Roland TD-1 V-Drum Set

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bluebell
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Roland TD-1 V-Drum Set

Post by bluebell »

Hi all,

I am tired of hammering my drum tracks in with a keyboard or to click them together with a mouse.
A shop recommended the Roland TD-1 V-Drum set that I could afford. It should work with Linux.

Can anyone confirm that its MIDI events can be sent to a Linux box?

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Re: Roland TD-1 V-Drum Set

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

I assume you mean the TD-1K, as the other TD-1 models are overkill if you're gonna use it only to trigger drum sounds in Linuxsampler (rather than use the sounds on td-1 itself)

All currently manufactured roland products (having a usb jack that does MIDI) support the USB-MIDI standard. So they all work with Linux. (Digital audio over usb is a different story).

Some of the higher end products feature a second, proprietary usb MIDI mode which is faster than the standard mode. Roland refers to this as "Advanced MIDI mode". It is used by Roland's Windows drivers, but ALSA/Linux doesn't support it. On such products, there is always the option to switch between the modes (right from the knobs/display on the product itself). So to get that product working with Linux, you just need to push some buttons on the product to change its "MIDI mode" setting from "Advanced" to "Normal".

The TD-1 line doesn't have Advanced MIDI mode anyway. So it works with linux out-of-the-box.

But, if all you care about is hitting pads with sticks, then a pad controller is a lot cheaper and compact. Buy a SPD30 (http://www.rolandus.com/products/details/1059/484) and a VH-11 hihat (http://www.rolandus.com/products/details/660/519) and KD-9 kick (http://www.rolandus.com/products/details/1149/518) to attach to it.

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Re: Roland TD-1 V-Drum Set

Post by bluebell »

Yes, I think about buying the TD-1K. Thanks for the information.

EDIT: I ordered it. My little son is 11. I'd say a good age to show it to him and let him play with it.

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Re: Roland TD-1 V-Drum Set

Post by bluebell »

It came today. It's a very basic thing. 15 different drumsets, pads are ok. I like it.

Connecting it to the PC with an USB cable worked out of the box.
It always sends on channel 10, that can't be changed.

The midi note(s) that are sent from a pad can be configured.

When playing the hihat and pressing and lifting the pedal the note it sends doesn't change. Instead CC#4 (foot pedal) is sent.
Fluidsynth with a GM soundfont (e.g. FluidR3_GM.sf2) handles this perfectly, Linuxsampler with "Big Mono" sfz doesn't.

I have to find out more of these speacialities,

But latency seems to be an unsolved problem. Even with -p128 it's no fun to play along when the sound is produced by Fluidsynth.

The drumkit can't be used as a sound module. It shows up in Qjackctl as a writable client but it doesn't produce any sound. At least I was not successful. Since it doesn't have separate outputs per instruments that's not very important.

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Re: Roland TD-1 V-Drum Set

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

bluebell wrote:But latency seems to be an unsolved problem.
That's why I made eDrummer. The drummer who was using his Roland TD pads with LinuxSampler wasn't happy with the latency. He was really happy with eDrummer. (But note that eDrummer is made for live performance -- not recording with a DAW).
it doesn't produce any sound
You have to send the midi messages on channel 10.

P.S. Provide me with the Big Mono sfz file, and I'll modify it to do open HH on foot pedal. It won't totally simulate what you can do with a real HH, but better than nothing. (Note: eDrummer intelligently models the roland HH pad/pedal to behave like a real HH).

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Re: Roland TD-1 V-Drum Set

Post by bluebell »

Since I do no live performances I guess I simply have to buy a PC with a fast CPU, even if it's fast only on one of its cores. I am dreaming of a "music room".

I sent MIDI on channel 10 to the set. It doesn't produce any sound. I guess the hint is valid for all instruments, not only for HH:
r.png
r.png (22.38 KiB) Viewed 851 times
I attach the sfz file. I hope I can learn something when viewing your modified version. I had to add .txt else the board didn't accept it.
Big_Mono_hm.sfz.txt
(60.02 KiB) Downloaded 53 times

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