wibwobweb.com
A website. With stuff on it.
Using the ION iED05 USB Drum Kit with MIDI capable software

iED05 USB Drum KitI recently purchased the ION iED05 drum kit, despite having seen a number of reviews that stated that it had no capability outside of the software - and therefore drum samples - supplied with the kit.

As I suspected, that’s not really the case! With a bit of jiggery-pokery, you can make the ION iED05 drum kit, and, I believe, the DrumXtreme DX-100, which appears to be the same kit with a different name, work with any MIDI capable software, which means you can use it with your sequencers, software synthesizers / samplers and notation programs, and assign pretty much any sounds or samples you like. Plus it sounds infinitely better driving pure Sound Font percussion kits, and is more responsive than the original software (which unfortunately has a small but noticeable lag time between striking a pad and playing the sample, which can be disorientating.).

Oh, and you can still play the Virtual DrumX tutorial drum game that is supplied, albeit with your own MIDI drum kits! Whee! (See below for details on that)

I should probably stress before I start that this is strictly a PC/Windows method. I don’t own a Mac, and I don’t know what you’d do to achieve the same on one. Sorry, Mac users! (I don’t even know if you can use the kit on a Mac… certainly no Mac software is supplied. So hopefully I’m not upsetting anyone anyway!)

Also, obviously I haven’t tested it with all MIDI software. Most of my testing was with Cubase, and it works perfectly fine with that. Since we’re exactly emulating the conditions and signals that your true external MIDI instrument would send, it ought to work with any software that lets you specify a MIDI input port.

I also can’t say for sure whether all of these drum kits are similarly calibrated, so it’s possible that to get the optimum performance you may have to tweak a few variables in my script. But don’t worry, it’s well commented and easy to do! More about tweaking later, too!

So, on to the details…

The Details!

  • First, you need a MIDI driver so that you can map the output to your software’s MIDI input. I used the freeware Maple Virtual MIDI Cable. Download and install it, then REBOOT (no, you really do have to. Trust me).
  • Second you need GlovePIE, which does all the clever stuffs, and basically translates the input from the drum kit from game controller format to MIDI format. GlovePIE doesn’t even have to be installed - just unpack it and run it.
  • Third, you need my script, which tells it what to do. Download this and open it in GlovePIE. Don’t forget to hit ‘run’!
  • Fourth, you need some MIDI capable software. I assume if you’re following this at all, you know what you want to use your drum kit with!

All you need to do in your software is match the MIDI IN port that you want to play your drums on to the output from GlovePIE. The default in my script maps to Maple Midi In Port 2. It’s possible your configuration may be different, so you may just have to change the output number in the script to match if you want a different port. At the top of the running GlovePIE script, next to the Run/Stop button, is a debug output which lists the device name it’s outputting to.

So, for example, in Cubase, select, say, track MIDI 01, and change IN : to read ‘Maple Midi In Port 2′. Now, don’t forget to change OUT to something audible… probably the wavetable synth of your sound card. Depending on your software you may have to explicitly set the MIDI channel to 10 to hear percussion sounds.

And that’s about it. Your drums are now liberated from the shackles of cutesy proprietary software and bad sampling! Enjoy!

Tip: If you have a Creative soundcard, and you just want to play the drums (with decent kits and samples!) I find the bundled SoundFont Bank Manager to be perfectly adequate - just fire it up, hit the ‘Drum Kit’ toggle, and select or load your sound font kits.

Trouble Shooting

If you don’t hear anything when you play your drums, you either don’t have your input-outputs connected correctly, or you’re not generating anything audible. As mentioned above, make sure that what appears on the debug line of your running GlovePIE script matches the selected MIDI input for your drum channel.

Many MIDI programs show a meter that will help you. If striking the drum makes the meter register, then your ports are correctly matched, but you probably haven’t specified an output. Your available options will depend on your soundcard, but look for something like ‘Synth A’ or ‘GS Wavetable SW Synth’.

Play the game with MIDI drums!

There’s really nothing wrong with the Virtual DrumX tutor/game software they supply (for the uninitiated, it plays like Guitar Hero… and if you don’t know what that is, crawl out from under your rock and Google it :p).

Happily, you can still play the game, using this method, albeit with MIDI drums. Yay!

