I wasn’t familiar with the kit before we started, so when it arrived I was actually expecting a USB port for MIDI.  But unfortunatly only the higher models that come USB equipped (so I hear).  The kit does have a MIDI out, but no MIDI in so my cunning trick I was planning was foiled from the beginning.  (This cunning trick would have involved recording the drums on a midi track, quantising and editing to my satisfaction then running the MIDI signal back into the kit and this time recording the audio output.  It’s a very cunning trick that works quite well with keyboards. )

Instead of the cunning trick I just recorded straight from the line out into my USB interface.  I was really impressed with the easiness of the whole process.  Just two leads.  Not ten mics and ten mic leads and ten mic stands and endless soundchecks.  And the whole kit folds down so easily that you can carry it up the stairs in one trip.

Obviously an electric drum kit can not replace a really nice kit in a great studio, but for home recording I think it’s a really great idea.  I loved the samples in the DTXpress, it has some that are cheesy and fun and some that are very usable.  While I probably wouldn’t go out and buy this particular model myself, as I definitly want a USB port (or at least a MIDI-in as well as a MIDI-out) after playing round with it I am definitly keen to try out some of Yamaha’s other electric drum kits to find something that suits my purposes.

It has a GH3 Keyboard which has different weightings on the hammers, so the action is heavier in the lower end of the keyboard and lighter in the high end making it very realistic to play.

Within minutes of setting it up I found myself writing this piece. Apologies for my rusty playing – I haven’t lived with a piano since moving out of my parents house about ten years ago, so I have a lot of practicing to catch up on

The music I did is done with General Midi, which was a challenge in itself. I think I already blogged a little while back about rediscovering the joys of MIDI, and while MIDI is a little outdated,and quite restricting, is does have some advantages. Because Attack of the Meeplings is a browser based game, it’s preferable for it to have a small file size for fast download. MIDI file sizes are ridiculously tiny, so ideal for this sort of thing. The other advantage we had with MIDI in the case of this game, is the fact that you can change the BPM. The game starts off with the music playing at 140BPM, and as the game speeds up with each level, the music plays faster and faster. Unfortunately I’m really bad at computer games, and haven’t managed to get past the first level. Yet…..

The big advantage of MIDI files, is they’re a tiny tiny size. Like, really really tiny. And the big disadvantage, is that the song will only sound as good as the MIDI module playing it back, and only sound as good as MIDI. I have Microsoft GS Wavetable SW synth playing back my MIDI files, and gosh, they sound so bad. Really, like, bad tacky computer game music from the 90′s…. Which is great because that’s exactly what I plan to use MIDI for. Tacky computer game music is secretly incredibly cool.

You can find MIDI files all over the net for use as backing tracks for playing guitar over or karaoke, or if you’re a real masochist you can even just download MIDI songs to listen to. You know, if you really hate yourself that much…

Here’s just a quick little thingamee I chucked together while trying to figure out how to get the whole MIDI thing to work. I made the file in Cubase, but I must have been doing something daftly wrong because it kept coming out with all the instruments sounding like a piano. Which annoyed me something wicked. So I imported it into a super little program called Anvil Studio to save the instrumentation. Anvil studio is free – and totally anti-intuitive to use (hence me only using it after Cubase repeatedly failed me). But it’s free, so yay for that anyway

Click to hear my fab tacky midi file