I'm trying to connect my 404 to my Yamaha DD55 electronic drums through midi because I have this dream of triggering samples with drum sticks.

I haven't had much time to fool around with it and I don't know much about midi. So I was wondering if someone had any advice?

you can, there are catz on here who've hooked up MIDI controllers/sequencers to there 404/303... i'm not big on MIDI, but i know what it does. there is a MIDI implementation chart on the 404's manual & there should be one for your yamaha, or some of the catz onhere will help you...peace

Ok here it goes:

step 1: connect midi out of your dd55 to the midi in of your sp-404 with a working midi cable.
step 2: make sure that the midi transmit channel on your dd55 (see manual page 27) is the same as the midi channel on your sp-404 (check manual page 41) strangely enough the 404 can not be set to channel 16 so make sure that you pick a channel between 1 and 15.

step 3: On the midi implementation chart of your sp-404 you will find the note numbers of each sample on your sp-404, now you only need to assign the note numbers of the samples you want to trigger on your 404 to the corresponding pads on your dd55 ( see manual page 28 )

If MIDI is Chinese to you then I would advice you to read up on it

http://www.tweakheadz.com/how_to_get_started_with_midi.html is a good start .

Yeah, I got it to work the other day... Kind of.
I set the notes and channels, but it's playing odd pads.
For example, my SP is on channel 1, I believe. And I set the first pad of my DD55 to 1, and adjust the note to B2. But that ends up playing the sample of bank B's first pad instead of bank A's. What am I doing wrong? My manual says note B2 should be in bank A... Unless I'm reading it wrong.

Check the 404 manual to see what the note number is of pad a1 and adjust the note number accordingly on your dd55.

Hi,

Different makes name the midi note octaves differently, try either B1 or B3 for the DD55 pad and see which 404 bank plays.

Oh, the reason the 404 can't use channel16 is that it needs 2 channels for all the pads (the last ones are on the next channel up from the one you set in the 404). Since there's no channel17, you can't set higher than 15.

Jim