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stickinthemud
10-13-2006, 09:36 PM
I recorded a drum loop from my Roland TD20 drum module into Reaper, and the sounds are not what I expected. They sound like low-quality MIDI sounds, and what should be the snare sounds like a hi-hat. Does anyone know if and how I can get the sounds from my module into Reaper?

Thanks in advance!

Alistair S
10-14-2006, 05:32 PM
Not sure how to answer this, and I'm no midi expert, and don't know your kit (though it sounds nice).

Questions:

Are you recording midi, or audio output?

If midi, what are you playing it back through? The drum kit itself or a VSTi or what?

It almost sounds as if you are recording midi but playing it back on your soundcard as drums.

Spon
10-14-2006, 07:44 PM
Cheap rather than defective sounds is most likely recording MIDI and playing it back through your soundcard's synth. It may even be that you recorded audio *AND* MIDI, and have the MIDI playing a soundcard.

To get your module's sounds into REAPER, there are at least two ways.

One, you can play a loop on the box and record the audio. Trim it tight, and loop it. You would do this by recording the audio out from the box through your soundcard. This limits you to audio editing of the loop (and processing, of course). Some rearranging is possible, but it starts to sound D&B if you do too much chopping and rearranging of ambience. So it depends on the beat, and the sounds, and the effects.

Two, you can play the sounds one at a time, sample them into REAPER, trim them, and play them with some kind of sampler. REAPER has a nifty little one-channel one built in, but ten of them might be a little unwieldy for drums. There are a bunch of free VSTi sample players - I'll let someone else recommend some. You also have to record the MIDI if you want the machine's patterns as well as sounds. The advantage of this extra work is that you can play the machine's sounds with any patterns whatsoever, and edit them freely, or even use MIDI generators to play them for you.

Yet another approach, if you want the sounds and not the beats, is to use the machine like a hardware sound module. Send it MIDI telling it to play its sounds, and record the audio that it plays in response. This lets you use REAPER's editor and plugins to make drum patterns, but play your sounds. For some machines, this captures nuances that looping a single measure won't.

stickinthemud
10-15-2006, 02:06 PM
Thanks, Spon and Alistair!

I appreciate your interest in my problem. I will try to elaborate. I am a MIDI newby, so assume complete ignorance.

Yes, Alistair, it is a very nice kit. I love it! I can edit with it to a limited extent, and have a stand-alone DAW. I just want to get a basic understanding of what can and can't be done with MIDI editing.

Spon - good insights all. the picture is beginning to emerge...

What's happening is this:

I have the drum module connected via MIDI, recording directly into Reaper. If I replay the loop, sending the signal through the module and with my headphones plugged in through the module, everything sounds like it should. However, if I send the signal to my sound card, the sounds are not like the sounds from my module. Not a fidelity issue. The sounds are different (i.e. open hi-hat sound from what was originally a snare strike), so there must be some default voices(?) that are coming into play. BTW, I am recording into channel 10, if that makes any difference.

What I want to do:

Take a pattern recorded into my module and edit it with the Reaper MIDI editor with the ability to save it as a MIDI or WAV file. Now, I can see how to get the WAV - just play it back through the module and record the output, but it seems that if I want to actually compose in Reaper without having the module attached to the computer, I would need the samples in Reaper.

It may be that Reaper was not designed to do this.

Any insights are very welcome!

Alistair S
10-15-2006, 02:31 PM
OK, as I said I am not a midi expert by any means, so I am sure one of the residents will help you more than I can.

It seems to me that you could record midi as you are doing, then edit it.

To play it back, you could play it through your kit and hear all the sounds exactly right. You could then record the audio output from your kit on a separate track. But you know this.

Your issue is that you want to edit when you are away from your module, but hear the output from your soundcard.

I am not sure whether it would be exactly the same, and I don't know what software came with your kit.

However, you could get some much better drum sounds than you are getting right now. If you download a good drum soundfont - and play it through a VST like Take-1.

Or maybe get some good samples and play it using something like GTG Drum Sampler.

I'm sure someone will have some better suggestions. Are there any samples supplied with the kit? If not, Spon suggested a couple of ways of getting your sounds into your PC.

Edit: A quick google found a few samples here .. http://vdrums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24877

Edit: You may want to check this thread. Basically, if you can't use your kit to play your midi, you need something else. Some help in the link .. http://www.cockos.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2917&highlight=drum

Spon
10-16-2006, 04:53 PM
Sorry for this being so long...

Your drum machine has two parts. It has a sequencer that records and plays MIDI, and it has a sound generator that receives MIDI and outputs audio. Normally they are connected together inside the box. There is a special MIDI message, called "local control" that can turn this connection on or off. With it off, a computer can play the sounds in your module separately from what the pattern player is doing.

When you record patterns into the drumbox, they are recorded as MIDI. This means the recording is "the snare played here", "the hihat played here". The MIDI recording doesn't know whether you used a snare drum or a sampled watermelon. It just knows "play the snare sound, whatever it is".

When you press play on your drumbox, it sends it's MIDI pattern to its internal sound generator. This plays good-sounding wave files, the sounds that come with the box. These are the sounds that come out of the module's headphones.

When you press play, it also sends the MIDI to REAPER. REAPER doesn't know what sounds to play - it's just "note #37" at this point. Unless you have set up a MIDI instrument for REAPER to play, it will probably send the MIDI messages to your soundcard's generic (i.e. cheap) synth. When they get there, they will play whatever cheap sounds correspond with those note messages.

If you want the module's exact sounds, you have to record them with your audio inputs. I described three different ways to do this. Here's a fourth - this is the old-fashioned way of using MIDI instruments.

IF you can send your module a "local control off" MIDI message, AND if your module understands it, you can play your module's MIDI patterns separate from its sounds.

Now, you can send the MIDI into REAPER, and it will record it, and let you edit it. To hear the sounds, you send the MIDI right back out from REAPER, to your MIDI out, back to the module, where it triggers the sounds.

Then, you have to connect your module's audio outputs to your soundcard inputs and record/monitor the audio.

All this assumes you really want the exact sounds your module makes. If all you want is good drum sounds, you can get other drum samples, and a sample player to play them, and play them with the patterns from your module, edited or not.

What you want to do is powerful, but not simple. It's not simple in any other DAW either, if that helps any. And it's often not simple to set up the MIDI instrument for this kind of working, either. And there are quite different ways to do it, depending on what kind of editing you want to do.

Just remember, MIDI is the instruction "hit the drum", not the sound of the drum. To get your module's patterns, record its MIDI. To get its sounds, record its sounds.

stickinthemud
10-18-2006, 10:04 PM
Very nice explanation of the MIDI signal flow. It confirms what I have suspected - if you can actually play an instrument (in my case drums), it's far easier to just play it until you get it right than creating it in MIDI format.

I'd like a sample of a watermelon!

Thanks!

Spon
10-18-2006, 11:31 PM
if you can actually play an instrument (in my case drums), it's far easier to just play it until you get it right than creating it in MIDI format.

If you have MIDI drum pads, you can have the benefits of live playing AND you can tweak with the drum sounds later, or move the odd note.

But making MIDI drums from scratch is tedious. That's why there's lots of loop programs to make it easier - as long as you want drum loops that play over and over again.


I'd like a sample of a watermelon!

like this? (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=2883) or more of a "watermelon off tall bridge" sort of sound?

stickinthemud
11-27-2006, 08:46 PM
Man, that watermelon sample was kind of creepy! Like a giant insect feeding on a frozen cadaver.

That sample site is cool. I have bookmarked it.

Thanks again for the helpful information!