MIDI Gurus!!! I need your advice

[funkmuffin]

My problem: My drummer just bought a Yamaha electronic drum kit. That's pretty cool, cause I don't have to worry about mic'ing, bleed and splash... BUT -- it only has a single stereo audio output. That means I'll need to "get it right" when we actually record the drums. I need more control (EQ the snare, turn up the kick, etc) for later in the mixing process.

Here's the scheme my little logic circuits worked up:

Record the drum track in MIDI, split out the kick, snare, hat, etc. from the initial MIDI file, then run the resulting single-drum tracks back through his processor, recording the audio separately each pass.

As far as I can tell, that *should* get me (after several passes) individual tracks for each drum, so I can mix to my heart's content.

Questions:
How do I take the MIDI file apart? Is there software for this, or do I use the "masking" stuff I've read about?

Any advice for a MIDI noob? I've played around with my drum machine's MIDI --> FirePod --> PC rig, and had (so far) very little success getting over the initial learning-curve hump.

Is there software other than the Cubase LE POS that came with my FirePod -- that won't cost an arm and a leg? BTW, I do ALL of my audio recording in Linux with Ardour, but have had even LESS luck with RoseGarden (Linux MIDI seq), because I think the beta FirePod driver I'm using in Linux doesn't like to work for MIDI... (it's awesome for audio, though -- actually sounds better than the Presonus Windows driver)

Help me get on the right track with this, so our mixes don't come out sounding like crap!

 

[Rick Brienzo]

That idea will work great!

I use Sonar so I am not familair with Cubase but you should be able to filter out the notes (drum sounds) you don't want and leave the one you do. You could also copy the same sequence on a few different MIDI tracks (one for each sound) and delete all the others so you would end up with a MIDI sequence on a seperate track for each sound.

The cool thing about doing it that way is you can fix any screw ups in your sequence before you record the audio from the drum module and you can go back and change the sounds.

Some tips

1. Record the audio from the drum module along with the sequence for a safe copy just in case.

2. Use real cymbals and set up a couple of overheads, or at least use a real hi hat. Drum machine cymbals are always a dead give away.

 

[zeronyne]

You don't even need to do any complex masking. If you can copy and paste in Word, you can split out the drum track into separate tracks.

Just drag-select each note, hit ctrl c, go to a blank MIDI track and ctrl v. Make sure all the tracks are going to the same MIDI output and channel. You can then mute (or solo) to your heart's content.

There's many other ways, but this is probably the most straightforward.

 

[TL5]

Cakewalk/Sonar has a command called "split to tracks" which will put each MIDI note number on consecutive tracks. You tell it which track to start on (example, I always record MIDI drums on track 10 to coincide with the MIDI channel. So I would strat on 11. Cakewalk would then split the kick to 11, alternate kicks to 12, snare, or next note number used, to 13 and following) and the software does the rest.

I don't know about Cubase.