The Adapt to Zoom mode creates a finer and finer grid as the timeline is zoomed in. In Use Quantize mode, the grid will be determined by the editor’s current quantise setting, whereas Use Snap from Drum Map will create a per-instrument grid determined by the snap setting of each drum instrument (if you can’t see this column, move the divider between the instrument list and the grid).

If this or any other toolbar buttons I mention are not visible in the Drum Editor, click the gear icon at the top-right of the editor’s window to open a menu from where you can enable it. The grid displayed by the Drum Editor is dependent on the active Grid Type, which is accessed via a drop-down menu on the toolbar at the top of the editor window. The menu also has options for opening the Drum Map Setup window, where you can load, configure and save maps, and to import a map from the VSTi providing the drum sounds (if the VSTi supports this feature). Clicking in this field opens a pop-up menu from where you can choose from the currently available maps – a General MIDI map is always available. Assigning a Drum Map to a track also causes the Drum Editor to be shown in the Editor tab of the project window’s lower zone whenever any of that track’s parts are selected.ĭrum Maps are assigned to a track in the top section of the Track Inspector – the field in question is located below the MIDI I/O routing selectors and has an icon that resembles a kick drum and beater.

This tells Cubase the track is being used for drums, and so double-clicking parts on such a track will open the Drum Editor rather than the Key Editor. To open selected parts in the Drum Editor instead, we can use the MIDI > Open Drum Editor menu option, but a more streamlined approach is to assign a Drum Map to tracks that contain drum parts. By default, double-clicking on a MIDI part will open Cubase’s Key Editor, the classic piano-roll MIDI note editor common to all DAWs.

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