Mapping instruments in Logic? Change midi notes? Please help.

Yes, you can do this in Logic, and much more besides.

Logic has a Mapped Instrument environment object specifically for remapping drum notes. You can either insert this into the incoming MIDI stream (ie in the environment Click&Ports layer, between the Physical Input object and the Sequencer Thru object) - this means these notes will get transformed on all incoming MIDI and the mapped notes will be recorded, or you can do it after the sequencer part (meaning you're recording the original notes, but only remapping on the fly during playback.

It depends on how you want to set it up. Is the DTX your only MIDI input device?

I'm not sure this is correct, but depending on which version of Logic we're talking about (Logic Express OR Logic Studio - it can't be both) the Environment functions may be limited. I'm only speaking of my experience with Logic 7 in trying to get PPC plugs working on an Intel Mac via an external aggregate device using Rax/Soundflower in Logic Express 7, and having to upgrade to Logic Pro because the Environment in Express is limited.

Ah - as this is the Logic Pro 8 forum, I expect to be giving advice about Logic Pro.

If in this case the poster is posting about Logic Express, he should post in the Logic Express forum, otherwise it just gets confusing, and and advice given may be entirely useless as he's using a different piece of software with different functionality.

Quite right too, but when someone says (not being peevish, just, like, get it right, ok?) they have Logic Studio Express, you should be wary. It's like asking someone where they saved their lost document and they say "I saved it in Word".

Yeah, you're right, I was just saying I didn't really notice because I expect the posts in this forum to be about Logic Pro, and answer in that capacity.

I don't post in the Express forum simply because I don't know the exact feature differences in Express (as I don't own it) and therefore my advice would be potentially wrong (and therefore a waste of everybody's time...)

And yes, some of the long-timer's around here know that I'm a stickler for correct terminology (which is fun, because there are concepts in Logic where the terminology has changed over the years. I still find it clunky to say "MIDI regions" rather than sequences - I understand why they renamed it for reasons of simplicity, but MIDI regions are not regions, there are complete entities, totally unlike audio regions, which are actual regions onto a different, larger entity (the audio file).

Yes, the new way is less confusing, but still bad, imho... 🙂

Little minor rant there... 🙂

There is no such thing as "Logic Studio Express 8" - there are two versions of Logic, Logic Pro (which comes in the "Logic Studio" bundle ("Studio", because it contains a whole bunch of related applications in addition to Logic Pro), or Logic Express (which isn't a Studio bundle, because it's just Logic Express).

But anyway, the thing is, there is no point spending half an hour step-by-stepping a procedure which may be totally useless to you if the software doesn't contain even one of the necessary features. I want to give the correct advice to the best of my ability. In Logic Pro, the answer to your question is "Yes, there are lots of ways to do it", but the answer in Logic Express might be "No, you cannot easily do it in Express" - or it might not. I have no idea what the answer to your question is with Logic Express, hence I wouldn't attempt to answer it if I had realised you were not talking about Logic Pro.

As I've said, I do not know intimately what features exist or not in Logic Express - this is the reason why you are best off posting in the correct forum.

(Anyway, if LE has an environment, and if you have access to the physical input/sequencer thru cabling, and if LE has a mapped instrument object, that's the way to go about doing it.) If it does not, you could probably do it via some other solution, such as putting using MIDIPipe on the MIDI stream before it hits Logic...

Cool, thanks for that - yeah, it seems Logic Express is much closer to Logic Pro than it ever was in the past... previous versions had all kinds of stuff removed...

Yeah, no probs.

As I asked before: Is the DTX your only MIDI input device? Or are you using other MIDI keyboards with Logic as well?

How do you have the DTX configured in Logic? For instance, when you want to record a MIDI performance in Logic, what tracks/instruments are you recording on? Are you using the DTX in MIDI local off mode?

Yeah the dtx is my only midi device connected right now

Ok, in that case I recommend doing it like this, because this keeps it invisible and simple to use... oh, hang on...

I also have a M-audio axiom25 but I am just using that via usb for now.

So your DTX is not the only MIDI device. Ok, then we'll do it a different way, or at least have to modify the walkthru.

Let's keep it simple for now. Open the environment window, and go to the CLick & Ports layer.

You should see two environment objects - the Physical Input object (where all your MIDI comes into Logic) and the Sequencer Thru object (the sequencer part of Logic). These objects should be cabled together, because by default we want incoming MIDI to be sent to the sequencer.

But this part of Logic lets us customise things, by adding MIDI input processing before the sequencer (one of the reasons why Logic is cool).

Now, because we have two incoming devices, we can't just remap all incoming notes, otherwise your keyboard playing will really suck... 🙂

Both MIDI ports (the Echo, and the Axion) should be listed in the Physical Input object, with the cable coming from the "SUM" output (this is the sum of all MIDI interfaces).

Disconnect the SUM cable. Connect a cable from the Axiom output to the sequencer thru (so all MIDI data coming from the Axiom gets passed through unaltered).

Select New -> Mapped Instrument. Name it "DTX Remap" or something.

Cable the Echo output of the Physical Input object to this new mapped instrument, and then cable the output of the mapped instrument to the Sequencer Thru.

Now, all MIDI events coming from the Echo (which the DTX MIDI is coming in on) are getting passed through the mapped instrument object, before being passed into the sequencer.

Now, double click on the mapped instrument to open it's window. You can now remap each input note to any output note.

Note - there are other ways of setting this up (there are often many ways to do things in Logic). The benefit of this way is that your mapped notes are recorded into the sequencer, so they will always play your other instruments according to the mapping you've set up, and you don't have to do anything else in the arrange page - just select your destination audio instrument (or whatever) as you already do.