Whats the cheapest way to get a midi note from a kick?

  • Thread starter Thread starter tubedude
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tubedude

tubedude

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I want to trigger a kick, and get a midi note in sonar, preferably in the right key, but whatever. Its gotta be quick enough for metal drummers too. ANything cheaper than say a DM5. I dont need sounds, I just need a note triggered and input into Sonar.
 
You need a hardware trigger to MIDI interface "brain". Found a home-made interface you could take a crack at (which will cost around $100 in parts and God knows how much time to do it):
http://www.storm.ca/~rheslip/trigger.htm

OR go an Alesis D4 (same price as the DIY project above at ebay) and input the Midi signal through the D4 to the PC or whatever you'll use to remap the MIDI notes. I can't think of anything short of D.I.Y. that would be cheaper to convert an acoustically triggered signal to MIDI code.
 
The cheapest way i can think of (and this may not be what you were going for in terms of process and results) is to mic the kick and record onto a separate audio track while your backing plays, then make some coffee and draw in the midi notes manually where you can see the notes on the audio track. It will take a long time, but that really is as cheap as it gets. Otherwise, it's probably worth paying out for a DM4 (i got one off Ebay for about £150 ($300) or similar, and just doing the midi thang properly.
 
Only other thing I can think of is to use a replacer like Drumagogg. It replaces with an analog sound, but it shouldn't be that hard to get your desired midi sound (or a close or even better sound).

But I guess you did say cheap. Never mind.
 
Well, my idea here is to add more inputs, cheaply, as I am maxed out at 10 analog and can go no higer except with midi. The 11th input will just be a kick trigger, via midi input of my soundcard, leaving me with 10 analog that I can use after the kick is taken care of. One input can make all the difference sometimes, and I often find myself one short.

Davenhurst, that is insane... if you use Sonar, you can use "extract timing" on an audio track like kick, and with a little tweaking to get it right where its not triggering too much or too little, it will make all the midi notes for you, paste them into a midi track, and you are done in like 2 minutes total. Going by hand sucks and take sup way too much time.

Drumagog is fine too, but doesnt help my goal.

Peace
Paul
 
tubedude said:
Davenhurst, that is insane...
Click to expand...

I fully agree, but it is viable and cheap. I play trigger pads through a DM5, connected to a midi track in Tracktion to trigger samples. After a bit of a freestyle drum-o-jam, there's a lot of workable beats there which need tweaking manually. Sure it takes time, but for me it adds a kind of improv feel to the drum tracks without having to piss the neighbours off by recording a live drum track. Also i'm more likely to get into a decent groove playing "live" rather than sequencing from the off, it's just a different way of doing things. It's worth the effort. That's just me though, i'm aware it's not similar to what you're doing, just thought it would be of some interest.

Rock on.
 
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