I’m not sure if this was even possible, but I tried it anyway: I have two Simmons SD5K kits that I combined as a big, obnoxious heavy metal-style kit (see attached pic). In its self contained form, the new combined kit plays fine. It does that by utilizing both trigger brains; one brain to control typical sounds of the left half of the kit (kick, snare, toms, high-hat, and 2 crash cymbals (the ride was re-assigned a crash sound), the right side also has kick and toms (lower tom sounds) but the cymbal pads were re-assigned to crash and ride sounds (no hi-hat or snare) and leftover pads were assigned a “china-type” sound and a cowbell sound. Plays great, but the obvious thing is that the Simmons sounds are terrible, especially compared to ToonTrack libraries. So I got this idea…
Since EZDrummer, along with Solo, allow E-drum triggering via midi maybe I can trigger the whole Simmons kit using, say, Metal Machine or DFH (I currently own both, along with Nashville). I am in the process of converting my acoustic kit (big and obnoxious, just like the SD5K monster–and looks like the Metal Machine kit) for live performance that will trigger using an Alesis Trigger I/O and the EZDrummer software, but I wanted to also use the Simmons as a practice (and maybe recording) kit for home since it takes up slightly less space than its acoustic cousin (and I also won’t have to lug kits in an out of the house after every gig).
So this is the way I set up the Simmons SD5K monster for triggering: since it utilizes two stock brains for all those pads, I purchased a M-Audio midisport 2×2, so that I can combine the midi signals from both brains into one USB port on my laptop. After making the appropriate connections (Brain A midi out to midisport 2×2 midi in A, and Brain B midi out to midisport 2×2 midi in B; silver button pressed in for “USB/midi merge” selection), I fired up EZDrummer in Solo and selected both midi signals from the menu. I then brought up Metal Machine from the list of drumsets, and…
Success!…partially…
Because what happened is the kits play…independently from each other. That is, SD5K kit A (left portion of SD5K monster) plays as a kit–and so does SD5K kit B (right side of SD5K monster). In other words, I couldn’t assign a specific pad to a specific sound within Metal Machine, EZDrummer, or Solo. It plays like two separate kits; two snares, two hi-hats, two kicks (that I like), but the toms are also doubled).
And something else weird was going on: for kit A(left side), my SD5K tom1 triggered the first tom in Metal Machine; same happened for kit B(right side). Ditto both for tom2 (except it triggered the 3rd tom in Metal Machine). But when it came to SD5K tom3, kit A triggered the last floor tom in Metal Machine while kit B triggered the first floor tom. I also noticed that the SD5K crash cymbals (A and B) triggered different crashes within Metal Machine.
So my short question(s) to this long explanation is… can it be fixed? If so, how? Is there a way to customize the midi channel assignments to let both brains trigger the big monster kit as it should? Am I asking the impossible? Can it not be done in Solo, but perhaps in another host program? Maybe EZDrummer won’t allow me to do custom midi channels but Superior Drummer will?
I’m totally not a midi aficionado, so any help is appreciated. Please try to be as detailed as you can, yet understandable enough for a noob like me. Thanks
