Importing / Recording Reason Trigger info... MIDI

[steals]

Can I export/import my trigger info along with my midi file to a PT's midi track? Or how do I record/save my trigger info?

[electrobank]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by steals:
Can I export/import my trigger info along with my midi file to a PT's midi track? Or how do I record/save my trigger info?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

YES! Each MIDI track contains "trigger" information. A better technical term for this would be Note On/Off information.

[Mark_Knecht]

electrobank,
Hi. Last week I bought an Alesis drum machine with the intention of getting a trigger pad to drive it. When I read steals' post, my thought of 'triggers' was the actual electrical trigger coming off of the drum pad as opposed to the note on/off info.

Now, if the trigger goes into the DM-5 then PTLE never sees it. But his question did make me wonder about recording the trigger signals as audio and actually saving them to drive a drum machine later.

Guess we need steals to tell us which sort of trigger he was thinking of... [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Take care,
Mark

[electrobank]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by Mark_Knecht:
electrobank,
Now, if the trigger goes into the DM-5 then PTLE never sees it. But his question did make me wonder about recording the trigger signals as audio and actually saving them to drive a drum machine later.

Guess we need steals to tell us which sort of trigger he was thinking of... [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Take care,
Mark<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hey Mark,
The actual trigger signal is a controlled voltage that gets converted to MIDI. Protools can read this MIDI information. Maybe i misunderstood what you were saying.

[Mark_Knecht]

electrobank,
No, you and I are talking about the same thing. But I'm off in LaLa land. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] HEre goes..

The drum pad puts out a trigger voltage, the drum machine (or whatever) does a trigger to MIDI conversion. Exactly. And normally all you would do with PTLE record is the MIDI information...

However, if you plugged the drum pad into the 001 Preamp input INSTEAD of the drum machine, you'd record the trigger voltage, right? (I know, this is bizarre!) You could then route that input through a bus and to an output on the back of the 001 and drive the drum machine that way. I would guess that the trigger is just a voltage pulse that the drum machine uses. As long as the voltage is within the normal limits of the 001, there's no reason that you couldn't 'record' that INSTEAD of MIDI. (Or both.)

Like I said, this is a pretty bizarre idea, and I don't know why someone would want to do this, unless you wanted to create more interesting triggers by processing the trigger itself somehow, but my mind drifted away, thinking about a hole in the roof, and wondering if the rain does get in, will it actually stop my mind from wandering?

(This is much more interesting than trying to understand 'Folded Cascode Amplifiers', which is what I'm doing at work right now...)

Take care,
Mark

[electrobank]

Hey Mark,
Yes it is very bizzare idea! In theory it could work but I don't think very well. Protools may not recognize that voltage the same way the module would. For instance, when playing back that voltage and you were to adjust the track volume, that could severly effect how your drum machine brain interprets that signal. For starters we are dealing with millivolts. All the Digi outputs are line level. There is an obviouse impedence difference here. God knows what that track would sound like if you were actually monitor that recorded voltage.
We will never know until someone tries it.
If you do decide to try it, I will be really interested in hearing what the results are. If you do get it to work at a basic level, try throwing in a multitap delay or some other plug in like you had mentioned. I have done this with SMPTE before and made the clock jump all over the place. Its probably not good for the equipment but sometimes curiosity gets the best of people. [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[IOP Drummer]

If I'm not mistaken quite a few people do this all the time - (record the triggers' 'audio' output). Ever heard of Ddrum triggers? Same thing as a drum pad for the most part, except that they mount on acoustic drums. A lot of people will plug the trigger into a Pre and record the output to an audio track. SOUNDREPLACER just works flawlessly this way. You can dynamically trigger an entire kick drum track with one pass. Snare too. Also, I like to compress the trigger voltage before sending it to a module like the DM5. Otherwise, it sometimes triggers weird.

[Mark_Knecht]

Interesting info.....

So my strange ideas are alreay in use! Fun!

[img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Cheers,
Mark

[steals]

I was referring to the audio part of the MIDI note that’s generated in Reason Redrum, I want it to accompany the Reason import into a PT's MIDI trak and not have to have Reason open to generate the sounds.

[IOP Drummer]

Reason is the soundmodule, so you NEED it open to hear the sounds via MIDI information. If you want to hear what you did in Reason without reason open, the ONLY way is to bounce your reason session/tracks to AUDIO files and import them into another Program.