Sync drum machine and SL?

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PT76

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Hi, I just got SL yesterday and managed to get my project studio up and running with little to no problems (yay for me, LOL! ). I managed to record myself playing guitar (cuz that's what I do) and managed to lay down a track from my drum machine (a Roland R8 Mk II). What I'm really interested in achieving is recording seperate tracks for each drum, but I am not sure at all how to get my drum machine to sync up to Cubase. I've never done any recording using a computer and a drum machine and I'm a little lost as to what I need to do. I've skimmed through both the R8's manual and SL's manual but am not 100% clear on what to do.

What I'd like to have happen is I press 'Start' on the R8 and that would cause SL to begin recording. Is that even possible? I've got an M-Audio Firewire 410 and midi cables, with everything hooked up, but it's a matter of getting my R8 to communicate with SL that has me stumped. Remember, I'm totally green to all this (though extremely enthusiastic). Thansk for your help in advance.

Phil
 
Is this a tough question of have I just asked it in the wrong way? Perhaps I need to prove that I actually own the software with a serial number or something? :p
 
Hello, Phil.

I think the best way to do this would be to make Cubase the master. This means that when you hit play on cubase, the drum machine starts going too.

You will have to make a midi connection from the midi out of your soundcard to the midi in on the drum machine. You may have to make some settings on your drum machine that will set it to "slave" mode, which means that it listens for midi commands from another source (in this case cubase) to tell it what to do. What you will probably have to do is mute every drum sound but the one you want, and then do a new take to track each drum sound. However, there is a better way to go about doing this if you are willing to delve into MIDI a little bit...

It sounds like you're programming your drums in your drum machine. I would suggest that you try sequencing your drum parts in cubase...It's a lot easier, alot more visual, and the editing is insane! To do this, you would connect another midi cable, this time from the midi out of your drum machine to the midi in on your soundcard. You will have to open a midi track in cubase, and then set the input to your soundcard's midi in. There should be a little LED that flashes in cubase when you hit the pads on your drum machine. (again, you may have to adjust a few settings on your drum box for this.) Once you are getting a midi signal, you simply press record and cubase will record the midi notes you hit (NOT AUDIO! this is important to understand...). Once you have recorded a loop with cubase's metronome, you can quantize your notes so that they are all on time, cut, paste notes/loops and sequence whole songs. Keep in mind that you will have to set the midi out of the track to your soundcard as well. What will happen is you will record the note presses into the computer, and then upon playback the notes will be sent BACK out to the drum machine to trigger the sounds. The audio will still be coming out of the drum machine. This way of doing it is a little more involved, but MUCH more flexible as it allows you to change very small things about the drums later on. If you record audio, your kind of stuck with it unless you redo the whole track.
 
So the drum machine will automatically know when to play and what sounds to play?? How would you program the correct sound for each virtual track?? That's probably to do with the drum achine itself right?? I HATE MIDI!!!!!!

Pat
 
Okay, check it out...

Yes, the drum machine would know when to play because cubase triggers the notes when they come up in the song exactly where you recorded them to (or pencil'ed them in...etc.) still with me?

If you hit record on the cubase midi track, then start hitting your drum triggers, whatever keyboard notes they are assigned to (i.e. C#1, A3, F2...) will get recorded. For example...say your hi hat sound is set to C#. Everytime you hit that, the sequencer is recording a C#. Now say you go play back that track. The sequencer happens upon a "C#" that you just recorded...now remember...this C# does NOT make any noise...what cubase does is send this C# 'command' to your drum machine and says "do what you will with it". The drum machine still has that C# set to the hi hat sound, and thus the hi hat is triggered!

Now, the beauty of this situation is that once you record your performance, all you need to do is reassign different drum sounds to the pads and you have a completely different sounding drum pattern! Does that make sense?

In other words...after you've recorded a string of 1/8 notes on your C# hi hat... you then change the C# pad to be a snare drum and VOILA you have a drum fill...
 
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