Recording Electric Drums on GarageBand

Hey Guys,

As you can see I am very new here, but just thought i'd ask as you guys all seem to know what you are doing!

I have been playing drums for about 4 years and have just got myself a macbook (original macbook, it arrived today, I havn't a clue what kind of details you need to know. All I am aware of, is that it only has one line it, where as the older macbooks used to have two I am told!). I am trying to hook up my electric drum kit (Roland TD-6V) to GarageBand. I have not got a clue how to do it.

Firstly, after trawling the internet, I want to know, is it at all possible?

Secondly, what kind of cable/lead do I need?

Many thanks, I hope you guys are able to help.

Sean

Hi. You've come to the right place (sort of, more in a mo)
Yes, perfectly possible.
You need a 1/4" to minijack cable, connect to your line out on the TD6V, direct into the line in on the Macbook.
Open Garageband and find the input source and away you go.
If you want some more specialised drum advice, scoot over to:

Unofficial Roland Vdrums Website

You'll find me there too (a lot!)

Welcome aboard.

Wow thank you very much, this is a lot of help. I have looked everywhere on the internet, and all I have found it "How to hook your guitar hero and rock band drums to Garage Band" and thats not what I want haha.

Thanks again,
See you on the other side

NP. I actually use a 1/4" to 1/4" cable with a mini jack adaptor, as it was easier to source!
See you over there anyway.

To add on . . . if you get to where you want more control, better sound, or more instruments in (guitar, vocals, etc), you can get a USB or Firewire interface that is sort of a mini mixer (the affordable ones are generally 2 channels that ouput to USB or FW) that you plug your insturments or mics into, then it feeds the signal to the Mac.

Here's just one example: MBox Interface

follow up question

Hi,

Im in the same situation as seantobin, I have a roland TD-11 and want to record to garageband. I think its best to use the USB cable that came with the drums, and I have managed to record , but not with the drum kits from the roland module. I can only choose sound in GB such as kits, piano, gitar etc.
What do i do to choose the kits from the drum module?

thanks

Yes!!!

mhektoen89 said:

Hi,

Im in the same situation as seantobin, I have a roland TD-11 and want to record to garageband. I think its best to use the USB cable that came with the drums, and I have managed to record , but not with the drum kits from the roland module. I can only choose sound in GB such as kits, piano, gitar etc.
What do i do to choose the kits from the drum module?

thanks

Click to expand...

Seriously, I need to know what he's asking as well! My drum set has a midi in and midi out plug in the back of it so i bought a midi to usb cable. My computer notices the new midi in garageband but, i can only record with the drum sounds in garageband and not the ones on my module! It won't notice a new "built in input" it just calls it a mic and records me hitting the pads!

Funny getting a reply on an old thread. I don't use garageband anymore, I started using cubase, but anyway, a DAW is a DAW. I have done some various recordings from my electric drum set and if you want to use a midi-cable you won't get any sound, because you're only sending a signal. The midi signal is just a trigger, so to get drum sound you will need a virtual drum set instrument in your DAW. Don't know if garageband has any by default. Type StudioDrummer, or EZDrums in google to see examples of VST-instruments.

So, the easiest may be to use a jack/mini-jack directly in your line in and set up a audio track instead of midi track in garageband. If you have an external sound card you could record stereo out from your drums set and that could be satisfying if your drums produce a nice sound themselves.

Hope any of this helped,

Michael