newbie question re: midi, drum tracks, sampletank...

[genebadd]

Jcoker, Hey I just figured out how to hear sounds out of Sample tank. If you already got to the point where you can SEE some volume in the level meters when you hit play or record but cant hear anything, try playing some lower notes on the midi channel. I was stumped. Thought the program was broke or something. I would click in some notes in the midi track, hit play, see the notes being played but didnt hear anything. So then I scrolled down a little bit in the midi track or just "Jumbo" size the midi track ( make it larger) and start clicking around in there until you hear soemthing. Hope this helps buddy.

Gene

[jcoker]

Ok...I've read a little about midi in Modern Recoding Techniques (Huber). But I'm still a little stumped about some things. I want to be able to record drum tracks in Pro Tools LE/Digi 001 (pre-sampled drums or drum tracks I create from a midi instrument). As an added benefit, I'd like to be able to lay down some keyboard tracks (syth, etc.) too. Does such a midi device exist that does both well, i.e., decent sonic quality and functionality (polyphonic & multitimbral)? I suppose if so, it would cost an arm and a leg? Or maybe this group has some recommendations for seperate midi devices (a decent drum machine and a decent syth)?
This question all came about because I need drums in the mix (pop/rock genre). I currently have no midi device. I saw the thread on SampleTank and downloaded ST to use for setting up a click in PT. I downloaded the ST free acoustic drum kit thinking I could use it w/o a midi device, but alas, it says I need a sequencer. I sure could use some clarification on midi sequencers and samplers. Is there a cheap midi device I could use to just try the SampleTank stuff, and see what it will do? Any enlightenment appreciated [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Thanks.

[pedro803]

ok I'm only a newbie too but I don't think you need anything other than Pro Tools to hear Sample Tank. Simply find some midi tracks (online there are many you could use to audition just use this link to search for titles)

http://www.musicrobot.com/

most of the midis aren't so great but if you search a little you should be able to find something decent. Once you download one, windows media player or real one player can play it on your soundcard just to hear it

after you find one that interests you, save it somewhere on your computer then in Pro Tools look under the file menu for "import midi to track"

click this and it will ask you for the file location, direct it to your new midi and hit open.

create a stereo aux track, on the 1st insert put sampletank and assign the sound on channel 10 of Sampletank to the free drums you downloaded. then on midi channell 10 (i.e. one of the midi tracks you imported) assign its output to "sampletank 10"
as it plays you should hear the drums.

to make a long story short Pro Tools includes a sequencer among its bag of tricks. And yes midi is pretty cool it provides lots of options for editing your stuff as you go along.

hope this helps!!

[metaltim]

Originally posted by jcoker:
Ok...I've read a little about midi in Modern Recoding Techniques (Huber). But I'm still a little stumped about some things. I want to be able to record drum tracks in Pro Tools LE/Digi 001 (pre-sampled drums or drum tracks I create from a midi instrument). As an added benefit, I'd like to be able to lay down some keyboard tracks (syth, etc.) too. Does such a midi device exist that does both well, i.e., decent sonic quality and functionality (polyphonic & multitimbral)? I suppose if so, it would cost an arm and a leg? Or maybe this group has some recommendations for seperate midi devices (a decent drum machine and a decent syth)?
This question all came about because I need drums in the mix (pop/rock genre). I currently have no midi device. I saw the thread on SampleTank and downloaded ST to use for setting up a click in PT. I downloaded the ST free acoustic drum kit thinking I could use it w/o a midi device, but alas, it says I need a sequencer. I sure could use some clarification on midi sequencers and samplers. Is there a cheap midi device I could use to just try the SampleTank stuff, and see what it will do? Any enlightenment appreciated [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Thanks.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">well i can answer your first part:
i have a roland xp-30, and it has 64 voice polyphony, and is multitimbral. I can have drum tracks and piano, and whatever, at the same time. However, 64 voices gets used up fast. what I didnt realize when i started (ive got 61 notes, how could i ever use 64 voices at once?) is that some patches use more than one voice, some use up to like 5 or 6. In other words, you only hit one key, but it has like multiple sounds in there, using more than one voice.

i've run into problems only once, i had drums, strings, piano, and one other thing i cant remember, and at some points in the song, apparently all the voices were used up, cause all of sudden i wouldnt hear something, like a kick drum for instance.

it was solved easily by putting something to audio, and freeing up some voices.

anyway, this keyboard, which i would think would be on the lower end of this type of machine, runs for about $900 new, however those on ebay go for only about $500- $600.

tim

[jcoker]

Thanks for all the replies. A friend of mine gave me a copy of the EM Personal Studio Buyers Guide 2003. It has all sorts of midi devices in there for me to compare prices, features, etc, including drum machines. Things are starting to make a little more sense after looking thru and reading the specs. Also, I was just able to get the SampleTank Drum Kit to work once I imported a midi file. Actually, I imported a Beatles midi file (Eight Days a Week) and 6 midi tracks were created and I pointed each midi track to a different midi channel in the SampleTank Plug-in (Room Small) on the Aux track. I can hear the drums now, but I'm trying to make sense out of why 6 tracks were created during the import. Each track has a different name, like track 1 is called Eight Days a Week (but is an empty track), track 2 is called Std Drums, track 3 is called VocLead Oohs, etc. So tracks 2-6 play the SampleTrak drum kit. I'll sort this all out soon enough [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] Thanks again for the help!

