Different types of "playalong" music...with my new TD-30 module.

[kelvinJouhar]

OK - so I just got my new TD-30 module after owning a TD-8 kit for many years. I also upgraded my snare to a TD-105 and my ride cymbal to a CY-13. I am not a very good drummer, but an enthusiastic older person (just the wrong side of 50 ), and I am loving the sounds on my new module.

I have loaded some MIDI files into the TD-30 as "patterns". this works well for me as I can have the "click" sound while I am playing, because this is the thing I have the most trouble with at the moment - keeping a rock-steady tempo. I have also loaded the Roland drumless tracks from the CD, and they sound very good, but my issue there is that it is not possible to play them to a "click". The tempo button only allows you to slow down and speed up the song. The last thing I have done is download a couple of tracks from www.karaoke-versions.com - I read about that site in another post on here. They allow the best of both worlds as you can have the track without drums, but with a click sound.

The ideal situation would be to be able to play MP3's or .wav's in the TD-30 module WITH a click track, but I can't see how that could be done. Any suggestions or other ideas would be welcome.

[Greg The Groove]

I've downloaded a bunch of tracks with the click track from that site. You can put mp3s on a USB stick and stick it in the back of the TD30 and you click on the USB/PTN button to toggle between the Roland's patterns and your USB stick. Is this what your referring to?

[Greg The Groove]

You can use the click with midi together because it is quantized already, meaning the click is perfectly on because midi works this way. You can't insert a click track onto a mp3 or wav because the two will never be in sync. The only thing you can do which is very cumbersome, if you know how to operate a DAW like Pro tools or some multi track audio program, you can add your own click track and edit the original song to fit to the click tracks tempo. This is cumbersome because your gonna have to cut and splice and move the waveform whenever it gets off. I've done this and it's way too cumbersome. Easiest is just to buy and dload those drumless covers from karaoke-version.com and just play them that way. Only thing that sucks is that these aren't the original songs, but still darn good covers I think!

[campster]

Most songs that you hear on the radio don't have a perfectly constant tempo so, as suggested by Greg, you need to get a DAW. Greg suggested changing the song to fit a fixed temp. That addresses your need for a constant tempo.

Alternatively, you can also map the tempo of the song bar by bar. I have just started using Reaper (a cheaper but very powerful alternative to ProTools/Cubase etc) and learnt how to set up a "tempo" track against a song my band recorded. Basically all i did was map the first beat of each bar (listened to the whole song, pressed a defined key on the "1" of each bar). Once this is done you can turn on the click track and it will follow the original song and you can get the DAW to send midi messages to your TD30 to control the tempo on the TD30. To playback without the DAW, you can add a click track in the DAW and then export all the tracks into one mp3.

[kelvinJouhar]

Thanks very much for all these suggestions. That gives me something to be working on.