Hi Justin, 1. where can I purchase a midi keypad? *You can get a midi controler at a music store like Guitar Center, or you can purchase some from Dancing Dots. 2. how much does a midi keypad typically cost? *Depends on how many keys, (49, 61, 76, or 88 keys,) and depends on the modle, features, etc. 3. will I need to purchase any gadgets past the midi keypad to get it to work with sonar? *If the Midi controler you buy has a USB port, then you won't really need anything else to connect it to your comp and access Sonar. If it doesn't have a USB port, then you'll need to get some type of midi interface. 4. what is the url to Omar Binno's site? *My site is www.omarbinno.com 5. within sonar, can you load in your own drum sounds/kits and use them with the midi keypad if desired? Or are you confined to the ones that come with sonar? * You can do this a couple different ways. You can load drum samples using the SFZ sampler that comes with Sonar, or you can use your midi keyboard to trigger your drum machine. ----- Original Message ----- From: Stacy Bleeks To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Monday, May 28, 2007 11:56 PM Subject: [ddots-l] Re: accessible drum machine Hi Justin, First. That HR16 is a great little drum machine. It's got a nice groove to it. If you have a midi keyboard controller, you can, using Sonar, access some soft synths that come with Sonar. For example The roland x o x series of drum sounds such as the 6O6, 8O8, 9O9, plus many others like the CR78 and various kick drums, snares, high hats, ride cymbals, toms etc. etc. are all accessible via the soft synths and played using your midi keyboard controller. Some of these drum sounds will lay the entire drum kit out along the keys on your keyboard and sometimes a single drum sound like a snare or a clap or a zap or a tamborine will take up the entire keyboard with each key being a different pitch. Like with many drum machines and groove boxes you can quantize your beats so that they line up a little tighter. I'll be honest, I have used a few programmable drum machines in the past and their ability to easily nail the quantizing feature was more intuitive but if you play the keys right on the first or second take this isn't much of an issue. Most of the drum sounds played using the midi keyboard are touch/velocity sensitive so if you press a little harder the beat will be stronger and if you hold it a touch longer it will ride a little longer. In other words, it works. I'm hoping that someone else can speak to the whole quantizing thing so that our beats will come out a little tighter etc. There is also something called Session Drummer. I know you were talking about making your own beats from scratch but this Sonar feature is useful as it gives you a pretty decent range of drum patterns that you can customize at will. Check out Omar Binno's site and listen to the beats he's been cooking up. Hope this helps. Stacy ----- Original Message ----- From: Justin Daubenmire To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Monday, May 28, 2007 5:14 PM Subject: [ddots-l] accessible drum machine All, I am checking out sonar 6 and had a question for creating my own drum beats. I used to have an Alesis HR-16B drum machine that had around 30 drum kits in it and it had 16 programmable pads. You can make the pads be whatever you wanted such as kick, snare, high hat, crashes, etc. Then it let you hit the pads and create your own beats via a sequence click. It would record your beats for you as a pattern. You could record, for example, 4 or 5 patterns then copy/paste them in the order you wanted and save it as a song. I.E intro, verse 1, chorus, bridge, etc. Does anyone know of any accessible drum machine software that would let me do this? I'd like to do this on the computer now and not use an external drum machine since I am sure it is possible, however, I cannot seem to find any accessible software package to accomplish this task. Ideally I would like to have a drum machine software package totally outside of sonar and create my beats for my songs outside of sonar then port them into sonar as a track. However, I am not all that familiar with sonar yet as I am just investigating it so if it is possible to do this within sonar using drum kits please let me know. Any feedback much appreciated. What I do not want is premixed/created drum beats that I can use as a track. I want to be able to totally create my own beats using different drum kits. That is very important for me to be able to say, for example, use this kick, that snare, this ride, and make/record my own beats from scratch. thanks for any feedback/help! Regards, Justin