so i purchased cubase 5 essentials with absolutley no experience with recording software and am trying to seek some help on how to get my pearl e pro live electric drum kit set up for recording. i have fiddled around with the program for a few days now but havnt had any luck so far. the only sound i have been able to generate is a piano or a really cheap sounding drum kit. my drum brain is a pearl red box which i have 2 1/4 in cable running from the main out left and right into the usb audio interface line out left and right. the brain also has a midi in and midi out an aux 1 and aux 2. is it possible i dont have it connected to the interface properly?
If you got it to play piano then you got the midi connections right
The question is what you want to record. If you want to record midi and use that to trigger a software VSTi that generates the sound, then you don’t even need the audio connections from your drumkit. However, unless you spend some money on a good drum VSTi, you’ll find that the sounds in your drumkit are better than those supplied with Cubase.
Here’s what I do to record my e-kit:
Create a midi track in Cubase, and set the in and outputs of that track to the midi ins and outs of the drumkit. Now arm this track for recording, hit record and play the drumkit. After hitting stop, you’ll see Cubase recorded all your hits. If you set the midi track output correctly, you can play back the midi part to the drumkit and hear it generate the hits you played. You can edit the midi to fix any playing mistakes.
Next step is to record the actual audio. Create a stereo audio track, set the input to the inputs on your audio interface you connected your drumkit to. Arm this track for recording, and hit record. Watch how as the midi track plays back, the audio generated by the drumkit is recorded onto the midi track. You can now use the audio to add any FX, EQ etc.
