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E-Drums with iPad?
After successfully upgrading our keyboard sound to iPad with AUM, Pianoteq, V-Tines, Synth One J6, Decent Sampler, AutoPad, Korg NanoKontrol2 and Presonus Audio Interface (it sounds fantastic!), I want to approach our abandoned e-drum kit that sounds rather awful.
Is there any e-drummer here that uses an iPad as the drum module?
I’d appreciate app tipps and advice for the most natural sounding and realistic feeling drums!
Unless iPads are not really usable for e-drums and I‘m better off buying an old MacBook.
Any thoughts?
Comments
More of a tinkerer than a drummer but: Klevgrand OneShot loaded in AUM should cover most needs. Skaka, Slammer, Borsta and Ting and great too. They all play well together.
Oneshot is great and the samples are pretty good, but I found one issue when trying to play with real drums: how do you handle the hi-hat opening? There are samples for the closed hi-hat and samples for the open hi-hat, but everything in between? I think that not only samples like this are missing but Oneshot completely lacks support for that kind of input.
Thanks for chiming in @Kewe_Esse and @unlink
Yes I also thought that the hihat might be a problem in OneShot. And how many dynamic layers and round robins does OneShot have? Anyone knows?
I saw some peeps on YouTube using Garageband for live drumming with e-drums. It sounded good but I'm wondering if that also has enough dynamic layers and round robins.
Other than that Korg Gadget seems to have recently added a drum module. Any experiences with that?
Hi @jacou If your drum module allows you to adjust the midi cc’s sent out for different kit parts you can separate the hihats open and closed trigger so a closed trigger will sound a closed hat sample and an open trigger will sound an open hat sample in your chosen app. I have used Oneshot previously in this way but opted for bought in samples from “drum drops” as they are more natural sounding to my ears. As far as app choice goes, I moved back to digistix 2 recently for lower dsp and more precise control of dynamics (you can set each sample individually as opposed to using a dynamic curve). You also have 5x 64 sample slots that can be split across all your kit pieces. As I play drums with my feet only I find 10 samples per kit piece enough for my needs but you could use more if you wish. Hope this helps
@jacou sorry but forgot to mention, you can also use mute groups with digistix 2 to give a more realistic playing experience with your hihats. From memory I think this is also possible with oneshot. (Current oneshot users may confirm this)
Once upon a time, BarbaXDrums was available for this specific purpose.. not around anymore unless you had previously bought it.. I just redownloaded onto my new iPad (A16), hooked up my Roland TD-8 with my Focusrite 2i4, and it had a couple hiccups at first but was far more stable now than with my old iPad 6.. 🤷♂️ Out of the box it was mapped perfectly to my TD-8 kit.. had some nice sounds.. over 900 MB of samples..
https://a4irebith.weebly.com/blog/barbaxdrums-v15
Just finished a session using OneShot in Drambo.. (using a Roland TD-8 kit into Focusrite 4i2).. I love the quickness of Drambo’s sequencer.. a couple of taps and away you go..
It worked well.. played in some sequences which is far quicker for me to do than tapping on a screen, or some other controller with my fingers.. open + closed hi-hats recorded fine.. nowhere near the nuances you’d get with real hihats obviously, but usable.. I set the buffer size in Drambo to 256 + that was OK.. Hihats are always going to be the issue when recording MIDI using e-drums.. I don’t know what kind of magic the Toontrack drummers use to record their MIDI files but they’re quite impressive.. I still use EZDrummer on my ancient MacBook Pro (2012 running Catalina) a fair bit because of the detail the MIDI tracks provide..
Don’t really have an answer for you but thought I’d share my experience.. If I’m really going to record drums, I’ll mic up a real kit and play that.. everything else is usually a place holder until then.. and many times those placeholders become permanent.. you get used to the sounds and how you programmed them.. suddenly nothing else will work.. 😁
This is why I really wish I had an electric drum kit. It’s so much easier to just play a beat instead of sitting trying to sequence it all out. If I had the space or money I’d love a simple little e-kit.
I use DM10, you can build your own kits from your own samples or load any number of kits that come with it.
For this song the drums, bass and synth all were programmed, arranged and sequenced in DM10, I added the samples after exporting the stems from DM10.
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I’m enjoying these smalerl models for taking less space. The pedal on the hi-hat input does open-close and there are 2 kick inputs for the switch style pedal which comes with or a real bass drum target you must tap with a real bass drum pedal. I haven’t connected both input to see if I get double bass drums for free with one NOT being velocity sensitive.
