Pad Electronic Trigger
what to use to record and make remix's with electronic drum kit on PC?
Okay so here's what i want to do.
I just got an alesis dm6 kit and am ready to start doing some recording. i got the usb cord for the computer and i have fruity loops 8(hardly know how to use it), and when i plug it in and i try to play on the fruity loops, it does the same sound for each trigger..like there is different sound layers but when i hit each drum pad only the layer that has been selected goes off.
so first off, how do i get it so that i can make each trigger have a dif sound.
secondly, i'd like to play along with a song and record both the song + my drums.. so after i figure out how to make each individual sound work, how do i go about doing this!?
thanks ahead of time
Umm, I'm not quite sure where to start.
first of all you need to understand that your kit is going to be used as a set of midi triggers in fruity loops. this means that you can't use the onboard sounds of the kit, you have to use the sounds in fruity loops. in oder to do this you will need to set the channel outputs of the drumkit module (the little computer in the middle of the kit) so that they match the midi channel inputs for each sound in fruityloops. for example, say you load up "hip hop kit" in fruity loops, each sound channel has a little midi number in the upper left corner when you click on it. you should match the midi numbers of each sound here to the numbers corresponding to each pad on the alesis module.
if you don't know how, you might try to scroll through the midi numbers for the channel while hitting the pad you want to use for that sound till you hear something.
Fruity Loops comes bundled with a module called FPC which is a drum module designed for use with electronic drum kits. You may find it's easier to use because all the channel settings are in one place and it's not so laborious to set up. To use it, just go to "add channel" in the fruity loops channel menu and "FPC" should be one of the channel types you can select. Try it out.
For your second question, I'm not sure exactly what you are trying to do... If you want to record a drum track you would first select a tempo and then press record. It helps if you go to options and select "recording precount" "metronome" and "start recording on input" this will give you time to get ready and will help make sure you're playing in time. once you've selected these- press record then go to your kit and and hit a pad then you will hear a four beat count in-get ready! then start playing your drumtrack. when you're finished press stop and you will have recorded your drum performance as midi in the step sequencer in fruityloops. this performance can be played back and/or rendered into a wav file or mp3 to listen to outside of FL.
If you want to add drums to an already recorded song using fruityloops it's a little trickier. First you have to figure out what the tempo of the song is. you can do this using a metronome starting the metronome at the same time as the first beat of the song and adjusting the tempo until it stays in time with the song.
now go to fruityloops and use that tempo number as the tempo for your drum recording. now you need to do something a bit trickier if you want to play the song from within FL. go back to the channels menu and select "new channel" under new channel select "audio clip" . go to open sound file within the chanels module and select the song from the files on your computer. once you've imported the song press F5 and you will be in the song sequencer window. on the bottom you will see the audio clips area. simply left click and a long audio clip should appear, which is the song. now go back the the main window and make sure you set playback to "song" rather than pattern. press play and you should hear the song.
now all you have to is go to a different pattern and press record. play along to the song as it plays back and you will have recorded a midi drum track that is synced to the song. to hear them both together press F5 again and in the pattern part of the song sequencer draw in the pattern that you just recorded (pattern 2, most likely) press play and you should ear them both together, though you may have to move them slightly in the sequencer if the are out of sync. once that';s done you can render your song by going into the file menu and selecting "render". That's all I have time to write now.
good luck and have fun!
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