All you’ll need is some software running underneath the game that you can have playing the MIDI output. As I said earlier, I have a Creative Sound Blaster, and the bundled SoundFont Bank Manager is perfect for this.

I’ll try and find an equivalent freeware that will do the same thing and update here, because you really don’t want your full blown sequencer running under it just to render MIDI to your soundcard. (If you know of a simple MIDI input > Soundcard MIDI output tool with a tiny footprint that’s preferably free, lemme know!)

All you have to do is mute the audio from the VirtualX software to silence the distinctly average sampled drums, which is on the WAVE audio channel. You can either do this from the advanced volume interface in Windows or from the mixer within Virtual DrumX. The audio for the track is controlled by the CD audio channel, so you can adjust the balance between your MIDI and CD channels to suit.

Tweaking

The script is well commented, so if you need to change anything, it should be fairly simple. For example, at the top of the script is a bunch of offset variables that are used to counter the fact it’s VERY difficult to calibrate your drum kit as a game controller in Windows! If your drums are too loud when you hit them softly, and therefore don’t have much of a velocity range, add a negative value to the appropriate drum, or vice versa.

Tip: Though it’s certainly not easy, you actually can calibrate your drum kit in Windows for better response. Open Control Panel > Game Controllers and select your Drum Kit from the list, then open ‘Properties’. Go to the Settings tab and click ‘Calibrate’. Now just do your best… it’s not going to be easy to do everything it says in order, but what you can do is redo the cailbration over and over, because it seems to only add to the profile, not overwrite it. So using the table at the bottom of this page as a reference, comparing with the responses on the Test tab of the controller properties, you CAN calibrate it. For example, when it says to move your joystick on the x axis, hit the red drum a few times in a range from soft to very hard. Just do your best. I found that some calibration is better than no calibration - mainly for the velocity ranges.

The Technical Stuff!

For those interested in tweaking the script or taking the concept further, or if you’re just plain curious as to how it all works, here’s some info on the script and method.

By all means, if you think you can improve on the script, and I’m sure there’s ways to improve it, then please do. Just a) gimme some credit, and b) lemme know!

I’m sure the velocities could be refined, but basically, my math sucks.

MIDI Mappings:

First, though GlovePIE allows you to explicitly call a drum sound and automatically transmits it to channel10 (MIDI percussion channel), you can’t set a velocity on those sounds in the same way as you can for a note, so each drum is mapped to the equivalent note instead.

Drum Pad

 input
no		 GlovePIE/GM Drum MIDI
Note
Red Drum 1 ClosedHiHat F#3
Yellow Drum 2 AcousticSnare E3
Green Drum 3 HighTom C4
Blue Drum 4 HighMidTom A3
Purple Drum 5 CrashCymbal1 C#4
Bronze Drum 6 LowTom F3
Left Pedal 10 OpenHiHat A#3
Right Pedal 9 BassDrum1 C3
Cymbal Mute 7 not working at present!
(I can’t find a way to mute
the playing sound)		  

This seems to work satisfactorily for most GM Drum kits. If you find you would prefer another sound generically; for example, you want to globally remap the purple drum to always play CrashCymbal2, then near the bottom of the script you could change the note that is being referenced in the output line (midi.CSharp4Velocity = var.PurpleDrum%).

Velocities:

As far as velocities go, the drum kit uses various axes… axisis… axises…. uh… the drum kit makes use of various inputs from the joystick, as follows:

Drum Pad

 input
no		 GlovePIE / game controller mapping
Red Drum 1 Joystick1.x
Yellow Drum 2 Joystick1.y
Green Drum 3 Joystick1.slider
Blue Drum 4 Joystick1.roll
Purple Drum 5 Joystick1.yaw
Bronze Drum 6 Joystick1.pitch
Left Pedal 10 * see below
Right Pedal 9 * see below

* The Left and Right Pedals don’t seem to have a velocity input… despite being a pedal, it appears to behave as a simple button.

Additional Info

Having played around with this configuration for some hours now, I have found a couple of things that may or may not be of use to know.

Personally, I find the bass pedal to be a bit twitchy, sometimes producing a double hit. To combat this, I just changed the wait command for the right pedal to about double the global var.WaitTime, which seemed to stop the double kick, but still respond quick enough for fast beats. Your mileage may vary.

