Roland TD-20-record and sound.

[yamahadrums]

Hi everyone,

Having this kit for a few years, but I always wonder one thing-how to substitute the sound of room and overhead microphones, that helps to the overall presence of the drums recording. I am recording all the 8 channels separately. One thing that I do to help is to record simultaneously the whole kit through SPDIF, which somehow emulates the room. I know you'll say it's impossible, but I would appreciate any tips and tricks to get close to the desirable sound. Share your experience! Thanks!

[nst7]

Do you mean substitute the sounds from a sample library? Then you want to make sure you're also recording midi info from the TD 20 to a midi track (or instrument track, which would be even easier.

Then on that instrument track, you can insert whatever drum program you want and do what you need to do.

I highly recommend just using the Roland kit as a trigger for a Drum program totally, and not worrying about recording the TD20 sounds, because they don't even hold a candle to the quality in most modern drum programs.

As for what you're hearing in SPIDF, there's 2 possibilities:

1. There's some kind of ambience feature that's being routed to the spidf, but not getting routed to the 8 separate outputs, perhaps something you overlooked.

2. Or, you could just be hearing much more detail from the spidf out, which makes sense, because with the analog outs (whether separate or stereo) you're going through 2 steps of analog to digital and digital to analog conversion, which will degrade the sound somewhat. Using spidf bypasses that, so you're preserving more detail.

[yamahadrums]

Thanks for the reply, but you missed the point. I am pretty familiar with TD-20 sound midule and different ways of recording it (audio,midi). I am asking about post recording, editing. After the drums have been recorded how do you recreate the drum room and overall sound of the kit? That is what I want to know.

[nst7]

Sorry, I still don't understand your question. Are you talking about adding reverb? I don't know what you mean by "recreate the sound".

[yamahadrums]

I mean recreate the sound of acoustic drums in acoustic environment, where you have overhead and room mics adding fullness to the mix. Typically I use parallel compression and reverb, but doesn't help a lot with electronic drums. So I would like to know what kind of tips and tricks you use when recordin el. drumkits. For example Addictive drums has an Overhead channel and Room mics channel.

[albee1952]

What worked well for me(with a TD-10 kit) was to record 8 tracks, with toms on a stereo track, all else on individual tracks, and then use an AUX send on all tracks to feed an AUX track with a room reverb. That would tie the whole kit together sonically. In the last 2 years, I have moved onto using the Roland for midi and using drum plugins for my sounds(ezdrummer, then SD2 and now with Addictive Drums as my "go to" sounds). As solid as the TD20 sounds are, I prefer the versatility of the plugins for a couple of reasons. First off, they just seem to sound better to me(but that's totally a personal preference) and second, its easier(for me anyway) to audition different sounds thru the plugin

[yamahadrums]

I also have Addictive Drums, though I rarely use it. Even it has a TD-20 MIDI map preset I cannot map the hi-hat properly. It triggers at least 4 different MIDI notes. Also cannot manage to set the open hi-hat. The cymbals also triggers 2 different notes and after a record I have to manually reorder and cleanup some notes, in fact a lot of notes.
I do not use the default TD-20 presets that the module comes with. I ordered V-Expressions kits that sound great. Anyway, seems like I will not achieve what I am after. Will give AD another shot. Thanks for the replies!

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by yamahadrums

I also have Addictive Drums, though I rarely use it. Even it has a TD-20 MIDI map preset I cannot map the hi-hat properly. It triggers at least 4 different MIDI notes. Also cannot manage to set the open hi-hat. The cymbals also triggers 2 different notes and after a record I have to manually reorder and cleanup some notes, in fact a lot of notes.
I do not use the default TD-20 presets that the module comes with. I ordered V-Expressions kits that sound great. Anyway, seems like I will not achieve what I am after. Will give AD another shot. Thanks for the replies!

Curious! In any case, while the hat on the TD10 worked okay, there are so many nuances that I am using a real hat and recording it to an audio track. Many drummers will play the kit like that, and some will replace the snare trigger with a real snare as well. Mixing real and triggers can actually work really well

[nst7]

One thing you can try with Addictive Drums, if you've recorded the midi from the Roland, is to use the midi to trigger just the overheads and/or rooms in Addictive Drums (mute everything else). Then, blend this with the direct recorded tracks from the Roland. It might help somewhat, even though it's different drum sounds.

FWIW, Roland just introduced their new flagship kit, the TD30, I think, and it now has overhead and room channels built in. From the videos I've seen it sounds amazing, but it's also $7000.

[yamahadrums]

@ albee1952 I don't have any real cymbals or hats. Use to have Yamaha Oak Custom, very nice kit, but since our studio falled apart I had to trade them for el. drums, so I can play at home.

@nst7 Very, very good idea! Definetely will try this.

Thank you!