Brian Westbrook
Email: bwestplaysdrums@gmail.com
AIM: bwestplaysdrums
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Xbox Live: westJB
About Me:
I’m 21 years old and I’m from Greenfield, MA. I have a B.M. in Music: Sound Recording Technology from the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
I’ve been a musician my entire life, and I plan on making a career in audio/music engineering. I’m a percussionist with 10 years’ experience, mostly focusing on drum set, but I also play concert snare, xylophone, marimba, vibraphone, timpani, and all sorts of auxiliary percussion. I took piano lessons for 5 or 6 when I was younger, but I switched my focus to percussion around 5th grade. Other than percussion, I’m also a vocalist, mainly doing backup singing/harmonies/screams. I’m still working on guitar and bass in my free time as well.
I’m currently playing drums for Lich King and Ages Ago. I’ve played drums for a number of bands in the past, including Hydraulic Sandwich, Face The Lie, Arc City Angels, and Razmig, as well some other short-lived or one-off projects.
I’m mainly into punk, rock, metal, hardcore, thrash, and any heavy music in general, but being a musician I appreciate all styles of music. Some of my favorite bands include Thrice, A Wilhelm Scream, Mastodon, Protest The Hero, Streetlight Manifesto, and Propagandhi.
I work for PDP Productions, a small company that does musical events, promotion, live sound, and studio recording in the Western Massachusetts area. To hear some examples of recordings that I’ve worked on, check out Kids Will Be Kids, Bringing Back The Guillotine, August Is Over, and White Boy Can’t Jump.
MIDItar Hero 
how can i play two notes for examle i want to play d1,d2,d# at tha same time how is it done is it possible? pleae help oh an this is awesome!!! i went through three sets of bateries
You can’t play two notes at the same time. I wish there were an easy way to make it possible, but it makes things way too complicated.
If you want to record yourself, you could just record two tracks and play the second note on the second track.
ok man. i have seen the video of the tutorial that you had on on how to get the MIDItar hero to play with other programs like fl studio which is what i have but it did not really help me at all and im really confused. i installed the maple midi thing and i dont know how to make the sound come out with the effect i want to use on fl studio. can u help me please? thanx
If you’re not getting sound in FL Studio, try using LoopBe1 instead of Maple Virtual MIDI Cable.
I’ve never used FL Studio personally, so I don’t know anything about effects or plugins in the program.
Check online for a tutorial for FL Studio if you’re unfamiliar with it.
i just download the miditar hero, and sooner it worked, but now i can’t open it, max runtime give me the message “error 998 making directory”, and im tired of that, hope you could help me, thanks
Can’t help you there, sorry. Try reinstalling the Max Runtime.
cant see any info on how to transfer midi data from the wi remote to pc apart from the software do i need midi usb cable or is it bluetooth or something
As far as I know, there aren’t any drivers out there yet that read the Wii Remote as an HID device, which means it can’t be used with MIDItar Hero yet.
Really thanks for this software, it’s fantastic! I’ve been looking for this since I buy my first guitar, I was sure someone would do it! So many thanks!
PS: I think it could be useful for you, I’m using a program called DarkWave Studio, wich is free and can load VST instruments (works well and is intuitive for the newbies in the MIDI world). I´m using the Slayer2 as VST, and works fine (search for it in RapidShare, it’s cracked).
I got those programs but how did you get it to work. In darkwave studio in the studio tab I right clecked and selected “ES Midi input” the selected loopbe1 then I right clicked again and selected “Slayer2”. I have MIDItar hero up at the same time and for midi outout I have loopbe1 it’s on normal mode and I have my guitar selected. what am I doing wrong?
I’ve never used Darkwave studio, so I’m not sure how it works. I looked at some screenshots, and it looks like you need to connect the LoopBe input that you created to “Slayer2”, and then connect “Slayer2” to the mixer, which then is connected to the audio output. Make sure you’ve done all that.
If you switch the MIDI Output in MIDItar Hero to one of the computer’s built-in synthesizers and you can get sound, then everything in MIDItar Hero is functioning correctly. That’s about as far as I can help, though.
Hey, This program sounds amazing, i have not downloaded or tried it yet because im not sure if i have the right wires.
I have a macbook and would love to start playing the drums through garageband
I have the wireless GHWT drums for the xbox 360. Im thinking of buying a MIDI to USB cable. Will it work to connect my drums to my mac this way or do i need to buy the wireless gaming receiver
Any help would be much appreciated.
Fanks
You need the Wireless Gaming Receiver. The MIDI port on the GH:WT drums is a MIDI in port, not MIDI out.
i have a program called trakAxPC…is there anyway of me getting what i play into there?? or will i have to download another program?
It looks like trakAxPC doesn’t include any software instruments – it’s strictly just audio recording and mixing. You could use MH’s Sample Mode to trigger audio samples, and you could record the resulting audio into trakAxPC. For any of MH’s other features you need a program that can play software instruments through MIDI.
I can’t get both the drums and guitar to work, and I downloaded the PS3 controller driver. Where it says “controller” in MIDItarhero, it only shows 4 different Apple Internal Keyboards and one Apple IR.
If you haven’t restarted since installing the controller driver, try that.
Also make sure the controllers are plugged in and turned on before opening MH.
Which drums and guitar are you using?