I, uh, don’t know what else you might need to know. So I’ll leave it there.




63 Comments

  1. […] Using the ION iED05 USB Drum Kit with MIDI capable software […]

    Pingback by wibwobweb.com » Blog Archive » Ooh, content! — September 17, 2007 @ 5:38 am

  2. JUST WHAT I WANTED… IM USING IED05 DRUMS WITH A EMU 0404 SOUNDCARD AND A FREE PROGRAM CALLED JOY TO KEY. WINDOWS RECOGNISES THE IED05 AS A GAMEPAD YOU SIMPLY CONVERT THE DRUM PADS TO MATCH THE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS OF THE PROGRAM YOU INTEND TO USE. IM USING BATTERY 3 STANDALONE.THIS METHOD WAS EFFECTIVE FOR AUDITIONING & PLAYING SAMPLES OR DRUM HITS WITHOUT GOIN THRU A FULL SEQUENCER BUT LACKED VELOCITY YOUR ARTICLE SHOULD NOW ENABLE ME TO ADDRESS THE VELOCITY ISSUE . JOY TO KEY ALSO SAVES YOUR PROFILES SO YOU CAN CONFIGURE IT TO DO OTHER TASKS WHEN YOUR NOT DRUMMING. I SOMETIMES USE THE PAD TO OPEN UP MY EMAIL BROWSER WINDOW OR PLAY A GAME USING THE PEDALS TO SHOOT TO HELP BUILD UP MY LEG MUSCLES . THERES ALSO THE FREE DTXMANIA & DIGIBAND DRUM EMU SIMULATOR GAMES BASED ON THE ARCADE VERSIONS WHICH HAVE HUNDREDS OF POPULAR & HARDER SONGS IN MANY GENRES WHICH CAN ALSO BE EDITED WHICH SHOULD MAKE PRACTISING MORE ENJOYABLE……..

    THANKS FOR THE ARTICLE

    Comment by element — September 22, 2007 @ 3:43 pm

  3. Mate, thats awesome, all works brill….except for one thing.

    There seems to be even more of a lag when using with Cakewalk Music Creator, than the provided software with the drums - anything I cn do to alter this?

    Thanks in advance,

    Jon

    Comment by Jon Tupper` — September 23, 2007 @ 3:51 pm

  4. @Jon, I gotta say I haven’t tried it with Cakewalk. Strange that it would lag particularly with that or any one piece of software. If I can, I’ll give it a go myself and report back with any findings.

    Comment by Jay — September 24, 2007 @ 9:31 am

  5. Wow!…Great work….your now on my list of legends….gonna go and beat them pads hard :)

    Comment by Pete Thomas — October 5, 2007 @ 3:50 pm

  6. Great stuff son, I haven’t had any time to investigate this but I check today and find your article. Thank you :)

    Comment by Adam — October 7, 2007 @ 12:02 pm

  7. If you’re using a software synth, you’ll need a fast sound card with dedicated asio driver to bring the latency right down. If you’re using a sound card with onboard hardware synth (eg: sblive) then latency isn’t an issue.

    Comment by mak — October 12, 2007 @ 12:46 am

  8. Ok, I’ve had a bit of a play with this now.

    If you’re having latency issues then check out ‘asio4all’ generic asio driver. It works for my (very old) integrated laptop soundcard.

    I love this approach - I find it really fascinating so well done for getting this far.

    The slow polling, though, is a serious downer and makes the system pretty much unusable for anything slightly flamboiant. Each pad needs to be polled about every 20-30ms and compared to the previous results to test for a new hit. eg:

    if joy.y > PrevSnare then DoFreshHit();
    PrevSnare = joy.y;

    I don’t know anything about these scripts but I’ll be looking into it as soon as I get the time.

    I do have another issue with this and Reason. The kit will trigger all loaded instruments ok appart from the NN-XT sampler??? It gets the midi data ok but only occasionally triggers the notes. I’ve had this type of thing before when using drum machines as sequencers to drive synth’s; The problem being that the note was too short, ie. the note off data was transmitted to quickly causing the note to end before it had even begun. So, how can I make the midi notes longer?

