Drum Maps

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.

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.

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. Each open Aether window keeps its own selected map, and any change to the saved maps in one window reaches the others within about two seconds.

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. If yours is an Ableton Drum Rack, dropping its preset file is quicker still: see the next section.

• ●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.

Drop in an Ableton Drum Rack

An Ableton Drum Rack has a quicker route than a clip. Drag its .adg preset onto the Drums tab and Aether reads the rack itself: every pad, the note it sits on and its name. The mapper opens already filled in, one row per pad, with the pad's name shown beside the piece it was matched to and the map name taken from the file name, so you check the rows rather than build them. Apply, and it becomes the active map.

• ●A pad takes the name you gave its chain, which is what Live's Rename sets. A pad with no chain name takes the name of a device inside it, and a pad with neither takes the name of its sample file, which is what Live shows on the pad. Racks saved in Live 11 and 12 are named the same way.
• ●A pad that holds a rack of its own is imported as one pad on its own note, not as the pads inside it.
• ●A pad named like a standard piece is matched to that piece. That covers names such as "HH Closed" or "Kick 1", short forms such as kik, snr, hh or OH, names that start with a pack name such as "Vintage Kit Open Hat 11", and joined names such as ClosedHH. A name that names two drums, such as "Snare Rim", becomes a pad of your own.
• ●When two pads would claim the same piece, the one whose name starts with it keeps it, then the first in the rack, and the other becomes a pad of your own, so no note is lost. Toms with no high, mid or low in their names fill the free toms from the lowest note up.
• ●Drop the same rack again after changing it and Aether updates the map it made last time instead of adding a second one. Pads you have since removed from the rack stay in the map. Aether recognises the rack by its file name, so if you rename the map, the next drop starts a new one.
• ●A .adg that is not a Drum Rack, such as an instrument or effect rack, is refused with a message saying so, and nothing changes.

Pads of your own

A map is not limited to the sixteen standard pieces. For a pad none of them describes, such as a cajón, an FX hit or a second snare, type its name into that row's piece box, in the mapper or under Edit map... on the top bar. A name that matches one of the sixteen takes that piece; any other name becomes a pad of your own, kept exactly as you typed it, in any language.

Click the pencil on a row to add a short note saying what the pad is, such as "low cajón slap". Aether writes parts for your own pads like any other piece, the note helps it understand an unusual one, and you can ask for a pad by name in your prompt.