USB Drum Kit

[Kryo]

Hey!

I’ve just bought one of these…



It’s a USB Drum kit. Simply plugs into any spare USB port and using the supplied software, enables you to play the drums through your computer speakers. Awesome bit of kit for the virgin drummers like me!

The pads are velocity sensitive so the harder you hit the louder the noise…
There are a couple of problems with the overall kit, let me explain…

1. The controller unit has 10 inputs, 6 analogue and 4 digital, the analogue inputs are needed for the pad hits (each pad has a piezo speaker inside which enables the velocity variants) and the digital inputs are for the kick/hi-hat pedals and the cymbal choke. Thus leaving very little or no room for expansion. I do have a few ideas on how to expand the kit, but I’ll save that for another time (if there is enough call for it…)

2. According to the manufacturer, you cannot use any other software with the kit. Limiting you to the midi sounding samples you get from their supplied software. However, I have found a way around this… It involves installing a few small pieces of software, if you are ready, I will begin the tutorial!...

TUTORIAL

Things you will need:

Hardware…
1 Windows PC
1 ION iED05 USB Drum Kit

Software…
eDrum Monitor (In this tutorial, I will be using version 2.0.0.2a – the software is still in development so newer versions may be released after this post…)
FXpansion’s BFD Drum sampling software
Midiox

How it works:
When you plug in the USB kit, and install the official software, a set of drivers are installed for the drums in the Game Controller Properties in you control panel. If you go to the properties, you can clearly see all of the analogue axis and the buttons. Something quite freaky though, for some reason all of the axis are linked to the first set of buttons…
X Axis  Button 1
Y Axis  Button 2
Slider  Button 3
And so on… This can cause a slight problem when trying to set the software up with velocity layers. So we ain’t gonna bother just yet. I am working with the creator of eDrum Monitor to try and bypass the button presses, at the moment I have a slight work around, but it is a lot of messing about, I will provide information on request…
eDrum monitor catches the drum pad hits and converts the signal to Midi CC notes, it then passes the notes through a virtual cable with Midiox which then inputs the notes into BFD’s stand alone application. Get it?

You are not limited to only using BFD, you can use pretty much any Midi activated drum machine… I have tried a few, but like the features you can achieve with BFD…

Using Fruity Loops as a VST host, I have tried:
Addictive Drums
Drumkit From Hell
Real Drums Soundfont
All with excellent results, but as I said, each to their own. If you decide to use a different drumkit sampler, the principal is pretty much the same…

Ok, begin by installing all the relevant software. Put it all wherever you like… doesn’t really matter…
Although it does quite annoy me to click on a few shortcuts to start playing, I wrote a batch file to run both eDrum Monitor and BFD at the same time…
Create a new txt document and paste this into it, changing the directories as needed…

@echo off
cd C:\Program Files\eDrum Monitor\
start /min EdrumMon.exe
cd C:\Program Files\FXpansion\BFD\
"BFD Stereo.exe"
C:\WINDOWS\system32\taskkill.exe /F /IM EdrumMon.exe

Save and close the document, and rename it to something.bat… Now, when you run the batch file it will open both programs. The last line of the batch file tells the system to close eDrum Monitor when BFD is closed. Which is nice!

Ok, all software should be installed by now.
Go ahead and fire up both eDrum Monitor and BFD.

Lets set up eDrum Monitor first…

Click on Options/Midi devices in the toolbar…
You should see something similar to below…



Set the Midi Input to your Midi IO, probably differ from soundcard to card…
Set the Midi Output to Midi Yoke NT: 1, may be called something slightly different on different versions of windows, but just choose the first one, and you should be ok.
Once done, press ok.
Next, go to Options/Game Devices. And select the Drum controller. (If you don’t have a drum controller present, there may be a few things wrong… Make sure you plug the USB cable in before you open the software. Ensure you have the manufactures software installed, even if you ain’t gonna use it…)

Ok, that’s the options sorted…
Next you need to set up your hit options.

With the Kit we have, we have 6 pads and 2 pedals, so is Edrum Monitor we need to set up 8 Tracks.
Go to Tracks/New Single Track to add a new track. We need to do this 8 times, so you have 8 single tracks. Next go to Tracks/New Midi CC Track to add a controller track.

