Just bought a Motif Rack XS and wanted to mess around on an electronic drum set for a change of pace.

How do I connect the drum set to my XS?

The question has been asked before on the forum but never in detail.

I’m very new to the features of the XS, and most sound processors in general.

I assume I’m hooking up the drum set via a MIDI cable from its output to the XS’ input. And here is where I get fuzzy. I’ve got eight drums. Eight different triggers.

Might each trigger be set to a separate MIDI channel? How can I set this up successfully in the XS so that each drum/trigger is assigned to the correct voice/drum sound in the XS module?

Your question cannot really be answered here because it is really about the capabilities of your Electronic Drumset.

The Motif-Rack XS is able to receive on all 16 MIDI channels simultaneously when placed in MULTI mode. And each MIDI channel has 128 MIDI notes for normal Voices - and the Drum Kit Voices in the Rack XS are capable of 73 different drum/percussion instruments each.

So on the tone generator side, the Motif-Rack XS will have more available than you can possible send from your Electronic Drum Kit.

If your kit is a Yamaha, for example, we invite you to go to Motifator’s sister site for electronic drums: http://www.dtxperience.com

...where you can ask detailed questions about how to route your drum triggers out via MIDI. Most (good) kits will allow you to route multiple MIDI trigger notes from a single pad (some pads are 2 Zone, some are 3 Zone - each zone can be a different MIDI note)… some have toggle modes where each successive hit will trigger a different note - allowing drummers to play melodies or bass lines. The capability of your particular electronic drum kit is what you want to explore… because as I mentioned the Rack XS has the ability to extremely flexible as to what sounds go where.

Thank you Bad_mister!

I haven’t bought the drum set yet, though I found someone who claims they successfully hooked up their Alesis DM6 to an XS.

Thank you for the site, I’ll go ask there about compatibility issues and configurations. I was also considering the DTXplorer since it was the most accessible price-wise (just spent $840.00 on the XS, don’t want to go overboard on another new toy).

If you plan on using the XS for most of your sounds and you like the feel of Alesis...this might work for you…

http://www.zzounds.com/item--ALEUSBSTUDIOKIT

And later, if you want more sounds, you can always turn to software if you wish.

bardish I have a d4 and a d5 trigger hooked to a real drum set and it works ok. The d4/d5 have microphone trigger inputs. If you just slap the mic the drum will play. Problem is that sometimes other triggers jump from the vibrations of other drums. Just to mess around drum triggers and modules can get expensive. Bad_Mister is right the dtx might be the best way to go for recording if you haven’t bought anything yet (check out the video). Yamaha has their hand in so many aspects of music that it only makes since to buy their products. compatability is more likely