Electric drumkits, need some advice please?

[AJ-T]

Anyone know much about the above and whether I can play along with music or edit what I play on my Macbook?

Cheers, Andy.

[sp222]

Unless an Electronic kit offers the ability to play along with other audio, you'd need a small mixer to combine the outs from the kit to whatever music you want to play along with.

To Edit the MIDI info from the kit in your MBP, you'd need some kind of DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) - this is much simpler than editing the audio from the kit - basically, the Electronic kit will need a MIDI out (a 5 pin Din connector), and then you'd need an interface to connect this to your computer. The DAW software will then receive this info - and if you connect MIDI both ways (to and from the computer), the computer can play back your drums.

Hope that makes sense - have a chat to the staff at your local store selling these kits - they will be able to advise on how to achieve what you want

Cheers

[AJ-T]

Hi. Thanks for your advice, I will go to my local store and have a chat with them. Yes it does make sense. Thanks a lot.

[OldSkoolRS]

FWIW with the Roland models you can put a USB stick in them with MP3s on and drum along with the music, which is exactly what I do. I have the TD30K, but I'm pretty sure that the cheaper TD15/11/ models do this too.

Haven't got as far as connecting the midi out to anything yet, but as said a decent DAW will help there. Depends if you want to be able to edit mis-hits to perfect a recording, or whether you just connect the sound cables up and simply practice until it is right (I do the later, but it's still not quite right ).

[vrsmxtb]

Roland models will have a mix in jack, so you can just stick a CD/MP3 player in and adjust the level compared to the drum sound and headphone volume.

[OldSkoolRS]

Yes, just had a look at the 'brain' on my TD30 and it has a 'mix in' socket.

[AJ-T]

Thats cool, Ill check out the Roland kits and see whats what. I must admit I was very impressed with the Yamaha I played on in Regent street, I like the idea of playing along to music makes it that bit more engaging esp as Im not in a band anymore. Cheers lads

[vrsmxtb]

They've probably come a long way, but when I bought my Roland TD8 over 10 years ago, the Yamaha kits felt and sounded noticeably cheaper.

For what it's worth, my TD8 has been faultless over the last decade. All I've had to do is change the back-up battery in the brain once. The mesh heads are still fine, and only recently one of the cymbal pads has started playing up, but again only minor - the edge "choke" sensor seems to have stopped working.