MIDI Drums....Mono or Stereo

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rvkitch
Posts: 70
Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2020 7:24 am

MIDI Drums....Mono or Stereo

Post by rvkitch »

Hi All,
I'm using Steven Slate 5 "free" drum VST and MC 9 pro. I'm finally getting the knack of using VSTs with multiple outs and setting up child tracks in MC. My question is, which drum pieces should I send to a stereo channel and which ones to a mono channel? Each drum instrument has it's own overheads 1 and 2 and 1 room mic setting. I think all of the mixing for the overheads and room mics would have to be done in the VST because I can only send each of them to their own child track so I think those 3 tracks would be a train wreck of sound. And should those be Mono or Stereo? I'm just curious how some of you approach this and what is kind of the "typical" way of doing this. Also, is there a way to have each drum piece identified on the keys in piano roll like it is when using the Acoustica Studio Drums?

Thanks So Much!
cactus-head
Posts: 996
Joined: Sat Sep 16, 2017 3:09 pm

Re: MIDI Drums....Mono or Stereo

Post by cactus-head »

Hello,

Mono vs Stereo in the VST for drums really depends on the VST. I'm assuming you mean the VST has a mono or stereo out effect or some kind of reverb. The stereo effect may be a doubling effect to give space to the sound. Depending on the settings, it could sound like a double hit which I doubt you would want. I would recommend mono across the board. You should still be able to control panning per drum and you could use a spacializer or stereo enhancer later on the whole kit at once if you wanted to. A mono track on mixcraft can still show a left and right meter.

Use the mixing option first in the VST to set your relative levels. If you think you would need to add compression or other effects on specific drums (like the kick or snare) then you might want those outputs on their own tracks so you can control those types of things independently.

For example, I'm writing a salsa band tune which requires a huge percussion section. The main drum kit is on it's own track with the VST mixed internally. I'm using the VST's reverb and mic-ing also. The congas, bongos, timables, cow bells, clave, guiro etc are each on their own tracks unrelated to the main kit so I can control the dynamics individually and for ease of automation.

Page 125 of the manual should tell you how to create a custom drum map for the piano roll.
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