Topic: Transposing (actual pitch shift) of entire drum kit on s970

[Ash Of To]

Is it possible to transpose (i.e actual pitch shift in semi tones) the instrument sounds of the entire Drum Kit on s970?

[SeaGtGruff]

I don’t know if you can transpose the Note values of a drum kit, because the General MIDI specs from the MMA stipulate that a Transpose (or Coarse Tuning) message should not affect the Note values of a drum kit. If you really want to do that, you might need to load the MIDI data into an external MIDI editor to do it. Otherwise, there might be a way to trick the keyboard into doing it, but I don’t know whether it would work. Each channel has an XG setting or flag associated with it which identifies the channel as being used for a melodic voice or kit voice. If you can figure out how to change that flag on a drum channel so the keyboard thinks it’s a melodic channel, you might be able to transpose it.

[Ash Of To]

Hi Michael,
Thank you for your response.
I recently bought some Indian Styles and in one of them any drum kit assigned to the Rythm1 channel (ch9) "gets pitch shifted" down by 5 semitones. So I thought there was an obvious way of doing this. If there is, then it would be very useful for applying it to the indian kits as they have melodic percussion instruments which have to be in tune with the scale of the song being played.
Ash.

[EileenL]

The reason we are told not to transpose the drum track is that it then alters the drum mapping which dose not sound good.

[Ash Of To]

Hi Eileen,
Touché. I am looking for the Style File Parameter which will allow pitch-shifting (by semitones) of the entire drum-kit (or restoring the drum kit to play at its original pitch) in a Style I bought.

I normally use the "DRUM SETUP" of the s970 to pitch-shift the only the chromatic Indian instruments (e.g. Tablaa) in the Indian Kit to be in tune with the song. But the Style I bought is pitch-shifting the entire drum kit down by 5 semitones. It does the same to any other drum kit I assign to ch9 as well (even the preset kits). So there has to be a parameter in the Style File which allows the pitch of the entire drum kit to be shifted in semi-tones.

My intent is to restore the Indian-Kit back to its original pitch and then use "DRUM SETUP" to pitch-shift only the Instruments that need shifting.
Ash

[SeaGtGruff]

In MIDI, there's a difference between "transpose" and "tuning," even though "transpose" is also referred to as "coarse tuning."

What you want to do should be possible, although I don't know if you can tune an entire drum kit at once; I suspect that you might need to tune each Note (or percussion sound) one at a time.

If this drum kit you're referring to is from an expansion pack, it may be tuned differently from the built-in drum kits by design. Or are you saying that the tuning of the sounds is changing depending on which style or song the drum kit is being used with?

[Ash Of To]

You can use "DRUM SETUP" on s970 to "pitch-shift" any sound of the drum kits assigned to ch9 or ch10 in a style file, and I use this functionality to tune my chromatic instruments in the assigned drum-kit to the song.

However, there appears to be a global "pitch-shift" parameter which will "pitch-shift" the entire drum-kit (i.e. each sound assigned to each note). I can say this with certainty, because even when I replace the original drum-kit in the style file with any other drum-kit, the entire drum kit is pitch-shifted down by five semitones from the outset, without using the "DRUM SETUP" function. So the Style File appears to have a global parameter which is set to pitch-shift (NOT transpose) the entire drum kit. I have scoured the available documentation and FAQs related to Style Files but to no avail...and this boggles me because there are people out there using this function!

I was hoping someone on this forum had the knowledge of this global pitch-shift parameter. If you are technically savvy and want to try out for yourself, I can make the style file available to you.

[SeaGtGruff]

Is the style file something you can post for someone to look at? I would NOT post it if it was part of a Voice & Style Expansion Pack that is for sale. In that case you can try looking at it yourself. Jorgen has a free utility for editing the CASM section of style files, and MixMaster can display an event listing for the MIDI portion of style files.