Smaller yet? I got the PD708 but there is also a cheaper PD705 with fewer features.
Hehe ok thanks everyone! I ordered an old MacBook for 50 bucks to use with the electric drum kit. Running Ezdrums or similar will probably make the most sense for now.
I’ll be checking back in here in another 5 years 😄 cheers
Ps: So far we successfully got the keyboard and electric guitar running through iPads. They sound outstanding! I’m surprised that no major Drum Plugin dev jumped on board yet. It’s probably the GB size of these plugins.
Drum Perfect Pro has been with us since at least 2016.
Yep I‘m aware of that. How many dynamic layers and round robins does it have though? And how does it feel in combination with e-drums?
16 layers per pad. You may also be interested in how it can handle open/closed hi-hats from an expression pedal. If I remember correctly it blends the closed and open sounds based on how far the pedal is opened.
(I think One-Shot can do that too, possibly with the addition of progressive choking as well.)
As far as "feel"? I couldn't say. But MIDI is MIDI, so I'm not sure how or where "feel" would come into play.
@jacou EZDrummer 3 makes hooking up E-drums fairly effortless.. Which e-kit do you have?
Hey thanks @royor we got the fairly old Roland TD-8 but it seems to have solid hardware. Only the sounds are not really usable 😄 I‘ll install MainStage first then a few free / affordable drum plugins (Slate 5.5 etc) and see how they sound. We‘ll probably invest in EZ at a later stage.
Still more than happy with my TD-8.. Slate 5.5 is also excellent.. picked up the Patrick Carney Expansion and absolutely love it.. wait for 1/2 off sales on Slate if you can.. Black Friday + Xmas for sure.. maybe other times during the year..
So many options on desktop.. all very playable with the TD-8.. good luck on your new e-drum adventures..
Just a bit of nostalgia.
The apps no longer available though.
Oh wow you also got the TD-8
it’s good to know that you’re happy with it! Thanks for the slate expansion tip! Will definitely check it out and then wait for a sale heheh
Thanks for the wishes! Best to you!
Ah man I remember those times and the excitement I had when I saw this and the red version for guitar. The times when iPad music making was still very new and exciting 😄
Well.. that excitement probably stayed with some of us on here
ii also use iPad for drum duties (either with MIDI e-drums & pad controllers for finger drumming) but can't recommend anything realistic & natural sounding because i'm all about unnatural synthesized sounds.
waiting for iPad version of Waldorf Attack 3.
Just a little heads up in case anyone is interested. I ended up getting a pretty decent MacBook Pro for 50€ (2013, 2.6 dual, 8GB, 500GB SSD) and installed MainStage and the free Steven Slate Drums 5.5. Still had an old Presonus iTwo with MIDI in so I could connect the Roland TD-08 drums.
It works a breeze and sounds awesome. Only cost me the 50€ for the MacBook since I had a license for MainStage and the audio interface already.
I still would prefer a more compact setup with iPad. Will definitely keep my eyes annd ears open for drum apps on iPad.
Someday we will have all the nice things on IOS… maybe after they merge MacOS and iPadOS into a single image… or maybe not.
But I will never want the usual pricing of the desktop/laptop apps and I wouldn’t want to go back the mouse/trackpad interface just to touch buttons, pads, sliders, etc.
Anyway. I think you gave up too early… but finding the best answer for you is often a waste of time because it might take owning a TD-08 and the Presonus to do the research. I am glad you found a solution and I wish we had MainStage on IOS already.
Yeah I had mixed feelings about going the Mac path. On one hand it felt great since Mac still has more options and is open to download software outside of the AppStore but on the other hand it felt a bit old school and bulky 😄
I really wish that Apple would have kept iPads open. They feel artificially crippled down to becoming way overpowered freemium toy machines in a beautiful and compact form factor 🫣 sorry for my pessimism.
Even the recent EU attempt to open it up a bit more didn’t really help. Sad.
When I look at Apple Creator Studio apps for iPad I can only feel anger and frustration with Apple. Such great potential all trapped behind an eternal paywall. I’m seriously losing hope for the future of iPad. Maybe for Apple all together. Realising that Apple became just another greedy big tech company that likes to maximise profits through “services”. “Services” 🙄 wow I feel so served paying unendingly for these subscription services.
I don’t use any of those. Instead I feel like I have to keep holding onto Mac as not everything is sandboxed yet…
Ok enough of the rant. Despite hating subscription “services” I still love using fair priced and non subscription creative apps on my iPad! Hopefully some more drum apps will make it to iPad soon.