Electronic Drums Help

[bradsx]

I'm very new to home recording and I live in a condo where I cannot use acoustic drums (nor do I have the mics, mixers, money or space!) I'm a drummer from way back so using electronic drums turned me off until I actually heard some of the kits out there. Now I'm pretty stoked.

Here's my conundrum:

Having not used MIDI other than with Sample Tank and my Axiom controller, I want to record electronic drums and have control over individual levels and drums and NOT have use drum software like EZDrummer, Strike, etc. I'd like to just use the brain that comes with the kit. Is this possible? Or am I relegated to either using software with per drum control, or recording the entire kit on one track and tweaking the level on the drum kit's brain?

I've looked everywhere for an answer, and this is my only hope Obi Wan.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Brad

 

[suprstar]

That depends on the module. Lower end ones have stereo outs, you can set the levels of the individual drums in the mix on the module, but when you record, you have 2 tracks, and are very limited in mixing. Some high end drum modules have many outputs, and you can assign snare to one, kick to another, hihat to another, etc. Then you end up with 8+ tracks with the individual drum sounds in each track.

I recommend Roland for drum modules. On the low end there's the TD-3 brains. They have great drum sounds, decent cymbals, and cost $300-ish. 2 track mix. At the high end there's the TD-20, the best modult Roland makes. Something like $1600. I beleive the TD-3 has some of the same drum tones as the TD-20, but the TD-20 has a lot more kits, more inputs for drums/pads/cyms, more outputs for mixdown/recording, a lot more features like uploading your own samples, saving kits/configs, etc..