Sync Alesis HR-16 w/Pro Tools as Click

[goodness]

Hello All,

I am new to the forum so not sure I'm posting this in the right place.

I am a professional studio musician (drummer). I want to use my Alesis HR-16 as a click track and have the tempo driven from Pro Tools.

I've done this many times in the past but I don't know exactly how the engineer went about setting it up.

The studio I am going to do this in is running an older version of Pro Tools (8.2 I believe) on a Windows machine. I'm trying to find some instructions that I can share with my engineer buddy so we can get this working.

The built-in click in PT is not exactly musical. I program simple percussion patterns in the HR-16 to use as clicks. However, it's always been my understanding that the clock in the HR-16 is not as accurate as it should be. So, engineers I have worked with in the past drove the HR-16 from the Pro Tools clock.

I see in the HR-16 manual that the clock can be set to either MIDI & INTERNAL (default), INTERNAL ONLY, or TAPE SYNC IN.

I hope that makes sense.

Thanks in advance for any help/advice anyone can give me.

[albee1952]

Actually, this is a lot of work that is counter-productive to a certain degree. As for making it work, it SHOULD be as simple as feeding MIDI from the session and to the HR-16 and setting the HR-16 to slave to incoming midi.

Having said that, is there a reason to NOT use the click function that is part of PT? I provide click for all of my projects and have not had any issues

[goodness]

albee1952/Dave - Thanks so much for taking the time to respond.

I realize that PT will put out a click. However it is pretty sterile sounding (not musical at all).

I spent many years as a session player in Nashville (I see that's actually where you are) and the click was always a drum machine synced with the PT clock. It's a much more musical approach and what I'm used to.

The problem is, all I every had to do was program a pattern in my HR-16 and the engineer did the rest. So, I don't know exactly how to make it work.

Now I'm trying to duplicate that process for a friend in his home studio. That's why I'm looking for some instructions that (between the 2 of us) will help get this working.

Thanks again!

[albee1952]

I see. Any time my players despise the stock click(and I do agree that it happens), I generally toss up EZdrummer or SD2 with a percussion loop. Since I run 5 discreet stereo phones mixes here, usually giving the drummer all he wants(waaaay more than anybody else) and just a bit to the other players seems to hit the "sweet spot" for tracking BTW, its possible to use the stock click to send midi to a VI plugin, which opens you up to tons of sound choices

[goodness]

Dave - I normally run a More-Me box - sending the HR-16 directly into my More-Me as well as to the control room. That way I can adjust the level of the click independent of the overall mix. With 5 channels, the click could easily be in one of the five, allowing for the same control.