We're sure other people have done it as well, but for those aspiring electronica performers who haven't yet made the plunge, YouTube member luksy has posted a video explaining how he used a handful of programs to turn the Rock Band drum kit hooked up to a PC into a working electronic drum kit.Remember, this is just one example of how you can do it. We're working at finding the perfect setup for using our MacBook (via OS X) as a sound module for our 22-key midi keyboard and Rock Band drum set simultaneously - any suggestions would be appreciated. With the proper drum kit sound silencers, this can make for a pretty handy (although fairly minimal) portable gig setup. Video after the break.
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It's like a daily thing here. Enough! Stop doing them for a good week, please.
We get it, Joystiq loves the game.
Here's a concept you see something that has Rock Band in the title, DON'T CLICK ON IT...
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he just wouldn't stop talking would he!?
sounded like he was reading a script,
and ad-libbing, badly.
so much for a demonstration.
can't we use an application such as GlovePie for the wii remotes to work with the Xbox controllers?
i mean, there was a drum kit thing for GlovePie, and it wasn't hard to edit and play with?
ah oh well.
looks like i'll have to wait to get Rockband myself and playing around with this stuff!
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"this can make for a pretty handy (although fairly minimal) portable gig setup"
Only if you want to play the whole gig at a set volume, or turn a knob to change the volume. Instead of, you know, just hitting the drums at a different velocity.
Mic the drums, record the MIDI signal and mic output, and use the plugin to convert the sound of you bashing on those apparently loud-ass plastic pads into velocity.
Once you get it all rigged up as a MIDI drum set, use it to 5-star Raining Blood on expert in Guitar Hero 3. (http://egyokeo.com/midihero/) Then send it in to Joystiq and we'll all make fun of you.
If you really need something more accurate than that, you could cut open your Rock Band drums add some piezo transducers to the pads and get a cheap drum brain (http://members.cox.net/ampage/triggers.htm). But that kinda cuts on the USB plug-and-play convenience even more.
Neither solution solves the bass pedal very elegantly, though.
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You would need to send MIDI between two applications to get this working, so, in comes Apple's IAC Bus. You can turn this on in OS X's audio MIDI setup. In Max or PD, you can then send MIDI out the IAC bus, and in Garageband, you can make a new track and set its input to that same IAC bus.
Still, I dont know why you would bother. Getting rid of the latency and working around the velocity issues could be more trouble than the nerd cred is worth.
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That's gonna require the drummer to play a little bit ahead of any normal instruments. Though, it's possible his laptop is just slow and a better computer would translate faster...
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http://www.orderedbytes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=445
That's someone detailing how to use the drummania kit on OS X, for the xbox 360 rock band kit you should just need to use Colin Munro's awesome xbox 360 os x driver in place of the ps2->usb adapter mentioned in the post above:
http://tattiebogle.net/index.php/ProjectRoot/Xbox360Controller/OsxDriver
The basic setup that should work would be the following:
Xbox 360 OS X drivers -> controller mate mapping from HID joystick buttons to keyboard output -> midi keys program mapping keys to a midi channel in OS X, then you should be able to load up garageband and see everything work.
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JunXion actually lets you map the controls on USB devices directly to MIDI, so you could theoretically use your X-box controller to operate an external synthesizer if you so desired.
The only down side is that it costs money. STEIM is a non-profit electronic music research lab. Though if you're really into this sort of stuff it's a worthwhile investment - yesterday I used a wacom drawing tablet to control the envelop parameters on a synth.
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