edrum midi=confusion city

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didgijimmy

didgijimmy

vexed
Tried this in the noob section but didn't get a response, figured i'd try it here
K guys, ive asked a few midi questions lately. I have a simmons sd9k and would like to use the sounds that it came with to record midi with. I know that midi is not audio, and that the signal comes from the drums, to the pc, and then back to the drums for its sounds and then back to the pc, very quickly. Ive read the literature I just can't seem to get it to work. I have Protools Mpowered and the green gain lights up when i hit a drum, however no sound is produced. i set the input to the simmons and the output to it. I have searched the forums and can't find a solution. I think it may be something i need to do with the kit itself, but there is no full manual available for it, just a quick start guide that gives no midi instructions. Anyone want to point me in the right direction? rep points guaranteed.
thanks
james
 
info on the brain...

if it helps i have local set to on in the drum brain(i want to use the samples on the brain, and i think if ive read correctly this is the right setting). i also have set sync to clk master(i have either off or clk master as options). GM is turned off. in protools i have send channel set to 1 and recieve also set to one. i have no idea if these are correct, but i do know that the green lights up on the meter when i hit a pad, but no sound occurs.
thx
 
Don't know anything about Protools, but...

Do you have anything hooked up to your audio outs on the Simmons?? If you want the sounds to come from the simmons, you've got to be recording the audio, not the midi. You're not going to get any sounds through the midi channels.

Not sure if I'm reading your post correctly.
 
you read it right, and i may be an idiot...

Yes, that was basically my intention and I feel pretty dumb because I read so many other posts and still didn't completely understand. I have my simmons hooked up via usb to my pc. so, no i am not using the 1/4 audio outs. I wish to be able to pan, and adjust volume for each individual drum and cymbal, and know that with midi i can accomplish this. I just somehow assumed that i could create the notes on midi and then use the sounds on my drums to somehow produce the audio. i hope that makes sense. so what you are saying is that i can record the notes with my drums, but must download sounds off of the internet to apply them to the midi notes right? if i do this can i play back the sounds i got off of the internet in real time while recording the midi? also if you happen to know how to set this up it would be great. thanks chilli.
 
You won't get any sounds into your computer if you don't use the audio outs.

Let's put this another way. Say you're playing an acoustic drum set. You have sticks in your hand and you hit the snare, it makes a sound. You use a mic to record the sound into your computer. The mic is capturing an audio signal. Think of midi as your hands. It is only hitting the drum, but it's the drum itself that makes the sound, not midi ( or your hand). If you want to record the sounds from the simmons, you have to connect to your audio outs.

You can use midi to record the drum hits then play them back through the simmons, but you still need to use the audio outs to record the sound that the simmons generates.

make sense??

Now, there's another option you touched on slightly. You can use the simmons strictly as a midi controller to trigger a VSTi like ezdrummer. There you would be playing the drums, but the sounds would be the sampled drums of ezdrummer. In this case, you would only use the midi ports and not the audio out. EZDrummer runs strictly within the DAW app on your computer.

(You can go to the www.toontrack.com website and find some video of someone doing just that.)

But, honestly, I don't think that's what you are looking to do....

peace.
 
Oh, another thing, the simmons only has stereo outs, so you won't be able to track each drum or cymbal individually. I guess you have an option to adjust panning and such within the simmons controller, but I wouldn't know how to do that.
 
Chili said:
Oh, another thing, the simmons only has stereo outs, so you won't be able to track each drum or cymbal individually. I guess you have an option to adjust panning and such within the simmons controller, but I wouldn't know how to do that.
Click to expand...

Actually, you can in a round about way. Record your set as midi, dissolve it into individual tracks each with one instrument, record an audio track for each midi track soloed
 
thanks guys...

this is a huge help. altitude, is there anyway you can elaborate on this? I'm so new to midi, and actually drums in general, im a guitar/piano player. Would you happen to know how to "dissolve" the midi to individual tracks? and i am confused on what you mean by record an audio track for each midi track soloed.
Chilli, as always your info is invaluable. id rep u but i gotta spread some around first.
thx guys
 
altitude909 said:
Actually, you can in a round about way. Record your set as midi, dissolve it into individual tracks each with one instrument, record an audio track for each midi track soloed
Click to expand...

I know, but I wanted to keep it simple. I had enough difficulties trying to put into words what I posted earlier. :o

didgijimmy said:
Chilli, as always your info is invaluable. id rep u but i gotta spread some around first.
thx guys
Click to expand...

Glad to help. :) I try to pass on what little I know.
 
didgijimmy said:
this is a huge help. altitude, is there anyway you can elaborate on this? I'm so new to midi, and actually drums in general, im a guitar/piano player. Would you happen to know how to "dissolve" the midi to individual tracks? and i am confused on what you mean by record an audio track for each midi track soloed.
Chilli, as always your info is invaluable. id rep u but i gotta spread some around first.
thx guys
Click to expand...

Ill try to keep it simple, but I dont use PT so you will have to figure out how to do certain specific things.

When recording edrums, dont route the midi back to the brain via the DAW to trigger the sounds at first, just monitor the audio directly from the sound module (headphones, PA, Whatever). Just have the SD midi out connected to the midi in of your interface and set that to be the input of a midi track. This will eliminate any latency due to your software and midi hardware and make playing along to PT much easier.

Have a click and/or other parts going from PT as a time reference. I would just use a mixer with the simmons sounds on one track, the PT click on another and monitor via headphones. Record your set in PT as midi, no sound. When you look at the midi track it will be a piano roll with each drum instrument being a different note.

Now set the midi out of the track to the midi port connected to the midi in of the SD. When you play back the drums, you should hear whatever you recorded. Make sure this works and channels are set accordingly.

If everything is going as expected up to this point, you can now connect the audio out of the SD to your audio interface and monitor via that or protools. Create an audio track in PT with the input set to whatever you connected your audio in to and play back your set while recording to that audio track to make sure you are set up correctly. You should now have an audio recording of your set (mute your midi track or you will hear it twice). If this works, you have now recorded the audio of a midi device played back from inside of PT, congrats! It's a big step.

You are now set up physically to record each sound to it's own track. From here on out, everything is conceptual so I cannot exactly tell you how what to do specifically in PT.

Dissolving midi: The midi track you recorded has all the individual instruments as one midi track, you need to break that up into individual midi tracks each with a different instrument. The sure fire way is to copy the midi track as many times as you have instruments recorded and then delete everything in each track except the instrument you want to keep. I.E. your kick will be a C1 note, so delete everything except C1 for the kick track, your snare will be C1# so delete everything but that for the snare track, and so forth

Now make a new audio track, set the input to the same input you set for recording the complete set, solo the midi part you want to record, arm the track, and record as before. It should just record a single instrument. Repeat creating new audio tracks for each of midi tracks. You should now have the whole set recorded as audio, mute out the midi parts your done. :o
 
man this is perfect....

its gonna take some fooling around with, and maybe a post or two, but this exactly what i needed. thanks a ton and take some rep brother.
 
altitude im almost there...

ok, everything worked just like you said it would except for one thing. after recording the drums to midi, and playing the midi back everything sounds like a piano. they don't actually sound like drums. I'm pretty sure im missing something very easy here... but anyway im so close and know ill have it soon. if you have any idea what im missing please let me know.
thx
james
 
Sounds like you are routing your midi track back to a GM (General Midi) player instead of back to the SD module, check your midi routing. You can easily confirm this by switching the midi channel (not port) to 10 which is the GM standard channel for drums. You should be hearing exactly what you recorded
 
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