Recording Electronic Drums to a PC

[ScottMacfeat]

Hello! I do not own my own studio, nor am I a sound engineer of any kind. However, I figured homerecording.com might be the right place to answer my question:

What is the best/easiest way to record my electronic drums to my PC?
- I would like to be able to offer recorded drum tracks from my home, and email them to producers.

Here's what I have:
- Roland TD-11kv Drumset

Here's what I've tried:
- I first tried saving my recordings from the drumset on a flash drive and then copying it directly to my PC. This didn't work because it saves files in MIDI format.
- I then had to learn about MIDI and found that I need a program to import MIDI files
- I tried Hydrogen because it is free, but I couldn't figure out how to import
- I then tried the demo version of Finale Songwriter because it would be two birds with one stone (record my playing and save it as an audio file, and it would be nice for lessons because it prints out sheet music)
- Finale worked for the most part, but I found that it's not 100% accurate when I play more complicated patterns (like a crush roll .. or anything really fast). Also, when I would export the song to an audio file, the sounds changed. I submitted an email to finale about that - I figured they should be able to help with that, and I might want to buy the program anyway for lesson purposes.

Here's what I'm thinking:
- I'd like to stay away from MIDI if at all possible (unless someone has an easy solution)
- The TD-11's have stereo left and right outputs. Obviously I could come out of these and go into a mixer board, but like I said above, I don't own my own studio.

Are there any devices or programs that anyone recommends? Is anyone currently doing this? What setup do you have? Maybe there's an android app? (Roland made an i-phone app) Any advice would be extremely helpful. Thanks!
-Scott

 

[Girish]

If I'm reading this right all you want to do is record your drum kit to a digital file to email.
The very basic option is to use the left/right output from the drum kit and run it into a mic socket in your PC. I'm sure there is a cable that has two 1/4" jacks to a mini phono plug and you can easily download a free audio recording piece of software to record the audio in to. You don't need a home studio to do that. Then simply save out the recording.

 

[ScottMacfeat]

If I'm reading this right all you want to do is record your drum kit to a digital file to email.
The very basic option is to use the left/right output from the drum kit and run it into a mic socket in your PC. I'm sure there is a cable that has two 1/4" jacks to a mini phono plug and you can easily download a free audio recording piece of software to record the audio in to. You don't need a home studio to do that. Then simply save out the recording.

Hey thanks for the reply. Yeah I actually ended up doing something similar to your suggestion. After reading a lot of forums on recording software, I found that I already had a program that would work well. It's called AVS4YOU. I bought it a few years ago simply for the video editing, but the nice thing about AVS is that it's a one time fee (at least that's what it was when I bought it, could be different now) and you have access to all of their programs for life (video, audio, image, etc). I didn't realize they had a recording program. So I just downloaded that and once I plugged in the TD-11's with a usb cable, the recording program recognized it right away. It also has a studio's worth of editing options, and I can save or convert the song to just about any file format I want. Here's my set up:

- Phone (music source) plugged into the "mix-in" of my TD-11's
- Laptop remotely connected to my PC (because my PC is in a different room)
- 16' USB cable running from my TD-11's to the PC
- AVS recording software

I also can record my track directly to the Roland sound module. The reason I do this is because if I get a good take, but am not happy with something, I can go back to the drums and edit my kit, then hit record on the Laptop and the play button on the sound module and it'll play back exactly what I did with the changed settings. I'm going to do exactly that with a recording I did last night. I'm not 100% happy with the kick drum sound - it could be a bit more 'punchy' .. but as it is, it gets a bit lost in the mix. You feel it more than you hear it .. could be my speakers though. Check it out on my website under the Studio Sessions tab. The website link is below for now; I can't post a url to another website since this is only my second post here.