Now we have everything needed to setup…

In the first track, click on the Learn Button at the top, and twat the pad you wish to use (I used the Cymbal pad, probably best if you follow suit…) If you have the pads plugged in as I do…

Hi-Hit Pad in Port 1
Snare Pad in Port 2
Hi Tom in Port 3
Mid Tom in Port 4
Crash in Port 5
Floor Tom in Port 6
Cymbal Choke in Port 7
Kick Pedal in Port 8
Hi-Hat Pedal in Port 9

… you should get the same button presses as in the image below…



Learn each track in same order as the image.
Next thing to do is set up the midi notes… on each track you will see 2 drop down boxes…
Midi # Output and Midi Channel. Set all of the Midi Channel dropdowns to channel 11.
Set the Midi # Output dropdowns as follows:

Crash: 49
Snare: 38
Hi-Tom: 47
Mid-Tom: 45
Floor-Tom: 43
Hi-Hat: 34
Kick: 36
Choke: 54
Hi-Hat Pedal: 4 – This track looks a little different from the rest, don’t worry about that though.

That’s everything in this program, except setting the levels of each drum… Just adjust the slider on each track to increase / decrease the volume. Might be a good idea at this point to save your work, just in case!

Lets move over to BFD now… Which doesn’t take too much setting up…

Click on Play Options on the right hand side.
Set the MIDI in chan to 11, this will catch all midi data from eDrum Monitor.



Next, click on Hit Options.

At the bottom of the popup, there is Hi-hat Pedal position (CC), with a learn button, click it and press your hi-hat pedal… it should learn number 4… This will allow you use the hi-hat features to a certain limit. You have Open, Closed and Pedal events, but no half open or bell events, not so bad for the beginner!
And that’s basically it… Get bashing on those skins!!!

Any help needed, and I’ll try my best!

[Beka4MikE]

OKay seriously two things!
1) your user title is hilarious
2) what was the cost of this beast?! It looks cool and makes me want to go get some just to have them

[Kryo]

The cost ain't actually that bad...
I picked up the USB kit for £130 from Maplin.co.uk, but the price has gone up by £20 since...
Firebox sells 'em HERE for £130 though... Not sure on shipping...

BFD costs around £100 - £130 depending on of you go for the premium or deluxe version...

Like I said though, the drums will work with pretty much any Midi enabled drum software...

I installed DrumCore 2 yesterday, and I must say I am really impressed, not quite got the features that BFD has, and you have to run it through rewire mode with fruity loops or some other rewire host, but the Matt Sorum kit sounds like a beast!

[Revraz]

Now that's what I call a review. Maybe should be posted in the Gear forums and not Lessons/Tabs, but still a nice review.

[drum73]

Did you see this http://geocities.com/d_skachkov/IONMIDI/ ?

[Rob]

Nice kit! Iwas looking for something small like that to use while recording! I do have a great drum machine but would prefer to play the drum tracks myself!

[oddjobblack]

Has anyone got the Ionmidi zip file that was posted on the geocities page mentioned above? The download link is now broken.

[polcrendszer]

Hey
I just found your review and I have to say you really gave a perfect detailed how-to advisory.Though I would need some help.You mentioned the BFD software,which is impossible to be found on the internet(the full version).You mentioned some more like Fruityloops as a host,I got EZdrummer,which is quite a cool program.Could you right me where to give the freuityloops the right channel(11)? i cant find it.Or other solutions would be appreciated as well...
thank you again
dave

[polcrendszer]

Unfortunately I cant select anything in the MIDI input box in Edrum Monitor:its blank...plus I dont see midi yoke in the MIDI output box...why??

[polcrendszer]

Is it serious that I gotta post 5 messages to be able to send private messages??

[polcrendszer]

nem nagyon értem ezt...

[polcrendszer]

mi ez a marhaság c

[skezza]

i wish the pictures were working, id love to see it. it sounds a fantastic idea.

[arasb]

Thanks for the tutorial. Works great, except for the velocities.

[Kryo]

I've had a few messages asking about pad velocities... there is a slight problem with the current version of EDM, in the fact that the way the ion drum driver is written.
Of the 6 pads, only 3 can actually be used as an analogue input, the other 3 are digital... and even then, the 3 analogue pads are shared digital too... so it's pretty much hit and miss on which to learn.
I have found a small work around though, but at the moment EDM is installed onto my WinXP drive (One which is solely used for music production... No internet set up on it!)
If I get a chance this week, I'll reboot into XP and have a quick looksee, and let y'all know how to set up velocity hits. Either that or wait for EDM3.0, which should hopefully rectify a few issues.