triggering samples with a computer

joeysnare

Silver Member
hi all, ive decided to start doing some recording at home mainly for doing scratch tracks for my bands original songs as we write them. i do have an acoustic kit but it seems like it will be easier for me to line directly into my comp with my roland td6 electronic kit and record it with the magix music maker 14 program i have.

but so far i havent been able to get the drum sound im looking for, im just wonder if anyone could give me some insight on how to hook my roland up to my puter and trigger downloaded drum samples as i imagine this would be quite a bit cheaper then buying a new brain for my td6. any help would be most appreciated.
 
1): You need a recording software program that does midi. There are dozens out there.

2) You need a way for your computer to take in midi. You can buy a basic midi to USB box pretty cheaply.

3) You need a midi cable.

4) You'll need a plug in that is compatible with your recording program that has drum sounds (BFD, toon tracks, or any host of others) or a plug in sampler that you can load sounds into (Reason for example).

Then you set your recording program to record your playing from your TD6 via midi, not audio. Take the midi out from the TD6 to the midi in on your midi box.

Once you have the midi in your computer, you route the midi to trigger the sounds from your plug in, (and not back to the TD6).
 
thank you so much! ive been googling the hell out of this problem and have gotten nowhere. i do like my td6 for practice but the samples are just not up to par imo, guess i shoulda sprung for the td10.
 
basically if you get some software (i.e. BFD etc) then you should be able to re-map the inputs of your module to trigger the various sample tracks instead. ofcourse you can configure your drum kit in the software. literally limitless possibilities. i've never tried it with your module specifically, but i'm pretty sure it would be ok.

if you want really good samples then you will need to invest some money in something like ocean way drums. try to see if you can find a 'group buy' for the software on vdrums.com , if a company does a group buy then it drives the price down considerably. when i got oceanway drums it went down from £400+ to £99.

oh before i forget, download reaper. you can get a free trial copy and it will be much more user friendly than your other program. you can just use it as the host for your drum software's VSTI (it might come distributed with kontakt player or something, which is just there like an interface). this will then allow you to do some basic mixing and such like (compression, reverb if needed etc). good luck!
 
thank you so much! ive been googling the hell out of this problem and have gotten nowhere. i do like my td6 for practice but the samples are just not up to par imo, guess i shoulda sprung for the td10.

I have the TD6 and the TD10 (well, the TD6 sits in a closet).

The samples the in TD10 are great, and I've done plenty of recording with them.
But honestly, as good as they are, those samples are now over 10 years old. I'm getting kind of tired of using them.

I really want to get BFD2 for future recordings. I really dig the way you can pick kits by brand name. As software, it appears to really think like a drummer would.
 
i find the samples on modules sound horrible. this is using a TD10 with very high quality phones btw. i use one for random practice when i can't be bothered to turn my gear on, but i would never record without using software. the samples have a real lack of variation to my ears. i can tell by listening to a track if it was recorded with an electronic drum module. A/Bing between real drums and good quality software however is much more difficult however.

http://www.museresearch.com/receptor2.php

i'm going to drop the cash on a receptor 2 pro max within the next few months. sorry if my message appears to be rude btw, it really isn't. :)
 
i find the samples on modules sound horrible. this is using a TD10 with very high quality phones btw. i use one for random practice when i can't be bothered to turn my gear on, but i would never record without using software. the samples have a real lack of variation to my ears. i can tell by listening to a track if it was recorded with an electronic drum module. A/Bing between real drums and good quality software however is much more difficult however.

http://www.museresearch.com/receptor2.php

i'm going to drop the cash on a receptor 2 pro max within the next few months. sorry if my message appears to be rude btw, it really isn't. :)

Well, I find you have to really tweak the Roland samples to get them to sound like natural drums, but it can be done, at least to a point.

But as I said, the TD-10 came out over 10 years ago, and sampling is so much more advanced now. In that sense, I agree modern software packages blow the module sounds away.
 
yeah man. in the grand scheme of things i really haven't been playing electronic drums for that long (2 years~), but i am so heavily into it now that i can't stop.
going back to an acoustic drum kit without having e-cymbals and an SPD-S actually makes me feel depressed. lol.
 
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