Jump to content
Please note: You can easily log in to MPN using your Facebook account!

Mixing electric drums?


shniggens

Recommended Posts

I have recently picked up a Roland Compact Kit. It sounds good, and really comes through the mix nice.

 

I know you can adjust the pan and volume of each individual drum on the Roland brain itself, but is there a way to separate, say, the kick from the snare on the brain's output to run it to seperate channel strips on a mixer?

 

There is only one output from the brain.

 

Would MIDI help?

 

Any suggestions for mixing electric drums in general?

 

Thanks.

Amateur Hack
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 8
  • Created
  • Last Reply

You mean the brain has only 1 audio output, right? I'll assume it's stereo, at least. You are pretty much stuck with mixing pan and volume on each of the sounds.

 

As for running individual sounds into the mixer, MIDI OUT from the brain will have to trigger another unit that does have separate audio outputs for each instrument.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I can't imagine that the brain only has one out - are you sure it does not at least have stereo out?

 

Even with stereo out you are limited to only two outs. You should be able to pan kick to one and snare to the other - but that still means all the other sounds have to be panned between the right and left.

 

MIDI really won't help - unless you buy a brain that have more outs (like an Alesis d4 with 4 outs).

 

If you want seperate audio outs, you need a different brain. The Roland TD10 has 8 seperate outs and the new TD20 has 10 seperate outs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

those cheap Roland units have drawbacks, but personally its not an issue.

 

im a big sampler user so i use electronic kits merely as midi triggers.... and my MPC as the actual sound unit.

 

you can pick up second hand Akai S3000 samplers for next to nothing these days, and they use wave files so its easy to dump sounds from computer

 

or you might like to dedicate a small laptop computer as soundsource

 

either way i hate the roland drum sounds personally, and prefer using me own. the midi implementation of even the roland heads is suitable for various trickery (PC changes for example) or even simple triggering...

 

something to think about perhaps

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I'd imagine that you probably have more than a stereo out from the machine, maybe also additional headphone out?

I'd check in the manual that there is a way to assing drums to different outputs if you have them. I looked at the Roland Site and they didn't show the back of your drum brain so I can't say for sure if it has more than 2 but all the drum brains I've seen had at least 4 outs to which you can assign your pads. We had a el. drummer briefly and for recording we made him assing AUX 1 to snare and AUX 2 to kick and everything else on the stereo channel.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...