Background
This is my latest setup of Roland TD-11KV drum kit with DIY bass pedal and a DIY monitor for the drums.
The setup was established in bits and pieces and all parts were bought separately. The stand was purchased from BAJAAO.com as an open box stand. The cymbal, HiHat and Snare were purchased from a very good friend Ankit who was selling his drum kit and TD-11KV module was bought by a friend from US due to unavailability and exorbitant prices in India. The monitor as seen is a completely DiY with amp being a blaupunkt Car subwoofer amp of 55watts RMS two channels. One channel feeds the subwoofer and the other channel feeds 10 inch speaker with a tweeter. The overall sound response is amazing for playalongs and jamming. Recently a mount for iPad was installed with some pipe clips from a hardware store. All in all, this kits has come up very nicely, one because it has been built with utter love and passion and two because of my love for drums. The bass pedal was modifiedby flipping the hammer and installing a piezo sensor sandwiched inside a foam block of 45 degree wedge. A mono female jack is used to connect the TD-11 KV bass input. The Hihat pedal is a Roland make which gives an excellent response, but the rubber inside becomes brittle and has been treated with hot water recently to regain its elasticity. This kit was in store for the past three years and is now fully functional for a few days till the time I shift it to my other apartment. Recording Most Important feature I was missing on till this day was being able to record the playalongs digitally and was using the external mic of my phone which was of not satisfactory at all. After searching the internet and local market , I found the iRig Amplitube adapter for guitar and plugged it . To my surprise the quality has surpassed previous levels and I shall include a video in this post. The various alternatives are as under
- USB Sound interface- Any two channel USB sound interface with mixer input and USB connectivity with a Mac or a windows laptop can easily record the track , but the hassle here would be take your video track and audio track separately and mix them both. To save time, you can avoid this option. the average sound card with USB interface costs around 4500INR as the starting cost with much better options ahead such as scarlette solo , roland Rubix 24, scarlette 2i2, vault ai-solo 2 .
- iRig Amplitube – This is the most convenient and economic option, I bought this from a local music store and hooked it onto my iPhone with a lightning to Aux connector . Next, open up the camera app and start recording the video, the sound input from the Roland TD-11 KV or the mixer will be merged with the video automatically ignoring the external microphone . I found the quality good. The levels of the sound from playalong can be adjusted using the mixer.
