connecting electronic drumset

[dabo333]

HI,
I'm looking for assistance with hooking up my Yamaha DTXPRESS IV electronic kit up to Ableton so that I can play in my own beats to record/improvise/sample ect... instead of mapping them out with my mouse every time. Can anybody please help?! I have been looking everywhere online and no luck so far... I am so anxious to do this! Thank-you.

[dancing Ray]

Did establish a midi connection?

[Warrior Bob]

I'm not familiar with the DTXPRESS drums (I use a roland kit myself) but the basic idea for using a MIDI drumkit is that you're going to be using either the MIDI out from it, or the audio out from it.

To use the MIDI out (for controlling drum racks or something), you probably just have to connect a MIDI cable from the drums into some MIDI interface on your computer, and then use that in a MIDI track just like you would any MIDI instrument - create the track, choose your input (drums are traditionally on MIDI channel 10), set your monitoring, and arm the track. Put some device in there too if you want the drums to trigger sounds in Live.

It's worth noting that you'll probably have to arrange your sounds to match the MIDI notes coming out of the drums, unless you are able to configure which notes the DTXPRESS is sending.

To record the audio, it's the same basic idea - plug an audio cable into the drums' output, and into your audio interface's input. Record your playing into Session or Arrangement clips like you would anything else.

Enjoy!

[trevox]

As others said, it's a matter of connecting the midi out from your kits brain to one of your computers midi ports. Is it just simply to play sampled drums or do you want to do something a little fancier? Do you want to play instruments live? I use my kit to play 8 synthesizers - i.e. The kick plays a bass patch, snare plays chord stabs etc and it's great fun. I have some M4L patches created for routing the midi signals between tracks if you want to do more than just recording the midi from your kit.

[dabo333]

Ok, awesome... I forgot to mention that I am running through a fast track pro and my biggest issue was setting up a channel to run the drums through. Thank you soo much

[Ark Arsenal]

I'm actually in the market to purchase an electronic drum set myself. I don't have one, but also have a general question about connecting it.

With respect to connecting the MIDI out to the computer, is it as easy as simply connecting it using a MIDI to USB cable and getting Ableton to recognize it? (similar to the way an AKAI MPK25 connects?)

Or does it require some sort of audio interface? All I'd want to do is use it to trigger sampled drums and other samples with mapping.

[theophilus]

yes, just hook it up via midi. you may need to do some midi mapping to get all your pads hooked up the right way, but that's not too hard to do.