Using Alesis Strike Multipad with Stage Traxx

kenrye

Is anyone doing this? Looking for ideas how others are doing it.

AnthonyB

Doing...'It'? 'It' what?

My drummer has a Roland SPD-SX PRO which the Alesis is a direct copy (i.e., rip-off) of.
We had been using it to run our backing tracks before moving them to Stage Traxx. Our drummer still 3 pads setup on the SPD to trigger Start/Stop, Next Song, and Crossfade on ST.
We have ST set to always load the next song in a playlist, and on Stop, Rewind the song, so our drummer just has to hit the Stop/Start pad for us to start the next song. We've chosen Start/Stop as it means if we suddenly need to bail out of a song within the first few seconds of count-in, he just hits the same pad and the song rewinds back to the start. From there he can re-confirm everyone is good to go, and then hit the pad again to Start the song. Alternatively, if we decide to skip the song, he can hit the pad assigned to 'Next Song'.
We have 1 song that we've split into 2 separate backing tracks as we have a very loosely timed middle section for audience participation, and so Crossfade option lets the drummer transition us from 1st backing track to 2nd backing track (he's learnt the 3/4 of a beat MIDI trigger lag to account for it).

Not sure if that is what you had in mind when you asked 'doing it', but that's how my band is using a similar device with ST.

kenrye

AnthonyB
Lol.....Sorry. I appreciate you taking the time!!!!! That was the it I was looking for. Are you using a Laptop/Macbook? How are you connecting the Roland? How are you routing click and FOH?

AnthonyB

No Problem! 🙂

I'm running 4 tracks of audio from Stage Traxx (ST) on an iPad - stereo backing track, drum click, cues.
My band has a Behringer X32 rack mixer that we use for our IEM system. I have the iPad connected via USB cable to the USB in on the X32 which exposes digital inputs in the X32. From there, I route the backing track channels to Front of House (FoH) sends and into our IEMs. The drum click only goes to our drummer's IEM bus. The Cues only goes to the band's IEM buses.

The Roland SPD is connecting to ST on the iPad via MIDI.
We do also still run some live drum samples from the SPD and so the SPD does have audio outputs running into our X32 mixer to be fed to IEMs and FoH.
I'm using CME wireless MIDI gear, but can fall back to physical MIDI cables if I need.
Simply, MIDI out from the SPD (i.e. your Alesis) going to the MIDI In of a MIDI interface that connects to the iPad running ST via USB (this is the specific MIDI interface I'm using - https://www.cme-pro.com/h4midi-wc-usb-host-midi-interface/)
Once the MIDI connections were setup, I just had the drummer setup the pads on the SPD to send a MIDI Note On when triggered. Then go into ST Settings -> Assign Action (ST doc link - https://stagetraxx.com/user-guide/remote/#midi) and press the specific action I want to 'link' to the specific drum pad. Once it is waiting in learning mode, hit the specific drum pad you want to link to that action, and if you've got everything connected and configured correctly, ST should receive the MIDI Note On command from your Alesis. Repeat the process for any other commands/pads combination you want to setup.

One 'challenge' we found that we had to consider with the Roland SPD (might be different on the Alesis) was that the MIDI send configuration for eaach Pad had a global setting, and a Drum Kit (i.e. a patch) specific setting. The global setting always 'overrules' the pad specific setting. So that was great for common triggers we wanted to use such as Start/Stop Plaback which we always wanted to be on the top left pad irrespective of which Kit the drummer had selected (because he still uses different kits to trigger different drum samples live from his SPD). But we have 1 song where we want to use the 'Initiate Crossfade' trigger. Now that is something that could be dangerous on other songs if it was accidently hit, so we wanted to be very careful and delierate about which pad we used, and we didn't want it to be a global setting available on every Kit (i.e. song). So for that song, we made a specific kit, configured a specific pad for 'Initiate Crossfade', and had to make sure it was a pad that doesn't have a global MIDI setting.

I think that's pretty much it, but if you have any other questions, fire away.

kenrye

Anthony.....This is exactly what I was looking for. Can't thank you enough for taking the time to share how you are using the Roland and ST. THANK YOU!!!!!!!

