Anyone have any luck using a drumpad as an input device?  There are several out there and I was wondering how well they worked.  I recieved a Yamaha DD-55 for Christmas, but I believe there are a few Roland products that might work better than this model.  I am currently using VDL II, Sibelius 4 and a Keystation 49e(Using MIDI-OX as virtual midi cable).  This setup works great, but I want to be able to play on a midi drumpad and Sibelius  read and write the notes.  Is this possible and how do I do it?  If this information is already on the forum, forgive me and point me in the right direction. 

Thanks for everyone that posts on this forum it has helped more than any other source.

Chris

This would be difficult.  If you only want standard hits, just Right and Left, then you can program it to work.  The great thing about VDL:2 is the array of sounds provided, which take up most of a keyboard to access all of them.

Gabe

I am looking to lay down a rough draft or skeleton of the part and then come back through and edit in skanks, dreads, mutes....etc with the keyboard.�� It would be ideal if a pad could pick up accents, flams, and shots.�� A pad would have to be very sensitive to be able to differentiate these subtle nuances and the technology might not exist.�� It just seems to be the next logical progression to all of these cool new tools.�� It would be very efficient to step up to a digital set of tenors, play, and then fine tune.

Thanks,

Chris

The technology just doesn't exist yet for this to be a method of writing notation.  The result wouldn't look the way you want it to on paper.  Rolls wouldn't come out as rolls, they'd come as 32nd notes, a quarter note might be an eighth note and an eighth rest instead, etc.  It wouldn't read triplets.  You would have to record it at a very slow tempo because the MIDI latency would cause it to be very inaccurate and slightly behind the beat.  You would spend double the time cleaning up than it would take to correctly write it with a MIDI keyboard- maybe even more if you want it to play back the correct VDL2 sample.  Your best method now would be one hand on your keystation for the pitch, and one on your computer numeric keypad for the duration of the note. 

But they did it on the Drumline movie...  I saw it!

:P

And rewrote drumline notation with sharps and flats for marching snares.  I guess they actually revolutionized marching percussion by making tonal snares, or at least snares that can be tuned quickly like old-school marching timpani.

I must say, I thought that was hilarious the first time I saw it. I was like, ";what the... is that a... no..."; then rewound and rolled to the floor laughing.

[quote author=drumcorpbc link=topic=926.msg3739#msg3739 date=1135662399]
And rewrote drumline notation with sharps and flats for marching snares.  I guess they actually revolutionized marching percussion by making tonal snares, or at least snares that can be tuned quickly like old-school marching timpani.
[/quote]

Tonal snares - I love it!!!