Pearl malletSTATION EM1 and Sampletank for Beginners Video 1/3

hi my name is Kenyon Williams I'm professor percussion Minnesota State University Moorhead I recently discovered that I had a real need for myself and my students to learn more about the world of electronic percussion and also practical use in terms of real-life application performance now I myself am NOT a gearhead I don't know a lot about the world of MIDI I've experimented with a little bit in the past in different areas and some recording areas but never really in terms of real life application so I purchased a pearl mallet station a few weeks ago with the understanding it seemed to be fairly plug-and-play but I quickly realized that was pretty far from the truth there's a lot of information that simply wasn't available in the manual information that wasn't available online I do a lot of experimentation ask a lot of questions and I'd like to share what I learned from people online as well as from Matt Jordan at Pearl Thank You Matt some information for how to do this instrument here in terms of a true beginners guide someone like myself who knows basically nothing about electronics nothing about MIDI and wants to figure out how to make it work for a gig but they may have lined up in just a few short days after receiving the instrument so that said I'm doing this incredibly quick low-budget lots of flubs lots of mistakes in my basement with my son filming on my iphone awesome YouTube video mainly there we go to help us figure out how this all works in a quick session so two or three short videos to show you what I've learned number one the first thing I discovered was what I need to purchase to go along with the mallet station now as you can see over here of course you have to buy the mallet station along with that of course I then purchased a cross brace stand underneath and I purchased this mm gear pedal right here now one thing is important and I quickly discovered is that many pedals have some different issues in terms of when you press down for release or when you let go to release so you want to find a pedal that has a switch that allows you to do that this M gear does have that so that away of course it works much more naturally to get it work with a vibraphone or chimes of course as a percussionist I like the idea of pushing down which gives me an open ringing tone and letting go that then releases the sound so that was an important purchase right there making sure I'm getting the right gear that was about twenty-four twenty-five dollars they're on Amazon the next thing of course that I don't really need to purchase and people a lot of questions about is getting an amp that goes with it this is a used guitar amp I found online it's a roll in KC 300 it's no longer for sale in production but you can find lots of used ones online I found a good deal works pretty well had to do a little bit of basic repair nothing really crazy just taking off some knobs cleaning some gunk out with some electronic cleaner on the inside front screens back board nothing that was a really big rocket science but nevertheless good guitar a good a good keyboard amp is vital not a guitar amp as I was told many times a guitar amp somebody dozen have a low end to handle things like timpani or I'll lower pitch marimba pitches so the idea of getting a good keyboard amp was important now the other thing that quickly discovered is need to purchase of course an adapter they could go with it in this case I bought two quarter inch cables that then connect as you can see here via this little adapter unit right here there's my quarter inch two eighth inch cables that then connect into a splitter that he goes into a and 1/8 inch connected why I wanted something I could plug directly into my horse iPad I simply didn't want to purchase an audio interface a lot of people online who know far far more about this than me scream you must purchase an audio interface you must purchase that little 150 $200 unit that goes in between these I simply did not want to do that for a couple reasons number one budget number two and this is actually the biggest reason portability the minute you get one of those you tend to have something it has to be plugged in somewhere else I wanted the only thing that you have to worry about plugging in on a gig would be the amp itself I didn't have to worry about plugging anything else and also have to carry around more electronics the idea for me getting a mount station honestly was to have the least amount of keyboard here I could take to a gig something you can provide marimba chimes ila phone in a Broadway pit and every time I have to haul those four things out to me that's less justification for having to purchase an item so I decide to get something that would work with just on my iPad so I'm gonna take this I'm gonna plug in these quarter-inch cables in the back in this case I'm gonna use channel two because my channel one this is a used amp to add a little bit of issue so channel two is working pretty well plugging that in I have my 1/8 inch quarter gonna plug this in directly to my iPad here we go on the side now the other thing I needed purchase that came that did not come with the mallet station the mallet station came with this USB cable it connects directly to the back of malla station however you also have to purchase extra and this is about a twenty to twenty five dollar little item a I pad adapter in this case good on my iPad the lightning adapter and on the bottom in here collects the USB and it's very very specific in the Pearl mallow station manual and online that you have to purchase a camera adapter not just any USB now but I looked online there were camera adapters that had just USB and ones that also had this little extra lightning conductor I went ahead and splurged extra five bucks big deal to buy the one that had both connections why this way I can plug in directly to my iPad as well as if I need to charge it simultaneously so if I get to the gig realize what my iPad is about out of juice of course that would really screw things up then I can plug it into the wall if I have to again I hate that idea because I hate having to have more things to plug in but nevertheless I wanted to have that option just in case force case scenario so extra five bucks I figure it's worth it especially at that moment if I start to panic so I can take this lightning adapter plug it in directly to my iPad and now I'm set up and ready to go now the last bit of thing I need to have to run this is of course a program that's going to run my sounds because it's real important remember that the sounds themselves are not stored inside the Mallett station the Pearl mallow station is simply controller it must connect to some sort of computer now this is where of course I'm going to get two different opinions that people are gonna have the best choice and I have two hommerson agree would be to connect directly to my laptop and my laptop would then run not this software but simply would run a mainstage for Apple or some others form of audio program there sample program mainstage is a world class program um that has tons of great music I've been told over and over the kind of the Broadway standard this is not mainstage it's not what I'm using instead I just have the program here that Pro provided to help control and connect along with this mallet station so I can set my parameters and I'll show you how to do that on the next video on this one though I discovered I personally though did not want to bring my laptop on gigs again I wanted highly portable I also wanted something I could give to my students and they could use so for my percussion studio at MSUM I was able to get a hold of a iPad that is I can put inside my pearl mallet station bag and by the way here's the bag this is a small extra purchase that I purchased along with it this is the lightweight version not the heavy version I wanted something that could be thrown in a back of a car that I would be wouldn't be worried about moving around again portability portability is what I was shooting for getting a heavy case just use a lightweight instrument and this is a great lightweight industry by the way to me that just seemed to be fairly against the point of what I wanted so like bag something I throw in the car again I'm not looking at throwing this under tour buses or anything like that not using it for a marching season in which case I would definitely use a heavier case but for what I'm gonna be using for my students will be using it for light bags something that we moved around from performance hall to rehearsal room fairly quickly fairly easily and the occasional in town performance that might take place across town but not major touring so that said I'm not using mainstage for my macbook here which again I've been told is fantastic but I decided to go with portability so what I decide to settle for then is the only thing that seems to really work on the market that has the sounds that I like that I found out where everything is period I just say the only thing on the market period that anybody recommended that goes with this is this little program here sample tank now sample tank there's a free version online not a very great little introduction the sample take introduction has very limited sounds doesn't have hardly any keyboard percussion on it of any note so right off the bat as soon as you download the free version you realize I'm gonna have to buy a larger version now I will show you on our next video how to use the software for sample tank and then how to make that integrate with a mallet station itself

Channel: Kenyon Williams

Views: 6,181

Keywords: malletSTATION, Pearl, mallet, station, midi, sampletank, sample, tank, malletkat, marimba, percussion, kenyon, williams, kenyon williams

Id: cJwbTfG_2as

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 22 2018