    Comment by mak — October 15, 2007 @ 8:45 pm

  9. OK! New polling technique works a treat… but what’s the joystick name for input 8 (the extra trigger input)?

    Comment by mak — October 15, 2007 @ 9:20 pm

  10. Joystick1.Button8 I presume???

    I’ve sorted out the hi-hats so they now work properly (different notes for open/closed) by setting a boolian ‘var.open’ in the pedal test block and using that as a conditional for sending open or closed data.

    Comment by mak — October 15, 2007 @ 11:20 pm

  11. Could I combine 2 drums at the same time to have more pads & pedals, using 2 separate “brains” on 2 usb ports?

    Thanks!

    Comment by Phil Ranger — November 11, 2007 @ 3:56 am

  12. can I use this on guitar pro?
    sorry I’m kinda newb. I did install the first two, ran the code in second. I have installed gp. any way you could guide me?

    Comment by userfailure — November 12, 2007 @ 12:42 am

  13. @Phil

    Good question! To which I don’t really know the answer. It all hinges on whether Windows will register two drum kits in the game controller applet. I suspect that it would - can’t see any reason why not.

    If so, then what you’d have to do is basically duplicate each part of the script and refer to ‘Joystick2′ instead of ‘Joystick1′. Then of course you can change the notes that are fired for the joystick2 drums and have 12 of em!

    Actually, if I had the cash, I’d be tempted to give that a go myself! :)

    Comment by Jay — November 14, 2007 @ 2:21 pm

  14. @userfailure

    Guitar Pro being the tablature editor software? I’ve never tried it (my only ‘guitar’ skills are on Guitar Hero II!), but if it supports direct midi input (I only saw reference to importing midi files in the feature set) then I guess you could use it.. a midi note is a midi note. Only I’m not sure how you’re gonna make guitar tabs by banging on a bunch of drums ;)

    Comment by Jay — November 14, 2007 @ 2:25 pm

  15. Huh. I just noticed that someone is selling information on ebay on how to achieve what this article describes and provides for free. I would hope they’re not actually selling this article or my script. That would annoy me muchly. But either way, more fool anyone who pays them for it!

    Comment by Jay — November 14, 2007 @ 3:26 pm

  16. Thanks for this article! Using the info provided here and a little tweaking of my own I managed to get Harmonix’s USB Drum Kit that comes with Rock Band to register in Cubase - Awesome!

    Comment by Adam — November 30, 2007 @ 8:31 pm

  17. @Adam,

    That IS cool! I shall look forward to doing the same myself… when the UK eventually gets Rock Band sometime around March next year (big game publishers can’t be bothered with piss-ant little islands with only 60 million backward natives).

    Comment by Jay — December 3, 2007 @ 11:39 am

  18. Thanks VERY much for this ! I’d managed to get the drum kit to work with Kontakt 2 via a midi to joystick converter, but couldn’t figure out how to get velocities - looks like you have the answer, nice one !

    My tip: If you want to use the drum kit with music software like Cubase, Reason, etc, but without paying for an expensive soundcard download ‘ASIO4ALL’ here:
    www.asio4all.com

    I reduces the delay between hitting the pad and the sound coming out of your pc (latency) to nothing. Sounds too good to be true, but I can now use Kontakt, with all the effects I want, with a regular soundcard.

    thanks again.

    Nath

    Comment by Nath Stealth — December 11, 2007 @ 12:07 pm

  19. Thanks for working this out and posting it.

    Comment by simon h — December 26, 2007 @ 2:37 am

  20. Hi,This is just what i am looking for:)
    My only question is this,do i copy the entire script and run in glovepie,or just the parts with the drum info?
    thanks.

    Comment by madriff — December 30, 2007 @ 2:07 pm

  21. Hello, does anybody know how to reconfigure the the key each drum is outputted at as Reason’s Redrum doesn’t respond on all channels, you can change the settings in the NN-XT but the drums sounds are aweful any help would be amazing. thanks for the advice already given by the way!!!!!!!!!!

    Comment by Dave — December 31, 2007 @ 4:17 pm

  22. Thanks a whole bunch, I am a happy bunny and your efforts are much appreciated. One little thing - I’ve been trying to get the hi-hat to work like a proper drum kit’s, but with no joy. I can get RedDrum to make two different sounds depending on the status of Button10, but I can’t get Button10 to trigger a sound on its own. Anyone got any thoughts?

