After fumbling around for an extended period of time to get my computer to play sounds when I hit the drum pads connected to it with a MIDI-to-USB cable, I finally got it working. The moment I got it working I was so overjoyed. At the same time, I can attribute the long trial & error to the serious lack of documentation/guides on how to do it. There are some forums and long articles full of jargons that tend to scare beginners away. So, after fighting through all the hard shits, I decided to write a lay-man guide.
1. The rigs
To play drums, you need a drumset. Long story short, if you just want to practice and are not particularly particular about the sound details, my DTXplorer did the trick.
2. The music
The software you are looking for is Guitar Pro. Its very misleading name had me believe it was only for guitar for quite a long time. You get to mute the drum track so you can play along with a song, with metronome, adjustable bpm, etc. This software has a lot of nice features and you get to print out music sheets with it too!
One great place to find guitar pro tabs is 911tabs
3.The MIDI sampler!
This is the part that got me frustrated for several nights. This software basically converts MIDI signals to wave signals to be output from the computer speakers. That sounds simple enough, huh? If you want to do this and are just starting out, you are so lucky to have found this post. A simple google search will turn up all the “MIDI synthesizer”, “MIDI sequencer”, “drum machine”, “VST”, “VSTi” or some permutations of these terms. Each one of those has its own rather steep learning curve (mostly due to lack of proper documentation) and they’re actually totally different things, not to mention most of them are priced over $100. I just couldn’t believe I had to get so involved to achieve something like the game DTXMania – to play a sound when I hit a pad, plain and simple.
After going through a lot of hassles, and I’m very glad I hadn’t paid in the process, I came across Native Instrument’s Battery 3.
It was the only one that worked like it should – I started the software, plugged in my drums, played and it emitted sounds! No forced advanced fine tuning, no “state-of-the-art” geeky options with 78 configurable settings. The demo version is actually free too! You get to play 30 minutes before the program quits itself. Not a big deal for daily practice, just reopen the program. The retail version, with 38 more drum kits is around $200, a very reasonable price for something that just works so fine.
