MIDI drums for big kits

[dmcguitar]

I have a Roland td4 which allows basic drums to be recorded with sd3. It has snare, kick, 3 Tom’s, hats, crash, ride

how do I use kits with more Toms and cymbals or octobans?  Can I add an additional MIDI pad (one of those 6 pad things) and expand?

Does anyone have a setup that could utilize the big kits?

Topic

[Mark King]

SD3 will run from more than one midi input. I use a td30 fully maxed out on the trigger ins. So that’s kick, snare, hi hat, 5 toms, 5 cymbals including ride cymbal and a Roland bt1 trigger bar. If I plugged in another module or an edrumin 10 then I could max them out also and have as many kit pieces in SD3 as you want. It’s just a matter of changing the note outs on the 2nd module and mapping them in SD3. In SD3 you can add extra kit parts as well so anything you want. You can also mix kit parts from different libraries. Almost limitless except for the power of your computer and the depth of your pocket.

SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors

[pumpkinking]

I currently have 20 triggers in my kit connected through 2 different modules.  I’ve been able to use all 20, although with some SDXs it is easier than others, depending on how many pieces the SDX kits support out of the box.  You can always add X-Drums, but I find them a bit laborsome to balance to the rest of the kit and there is the matter of no X-Drum bleed (I’m sure there are nifty solutions, just never worked that much on it).  I find that Death and Darkness provides a very large number of tom/cymbal slots in the two kit configurations supplied and fits well with a large e-kit.

I will say that ultimately you’ll be limited by the 128 midi note limit (Theoretically, there are two drum midi channels – 10 and 11 – but I have not found that SD3 can differentiate them).  One way this has limited me is in the total number of articulations usable on pieces that tend to have a lot (like hi-hat).  At some point you’re going to have to make a concession on either advanced articulations, or drop standard articulations of the basic kit pieces (like rim/rimshot on toms).  Also the midi mapping of new triggers gets tricky as you fill up the midi notes (you end up searching for mapped notes that you are not using, changing them and then making sure your module sends a different midi note).

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.7
Operating system: macOS Monterey (12)

[Christophe PRATLONG]

I own a Roland TD-11 + an eDrumIin module – https://www.audiofront.net/eDrumIn.php

All is perfectly handled by SD3

[Andrew Payne]

The older Yamaha DTX900 modules have 3 triggers on each of 12 inputs (incl toms, snare, cyms, “spare pads”) so 36 – plus the Kick, Hi-hat triggers (5) and an additional single input so I have 43 triggers on my edrums with following pads – kick, Hats, 5 “toms”, 2 snares, 5 “cymbals” plus a mono pad I use as a cowbell. Great setup for a large kit and I use tom rim triggers for octobans/rototoms. Cant beat the older Yamaha modules for this ability. The newer DTXPro modules (on new DTX10 Kit) has many less triggers – one of the reasons I haven’t upgraded. I don’t need the better module sounds as all of my sounds come from SD3/SDX and no module has this sound capability !

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.7
Operating system: Windows 10

Dell Precision 7730, i7 6 Core 2.6 GHz, 128GB RAM, 1TB SSD and 3 x 2TB SSD, Windows 11, Cubase Pro 14, SD3 plus a variety of SDX's and EZX's, Orchestral Percussion, EZBASS, RME BabyFace Pro FS and KRK V4 monitors. Modified Yamaha DTX900, DTXPRESS4 and Edrumin10 triggering SD3. Yamaha pads/cymbals and Roland VH-10 HiHat. PDP Maple acoustic kit for live playing.

[dmcguitar]

The edrumin I can just plug any brand of cymbal or pad into and setup to use more cymbals or octobans for instance?

 

That looks pretty cool and inexpensive

[pumpkinking]

Pretty much.  Check out what trigger brands the edrumin has been tested with (they maintain a list in the forums).

Ive personally set up some large kits for specific projects like the rototoms/octobans in Hansa, a large D&D double-kick kit with a second hi-hat, and a Ludwig kit in the core library with a double kick, a high concert tom, second hi-hat and a side snare.

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.8
Operating system: macOS Monterey (12)

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