    Comment by Zack — January 8, 2008 @ 12:05 pm

  23. I can’t get it to work, I’ve checked in properties and the drumkit is there and working. When I load up Cubase SE and change the midi in and out bits its not having it, even when I have treid all the combinations. Any ideas?

    Comment by Kevin — January 18, 2008 @ 11:37 pm

  24. Hi. I usually use Cool Edit Pro for my multitrack WAV recording and have not used MIDI before. Is it possible to use your method with Cool Edit Pro?

    Comment by Adrian — January 19, 2008 @ 1:43 pm

  25. Hi,

    Ive just got myself an ION kit. Ive tried using the method youve explained…

    In cakewalk The midi input is working…but only works on hi hat and snare…and on those it plays 5 notes at once. Which is a mess :D

    Anyone have this problem or kno what im doing wrong?!

    Also…I can only get an open hi hat sound from the hat pad. The pedal ‘closes’ when pressed. but has no effect on the actual hi hat pad.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks!

    Comment by Marc — February 15, 2008 @ 5:45 pm

  26. This is exactly what I’m looking for, I have but one problem, when I run the script, all drums fire, I’m using Cakewalk Homestudio XL. I have tried the script on another sequencing platform with the same results. Any suggestions?

    M

    Comment by Mark E Dunker — February 23, 2008 @ 4:55 am

  27. Same as Marc really - but used midi yoke to look at output. Seems several drums playing at once - and not the tom toms?

    Anyone got this script working well yet?

    Comment by Ian — February 27, 2008 @ 2:00 pm

  28. im having the same problem as marc. all pads work tho except 1 of the toms but when i hit them i have 5 or 6 sounds at once. ive tried with acid pro 6 and fl studio 7 and its the same with both. any help would be most appreciated

    thanks

    Comment by chris — March 4, 2008 @ 9:22 pm

  29. Sorry, guys. I don’t have Cakewalk to try it on… seems weird though. If I get the chance I’ll give it a go and report back. If anyone else figures it out, please let us know!

    Comment by Jay — March 6, 2008 @ 2:19 pm

  30. Yeah as it’s been mentioned above a couple of times.. it would be very VERY useful to get this workin with Reasons Redrum. Anyone got any clues? I have it recognising the installed progs in this article.. but no sound thus far.

    Cheers

    Comment by Jay — March 8, 2008 @ 8:54 pm

  31. Why have you removed my question??? Reason… Redrum… anyone? Thanks..

    Why did you remove it??? Bizarre…

    Comment by Jay — March 9, 2008 @ 4:28 pm

  32. Oooh its reappeared? Hmm… lol.. sorry.. again tho.. anyone…Reason… :P

    Comment by Jay — March 9, 2008 @ 4:29 pm

  33. I bought 2 kits, hoping to somehow “combine them” into one bigger kit *for the purpose of more low toms, cymbals, cowbell etc.* and I was wondering if there was anyway to map them together in one GlovePIE script. I was thinking just copy paste the script into the script and just change all the “joystick1.x” “joystick1.y” etc into “joystick2.x” “joystick2.y” etc. but I’m not too sure if that’d work. I’m not sure if I’d need to change anything else..

    And since I’m horrible at programming (I can barely read your script without breaking my mind) I’m not sure if you’ve mapped the pads to keyboard keys… Since I feel that’s needed, would you mind helping me to do so? As in, what format to put the pads names in and what not.

    Any help is appreciated. Thanks

    Comment by Alexander — March 10, 2008 @ 7:13 am

  34. I have same problem but used the drum player in piano suite (free to redirect the output). It did work once but then stopped again! Recalibrating changes things each time I try it. I wonder if the driver or the hardware has changes on later models. I noticed in calibrate that the buttons also fire when you hit a pad so if joystick.button1 etc could be used to detect the hit but I tried this and it didn’t help. Changing the var.senseThreshold to 0 stopped the multiple hits but some tom toms still dont work. It feels like a bug in the driver or glovepie. Setting a variabke to show the non working pads shows that they dont seem to change even though I can see them change in the joystick control pannel display.
    Also I don’t get any delay with the virtualdrumx but I wanted it to work so I could use other samples.

