# Reaper With Cubase Drum Editor



## bhakan (Jul 9, 2014)

So I was recently using Cubase at a friends for some drum programming and found it miles ahead of using Reaper's piano roll to program drums which is a nuisance. While playing around with settings in Reaper I believe I have found a way to emulate Cubase's drum editor within Reaper. This may be common knowledge, but I haven't seen it anywhere, and I know a lot of people prefer Cubase's drum editor so I figured I would share.

If someone with Cubase could confirm this for me (I'm doing this from memory and am not sure if I missed some features) but the Cubase drum editor uses diamonds which are all a set length, so you don't have to adjust the length of the note, a single mouse click adds a note to the grid, and dragging adds notes to each line on the grid. 

-I labelled what each note on the piano roll triggered, ie: kick, snare, etc
-In the Midi Editor, selected View>Show/hide note rows>Hide unused and unnamed note rows
-In the midi editor, selected View>Piano roll notes>Diamonds (drum mode)
-Under Actions>Show action list I created a new custom action for 'Set default mouse modifier action for "Midi piano roll left click" to "Insert note"'
-Made another custom action for 'Set default mouse modifier action for "Midi piano roll left drag" to "Paint a row of notes of the same pitch"'

You'll end up with a drum editor that looks like this:















Hopefully some Reaper users here will find this helpful. I think its way easier than the stock drum roll. If I'm missing any aspects of the Cubase drum editor tell me, as I'd really like to get this as close as possible because it was super intuitive when I was using it


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## jasonsansburn (Jul 10, 2014)

I love you


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## nutsock (Jul 10, 2014)

Will have to check this out. Thanks!


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## jasonsansburn (Jul 10, 2014)

Do you have any idea how i can make the diamods smaller? And I got the left drag but I can't get the left click to insert note.


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## bhakan (Jul 10, 2014)

jasonsansburn said:


> Do you have any idea how i can make the diamods smaller? And I got the left drag but I can't get the left click to insert note.


I do not know if you can make the diamonds any smaller, but I do agree that would be better. I'll see if I can find any way to do that, but I make no promises as I basically just figured this out through trial and error.

As far the left click insert, I assume you have made the custom action for 'Set default mouse modifier action for "Midi piano roll left click" to "Insert note"'. In really basic trouble shooting, did you run the action? I completely forgot to actually run it the first time and spent a bunch of time troubleshooting when the solution was the most basic thing. All the advice I can really give is just to check and make sure the custom action saved and run it again.


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## Lokasenna (Jul 10, 2014)

You can't make them smaller. Normal rectangles can be set to something tiny like 1/64, which works well enough for me.


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## Sebazz1998 (Jul 11, 2014)

Do you gotta do this every time though? Like If I save my superior template with this midi editor will it automatically be pulled up when I load the track as a template in another project?


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## bhakan (Jul 11, 2014)

Sebazz1998 said:


> Do you gotta do this every time though? Like If I save my superior template with this midi editor will it automatically be pulled up when I load the track as a template in another project?


It should (at least it does for me) keep these settings across all projects. 

The issue would be when switching between say programming drums and a synth melody you would need to change back and forth, but I think all the settings could be put into one custom action and then set to whatever key you want. So you may be able to hit one key to toggle back and forth.


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## Emperor Guillotine (Jul 11, 2014)

I need to update my Cubase. Been running the same version since like 2009... -.-'


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## deathbyguitar (Aug 15, 2014)

Here's an easier way get the kind of drum mode you're looking for:

1. Right click the MIDI Editor toolbar and click Customize.

2. First, we'll add a custom action for standard piano roll mode. Assign these 3 actions to it. 







3. Now we'll create a custom action for drum mode. Assign these 3 actions to it. 








We should now have 2 clickable buttons on the toolbar that will toggle between Standard and Drum Mode.





If you selected the actions I listed, it will automatically change to diamonds, showing event names instead of the piano and you'll be able to add notes by simply clicking instead of dragging. Much easier and more intuitive, in my opinion. Standard mode will make everything back to normal. This way you can toggle between editing drums and editing other MIDI stuff with one click. 

I don't use "show only named notes" because the diamonds are too damn huge and hard to deal with. I submitted a feature request to shrink the diamonds. Probably the one thing we need to make this a great interface for drum editing. Vote for it on the Reaper forums here. 

Smaller diamonds/rectangles in MIDI Editor when showing only named notes - Cockos Confederated Forums


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## QuantumCybin (Mar 14, 2015)

This thread deserves a bump not only for the OP but for deathbyguitar's post as well. I had figured out how to emulate Cubase's drum editor somewhat loosely, but finding this thread made it a lot easier. I particularly love the shortcut deathbyguitar posted, and it's now so much smoother to transition between a drum editor and the normal piano roll when writing synth stuff, for example. Thanks a ton


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## deathbyguitar (Mar 17, 2015)

Here, I'll do you one better. This zip file contains 2 files that will do this for you, plus a few handy buttons I made for adjusting note positions and velocities on the fly. It's my most recent config that I'm running now. You'll need to import the Midi toolbar file into the midi toolbar (obviously), then also import the midi editor actions. You'll now have a MIDI editor perfectly suited for programming drums and superior to the standard config in every way. 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16498200/MidiEditorStuff.zip

This is why Reaper kicks all kinds of ass. Mega-customization is not only possible, but easy as hell.


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## Rizzo (Mar 21, 2015)

deathbyguitar said:


> Here, I'll do you one better. This zip file contains 2 files that will do this for you, plus a few handy buttons I made for adjusting note positions and velocities on the fly. It's my most recent config that I'm running now. You'll need to import the Midi toolbar file into the midi toolbar (obviously), then also import the midi editor actions. You'll now have a MIDI editor perfectly suited for programming drums and superior to the standard config in every way.
> 
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16498200/MidiEditorStuff.zip
> 
> This is why Reaper kicks all kinds of ass. Mega-customization is not only possible, but easy as hell.


Holy fvck, thank you so much!
Really useful mod, now that's how a drum editor should be 

EDIT: I tried to implement the "drag to paint a row" action too but I'm not liking it. I removed it in the custom actions list but Reaper keeps doing it. How do Iactually remove the action? Do I have to assign another one in its place? (aka...What was the default one, in case?) :\


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## bhakan (Mar 21, 2015)

deathbyguitar said:


> Here, I'll do you one better. This zip file contains 2 files that will do this for you, plus a few handy buttons I made for adjusting note positions and velocities on the fly. It's my most recent config that I'm running now. You'll need to import the Midi toolbar file into the midi toolbar (obviously), then also import the midi editor actions. You'll now have a MIDI editor perfectly suited for programming drums and superior to the standard config in every way.
> 
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16498200/MidiEditorStuff.zip
> 
> This is why Reaper kicks all kinds of ass. Mega-customization is not only possible, but easy as hell.


This is fantastic, far easier to implement than my original post 

Agreed, I originally started using reaper for the price, but the level of customization really makes it one of the best DAW's by any standard.


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## JEngelking (Mar 21, 2015)

deathbyguitar said:


> Here, I'll do you one better. This zip file contains 2 files that will do this for you, plus a few handy buttons I made for adjusting note positions and velocities on the fly. It's my most recent config that I'm running now. You'll need to import the Midi toolbar file into the midi toolbar (obviously), then also import the midi editor actions. You'll now have a MIDI editor perfectly suited for programming drums and superior to the standard config in every way.
> 
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16498200/MidiEditorStuff.zip
> 
> This is why Reaper kicks all kinds of ass. Mega-customization is not only possible, but easy as hell.



This is awesome, and just what I've needed for a long time.  How do you go about importing the actions list? Just go in to Actions > Show actions list > and then import? And what are the actions that are included in that file? The single left click to insert notes is working for me, but not the drag to paint row of notes action.


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## HairyNutsack69 (Oct 9, 2017)

deathbyguitar said:


> Here's an easier way get the kind of drum mode you're looking for:
> 
> 1. Right click the MIDI Editor toolbar and click Customize.
> 
> ...



The images seem to have disapeared, would you mind uploading them again or describing what to do?


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