AnthonyB

kenrye glad I could help you! I'm only 6 months into using ST with my band so I'm still learning constantly from trial and error, and from this community.

In case relevant, we had been running the backing tracks from the Roland SPD for the past 4 years without any issue. The only limitations were that the Roland had a limited number of Kits (I think it was 100 on the SPD and 200 on the SPD PRO), and each Kit was the equivalent of a song. As a cover band with a repertoire of over 200 songs, this meant ongoing patch management. The Roland also wasn't the easiest for managing a playlist (i.e. set list) order for the patches.
The other limitation was the number of outputs - the SPD PRO had 6 outputs so we could assign stereo backing tracks to 2, Drum Click to a 3rd, Band Cues to a 4th, and then local drum samples to 5th and 6th. If we ever wanted to start expanding what was in the backing track and have the option to selectively split to individual tracks (e.g. add a guitar track or a bass track and present that to the FoH individually from other tracks so the FoH engineer could balance it in the mix themselves), then we were going to start running into physical output limitations.

ST solved all of the above problems for us.
We also wanted to start doing MIDI Automation of our guitarists' effects units to they weren't focused on changing patches and 'pedal dancing' - ST gave us the ability to do that.
It then added the lyric sheet management and automation which was a desired bonus outcome for us (and we've adopted).

kenrye

My issue is I only have two inputs available on our FOH mixer. I'm going to try and send ST and the percussion pads I use out the main ouputs on the Alesis. Send the click out the Alesis aux send to my mixer so I have click volume control. Hopefully ST will recognize the Alesis and allow me to do that. I have all the backing tracks loaded separately in ST. We have a weekly Thursday night gig and everything is left set up. Going to bring home the Alesis to try the routing this weekend. We usually don't have a set playlist so loading backing tracks into Alesis would be tough live. Does ST recognize your Roland when setting up outputs in ST?

AnthonyB

kenrye You can't route the AUDIO from ST (well, technically your iPad) into your Alesis to then 'mix' the sgnal and combine ST backing tracks and Alesis samples to a single output. Well, I doubt you can. The Record Inputs are for sample recording so I don't know if you can route them directly to an output to combine with local sound sources. If you can.. well, I guess that might work.

In my setup, the Roland SPD and ST/iPad are only communicating via MIDI.
The Roland SPD's audio output (for local drum samples) are going into 2 inputs on my X32 mixer.
The iPad running ST is connected via USB to my X32 mixer which exposes 32 digital inputs, so ST sees 32 mono channels and 16 stereo channels. That lets me route my stereo backing tracks to 1 stereo channel on my X32, and my stereo drum click and band cues track (drum click panned hard Left and Cues panned hard Right) to another stereo channel, where I can then route them indepentently.
So, I never have any audio from ST routing into my Roland SPD.

kenrye

AnthonyB I'm probably doing something wrong. When I run midi out of Alesis to iPad, I hear the backing tracks in my Alesis when I start the tracks with the assigned midi pad. I purchased a splitter to run out of my ipad hoping to send backing tracks Panned RT and Click panned left to my mixer by me(Drums). Send BT aux out to FOH. The other is to send MIDI from Alesis to iPad for start/stop. New to all of this so I may be living in fantasy land.

AnthonyB

In the past, did you load up the backing tracks on the Alesis to play when triggered by a local drum pad trigger?
I hit that problem during my migration to ST.
Hitting a trigger pad to start the song play playback on ST was ALSO playing the old local backing track samples from our Roland SPD. Our drummer used to have a Drum Kit on his SPD for each song. We realised we needed to change approach and not use the old Kits (we kept them for fallback in case ST/iPad fails). Drummer created a new 'default' kit with no local samples defined - purely for triggering ST. for the 20 or so songs in our repertoire that he does have local drum samples to trigger, he created new kits for them with only the drum samples and no old backing tracks.

Other than that, and double checking that there is definitely no audio out of ipad going to the Alesis input, then I think you are more likely mis-interpreting what you are seeing.