Hello Everyone, I'm a newbie and need to find a good tutorial on how to use an electronic drum kit to record in sonar x1 producer. There is a lot of stuff on the forum and I tried a search, but thought it would be easier to just put up a new thread. Thanks Paintscraper

You mentioned you're a newbie. How hard it is or how much help you need depends on which aspect you're a newbie at. If you have used soft synths before it's quite simple and only takes a few steps. 

Insert Session Drummer into your project file. 
In the midi track that's created set the input to the midi input you have the drums hooked up to. 

That's it. 
How well it works will depend on your computer and interface. If it's not a fast enough midi/audio interface the latency will be painful. 

Try this
http://cakewalk.com/CakeT.SONARU.aspx/Master-Class

Paintscraper


  Hello Everyone, I'm a newbie and need to find a good tutorial on how to use an electronic drum kit to record in sonar x1 producer. There is a lot of stuff on the forum and I tried a search, but thought it would be easier to just put up a new thread. Thanks Paintscraper

Well, I don't have the kit just yet, but will soon. I've never tried it before. I think I put the session drummer 3 into my project, then right click on that and pick, Split track into a midi. From there, I should be able to build whatever kind of drumkit I want (samples)! Like I said a complete newbie. The kit should have a usb to go to my computer. So, I'll have to use that. I don't have a midi, port on my comp. Thanks for any help. Paintscraper

Hi Paintscraper, Welcome to the forum!

I am sorry, but I am not sure what you want to do?

- You don't normally have a midi port on the computer, rather on your audio interface or midi keyboard. Do you want to play drums via midi keyboard?
- Do you mean that you want to use drum samples saved on a USB stick in Session drummer 3? Yes you can do that. You can load your own samples to build your own kits. However I find this easier to do in Native Instruments Battery 3 or other drum software for that.
There are a lot of info in this forum and youtube.com

Good luck!

Hi Paintscraper, welcome to the forums, I take it you want to use your kit as a trigger for session drummer? I have done the very same thing but using EZDrummer. If the connection you will be using is through USB it will make it a whole lot easier. If the kit is a relatively new one Sonar should detect its make etc, if not it should still detect it as a Midi Device then it is a matter of selecting your kit inside the Midi devices. It has been a while since I have used this technique but Im pretty sure thats all you need to do, once you have selected it inside Midi devices, open up session drummer, create whatever kit you wish and it should work automatically. Its something to experiement with anyway, I may have missed something, I am unfortunately not in a possition to try it myself anymore, but good luck. Cheers 

Paintscraper


Well, I don't have the kit just yet, but will soon. I've never tried it before. I think I put the session drummer 3 into my project, then right click on that and pick, Split track into a midi. From there, I should be able to build whatever kind of drumkit I want (samples)! Like I said a complete newbie. The kit should have a usb to go to my computer. So, I'll have to use that. I don't have a midi, port on my comp. Thanks for any help. Paintscraper

That's what I'm talking about BluffinMad. An Alesis Kit is what I'll be using. I want to Play my drumset and record. It will be nice to not write everything in piano roll or use the sequencer.

I assume your drums have a USB port to connect to your computer. 

If you want the timing to be precise, you'll need to play to the metronome. So you'll need headphones.
 
Then insert a MIDI track, arm the track (the R button) and then hit record. You should get a 1 or 2 measure count and then start playing. When you're done, hit stop.