Reason and electronic drums and midi

[Vullkunnraven]

I was wondering if someone can give me some advice/guidance (I would be eternally grateful!)...

-Let me start with what I have...

Hardware:
Radium midi controller
Yamaha DTXpressIII Special electronic drumset
Digi002 rack
G4 Mac OSX dual 1.25 ghz w/ 1 gig ram

Software:
Reason 2.5
Rewire
Protools LE 6.4

-and here is what I want to do and I'm having trouble doing...
I want to use my electronic drumset to a.) record my midi performance on protools and/or reason, b.) trigger the drum sounds from reason's Redrum drum machine with my Yamaha DTxpressIII and c.) be able to seperate each drum piece/channel (i.e. kick, snare, ride, etc.) onto protools on their own designated and respective tracks.

-what I've done so far...
I was able to connect the midi out from the Yamaha's brain to the midi in to the digi002 via midi cable, and then I drew the connection on the protools-menu "setups>edit MIDI Studio Setup". After I went to reason (which is on a protools track/plugin via rewire) I set up the reason "preferences>midi" to use my digi002 as the midi input on channel 10. Then my tom 1 on my yamaha kit was actually triggering the first instrument/voice on the redrum machine ( the bass drum) but it was muting it and had no sound coming out (this is similiar to when I use my Radium controller to trigger the redrum, only when I hit a key on the keyboard that doesn't make any sound, like a higher note out of the range of the "drumset"). How would you guys reccommend setting this up? What input and output do I assign my midi track on protools (I can't record any midi performance)?

Thanks in advanced for help with this...
Any and all suggestions welcome...

 

[ssscientist]

First, start with just Reason running on your computer. It has it's own built in sequencer so there's no reason to involve 'protools' in the process at this point.

Plug your Yamaha drum brain straight into the midi in of your computer interface. Then start with a blank Reason rack and create a mixer and a redrum drum machine. You will see just one track in the sequencer, and if there's not a midi jack icon there click in the space to the far left of the track and put one there.

If your Yamaha kit can send out midi notes that you choose for the kick, snare, etc., then you are in business. Trigger the kick drum and change the note that it sends out until you are triggering the kick drum in Reason. Then do the same with the snare and toms until you've got all the drums routed correctly. Then save it as a preset called 'Reason' if your drum brain has user memories.

Reason has a metronome to keep you on tempo, but if you have to turn it up at all I find it quite harsh --- you can use another sound like rim shot, closed hihat, etc on the fours instead.

Then go to town and start rocking the beats -- your performance will be recorded down to the 1/64 note which is the finest resolution the Reason sequencer is capable of.

 

[Vullkunnraven]

Thanks!!

Thanks Ssscientist... I tried it out last night and I changed the notes on the drum brain to match up to reason's redrum. Now the hard part is choosing which drum pad to trigger which channel on the redrum... any ideas on how to get each drum piece as a seprate track into protools? Maybe I can mute certain things and convert the midi into audio onto protools...

BTW, Thanks again!

 

[ssscientist]

My advice would be to run Reason as a ReWire slave with the Redrum still being triggered by the midi track. That way you have the flexibility of changing a drum sound or all the drum sounds if they turn out to be not right for the song you're working on.