Starting home recording with electronic kit

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fwest3975

New member
Hi all: great forum btw.
But I have some questions about starting a very cheap and simple home recording setup. I have a Yamaha dtx450k electronic drum kit(which DOES send out midi) and I have an iPad,iPhone (both with GarageBand) and a Windows 10 laptop.
I would like to have a simple recording setup and GarageBand seems to be the easiest app to record with. My first question is

1. how do I send midi drums to garageband? By that I mean physically. Do I need a special cable or will the basic charger cable connect the iPad to the USB port in my kit work? But then ima need a drum interface app to trigger the midi.
2. is there any drum interface apps that work with midi (such as ezdrummer) that are also compatible with GB?

If there is a comparable setup for A Windows laptop setup that would be just as well.
I just don't want to drop hundreds of dollars for interface apps and hardware to record song demos.
Thanks!!!
Ps. I'm a newbie so try to dumb it down for me
 
Just had a look at your kit online - You should be able to record the midi in GarageBand on your iPad using the Apple Camera Connection Kit and the USB cable that came with the kit...

You won't be recording any audio though - just midi.
The sounds in your kit won't hit the sequencer (GarageBand) so you'll need to assign a VST to the midi channel (probably channel 10)

If you want to record the actual audio from the kit you'll need a 2-channel USB audio interface and a TRS (stereo Jack) (or stereo minijack - can't tell from the picture I can see) to phono cable and a pair of phono to jack converters (or a stereo Jack to mono Jack lead if you can find one) from the audio out of the kit to the inputs on the USB interface.

You can get an audio interface that'll work on both iPad and your laptop - cheapest > behringer UCA222
 
From this review, Yamaha DTX400K
there is no actual MIDI output but the unit will send MIDI triggers over USB.

I know nothing of iPad recording but would be surprised if the latency would be low enough to allow easy operation? I would urge the use of an interface, a good value AI is the Steinberg UR22 and that has MIDI ports so you would then have the means to expand the system in the future. MIDI via USB is fine but without any I/O ports there is nowhere else to go with it.

There is a slightly similar thread running re a mini nuktitrack recorder and my view is the same. You CAN get by with the very basics but an AI and DAW makes monitoring, overdubbing and editing so, SO much easier!

Dave.
 
Yeah. I HAD a trial of ezdrummer and ran it into audacity on my laptop and I gave up because I couldn't get past the latency issues. I actually forgot about that problem. So the UR22 will remedy this? And I will still need a drum interface app?
 
fwest3975 said:
Yeah. I HAD a trial of ezdrummer and ran it into audacity on my laptop and I gave up because I couldn't get past the latency issues. I actually forgot about that problem. So the UR22 will remedy this? And I will still need a drum interface app?
Click to expand...

The UR 22 comes with a light version of Cubase. No better DAW for MIDI work and I would expect the kit to run fine on that. Once you have the setup running you could investigate Reaper? Audacity is a terrific free editor but not really the full ticket for building songs.

Dave.
 
I run my Alesis set into my Tascam and into SSD in Reason. Latency is very manageable. Second the Reason proposal. SSD or SD or any of the other drum packages that will run inside Reaper should give you a great platform (with a little learning curve). USB midi has it's own latency issues (at least as far as I've noticed)...
 
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