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Ok I heard a whole lot about recording midi. I have a motif keyboard & I don't wanna record using midi, but just wanna record audio as i play my motif live. I think i'm good enough not to mess up and I love the sounds on my motif. Now my question is that the drums on my keyboard suck. I was wondering if i could use maybe some kind of vsti with nice drum grooves then use my keyboard to play keys over it? Could this be done? Would this be a good way in making beats? What would i need to record this way without midi? I'm basically trying to do hip hop beats.

Software i have

Ableton live 5
Mackie tracktion 2
M-audio quattro usb interface
emu 0404 interface
Yamaha mg 10/2 mixer

Comments

pr0gr4m Tue, 07/11/2006 - 12:48

BALKI wrote: I'm basicly trying to do hip hop beats.

Isn't everybody?

Firstly, you need to know a little about MIDI...even though you don't want to record it. You need to know this because you will need to use it to do what you want to do.

MIDI is just computer data. If you were to record MIDI from your motif, you would only be recording the notes you play, when you play them. You wouldn't be recording any sounds. The advantage of recording the MIDI data is that you can then send that MIDI data to any MIDI device. If you wanted it to play back drums on your motif, you could do that. If you want it to play back drum sounds from a VST program you could do that.

Now to the practical use.

I'm not totally familiar with all of your gear, but you can use a VST plugin that has drum sounds to create beats. The first thing you need to do is find a VST that has sounds that you like. Hip Hop beats generally use non-conventional (realistic) drum sounds so I don't think that you'll get much use out of standard drum plugins like BFD or DFH. Check out http://www.vstaudio.com. You can get good info about VSTs from there.

Once you have the VST that you like, set up a MIDI track in your recording program and set it up to receive MIDI data from your motif and send the MIDI data to the VST. Now you can play the motif and hear the sounds of the VST. You won't be able to record the audio of the VST using the 0404 because it only has 2 ins and outs. While you play the motif, record the MIDI data (which is just computer data representing the notes you play and when and how you play them). Then you will have a MIDI track. When you play it back, the MIDI data will be sent to the VST and you'll hear it's sounds.

If you absolutely need to have your MIDI drums as audio, your audio program may have some sort of "export to audio" utility that you could use for that. Then you just import that audio back into the program and voila, an audio drum track.
An alternative would be to plug the outputs of your audio card into the inputs and then record the new audio tracks using the main output. You'll need to make sure that the new audio tracks are not outputting audio to the main outputs or you'll get some NASTY feedback.

EDIT:
Somehow, I missed the part where you said you wanted VST GROOVES. Everything I said above was for creating your own beats. If you are looking for something with ready made grooves, you could just buy a sample CD of HipHop beats and load those into your program and play to them. There are also VST drum machines that may be useful. I love microTonic, but it may be a bit too electro for what you want to do.

anonymous Tue, 07/11/2006 - 15:26

Thnx for your kind help program. I've been messing around with my motif and it seems as if i could just make beats all inside that w/o using any kind of pc software? It has what you were talking about already a sequencer inside of it. I was recording midi today inside the board. It also says i could tranfer wav files inside of it. Do you think drum wav files would be all i need to do everything with just the hardware and not any pc software? I know i need more memory in order to sample with, but it has a sampler inside of it also.
I mean i'm a lil confused on why would i wanna use a software sequencer when the keyboard i have already has one and lets me record midi already?
It just seems maybe i could do everything inside of it.

pr0gr4m Wed, 07/12/2006 - 21:09

You absolutely could do everything right there inside the synth/workstation.

I don't know about it's sampling or wave loading, but it does have a nice sequencer and I don't think the drum sounds are all that bad. Start off with what you got there, you dont need a computer. If later you find yourself wanting new sounds, then work on loading samples. I think you may be able to expand that thing with different cards. At least I can with my CS6X.

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