[pedro803]

did you get it going? the different tracks are probably different instruments they will sound like nonsens if assigned to a drum set if they are indeed bass, keys etc.. etc..

[Bastiaan]

jcoker,

The MIDI-file you imported was standard-midi with assignments to General-Midi instrument assignments. If you play that file with your soundblaster or other generic soundcard, you will hear the song the way it is (sorta) supposed to be. Sampletank does NOT conform to general midi, so you need to assign all the instruments yourself.

With sampletank (also the free version) you can play 16 midi-tracks at once. In the plugin-window on the bottom-left you see some buttons (numbered 1-16). Those are the midi-inputs for sampletank. So if you assigned drums to channel 1, and loeded the drums on that channel, you could click on the number 2, and load a lets say piano there. Then you locate the piano in the miditracks, and assign that to sampletank channel 2. And so on...

This little plugin is quite powerfull.

[jcoker]

Originally posted by Bastiaan:
jcoker,

The MIDI-file you imported was standard-midi with assignments to General-Midi instrument assignments. If you play that file with your soundblaster or other generic soundcard, you will hear the song the way it is (sorta) supposed to be. Sampletank does NOT conform to general midi, so you need to assign all the instruments yourself. With sampletank (also the free version) you can play 16 midi-tracks at once. In the plugin-window on the bottom-left you see some buttons (numbered 1-16). Those are the midi-inputs for sampletank. So if you assigned drums to channel 1, and loeded the drums on that channel, you could click on the number 2, and load a lets say piano there. Then you locate the piano in the miditracks, and assign that to sampletank channel 2. And so on...

This little plugin is quite powerfull.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Sounds like I can download some/all of the SampleTank free instruments and point those to the appropriate midi track and SampleTank midi channel (I'm downloading as we speak). I did listen to the Beatles midi file using WinAmp before importing. So I guess the Beatles midi file is really multiple midi (patches?), i.e. the drums, bass, guitar, vocals... and each track that was created in Pro Tools during the import was Pro Tools attempt to segregate each patch? I think what I really need to do is find a midi file of just drums and point that to the SampleTank free drum kit instrument? Then find a midi file of just piano and point it to the SamplTank piano instrument, etc? I guess I'm still confused about the content of midi files in general, so I'll go back to my books [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Thanks for your help.

[jcoker]

Heh...ok I got SampleTank working with Eight Days a Week. I can assign any of the free instruments I downloaded from SampleTank to any of the ST midi channels and PT tracks. What a hoot [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Anyway...I get the gist of how SampleTank works. Now I think I just need to d/l existing drum midi files that I like, if I want to use them in a mix, until I can buy a midi device to create my own drum tracks. Is there such a website with many free drum midi files? I'm not going to plagarize, I just want to experiment until I can I afford a midi device [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] As powerful as PT is, I'm suprised it doesn't have a way of generating midi so that I could create my own midi drum tracks and point them to ST [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] There is so much under the hood of PT, and I haven't evened touched the surface...

[soundsurfr]

JC, you are moving along well, and you still have a lot more options for doing the drum thang. Here are a few:

1. As you are doing, you can download pre-recorded midi files and use them to trigger drum sounds in SampleTank. Easy, fast, free, but somewhat limited.

2. I believe there is freeware out on the internet that will allow you to configure your computer keyboard as a synth controller. Again, it's a poor man's option, but it might at least get you to the point where you can input sounds without having to draw them in with your mouse.

3. You can go ahead and purchase a midi keyboard for inputing midi notes into the Pro Tools sequencer. This can be as simple as a single-octave Oxygen 8 controller (about a hundred bucks)which has no onboard sound, but is really handy to use. It has a USB interface and highly functional control knobs. You will be limited to the sounds you can download for Sampletank, tho.

With a little more money, you can buy yourself a used midi keyboard, like a Roland or Korg synth - some of the older models are really cool and go for reasonable prices. You might be able to pick up something good for $2-300. These will give you an array of synth and drum sounds in addition to the ST stuff, but you'll probably get tired of those after a while also. Or you can go full tilt boogie and pick up a Triton workstation for a couple thousand.

4 Another good option for drums is a software program called Reason. It's about $279.00, and it requires a second sound card to run, but it will give you access to soft-synths and drum machines galore. The amount of sounds you can download or configure for this thing is virtually limitless. The drum machine can be easily programmed without a controller, but you'll want one for the synths. Reason won't show up as a pull-down in PT, but it can be controlled from within Pro-Tools with a little tweaking. (If you ever get to this stage, do a search in this forum under configuring Reason.)

5. Yet another option is to go to Google, type in "free drum loops" and start downloading .wav files of drum loops, hits and fills from the million or so websites that are out there giving them away. There is a myriad of stuff available in all styles- rock, hip-hop, street, latin, etc. - enough to keep you busy for weeks. These can be imported directly into Pro-Tools and manipulated to create really cool sounding drum tracks. They usually sound much better than us non-drummers trying to program drum machines to sound like drummers (IMO). You can tweak loop tempo within Pro-Tools to a certain extent, but for a small investment, you can get Sonic Foundry's "Acid" program which will allow you to mess with loop tempos much easier and more effectively.

Those are just a few options - others will undoubtedly suggest more.

Good luck, and keep coming back with your questions as they come up.