Hooking up electronic drums with midi

Question

Level 1

4 points

Hooking up electronic drums with midi

Hi, I just bought a midi cable to hook up my electronic drums. Before I was using 1/4 inch patchcords and it worked. How do I hook it up with the midi cable? I mean I plugged the cable into the midi in on the interface (motu 8 pre) and out of the midi out from my drum kit (Yamaha DTX Express 3). Do I need to plug two cables? The guy in the store said I only need one, but there is a midi in and midi out on both the drumkit and the motu. Was he wrong, do I need them both plugged in? I can't seem to figure out how to record. When I make a new track should I choose software instrument track or real instrument track? Is there something else I need to do to get GB to recognize the kit? Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

macbook pro 17 inch, 2.6 Ghz, 2 gig ram, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Nov 14, 2008 12:17 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 14, 2008 2:01 AM in response to poflynn

Connecting the elec. drums thru MIDI to use GB's drum sounds would seem to defeat the purpose of having a drum kit you can play, since you can use any MIDI controller for that.

Well - it's a drum set. So the purpose would be to play drums and trigger GB's sounds instead of having to push keys on a keyboard.

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Answer 2

Nov 14, 2008 1:21 AM in response to rainsong23

You should run a cable from the drum kit's midi out to the interface's midi in, and indeed you don't need a second cable since GB is sending no midi data back.

Are you familiar with the fact that midi doesn't send the sounds of your drum machine, but just the events? So you need to create a software instrument track in GB and select a drum kit as instrument. You might run into problems because the way your drum machine maps the midi notes to drum pads might be different from the way that GB does. But first give it a try ...

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Answer 3

poflynn

Level 4

1,303 points

Nov 14, 2008 1:49 AM in response to rainsong23

As Christoph points out GB does not do MIDI out. So if you want to record the sounds your electronic drum makes I don't think you need a MIDI connection at all. Just line-out to your interface and record on a Real Instrument Track.

Connecting the elec. drums thru MIDI to use GB's drum sounds would seem to defeat the purpose of having a drum kit you can play, since you can use any MIDI controller for that.

If I'm missing something here someone please let me know.

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Answer 4

poflynn

Level 4

1,303 points

Nov 14, 2008 2:04 AM in response to Christoph Drösser

Huh! Doesn't the kit generate its own sounds? I would think that would be superior to the GB drums if it does.

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Answer 5

Nov 14, 2008 3:54 AM in response to poflynn

Yes, but if you want to edit what you played ... He said he has used the audio out and now wants to use midi.

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Answer 6

rainsong23 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 14, 2008 7:19 AM in response to Christoph Drösser

I apologize for my ignorance. I thought that midi would be better quality or something, but I guess the quarter inch is good anyway. I was thinking that at some point down the road I might want to use the 8 xlr's for something else, so I wanted to learn how to do it. I didn't realize that if I plugged in with midi that it would be using GB's sounds. So I've basically gone back to using the two quarter inch cables. I guess I'll just save the midi cable in case I ever get a midi controller keyboard or something. From what everybody seems to be saying there wouldn't be much point in me using the midi cable for the drumkit. Thanks for the info.

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Answer 7

Jan 7, 2009 3:43 PM in response to Christoph Drösser

I think I'm having the same problem. I guess GB is recognizing the "event," as the blue light at the bottom lights up when I hit a drum pad. It doesn't register anything when I hit record, though, other than that blue light. I do have it set up as a software instrument and drum kit selected, but still, no luck.

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