ORIGINAL: Sweet~Torque
Hi Everyone,
I have recently bought myself a electronic drum kit and would appreciate some help in deciding what would the right hardware and software solution. My main goal is to be able to;
- record the drums
- take midi samples and or loops, which are on my computer, and have them triggered by a particular drum pad.
Cheers
Sweet~Torque
If the drums have midi out all you need to record is the midi. Then later you can send that midi to any software sound module, sample player, etc. or even back to the sound module that came with your kit if you want to use the orignal sounds. It is not normal to trigger loops from midi because they tend to be longer then one hit but it can be done with the right software. You should not need to do that with most loops you just drag and drop them into a track in the project and then slide and streach them as needed. It's the single one hit drum sounds you need to be able to "play" or trigger with a midi performance.
Sonar can use midi tracks, software sound modules, loops, and audio tracks all in the same project. The loops can even be streached over more then one measure like is done in ACID (the first loop using software). Most drum loops are at least one measure long with the entire kit playing already but you can get some that are just one drum at a time.
If your kit doesn't have a sound module and just puts out midi then you can also play a software module on the computer however, you will get a bit of delay between the hit and the sound and that can throw you off. Try to get the latency down as low as you can in the software to keep this from being too bad. The speed of the computer and sound card driver both will affect how low the latency can get, you just have to work with it and see how low you can go before you start having dropouts in the audio.
It's best to use the sound module that comes with the drums to monitor so you won't get any dealy while recording midi, you hear the hit as you strike the pad. During the mix you can then send that midi to any software module and latency won't be a problem. It's only trying to listen as you play where latency (delay) happens.
If your sound card driver also has a software mixer you can just connect the drum module to an input on the sound card and monitor that and the rest of the project at zero latency. If you sound card doesn't have a software mixer then you may want to get a small mixer so you can hear the project and the drums at the same time. Try to get the tempo setting and time sig set in the project before you start recording midi so your playing will line up with the measures in the song it makes editing easier. Also, if you can play to the metronome in the software that will help also, you don't have to stay with it perfect just don't get too far off, you can fix the odd off time hit later by editing the time stamp on the midi event. That will save you from having to play the entire song over.
post edited by ohhey - 2006/08/01 00:52:19