Have an analog drum machine drum machine, do I MIDI?

[cpuck]

Hi, I have an analog drum machine that I want to record with in Pro Tools. I want to ask if I should use MIDI to work with the machine, or just plug straight into the interface and manipulate the drum machine in its console? I am not too experienced with MIDI, I just want to quickly plug in the drum machine and record betas for my guitar based demos. Any tips or pointers? Thanks.

[Darryl Ramm]

We cannot guess what you should do. A large part of this is if you are not happy with results you are getting as it is then you should just start learning how to work with MIDI and the drum machine or MIDI virtual instruments. Once you have some basics there you can decide if you want to go more that way or it does not work for you. Most musicians can benefit with knowing a little about MIDI and VIs etc. so it's not time wasted to learn a bit.

What *exact* make/model drum machine? Drum machine means a lot of different things to different folks.

You can just record the audio of the drum machine into an audio track. If you like the sound of that and don't need to keep reediting/retracking stuff then just go with that.

If the drum machine supports sending/receiving MIDI, and especially if it's got nice pads you play on...

... record that into a MIDI track and then play it back to the drum machine, essentially letting you adjust settings on the drum machine to get what you want... and then you can record that new audio back into pro Tools. You can also edit/tweek the MIDI notes in Pro Tools MIDI editor. Quantize them to a beat etc.

... record that to an *instrument* track and then generate audio from a drum or similar virtual instrument plugin (like Toontracks EZ Drummer as an example). And you can also edit/tweek the MIDI notes in Pro Tools MIDI editor. Quantize them to a beat etc.

You might even hand draw notes/loops in Pro Tools MIDI editor or another app and start with that into a VI or out to the drum machine.

You should find tutorials on YouTube or similar for doing what you want (e.g. recording MIDI from an external similar drum machine or workings with drum VIs) with a roughly similar version of Pro Tools and similar setup to you. Also look at Groove3 for very good commercial lessons videos, including a free trial.