Panterachat

...after I return from Europe.

!) New instrument mic. Mine was a loaner that I figured the loaner would never ask for back. I figured wrong. Tried plugging the amp straight into the interface and it sounds like shit in comparison (duh).

2) Drumset. Electronic drumset, because I live in an apartment. Major points to any set that I can plug/assign every trigger to different tracks in the mixer, rather than having the entire set come in as one big sound via USB cable.

I've done enough research to probably make solid purchases, but bounce some ideas off me in case I've missed anything.

Sky Black hooked me up with a Sennheiser 609e and it owns.


As far as an electronic kit, buy one of those expensive as fuck Roland ones if you can.

To be honest, I was looking at the Shure SM57 for the mic.

For the set, I was looking at the middle-to-high-priced sets. Somewhere between $1000-$2000 or so. But the specifics about how they plug in would be GREAT, if I could find that out. I'm mixing all my own stuff, and short of recording all my snares, cymbals, and kick drums seperate, I'd need something that could record them apart from each other like an acoustic drum set.

My dad owns a yamaha one, it's not bad but it's not one of the roland ones. It's a little weird with the interface/brain but doesn't have that huge of a learning curve. Plugging in I don't think is all that complicated. Get a stereo 1/4" cable and it should go out from the brain and into your interface.
I think you can control levels/fade/mix on each different pad from the brain, but don't quote me.

I've used one of the Shure instrument mics, pretty sure it was the 57 and the Sennheiser easily has better overall sound quality, to my ears anyway.

My interface is essentially dummy-proof, and it's plugging into a Mac, which makes it 100x easier. But yeah, all the pads still need to be able to mix different or I'll just keep programming the drums on the MIDI controller.

long4theblur wrote:My interface is essentially dummy-proof, and it's plugging into a Mac, which makes it 100x easier. But yeah, all the pads still need to be able to mix different or I'll just keep programming the drums on the MIDI controller.

I know you can control levels for sure. I've never really seriously tried to do anything hardcore with the kit, just get some tones and levels that I like out of it and play on it. I've never recorded with it. I'd imagine that you'd be able to mix/fade/pan each one though if you can adjust levels. These things are pretty involved and if there's only one output jack, they'd be stupid not to allow you to do this sorta thing before you ran out from the brain to your interface/board.

Kellan wrote:

long4theblur wrote:My interface is essentially dummy-proof, and it's plugging into a Mac, which makes it 100x easier. But yeah, all the pads still need to be able to mix different or I'll just keep programming the drums on the MIDI controller.

I know you can control levels for sure. I've never really seriously tried to do anything hardcore with the kit, just get some tones and levels that I like out of it and play on it. I've never recorded with it. I'd imagine that you'd be able to mix/fade/pan each one though if you can adjust levels. These things are pretty involved and if there's only one output jack, they'd be stupid not to allow you to do this sorta thing before you ran out from the brain to your interface/board.

Yeah but if there's one input into the interface, guess what. When you go to mix it, it's going to say, "Oh, you want to mix the drums? Here, control the sound for the ENTIRE KIT, because that's what's plugged into Input 4 here." The snare, toms, and cymbals all need to be at different volumes for me or else I start pulling my hair out.

Like I said, the only way around this if the pads cannot be recorded seperately at the same time is recording them all seperately, which makes for a really, REALLY shit recording process. Especially if you have a session drummer in there. "Okay, now I want you to record that line's HI-HAT parts, annnnnnd, GO!!!"

long4theblur wrote:

Kellan wrote:

long4theblur wrote:My interface is essentially dummy-proof, and it's plugging into a Mac, which makes it 100x easier. But yeah, all the pads still need to be able to mix different or I'll just keep programming the drums on the MIDI controller.

I know you can control levels for sure. I've never really seriously tried to do anything hardcore with the kit, just get some tones and levels that I like out of it and play on it. I've never recorded with it. I'd imagine that you'd be able to mix/fade/pan each one though if you can adjust levels. These things are pretty involved and if there's only one output jack, they'd be stupid not to allow you to do this sorta thing before you ran out from the brain to your interface/board.

Yeah but if there's one input into the interface, guess what. When you go to mix it, it's going to say, "Oh, you want to mix the drums? Here, control the sound for the ENTIRE KIT, because that's what's plugged into Input 4 here." The snare, toms, and cymbals all need to be at different volumes for me or else I start pulling my hair out.

Like I said, the only way around this if the pads cannot be recorded seperately at the same time is recording them all seperately, which makes for a really, REALLY shit recording process. Especially if you have a session drummer in there. "Okay, now I want you to record that line's HI-HAT parts, annnnnnd, GO!!!"

I don't know of any electronic drum modules that have dedicated outputs for each pad trigger. The drum pads themselves are just piezo triggers that send information to the module that reads the signal as pitch and velocity. If you want dedicated control of the sounds of the pads, you will need to use a VST program and send the MIDI information to it from the drum module. Then, you can go into the program and adjust each pad (which is assigned its own "pitch") and change the volume (or velocity) of each "track" individually.

Are you using Logic?

Pro Tools. Don't you have an electronic set? How did you overcome this issue?

long4theblur wrote:Pro Tools. Don't you have an electronic set? How did you overcome this issue?

MIDI motherfucker. If you're using an electronic drumset you're using electronic drum sounds anyway. You just use sounds in a VST program like Drumkit From Hell instead of the ones on your module. You aren't recording audio though, you're recording MIDI. But you can still mix it like audio though, but in the program itself.

A MIDI signal recognizes only two things "pitch" (that's an algorithm that says "if you strike this note on the piano, that equals the same note on the instrument" but for an electronic drumset you are turning it into "if I hit THIS pad, it equals this sound) and "velocity" (that says "I hit this key or this pad this hard so the tone it makes should be this loud"). In a program like Logic, the drum sounds are in the piano roll but instead of actual notes, the 'E flat' note on the piano roll is actually a snare drum sound. So you go in there and you simply adjust the velocity of the MIDI after it's recorded.

Some VST programs and sequencers treat each pad trigger as its own track. You simply assign the MIDI signal from each trigger on your module to a track and then assign a single sound to each of those tracks, like a kick drum, a snare, or a crash cymbal. Then you can mix the sequencer tracks like you would an audio track. The cool thing, of course, is if you don't like a given snare drum sound, you simply substitute it instead of rerecording it since MIDI is NOT audio.

Oh, for drum programming I've just been using Garage Band with my MIDI controller. The drums sound very drum machine-ish, but I'm not really trying until I actually have a set.

I tried using DFH before, but something went horribly wrong, and I can't remember what. Either I didn't know how to record the lines or it didn't recognize my MIDI controller or something. I forget.

Hmm.

long4theblur wrote:Oh, for drum programming I've just been using Garage Band with my MIDI controller. The drums sound very drum machine-ish, but I'm not really trying until I actually have a set.

I tried using DFH before, but something went horribly wrong, and I can't remember what. Either I didn't know how to record the lines or it didn't recognize my MIDI controller or something. I forget.

Hmm.

Yeah GarageBand is something of the Hasbro version of a music program. It's pretty good for demos and stuff but I wouldn't do a full-scale production on it. An electronic drum set IS a MIDI controller. Instead of keys you have pads. That's the only difference. You just have to do a little set-up work to get the triggers to match the right sounds on the program.

sm-57 , good for almost everything

Yeah, the 57 and 58 are both pretty cheap, robust and very versatile.. I don't really know much about the alternatives though.

Pfloyd, didn't you say you used EzDrummer? What program (and don't you dare say Logic) do you use it through? I've heard you can't use it through ProTools, which is teh ghey. Although I just checked ToonTrack's site and it says M-Powered Pro Tools is functional with it, hmm.

+1 for the sm57