HD-1 Drums as Midi Trigger for VSTi

[treblainesyh]

I just need some advice about how to use an electronic drum set (e.g. HD-1 or others) for triggering let's say EZDrummer or other VSTi.

I am thinking about buing a set of electronic drums to use for this purpose but I do not know which and do not know how to use them with VSTi. any advice please.

I use Acid Pro, and I would not like to pay more then £600 for the drums.


Cheers ...

[Khazul]

The drum kit control module will have generally have a midi out. The notes it emits usually roughtly correspond to GM drum notes, at least for the main drums - kick, snare, snare rim, 3 toms, open/close/pedal hh, crash 1 and ride 1.

Other rims often need remapping some how - often the drum module allows for this depending upon the model.

Other than that - its generally no different to controlling a soft synth from a keyboard.

The one gotcha - I find when drumming I am far far less tolerant of midi/audio latency than when playing most keyboard parts - anything over about 6ms or from hitting a pad to hearing the result tends to throw out my groove at the least and often overall timing.

I also suggest investing in some closed back head phones as even drum pads make enough of a noise when hit to obscure the sound of the drum synth/sampler etc, so best to try and block out the sound of the stick striking the pads - I find a good pair of DJ headphones are good for this (in my case AKG 181 - these also have excellent bass response so I can clearly hear the low end of toms, kick etc).

Generally when I am recording drums that are to be played from a VSTi, then while recording I typically select a similar drum kit sound on the drum module and monitor directly from that to complete cut DAW latency out of what I am monitoring. Also midi jitter etc I find contributes quite significantly to the overall groove, or lack of, so I often find I have to do alot of post-record editing of the midi.

If you have a kit that emits CCs (typically the HH pedal is a CC for example, and on my kit (Roland TD-12) most of the pads have position sensing emitted as CCs as well). When editing you must keep the CCs exactly in sync with note moves - most DAW only quantise notes rather than CC data as well.

Also in the case of the pedal CC (normally CC #4) the CC actually determines whether a open, closed or pedal HH sound is required, and NOT the note sent. On some kits, all of these notes are actually treated the same. On roland kits generally the HH notes are only treated separately if these is no CC4 being received as well and the current CC4 value is zero and has not changed recently, or has never been received.

Proper handling of CC 4 by drum VSTi I find is the main barrier to actually playing a drum VSTI from a typical decent midi drum kit. When I made a drum kit in Reason once, then I got around this by mapping the CC4 to control the envelope times of an open HH sound and mapped open, closed and pedal HH notes to all play the same sound.

[treblainesyh]

Thanks Khazul.

Can you suggest which one to buy. I am torn between Alesis DM5 Pro and Roland HD-1.


Cheers ...

[Khazul]

I have only ever owned Roland V-Drum kits, so naturally I would suggest Roland as I have allways been happy with them

I have an extreme downer on Alesis for the foreseable future due to the fiasco over the Fusion keyboards.