Drum Maps
Which note each drum piece is written to: the General MIDI map Aether ships, importing a loop on your own pad layout, and mapping a Drum Rack once to reuse.
DocumentationDrum Maps
Drums
Drum Maps
A MIDI map answers one question: which note number does each piece of the kit get written to. That is what reaches your DAW, so it is what decides whether a beat lands on the right pads or scattered across the wrong ones. Aether ships the General MIDI map and will use it until you tell it about your own rack, which almost certainly is not on those numbers.
The MIDI map
The MIDI map decides which note each piece is written to, and that is what reaches your DAW. Aether ships the General MIDI Level 1 percussion map, and it is what you get until you save a map of your own. Every generation lists the pieces it used and the note each was given, copyable in one click.
| Piece | Note | Piece | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kick | 36 | Ride | 51 |
| Side Stick | 37 | Ride Bell | 53 |
| Snare | 38 | Crash | 49 |
| Clap | 39 | Splash | 55 |
| Closed Hat | 42 | Low Tom | 45 |
| Pedal Hat | 44 | Mid Tom | 47 |
| Open Hat | 46 | High Tom | 50 |
| Tambourine | 54 | Shaker | 70 |
General MIDI defines no piece called a shaker. Note 70 is Maracas, and Aether maps its Shaker onto it, because producers ask for a shaker and never for maracas.
MIDI Map and Sound are different controls
They sit next to each other on the top bar and answer different questions. MIDI Map decides which note each piece is written to, and it goes to your DAW. Sound decides what those notes sound like inside Aether, and it never leaves the plugin. Changing the map re-reads the beat on screen; changing the Sound changes only what you hear.Note names disagree between DAWs, so the number leads
Note 36 is C1 in Ableton Live, Logic, Cubase and Pro Tools, C2 in scientific pitch notation, and C3 in FL Studio. One note, three names, and nothing on screen usually tells you which you are reading. That is why every legend row and every lane leads with the note number, which means the same thing everywhere. The Drum map card shows both the Live and the scientific name in its own columns, so a copied map is unambiguous on its own, and the Note names chip switches which one the lane tooltips use. FL Studio is a third convention and is not offered; read the number.Bring your own loop, on your own pads
Drag a .mid onto the Drums tab and it becomes the clip on screen and the reference for your next prompt, so "make the hats busier" works on your own loop. The tab does not switch, and the file's tempo and meter fill in the controls.
The live controls work on an imported beat too, which is where they earn their keep: a played-in loop is off the grid in a way a generated one is not, so Quantize and Humanize have something to do.
Almost nobody's rack is on the General MIDI note numbers, so Aether does not assume they are. It reads the music instead: the densest evenly spaced part is the hat, the lowest hits on the strong beats are the kick, whatever answers the backbeat is the snare. Every import opens a mapper showing what it proposes, with a hit count per note, so you correct it before anything loads rather than discovering it afterwards.
Name a map and Aether keeps it. The next loop from the same rack opens with that map already filled in and every row right, and the report says which map it used. Keep as many as you like and rename, edit or delete them from the MIDI Map control on the top bar. Two saved maps that both fit a loop are offered by name rather than guessed between, and saving a map never overwrites another. A project remembers the map it was read under, so reopening it does not relabel your beat.
A piece your map does not define still plays
A three pad map does not swallow the crash the model wrote. Anything your map has no entry for falls back to its General MIDI note, and Aether tells you rather than dropping it. Changing the selected map, or editing one, re-reads the beat on screen straight away with no regeneration, and says where each piece landed. The notes do not move; what each one plays does.Mapping your own Drum Rack
The mapper is not only for loops you want to build on. It is also how you teach Aether a rack once, so that every generation afterwards writes to your pads instead of to General MIDI. The example below is an Ableton Drum Rack; Battery, Maschine, an MPC or a rack of your own works the same way.
- ●Make a clip on the Drum Rack track that hits every pad you want Aether to write to, at least once. The mapper asks about the notes the file plays and nothing else, so a pad the clip never triggers is a pad the map will not learn.
- ●Play it in rather than drawing one isolated hit per pad, if you can. Aether works out what each note is by reading the rhythm, not the note number, so a real groove arrives with most rows already proposed. A clip of single hits still works; it just opens with more rows Unassigned for you to set by hand.
- ●Export the clip on its own. In Ableton, right-click it and choose Export MIDI Clip, or drag it out to your desktop.
- ●Drag the .mid onto the Drums tab. The mapper opens with one row per note the file plays, each showing its note number, how many times it was struck, and the piece Aether proposes for it.
- ●Correct anything wrong, name the map, and Apply. That name is what the MIDI Map control shows from then on.
The map is now the active one. Every beat you generate is written to it, so the kick lands on your kick pad and the Drum map card in each reply reports the notes it used. Nothing about the preview changes: you still hear Aether's own kit through Sound, and the file you drag out still carries your note numbers.
Export the drum track on its own
If a file contains any notes on channel 10, Aether reads only those and ignores the rest. If it contains none, it reads everything in the file. A whole-song export would therefore hand the mapper your bass line as well, and ask you what piece it is.Adding pads later is a merge, not a replacement
You do not have to fit every pad into one clip. Export a second clip playing the ones you missed and drag it in: Aether recognises the rack, opens the mapper on that map with the notes it already knows filled in, and adds the new ones on Apply. Notes the second file does not play are left exactly as they were. Correcting a single row works the same way, so a mistake costs one reimport rather than a rebuild.