I’m new to e-drums and I’m a bit confused on some of the connections I need to make. I searched the entirety of the web and couldn’t seem to find this simply answered. The basic thing I want to do is play along to songs from my library and hear the BFD sounds instead of the module sounds.
I have a MBP, Focusrite Solo, BFD, and an Alesis Mesh kit. The module has usb-midi out. I thought I could connect the module to the laptop with usb, then connect the focusrite with usb and an iPhone into the focusrite using a usb-c to 1/4” cable. Then monitor over the focusrite.
I’m encountering 2 issues with this. The first is the audio from the phone is super bad. Like missing parts of tracks. For example I played back a song from Apple Music and it didn’t play the vocals, a few minutes later it wasn’t playing the drum track on the song. Is this just a case of a bad cable? If so any recommendations? The other thing is when I tried to play along I did get audio from BFD but the high hat would not slur no matter what. It had closed HH, open HH, but going from open to closed nada.
I know this is super newbie stuff. Just hoping someone can easily get me sorted.
Hi! Welcome to the BFD forum!
I am probably not the best person to answer your questions since I finger drum and I’ve also never owned a cell phone. But I DO have a few things to think about and explore.
My understanding is that kit piece articulations that are labelled “variable tip” are designed for e-drums. And I think certain e-drum kit pieces have more capabilities and some have less, by which I mean that when you hit the bell, bow, or edge you can trigger different articulations. I think.
Not all hihats in BFD have the same number of articulations. They all have a few, but some others have many. With snares and hihats I think I have seen as many as 14 articulations on a single kit piece. You can look through all the available hihats and take a look at the articulations and if you want you can substitute that into the current kit. You may find that certain presets have mapping that has been done for you that you might like, so don’t just limit yourself to the kits.
It is a good idea to get familiar with the key mapping functions. That can help you assign hihat articulations to whatever capabilities your mesh kit has, and it is also very useful for adding kit pieces and assigning them to a particular mesh kit piece. Once you get things assigned the way you want be sure and save the key map for future use.
I don’t understand your cabling situation, but hopefully someone else can help on that. But it seems like the MIDI out from the USB cable on your mesh kit should be plugged into the computer usb connection (2.0 or higher). Then in the BFD interface you could select your mesh kit as a MIDI input and focusrite as an audio output and then monitor with headphones route the output to speakers. This would be the setup for playing standalone. Maybe it would be best to try this first as an experiment before adding the other audio that you want to play along to. If it were me, I would put that other audio into a DAW as an audio track, Cubase being my DAW of preference. Then I would add a vst instrument track, which of course would be BFD. Whatever the case, you would want to reduce the latency settings to about 128 or so in order to avoid delays. Be sure to choose the Focusrite ASIO driver, as the Windows ASIO driver is so horrible there is no way to get the delay down to a reasonable range. You probably already know all that.
Anyway, there is my 2 cents and hopefully it helps a little. BFD has a hell of a learning curve, but once you get past that you’ll appreciate it’s power and quality. Warning: there are lots of hidden menus and commands. I understand they don’t want to have a cluttered workspace, but sometimes I feel it is useful if you have ESP.