> First, on Tue, May 17, 2005 at 12:42:47AM -0400, LinuxMedia wrote: > > When I actually have everything set up the way I want it and get ready > > to make music, I will probly eventually look into electric drum pads (or > > whatever you call them). I'm assuming they are all midi. Would midiable > > drum pads help to make it more musical for you (assuming one could use > > the drum pads to trigger sounds via midi and a linux sequence/sampler)? > --- --- Then Steve D wrote: > [...] But your email gave me an idea. Rather than use Hydrogen (which > I really like) or another percussion program to produce drums for any > particular piece of music I'm working on, I could simply use one of > the percussion kits in one of my MIDI tone generators, which maps a > whole array of percussion from bass drums to snares to toms to hi-hats > to everything else, to the various keys of a MIDI keyboard. Then I can > simply use the keyboard skills I already have to "play" the drums in > real time and accompany my already recorded tracks of piano, organ, > etc. Well, I tried it. I set one of my MIDI tone generators to "rhythm" mode (which simply means it changes to a percussion kit with various percussion instruments mapped to individual keys of the MIDI keyboard), then used the keyboard to "play" the drums and record it live into Audacity, adding a drum track to my little piece Herky-Jerk. The good news is that I could play with lots of expression and variation in tempo, just like a real drummer. The bad news is that it was d*mn hard! I had to be incredibly relaxed to achieve anything even barely approximating a stable rhythm or tempo, and I have a new found appreciation for drummers and their skills. If anyone cares to hear the rather rough results of this tedious (but enjoyable) experiment, the ogg file is here: http://www.xscd.com/pub/music/herky-jerk-drums.ogg the original, without the drum track, is here: http://www.xscd.com/pub/music/herky-jerk.ogg Best wishes, Steve D, New Mexico US -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Life is full of answers, if you don't care what the questions are. ----------------------------------------------------------------