    John

    Comment by John — March 11, 2008 @ 12:34 am

  35. Update on my little predicament.
    I’ve gotten the snare, the hi-hat pad, and the middle tom to work.
    (buttons 1, 2, and 4)
    However, for the rest (High tom, cymbal, low tom pads and the 2 pedals) they don’t work.
    I’ve tried mapping them as “joystick1.button3″ etc. but it still doesn’t read them. Any way to somehow add to this that’ll help out the pads that aren’t working?

    Comment by Alexander — March 11, 2008 @ 12:52 am

  36. I forgot to mention that when you get multiple drums played you can see the variables for all the drums change together in the variable tab so either glove pie has a bug or the drum driver sends a change on all the pads. It might be that this is only very short and small on the wrong pads and could be filtered out.

    John

    Comment by John — March 11, 2008 @ 8:41 am

  37. @the other Jay - I didn’t remove your comments… they’re all moderated due to a bunch of spammers who try to add a few hundred links here a day. When you post a comment, you see it in preview, but then you won’t see it on your return til I log in and approve it.

    Comment by Jay — March 11, 2008 @ 9:50 am

  38. @Alexander.

    I haven’t tried it, cuz I’m not lucky enough (and the wife not tolerant enough) to have two kits, but as you said in your first post, you ought to be able to refer to them as joystick1.x and joystick2.x. but i dont think you’ll be able to just copy paste the whole script and run both. I think you’ll need to include both sets in the one running script.

    Try putting an ‘or’ after each script statement that refers to joystick1 and putting a duplicate command for joystick2? e.g. “if Joystick1.button10 or Joystick2.button10 then var.LeftPedal = 100%”.

    Comment by Jay — March 11, 2008 @ 9:56 am

  39. Hi everyone!

    I have one of these USB drum kits from e-bay. I was able to download the software from www.ion-audio.com and it seems to work, except I can’t get the program to recognize the (required)MP3 music files. I had to burn my own CD, as the files were zipped from the download and the program requires a drive lable(E). Windows media player plays the mp3 files and I even tried putting the files in a folder but, nothing. I have the USB unit plugged into the computer (and recognized by windows and Xtreme software), but I am using a different unit at the momemt(Non USB “Brain Unit” - *ION iDMO-2. I would like to try the tutorials and games (with more mp3’s would be ideal!). Even bought used PS2 considered Rock band kit!
    Thanks, Henry.
    BTW: With this other (*ION) “Brain unit” about every 200(moderate - fast)taps, I get a “crash” of all sounds at once.

    Comment by Henry Rody — March 14, 2008 @ 11:06 pm

  40. Hey, Gang…

    I don’t know if this helps or not - because it doesn’t pertain directly to the script, but…

    I use Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 and you CAN record your Ion IED05 drum kit as digital audio. I know that doesn’t allow you to edit your drums in MIDI format but you can use digital audio editing to get where you want to go. After all, they ARE digital drums…lol

    All you have to do is make sure you have both your Cakewalk and Virtual Drum X software up & running. Set your Cakewalk recording & playback source to your soundcard. Give yourself an extra measure or two of Count-In so that you can start your Cakewalk recording and then flip your computer over to your Virtual Drum X (Virtual Drum X has to be your top window) and you’re golden.

    Record your digital drum line and then go back and make any corrections, revision, etc. with a punch-in (just like in a “real audio recording studio”) and everything is GroovusMaximus (Latin for Groovy to the Max).

    I hope this helps someone out there. Let me know if you run into any “Funkus Maximus” issues.

    Rock On…
    Max };-)

    Comment by Max — March 16, 2008 @ 12:40 am

  41. Dude this tutorial rulez but unfortunately doesnt work for me.I did everything you wrote but I still have the annoying lag and can tdo anything about it.You mentioned ASIO which reduces, even makes delay disappear. This doesnt occur to me.I’m trying with EZdrummer,still theres the lag, but when I tried the edrum monitor,which the same program as GlovePie,and thats the source of the delay.I have no idea why it doesnt work for me, since you mentioned a regular soundcard is enough to get sounds with no delay. Any idea?

