MIDI Drum Assignments

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Level 1

25 points

MIDI Drum Assignments

I'm a GarageBand noob and and computer music noob, in general, but I bought an M-Audio Oxygen 8 v2 keyboard controller. I did a little research and found a chart of General Midi note assignments for drums. Sure enough, playing the notes on the keyboard in GarageBand triggers the 35 or so expected drums and percussion from the chart.

But GarageBand triggers another dozen or so percussion instruments that are above and below those listed on the chart I'm using.

Are ALL of the MIDI drums that GarageBand triggers documented somewhere?

Message was edited by: Jon Heal

Mini 1.66 GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.3), M-Audio Oxyge 8 v2

Posted on Jul 10, 2008 3:06 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 11, 2008 3:11 AM in response to Jon Heal

This is what Apple says about the Jam Packs, it applies more or less to the standard drum kits too:

The sounds in the Jam Pack 1 drum kits are organized across the keyboard in the following
general order:
• Notes below C0: Miscellaneous sounds relevant to the genre.
• Notes C0 to C1: Alternate drum kit sounds.
• Notes C1 to B2: Standard drum kit sounds, including kick drum, snare, hi-hats, ride cymbals,
crash cymbals, and toms.
• Notes C3 to A#3: Basic Latin percussion, including bongo, congas, timbales and agogo.
• Notes B3 to D#5: More Latin and other exotic percussion, including triangle, wood block,
claves, guiro, and cuica.
• Notes above D#5: Sound effects and other miscellaneous sounds.

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Answer 2

Jon Heal Author

Level 1

25 points

Jul 11, 2008 5:52 AM in response to Christoph Drösser

Thanks, Christoph. I guess if I were a real musician, I would know what the instruments were by their sounds. As it is, I'm reduced to scribbling notes like "the funny scratchy thing that buzzes" when I wish to notate an instrument choice.

I also noticed that if you pick different drum sets in GarageBand, many of the standard adssignments are replaced with instruments pertaining to the type of drum set. For the more electronic drums, again, a batch of unknown sounds are triggered.

GarageBand instrumentation definitely needs more thorough documentation, but hey, the price was right! 🙂

Message was edited by: Jon Heal

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