I fixed that problem. But I noticed under “control type” that my guitar and the drums for GH on PS3 are “unsupported”. Is it something I did wrong with setting everything up, or is it just a thing that you haven’t fixed yet?
That’s just because I haven’t heard from anyone trying to use that control type, so I haven’t been able to add the controller information to make it work.
Email me and I’ll send you instructions on how to find all the controller values so I can add support for your guitar and drums.
Thank you for your help. You can email me at fligojigolobolobodoo@yahoo.com
(just copy and paste that into your email thingy because it may be hard to remember)
do you know any free programs that will transfer the sound??? i’d buy one, i’m just afraid that if i do and it doesn’t work i’m stuck with that program. I’m so frustrated, none of the programs i downloaded would work! thanks for all the help and good job on the software by the way!
hey man,
I just ordered a guitar drum set for ps3 so i could use it with this in pro tools, is it not going to work since the ps3 GH drum set isn’t supported?
No, it won’t work. I tried adding support for every controller out there, but apparently nobody has the GH PS3 drums so I could get the controller information from them. Plus, my 9-month license for Max/MSP just ran out and I can’t afford the $250 permanent license, so I don’t have any way of working on MH right now.
this kid has it working….how did he do it? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMaflOAf4nk
He’s using Windows… the PS3 GH drums are supported on Windows, but not OS X. The values are different between Mac/Win.
do u know any free software that isn’t a trial that will transfer the sound?
hey, i was running MIDItar Hero and my girlfriend got the controller halfway across the room. the dongle came undone and now it only plays in chords, (3 keys at a time, all spaced 1 key apart.) is there any way to fix this? i have reinstalled windows but maybe its something else???
Umm… yeah, I have no clue what would be causing that to happen. There’s no way MH could be sending more than one note out at once, so it sounds like something is weird with your virtual MIDI device or your DAW. Try restarting everything and that might fix it.
crap. i wonder if the controller is screwed. i will test it on a friends system, thanks all the same for an awesome program. Oh, and its not 1 key apart its chords by 3 space, then a key and 2 space.
Does ANYONE use this for Fruity loops? are you having issues with the DAW playing chords? i am having insanity inducing issues with this damn thing
Hi there,
First off – great work! Works very nearly like a dream – but one niggle: I have the 360 drum kit, velocity is working but it’s not really sensitive enough to be usable. Just wondered if you or anyone had encountered the issue before…
I’ve asked activision for the tune up cable (not sure if that’ll help or if it’s app-specific) – or is there a way in any of the software to adjust it? I’m running Reason 4 and all the other software you suggest in the guide.
Cheers for any help. 🙂
I
Thanks for the comments 🙂
The main problem with the velocity sensitivity on the drum kits is that the resolution is very small… there’s only 5 or 6 ranges of velocity that the kit can output, and the amount of strength required to hit each range varies from kit to kit. What I should have done is allowed for some sort of sensitivity setting that would let the user determine their own velocity ranges, but that didn’t occur to me at the time.
Unfortunately right now I have no way to make any changes to MH, as my license for Max/MSP ran out about a month ago. In the meantime, the tune up cable should help your problem somewhat.
Thanks for the reply 🙂
Out of interest – is it a simple change, or will it require some thought? I’ll see how the tune up kit works, but if not looks like there might be a donation coming your way! 😀
is it possible to use 2 separate controllers with MIDItar Hero? i have not been successful. thanks for the awesome program.
2 separate controllers as in one person playing guitar and another playing drums? Not yet. If you wanted to do that you’d likely need two different DAWs, unless you could configure different tracks to use different MIDI channels within the DAW… otherwise both instruments would just end up playing on the same track.
what about using two drum sets together? Like in the demo video.
I have 2 RB 360 sets on windows, and cant figure out how to use both sets.
if theres no way to use 2 separate controllers currently, i am with impactor, a donation is in order.
First off, thank you SO MUCH for this amazing program and all of your hard work! This is exactly what I have been looking for!
I just have one problem with the drum mode. Im using the windows version (v1.05, your latest) with Xbox 360 GH Drumset and FL Studio and everything works really well except the velocity sensitive drum option.
It appears that normally (when the box is unchecked) it randomly varries the velocity depending on the Velocity Variation, and when I check the box, the velocity is 1 (which is what I expected). However, when I hit my drums (which ARE velocity sensitive), the velocity barely goes up, the highest Ive gotten it without destroying my drums being 51. My Max Velocity is as high as it can get (127), but no matter how hard I hit my drums, it barely changes the velocity enough to register a sound on my DAW.
Is this a bug or do I have to change another setting or are my 360 GH WT Drums just not sensitive enough? The drums are pretty new and are the normal 1st party ones that came with World Tour, so I don’t think it would be the last option.
Thank you for reading this, and I hope we can figure this out.
Hey, thanks for the comments 🙂
Long story short… velocity is still really screwy. It’s quite possible that I have the calculations screwed up, but since I don’t actually own a GHWT drum set it’s tough to test it out on my own. I’ll take a look at it and see what I can figure out.
HI I’ve just tried to download miditarhero from the mediafire link but it seems to be dead.
Could you please send it to my mail or let me know another mirror that works?
Thanx and keep up the good work!!
Here’s a temporary link: http://www.filefactory.com/file/a20c6cf/n/MIDItar_Hero_v1.07.mxf
Thanx alot buddy!!!!