    Comment by Dave Shwartz — March 23, 2008 @ 8:48 pm

  42. Please somebody hewlp me it doesnt work write to polcrendszer@gmail.com and probably u can help me fix this annpying problem!! thanks

    Comment by Dave Shwartz — March 25, 2008 @ 7:07 pm

  43. Hey… great work!

    I have a problem. When I try to use the drum set with my creative as you suggested, for 4 of the pads I get 4 sounds at a time, 4 times in a row…
    so if I hit the hihat, I’ll get 4 different sounds at the same time 4 times…

    do you have any suggestion?
    THANKS

    Comment by Christian — March 26, 2008 @ 9:36 pm

  44. Same problem…running Redrum on Reason. Green doesn’t register at all. A hit on any other pad results in a crash of all the other pads. Foot pedals don’t work at all. I’m no programmer and I’m having a hell of a time sifting through the code. Help would be greatly appreciated.

    Comment by ozzy — April 4, 2008 @ 2:44 am

  45. Hi, again awesome conquest i’ve been hunting for a while on for something to do this….however being the programming iliterate idiot i am i’m having trouble getting the drums to register.

    I’ve install/rebbot for Maple and install and run your script in GP.

    Using either guitar pro (percussion tracks) and cool edit (adobe audition)i’m not able to achieve any sounds for my kit??

    I’ve asigned the Midi IN to midi IN device to Maple Midi IN Port 2 and the midi OUT device to Waveabe SW Synth in both programs yet nothing?

    Am i being an idiot or are these programs untested with your script?

    Any advise or help very mch welcome

    Stu

    Comment by Stuart — April 20, 2008 @ 12:13 am

  46. Hey… i had the issue with multiple pads firing multiple times, I just installed glovepie version 0.29 instead of 0.3 and it works great now.

    Comment by Dave — April 27, 2008 @ 9:27 pm

  47. I was able to get the cymbol choke to work in fl studio. Using cut groups, i assume most software would impliment something similar where one pad will cut the output of another. Setting the button7 to output a midi note which will trigger a pad with volume set to 0 will effectively choke the cymbol.

    Comment by Dave — April 28, 2008 @ 2:51 am

  48. The script works excellent with GlovePie 0.29. Thanks

    Comment by Melissa — May 1, 2008 @ 1:30 am

  49. If you’re having trouble with the drums playing 4 times every time you hit one drum, try using version 0.29 of GlovePIE instead of 0.30. That fixed it for me in Sonar.

    Hope this helps

    Tommy.

    Comment by Tom — May 1, 2008 @ 8:31 pm

  50. I have followed this tutorial without any luck.

    I am using Anvil studio as the midi program, but when I test midi connections it says the device is busy and gives an error code for the anvil studio people then shows the midi test screen, however with the midi in an out set to the drum it randomly says that drum pads are going on and off when they are not and when selecting midi out port 2 the program crashes….and this is the one it says to use from the debug on GlovoePIE

    Any suggestions or known fixes?

    Comment by Daniel — May 9, 2008 @ 6:55 pm

  51. Ok a new update…tweaked some settings and ran the DrumX program in the background but now each time i hit a pad it cuts out the midi!

    Comment by Daniel — May 9, 2008 @ 7:02 pm

  52. WOW anther update..ok some error as some other guy…hear all sounds at once and only the hi hat and snare work!

    Comment by Daniel — May 9, 2008 @ 7:10 pm

  53. Does anybody know if I can get a rollup usb keyboard to work with this method. It uses it’s own software only and I want to use it control softsynths.

    Comment by Seb — May 28, 2008 @ 9:25 pm

  54. I am new to all this. I don’t seem to understand the linkage between GlovePIE and the drum set. I am guessing from what you are saying, that glovePIE and the scripts are going to translate the sound into a midi message for cakewalk. I use Cakewalk Creator 4. I see the maple ins and outs, but when I go to record, I don’t see the drums registering in the program. I have Vista if that matters for the script written. Should I have the Virtual Drum X open as well when I try to record? I opened the scripts in GlovePIE, opened Cakewalk, tried to record. What am I missing?

    Comment by misunderstoodk9s — June 5, 2008 @ 2:57 am

  55. yes. well my question got deleted too. I guess it wasn’t approved yet as described above? Anyhow, I got the drums to register in Cakewalk. My problem was that Cakewalk was not picking up on my soundcard as an out. All I saw were my 4 Maple ins/outs. Here is what Cakewalk told me to do.
    “To hear MIDI playback:

    To hear MIDI playback, you will always need a MIDI instrument like a

    keyboard or built-in synthesizer to select under Options | MIDI devices.

