Roland TD 20

[Stig Eliassen]

Hi there!

Upcoming album recording and mixing project. The drummer uses Roland V-drums, and the TD 20 module. He has recorded to the module's internal sequencer, with a demo of the songs as playback and reference. How can I get what he has recorded on the TD 20 over to PT? I will use Superior, so I'm hoping I can get a hold of a MIDI file of what he's recorded.

Thank you!

[Stig Eliassen]

And another thing - is 512MB really the maximum size CF card that the TD 20 can use, like stated in the manual? Don't know if I can get that anywhere...

[nst7]

I downloaded the manual from the Roland website. Page 77 looks like the best way to get the midi info into Protools (or any hardware or software midi sequencer) without having to get a memory card.

If this person is long distance, then they may have to do this themselves with a computer they have access to, then they can email you the midi file.

When you get it into protools, it may not be time aligned, but being that it's midi, it shouldn't be hard to line up.

[Stig Eliassen]

Originally Posted by nst7

I downloaded the manual from the Roland website. Page 77 looks like the best way to get the midi info into Protools (or any hardware or software midi sequencer) without having to get a memory card.

If this person is long distance, then they may have to do this themselves with a computer they have access to, then they can email you the midi file.

When you get it into protools, it may not be time aligned, but being that it's midi, it shouldn't be hard to line up.

Yeah, a bulk dump of the user patterns could be the best way to go. I haven't done one of those in a really long time.

Thank you.

[Stig Eliassen]

We have decided to record the drums from scratch again. My plan is to borrow my friend's LE 7.4 system (Mbox 2 Pro) and his Mac mini, and drive to the drummer and record there. So, being a V-drums newbie, are there any caveats I need to be aware of, or do I just hook a MIDI cable from the TD20 MIDI out into MIDI in on the Mbox? I don't think this guy knows very much about the MIDI side of the TD20, so, are there any settings in there that we need to look at?

Thanks a bunch.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by PT Lover

We have decided to record the drums from scratch again. My plan is to borrow my friend's LE 7.4 system (Mbox 2 Pro) and his Mac mini, and drive to the drummer and record there. So, being a V-drums newbie, are there any caveats I need to be aware of, or do I just hook a MIDI cable from the TD20 MIDI out into MIDI in on the Mbox? I don't think this guy knows very much about the MIDI side of the TD20, so, are there any settings in there that we need to look at?

Thanks a bunch.

This is about all you should need. A few setting inside of PT might need to be checked. Like Midi Thru should be checked. You will need to go into Setup>Midi.Midi Studio and create a new instrument. Call it Roland kit(or whatever). Don't worry about the brand and model as its not required. Select the midi port that the Roland midi is connected to. Create a stereo Instrument track and insert SD2 in the top insert slot. Put the track in record-ready and play the kit. It SHOULD be playing the SD2 sounds now(works great for me with a TD10 kit and no more fuss than I described). A few tings to remember: pad/triggers that are called AUX on the TD20 may not play any sound in SD2(or may play a cowbell) but that can be changed by changing the midi not assigned to that particular trigger. If the Roland kit has 4 toms, but the SD2 kit has 3 or 5, you may not get what you expect(but it should still work just fine).

[Stig Eliassen]

Originally Posted by albee1952

This is about all you should need. A few setting inside of PT might need to be checked. Like Midi Thru should be checked. You will need to go into Setup>Midi.Midi Studio and create a new instrument. Call it Roland kit(or whatever). Don't worry about the brand and model as its not required. Select the midi port that the Roland midi is connected to. Create a stereo Instrument track and insert SD2 in the top insert slot. Put the track in record-ready and play the kit. It SHOULD be playing the SD2 sounds now(works great for me with a TD10 kit and no more fuss than I described). A few tings to remember: pad/triggers that are called AUX on the TD20 may not play any sound in SD2(or may play a cowbell) but that can be changed by changing the midi not assigned to that particular trigger. If the Roland kit has 4 toms, but the SD2 kit has 3 or 5, you may not get what you expect(but it should still work just fine).

Thanks, man. Much appreciated.

The reason I ask is that he has tried recording V-drums on an LE system before, using EZDrummer, and he swore that EZD didn't play back what he played, especially on the snare and hihat. Something about snare rolls and half open hihats and such. I checked over at the Toontrack site, and the chart states that EZD has limited support for E-drums, but I don't know the specifics.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by PT Lover

Thanks, man. Much appreciated.

The reason I ask is that he has tried recording V-drums on an LE system before, using EZDrummer, and he swore that EZD didn't play back what he played, especially on the snare and hihat. Something about snare rolls and half open hihats and such. I checked over at the Toontrack site, and the chart states that EZD has limited support for E-drums, but I don't know the specifics.

I see. The hat issue could be that ezdrummer doesn't track the hat pedal controller, or maybe there's a setting in ezdrummer to choose between an on/off(like the older hat pedals) and continuous like the new Roland unit. I think SD2 handles this better and there are some youtube videos about it. As for the snare, I haven't noticed this, but maybe that recording was done with some input quantize enabled? One solution is to just use a real hihat with 1 mic(I can tell you that works great). I also have done tracking with a real snare(handy of the drummer plays brushes in part of a song). Other times, I will put up all real cymbals with a couple more mics. That seems to add a nice "air' to the overall product(and puts it over the top for me) BTW, if you do a hybrid recording like this, you can group the mic tracks and use Elastic Audio on them with darn good results(if you need to make gentle "improvements" to the performance).

[Stig Eliassen]

Originally Posted by albee1952

I see. The hat issue could be that ezdrummer doesn't track the hat pedal controller, or maybe there's a setting in ezdrummer to choose between an on/off(like the older hat pedals) and continuous like the new Roland unit. I think SD2 handles this better and there are some youtube videos about it. As for the snare, I haven't noticed this, but maybe that recording was done with some input quantize enabled? One solution is to just use a real hihat with 1 mic(I can tell you that works great). I also have done tracking with a real snare(handy of the drummer plays brushes in part of a song). Other times, I will put up all real cymbals with a couple more mics. That seems to add a nice "air' to the overall product(and puts it over the top for me) BTW, if you do a hybrid recording like this, you can group the mic tracks and use Elastic Audio on them with darn good results(if you need to make gentle "improvements" to the performance).

In the end, I'll use SD2 for the drums, but I gotta make sure to capture the MIDI properly. The drummer says that when he records to the built-in sequencer in the Roland module, it always plays back exactly what he did. So, that only leaves two potential problems. Either there are settings in the module that filters/thins out x parameter before going to MIDI out, or, EZD can't interpret 100% the MIDI coming in. Errr...thirdly, nobody knows if input quantize was in effect last time. I know PT pretty well, so I'll go over the settings on the LE system beforehand.

Thanks again, Albee. Frickin' drummers!

[Stig Eliassen]

All the MIDI drums are now recorded. A friend recorded it in Sonar, and I've imported the MIDI and a stereo audio track with the output from the module into PT. Everything sounds great, but the hihat is a problem. Where the audio sounds like a 95% closed hihat, the MIDI triggering SD2 sounds more like a half open hihat. How do I get around this?