Recording Roland electronic drums

[ALBERTPIKE]

Can I record Roland TD-8 through the MIDI into Cubase VST 5.1? When I playback, can I keep the Roland drums sounds or will I go to GM kits? Anyone know how to do this? I can't find specific patches in Cubase. Can I find them somewhere?

[skippy]

Absolutely: I do this all the time with my TD-10. You connect MIDI out on the drum module to a MIDI in on your computer, and a MIDI out on the computer to MIDI in on the module. Route the MIDI input you chose to a MIDI track, record-enable it, punch record, and wail away. To play back, send that track to the MIDI out you chose, and the module will play its internal sounds back in sync with the other tracks in the tune. No GM involved: the drum module does the synthesis, not the computer or soundcard.

The best thing about this is that it allows you to change your mind about the drum sounds, and completely alter the kit using the module's programming and tuning tools- without changing the details of the performance. When you are happy with the sounds, you can then track the drum module's analog audio outputs to audio tracks, and you're ready to mix- or, if you use an external mixer, you can skip that step altogether and just mix with the analog outs.

In this simplest case you are simply recording and playing back the MIDI stream. It could be any random instrument out there. Once you get this basic setup working, you can do much more sophisticated things. There are MIDI patch maps that you can use to have the patch names you see in Cubase match the patch names on the module. The Steinberg driverbase has some, and there are more available at various web sites- do a search and see what you come up with. I got my TD-10 patchname map from the Steinberg site...

[ALBERTPIKE]

Thanks. I've got a drummer coming to my little studio tomorrow with the TD-8. I was hoping to do it this way.

[ALBERTPIKE]

Okay, Skippy, I was able to do this with the drum kits on my Yamaha keyboard, but when I tried it with the Roland TD-8 I got car honks, whistles, and shrieks. I couldn't find the DrumMaps or patches for the Roland drums on the Steinberg web site. Found patches for lots of other things, but not those drums.

[skippy]

I don't understand that. When you record the MIDI out from the TD-8 when it is being triggered by the pads, a tom hit (for example) will record as a note-on event for some note number- and that's it. When you play it back, Cubase will send out the same note-on event for the same note number: you should get a tom hit from the TD-8. Cubase is simply recording and replaying the event: it neither knows nor cares what that note _means_.

Now, if you're trying to play the drum parts from some other trigger source (a keyboard, or remapping a canned sequence to drive your TD-8), you will need the drum map and other such junk so that you can translate the note numbers in the sequence/from the keyboard to the note number needed to get that sound. But for the simple case (record/playback), you shouldn't : event in simply yields the same event out!

Send me a PM with your email address, and I'll mail you the maps and info I have for my TD-10. They won't be perfect, but they'll be a start...