Trouble with MIDI drum signal

[skowog]

I am hoping someone out there can help with this issue.
After some trial and error, I got the midi signal from my Yamaha Dd-55 Electric drumset to show in Mixcraft 5. However, the signal either appears to be super faint or extremely short. I have to hit the drums pretty hard for the signal to register, and it is barely long enough to make a sound, as it lasts for a microsecond. Does anybody have any solutions to this problem?
Thanks in advance!

[Glergo]

How is the digital drumset connected to your PC? Is it a MIDI cable into an External Audio Interface or your integrated sound device?

[skowog]

I am connected via Midi to USB cable directly into my PC.

[Acoustica Greg]

Hi,

Have you tried Mixcraft 6? You could just select the notes and make them longer or increase their velocity.

Otherwise, check the manual for your electronic drum kit and see what kind of adjustments you can make.

Greg

[skowog]

Hi, I am looking forward to getting Mixcraft 6, but for the moment I am broke, and I would like to finish the project I have right now before I jump into learning all about the new version.

What I would like to do is to hear the drum notes in real time instead of going after the midi notes and adjusting them in the piano roll. The Manual isn't terribly helpful, seems like midi was more of an after thought!

Any ideas?

[Acoustica Greg]

Hi,

Is there any way to adjust the sensitivity of the drum pads? If the MIDI device is sending tiny notes, Mixcraft will record tiny notes.

Greg

[skowog]

The sensitivity is maxed out. I will restart it and try again.

[skowog]

Okay, I decided to fiddle with the settings a bit and I have the midi notes coming in as before, but on a whim I decided to mess around with the quantize settings. That seemed to do the trick. I have the settings at Quantize Note Start:1/8 Notes, and Quantize Note Length:1/8th Notes. These are completely arbitrary settings, my knowledge of music theory and note reading is very basic.

My new questions:

1. What would you suggest these settings be adjusted to?
Currently my default is the Acoustica Piano, so my drum hits are playing nice little piano notes,
but what I would like to do is use the drum pad to trigger soundfont percussion sounds, like the James Brown Drumset soundfont I have for example. What should I set the Quantize values to?

2. How do I assign specific sounds to the drum hits? If I go into the soundfont vst, how do I make sure that when I hit the snare on my drumpad, that I get a snare soundfont to play? Or say that I want to play the built in Mixcraft Taiko drums?

Any advice is very welcome!

[skowog]

Anyone?

[Acoustica Greg]

Hi,

I hate to keep bringing up Mixcraft 6, but it has a drum map feature that can make it easier to sort out which note plays which drum. You could also try out the new Acoustica Studio Drums virtual instrument.

Which virtual instrument would you be using with your sound font?

Greg

[skowog]

That sounds good! I am looking forward to MC6!
Right now what virtual instruments I am looking to use with the drum pads are soundfont drum kit files, as well as orchestral type drums, like the big drums that are in Mixcraft already as well as Taiko and other ethnic drums. I look forward to being able to play cuban Timbales on the e-drum kit, as opposed to "playing them" on my keyboard!