    If you don’t have a synth showing up under Options | MIDI devices, or if

    you only see “Microsoft MIDI mapper,” then you have 2 options:

    1) Go to Options | Audio | Advanced. Put a check in the box that says

    “Always Use MME Interface” (or change the Driver Mode to MME-32bit) then

    press OK. Restart the program and let the Wave Profiler Test your

    hardware. Go back to Options | MIDI devices. You should now see

    “Microsoft GS Wavetable S/W synth” under outputs. Select this new

    device and click OK.

    2) If your soundcard supports WDM or ASIO drivers, you can use a DXI as

    your synth. Go to View | Synth Rack and add one of the synths from the

    list.

    For detailed instructions, see the tutorial called “Using SoftSynths” or

    “Using the Edirol VSC” under Help | Help Topics. These tutorials will

    be very helpful if you choose option 2″

    Now my problem is the latency issue. I downloaded the ASIO4all driver ( as well as ReWire), but can’t seem to get the settings right in Cakewalk. I don’t know if I even need to change the settings. Can any Cakewalk users out there help me? I tried changing buffers as well as trying to turn echo off. I am at a loss.

    Comment by misunderstoodk9s — June 7, 2008 @ 9:24 pm

  56. It finally works! GlovePIE 0.30 didn’t work, but since I downloaded version 0.25 it works fine.

    I changed the script a little to add:
    Open and Closed HiHat sounds both work (depending on de pedal state)
    Pedal HiHat also work
    Cymbal switch let me switch between Crash and Ride Cymbal.

    Comment by Tijn — June 10, 2008 @ 11:52 am

  57. Hi.

    In real drums hihat without push pedal is Open and not this “Red Drum 1 ClosedHiHat F#3 ” then soun is “tisss” and not “tic”
    When you push an release de hihatpedal sound is
    “tissss” or “tic+tisss”
    And when hihatpedal is push and push red drumpad the sound is “tic”

    -Red pad only. sound:”tissss”.
    -Pedal push&release(100ms). sound: “tissss” or “tic+tissss”
    -Pedal push and not release sound: “tic”
    -And pedel+drumpad. sound: “tic”

    Can you programing this or similar?

    Thanks for all and for your awasome script

    Comment by antfros — June 12, 2008 @ 12:54 am

  58. Hey thanks very much for this, its exactly what I wanted. Worked fine for Cakewalk for me and after a bit of code tweaking I got it going for Reason/ Redrum too. Excellent, I got the hi hat working too which was a bonus.

    Comment by David — July 6, 2008 @ 8:29 pm

  59. what did you do to get it working with reason?

    Comment by armand — August 20, 2008 @ 3:07 am

  60. Works with version 0.25 perfectly, thank you very much (ended alot of frusration for me there).

    Comment by Jiinx — September 4, 2008 @ 1:12 am

  61. Just incase anyone is interested.
    This drum kit can be used to record its drum sound by using nero wave editer,just use digital as input and have drum sample program on top of nero whilst recording, works a treat.

    Comment by Doogie — September 9, 2008 @ 5:52 pm

  62. hi, how is the latency if for exampled used in Cubase?

    Comment by 2tall — September 12, 2008 @ 7:56 pm

  63. For those of you wondering how you can get the hi hat pedal to work, you know, like an actual hi-hat, you can modify your code with a nested if statement, like so:

    if Joystick1.x > var.senseThreshold then
    if Joystick1.Button10 then
    var.RedDrum = MapEnsureRange(Smooth(Joystick1.x, 5), -1,1, 5,100) * 10 + var.RedDrumOffset%
    else
    var.LeftPedal = MapEnsureRange(Smooth(Joystick1.x, 5), -1,1, 5,100) * 10 + var.RedDrumOffset%
    endif
    wait var.WaitTime
    else

    Then you’ll have to go near the bottom and get rid of the entire “if Joystick1.button9″ etc code. That whole section.

    The last step is to add a simple % to the end of “midi.ASharp3Velocity = var.LeftPedal”

    Bada-bing. You won’t have the sound it makes when you initially press the button, but if you’re a good drummer, you’ll want it this way better than no open and close control.

    Comment by DJ Yoshiman — September 17, 2008 @ 9:40 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment