Logic Pro: Drum Machine Designer instruments mysteriously disappear?

Question

Level 1

4 points

Logic Pro: Drum Machine Designer instruments mysteriously disappear?

Hi there!

I had several Drum Machine Designer tracks in a project, each of which had been converted to midi regions and was working perfectly fine. When I reopened the project just a few minutes later, almost all of the individual samples within the tracks were missing. The midi notes were still there, and were still triggering the pad interface in Drum Machine Designer, but when I clicked on an individual sound (such as "Snare 4"), the Pad Controls interface below it would be completely empty! (See attached image.) I was able to essentially get the sounds back, by clicking on a different sound in the Drum Library, and then clicking back on the original sound. But I had to do that for each individual sound, on multiple Drummer Midi tracks ... ! And I haven't verified it yet, but I suspect all of the editing I did through the Pad Controls interface is lost.

Also weirdly, one sound ("Perc") in this particular drum track, which I had muted anyway, was perfectly fine and appearing normal. That's strange.

Has anybody experienced something similar where the individual drum sounds essentially just disconnect themselves from the Drum Machine Designer? And is there an easier fix than manually connecting them all back up? Thank you for your advice!

Posted on Jan 19, 2023 11:49 AM

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Answer 1

Iaamusic

Level 4

1,408 points

Jan 20, 2023 12:55 AM in response to emmetbyrne

Hi, did you do the save like this,

Did you do this

You can save your custom-made kit as a patch, which you can then access in other projects on your Mac.

Select the kit name pad at the top of the Drum Machine Designer window, where the name of the track appears.
If necessary, click the Library button.
Click Save at the bottom of the Library, enter a name and choose a location for the patch, then click Save.
If you want your custom-made kit to appear in the User Patches folder in the Library, make sure you save the patch in this location: ~/Music/Audio Music Apps/Patches/Instrument.

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Answer 2

emmetbyrne Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 19, 2023 12:59 PM in response to emmetbyrne

Another weird thing: just so I had something to listen to, I tried bouncing the drummer tracks in place once I had reassociated the individual drum sounds. That worked just fine and created an audio track of the desired drum track. But, it also did something to the original track, such that when I double click on the yellow drummer icon, it opens up the "Controls" and "EQ" panel at the bottom, instead of the usual DMD kit controls interface that it should! And the track itself looks like a normal drummer track, with the triangular transients. Bleh.

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Answer 3

emmetbyrne Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 19, 2023 12:21 PM in response to emmetbyrne

Quick update: I thought I had successfully rebuilt the drum tracks, and everything was sounding fine, and I saved it as a new file. But when I reopened the file, the drum tracks had disassociated from their sounds again!

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Answer 4

emmetbyrne Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 19, 2023 12:47 PM in response to Iaamusic

Thanks for the suggestion. I reconnected the drum sounds, and then saved the kit in the Library as a custom drum patch.

Unfortunately that didn't work. When I saved the new file and reopened it, the drums were still not making any sound. And even weirder, when I clicked on my custom drum patch to try to reinitialize it, the entire track itself disappeared from the project entirely!

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Answer 5

emmetbyrne Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 19, 2023 02:01 PM in response to emmetbyrne

OK I might have found a basic workaround. I duplicated the malfunctioning tracks, and then reassociated the sample links in the duplicates. Then I saved the file. This time, when I close out of Logic and then come back and reopen these files, the duplicated tracks are working fine. But nothing I do seems to make the fixes I make to the original tracks permanent.

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