Giga with midi drum kit

[e-drummer]

Hi all
Merry christmas
I am considering buying GigaStudio but I have a few questions that I hope you guys can help me with.
My use of Giga will be mainly for one purpose ,for triggering samples held in giga that are played in real time from a Roland V-drum kit via midi.
1: I am hoping to have velocity switched samples (up to eight) on the snare and toms(4 of them).Is this possible being that all notes are sent on midi ch 10 with different notes for each drum?

2:The hi hat of the V-drum kit uses a pad for the hi hat and a hi hat pedal using CC4 midi data to give sounds of closed and open hi hats and a couple of sounds in between and also the \"chick\" sound of the pedal if played on its own. Will it be possible to recreate this with Giga using the pad to control the velocity but the pedal (midi cc4) to control which sample is played.

3: The most important thing is that i can play this all in real time as i feel that as a drummer ,what im hearing affects the way in which we play ,ie a drummer is the best built in mixer you can get for a drum kit in that he will play the kit and the velocity that he hits the drums will all be relative to the sounds he hears in comparison to each other.
Basically I want to use Giga to record drum loops from the V-kit in real time via midi.
Recording the output from giga in real time to either Cubase 5 VST 32 or Cool edit 2000 as a stereo cd quallity wave file.Possible?

4: My PC spec is as follows
PIII 500Mhz
128MB Ram
10GB Ide HD (7200 rpm)
My sound card is a Guillemot isis which I know is a defifinate no go but if all is possible i will go for a Terretec ews88mt.
Will I get a small enough latency to be able to do all this without hearing a delay between hitting a pad or pads (basically playing a groove) and giga playing the relevant samples?.
Many thanks in advance guys I hope you guys can help this newbie drummer out.
Many thanks.
steve lynch

[This message has been edited by e-drummer (edited 12-26-2000).]

[saxguy2000]

I have the exact same needs so I\'m glad you wrote. I have a lesser midi drum kit (TD-5) but same principle. Yes, I CAN trigger gighelp samples in real time BUT I find the resulting audio too low in contrast with other methods of triggering them (my MIDI guitar) at the same levels. I would like a louder kick for example.

I run my MIDI drum kit through my Echo Layla24 MIDI ports and into Cubase 5. The vents are recorded fine and play back. Not being a real drummer I need to get one over here to try this and see how the feel comes across.

I\'m not sure about recording loops though WITHIN gigaStudio. THat would be handy. I usually just want a real drummer to play the sounds I like and I record them on a midi drum track in Cubase.

Keep me posted how your experience goes. Perhaps we can work together on this.

Jeff
jefft@streampoint.com

[Chadwick]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by e-drummer:
1: I am hoping to have velocity switched samples (up to eight) on the snare and toms(4 of them).Is this possible being that all notes are sent on midi ch 10 with different notes for each drum?

Giga will allow each of 128 separate notes on a single midi channel to have up to 16 stereo velocity switched layers. ie one key can have 16 different stereo sounds assigned to it, each of which responds to a different section of the full velocity spectrum.

2:The hi hat of the V-drum kit uses a pad for the hi hat and a hi hat pedal using CC4 midi data to give sounds of closed and open hi hats and a couple of sounds in between and also the \"chick\" sound of the pedal if played on its own. Will it be possible to recreate this with Giga using the pad to control the velocity but the pedal (midi cc4) to control which sample is played. I\'m not sure about

Withe that hihat setup you are no longer doing velocity switching, but a kind of immediate crossfade between layers. That way you get to play through a range of sounds (depending on where the pedal travel is) and play each type of sound across its whole velocity range. According to the Giga\'s list of midi controllers which can be used to crossfade between layers, cc4 - foot controller - is available. The only thing you\'ll miss out on is the \'chick\' from playing the pedal without playing a note. Maybe a second midi footswitch could be set up to do that.

3: The most important thing is that i can play this all in real time as i feel that as a drummer ,what im hearing affects the way in which we play ,ie a drummer is the best built in mixer you can get for a drum kit in that he will play the kit and the velocity that he hits the drums will all be relative to the sounds he hears in comparison to each other.
Basically I want to use Giga to record drum loops from the V-kit in real time via midi.
Recording the output from giga in real time to either Cubase 5 VST 32 or Cool edit 2000 as a stereo cd quallity wave file.Possible?

Good question. I can\'t say for sure, Nemesys may be the only people who honestly know that. If you\'re specific enough about what you want to do(as you have been here)you may get an answer. Gigastudio also has an audio capture function which could record your performance without the use of an external sequencer at all.

4: My PC spec is as follows
PIII 500Mhz
128MB Ram
10GB Ide HD (7200 rpm)
My sound card is a Guillemot isis which I know is a defifinate no go but if all is possible i will go for a Terretec ews88mt.
Will I get a small enough latency to be able to do all this without hearing a delay between hitting a pad or pads (basically playing a groove) and giga playing the relevant samples?.

You could do with 256 ram and a second drive so that your programmes and sounds aren\'t on the same media. If you\'re recording audio tracks as well, ideally that should be done on a separate disk too(!). Basically you\'re trying to make sure that no data which is being streamed gets interrupted while other data is trying to get through. Giga and an audio sequencer will be competing heavily for bandwidth if they use the same drive.

Latency - GSIF cards should generally have a lower latency than Direct sound. I don\'t know which category the Terratec falls into. 8ms seems like an achievable latency in Giga.

Why not get the V drums up, record the ACOUSTIC sound of your stick on the plastic drum head onto one track AT THE SAME TIME as you record the actual fired sample, say, a rim shot, onto a second track. Now get both tracks up alongside eachother in an audio editor and measure the distance between the initial transient of your acoustic track with the midi fired rim shot. That\'s your current latency using the V drum system. To see what 8ms feels like you just have to whack the V drums through a delay which adds whatever the difference is between your V Drum latency and 8ms. Maybe the V drums are already at that point? Who knows?

Not to be a heretic, but as your sounds will all be (relatively) small and could fit in a largish amount of ram, what about the Unity DS1 PC sampler? At least with that there are no hard disk streaming issues , now 128 voices, mappable midi controllers etc.

I can\'t speak for the latency issue, but there\'s even a demo you can download: http://www.bitheadz.com/ (\"http://www.bitheadz.com/\")

Now I bet people yell at me http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif