Best way to write drum lines

[Ziko]

Hi there,

Can anyone suggest the best way for me to begin writing drum lines in PT?
I'm beginning to look into writing electronic music in PT (have used it for live bands only so far).
I'd like to be able play the drum lines with a MIDI keyboard. I have some sample CDs with some nice sounds although it would be good to able to fiddle around with them a bit maybe (pitch etc).

I've tried loading in some drums into redrum in Reason and using the pattern thing but I'd like to be able to just play the lines in and edit from there.

Any suggestions? I'm happy to look at new software if it'll really help.

Cheers,

Simon

[casperfun]

M-audio keyboard w/ drum pads. keys & pads will do the task. Or get a trigger pad, seems affordable these days for that mpc feel.

[Herkimer]

Try the Yamaha DD55. It's a toy that goes way beyond it's intended design. By adding midi ports, yamaha gave this little gizmo the ability to sync with PT on an instrument track. It can trigger any sound you want. The pads and kick drum are velocity sensitive too. The kick pedal and hihat pedal are less than ideal - but if you're not a drummer, you won't know the difference. It only costs about $240 too!

I'm not a drummer so I do this: I tend to bang out my drum patterns on a midi keyboard. I usually do it 2-3 passes using quantize in between each one. I typically run through once playing the kick and snare. I quantize that and then MIDI merge a pass for toms and then another midi merge pass for cymbals and hihat. Then I listen back through for sections I like. I create regions from those midi data and then stitch together a sequence of regions.

Just be sure to get a midi controller that is velocity sensetive.

[Ziko]

Yeah I've just got the M-Audio Axiom 49 keyboard which has 8 drum pads.

I've tried loading up Reason's Re-Drum and I can now have the pads triggering 8 of the drum sounds in there which is cool.
I'd like to be able to do it all within PT though if possible, using its Midi layout.

How do I do this if all I have is some drum samples in the form of wav files?

I played with using XPand as a virtual instrument and I can get it so that I have a kick on one pad, snare on another etc. but I'm not a huge fan of the drum sounds in there.
How do I do the same sort of thing just with some wav file samples?

Cheers,

Simon