How to Play Drums on Your Computer Keyboard
Purchasing a drum set can be expensive. While trigger pads and other percussion-based Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) controllers are helpful tools for studio musicians and producers to create drum rhythms with digital sounds and samples, they too can be expensive and cumbersome. As an alternative, you can play drums on your computer's keyboard if you assign it as your audio creation or recording software's MIDI controller. Doing so allows you to set various drum sounds to your computer keyboard's keys and play them as you would any other drum set or drum-loaded MIDI controller.
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Things You'll Need
- Audio recording software or audio creation software
- MIDI control utility (optional)
Instructions
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Purchase and install a MIDI-capable audio creation program onto your computer. Consider Digidesign Pro Tools, Apple Logic, Ableton Live, or Sony Acid Music Studio. Try Garage Band if you have an Apple computer, as it is a free MIDI-capable audio creator and comes preinstalled on your computer.
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Set your computer's keyboard as the audio creator's MIDI controller if it does not recognize the device by default. Go to the utility's "Preferences" menu and select your computer keyboard from the list of available MIDI control devices.
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Download and install an MIDI control utility if your audio creation program does not recognize your computer's keyboard as an MIDI controller. Consider Virtual MIDI Controller or Virtual MIDI Control Interface. These serve as digital conduits that allow you to assign computer keyboard keys to sound playback.
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Assign your computer's keys to drum sounds. Select a drum type from your audio creation utility or virtual MIDI controller's "Preferences" tab.
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Push the keyboard's assigned keys to play the drum sounds you desire within the context of your audio creation session.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit keyboard image by Fyerne from Fotolia.com
