Automatically swap sounds between verse & chorus?

Cantabile
1

I’m using Cantabile 4 Solo.

I have a “Song” in Cantabile that contains drum samples in Native Instrument Battery, played live via a Drum Kit MIDI controller.

I want to swap/change one of the drum samples being played via the drum pedal between the verse & chorus.

The “Song” contains a Tempo Track, so I guess that I might want to set up some time-based “triggers” that can change the song’s config (or Battery’s selected Patch) at the start of each verse/chorus?

Or maybe I can map a button/pad from the drum kit controller to trigger the change manually?

2

TBH, once you get to this level of complexity, I would highly recommend you upgrade Cantabile to the Performer version. Performer has “Song States”, which make this kind of switching sounds per song section a breeze. See the guides section to learn about what Performer has to offer here.

To do what you are planning, I would

  • create a drum kit in Battery that contains both drum samples (to avoid having to load new samples while playing, which is not a good idea)
  • create two different routes from your MIDI controller; one with the standard routing, another with a MIDI filter in it that re-routes the specific MIDI note to a new target. Or use some MIDI mapper plugin with two different presets.
  • depending on Song state, have one or the other route active to NI Battery. So when you’re in the verse, the MIDI note gets routed to the “verse” sound, in the chorus, the same note gets routed to the “chorus” sound. Similarly, using a MIDI mapper, use a different mapper preset between verse and chorus, using song state behavior to change the presets.
  • change song states manually using a MIDI command or automatically, using song-position-based bindings

All very easy to do with the right tools - and pretty complicated if you try to reproduce this in the Solo version, which just isn’t designed for this kind of “real-time configuration change”.

Cheers,

Torsten

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3

Thank you Torsten, so at least I know it’s do-able!

Q1) How do I configure song-position-based bindings? Do you mean by using the “Timing” option for a binding, or is there another way?

Q2a) You said depending on “Song State”. Can I configure different states like “Verse” “Chorus” etc? If so, how? Are they time-based?

Q2b) Can I trigger something when I “enter” a “Song State”?

Are some of these “Performer-only” features?

4

Song states are saved configurations of a song. E.g. selecting different presets for plugins, turning plugins on or off, activating different routes, etc. So you can have a verse state where your keyboard plays a piano and a chorus state where your keyboard plays a hammond sound.

You can define many different song states, e.g. for different sections of the song, and sort them in a certain sequence. When you activate a song state, the song gets configured accordingly. There are specific commands to step through song states, e. g. “next state (instant)” which steps to the next state in the list without any delay.

There are also “trigger bindings” that get activated on loading or unloading (entering or exiting) a sing state.

Last, there are bindings from the master transport, e. g. “On Position” that will fire when the master transport reaches a certain position in playback.

And yes, as I indicated above, these are all features of Cantabile Performer, so definitely worth upgrading if you are planning to use Cantabile live in a non-trivial way.

As also recommended above, give the Guides Section on Song States a read and look at @brad’s videos on the topic. Not much value in repeating all this in this thread…

Cheers

Torsten

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5

I’m using Cantabile Performer with an eDRUMin 10 and Superior Drummer. I swap snares to simulate releasing the snare. It’s the same snare sample with and without the snare latched. I use song states for each, switching between them using a momentary pedal. In my case the pedal is going into the eDRUMin footswitch input but it could be plugged into a keyboard.

1 Like
6

@Torsten
I finally got around to properly implementing this advice, having just upgraded to Cantabile Performer, and it worked a treat. I used a MIDI Filter on a Route to remap the incoming drum hit appropriately between verse and chorus. Thank you, Pete

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