Setup for midi drum pad controller.

[kol12]

Hi,

I'm just wondering how to go about setting up and recording drum tracks with a midi drum pad.

If I have a sample library how exactly do I assign samples to the pads on my controller? Do my samples need to be loaded into individual midi tracks? Does the recorded midi need to be converted to audio afterwards?

Kind of noob questions but thanks.

[JoelG]

What controller do you have? And if it outputs sound on its on, do you want to records its outputs, or just the midi notes?

I'm guessing you're going to want to set it up as a midi controller, and insert a VI on an instrument track.

Joel

[kol12]

I haven't actually got a controller yet I'm just curious as to how to set it up. I suppose there's a whole separate debate on actual sound outputting controllers vs midi controllers?

I'm being specific to drum pad controllers here. What is more popular? What are the advantages of actual sound outputting controllers? Most actual sound outputting controllers seem to do midi as well so maybe that is one advantage.. also maybe why the stand alone midi controllers are cheaper?

I just thought midi seemed to be quite popular these days?

Yes if using it as a midi controller I was wondering how you go about setting it up. I was thinking you would be able to assign .wav samples to pads from inside the daw perhaps to separate tracks? although I wasn't sure if this would be done with a VI.

Maybe a separate midi track has to be created for each individual pad of the midi controller?

[albee1952]

No separate midi track is required. All you want can be done on a stereo instrument track. There are several variations so you should try to narrow things down a bit before you dive in. Consider, to use your own samples, you can drag&drop them into Structure Free, assign them to specific midi notes for each sound, connect a midi controller(like the M-Audio Trigger Finger?), put the instrument track in record-ready and bang away. Or, use one of many available drum VI plugins(VI=Virtual Instrument) such as EZDrummer, Addictive Drums, BFD, etc. Any of these can be triggered by any midi trigger source including most any E-drum kit, pad controller(like the Trigger Finger I mentioned) or any midi keyboard.

One last bit of advice; the key to making all this work is to properly setup your external trigger device in the Setup>Midi>Midi Studio page

[kol12]

I think what I was thinking of was more like how you would program beats with something like the Akai mpd 32 or are they designed to be played and recorded live rather than programmed like a step sequencer?

I see the M-Audio has a built in step sequencer which is quite cool but I'm still curious as to how something like the Akai mpd 32 should be used.

I think I heard Mpc's can be programmed with patterns etc? I was thinking some of the midi drum pads might work similarly..

[ausitndj]

Did u ever figure it out? I just wanna know how to program the drum sounds I have to my midi controller and play it on pro tools!