APC40 not recognizing Roland KD-8 kick pedal trigger

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Post Reply
horsemouth
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 7:35 am

APC40 not recognizing Roland KD-8 kick pedal trigger

Post by horsemouth » Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:08 pm

I've got the KD-8 plugged into FS1 on the back of the APC40 and...nothing. Live doesn't display any MIDI info coming in either. I've tested other triggers, cables, I know everything works. I know I won't get any velocity sensitivity, but I'm OK with that. Has anyone successfully plugged in a drum pad trigger to either of the inputs on the back of the APC40?

Thanks for the help!

Rabalder
Posts: 1089
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2009 10:03 am
Location: Norway

Re: APC40 not recognizing Roland KD-8 kick pedal trigger

Post by Rabalder » Sat Feb 26, 2011 9:39 am

I think FS1 and 2 are mostly used for on/off action.. Sustain pedals etc..
Do you know what kind of signal the KD-8 sends?

horsemouth
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 7:35 am

Re: APC40 not recognizing Roland KD-8 kick pedal trigger

Post by horsemouth » Wed Mar 09, 2011 6:46 pm

I'm not sure what kind of signal it sends out, what different kinds of midi signals are there? I have an Alesis ControlPad that gets the signal from it fine (sidenote: the ControlPad is a total POS because if you hit 2 pads at the same time it cancels one of them out) and I can route the KD-8 into Live from there, but I don't want to bring the ControlPad to a gig just to make a kick drum trigger work. Any ideas anyone? I can't be the first person to try to plug in a drum trigger to the back of the APC40...

Thanks!

Rabalder
Posts: 1089
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2009 10:03 am
Location: Norway

Re: APC40 not recognizing Roland KD-8 kick pedal trigger

Post by Rabalder » Thu Mar 10, 2011 1:08 pm

Im pretty shure you need an interface, like youre Alesis ControlPad or something smaller..
It doesnt work like a normal miditrigger. (80% sure)

http://www.vdrums.com/forum/showthread. ... oland-KD-8

miwray
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 9:43 pm

Re: APC40 not recognizing Roland KD-8 kick pedal trigger

Post by miwray » Thu Mar 10, 2011 2:31 pm

Interesting question. Whilst pedals aappear simple, in practice there seem to be lots of possible differences between them. I'm not an expert but this is what I think is going on:

A drum trigger normally involves a piezo transducer to convert pressure into an analog electrical signal. The amount of pressure is the velocity sensitivity. Your Alesis can take this signal and convert it into a midi signal at the appropriate velocity.

I suspect that the APC-40 is instead looking for a sustain pedal, where the pedal either opens or closes a circuit (whether latching or non latching). This is again an analog electrical signal rather than MIDI. The APC-40 would convert that change in circuit into a midi signal at a default velocity. WI would guess that when the APC-40 sees the drum trigger it is not interested in voltage changes and as the circuit is always complete the APC-40 does not notice that the trigger has been activated.

If you want to use the KD-8 you will need a device (such as the Alesis) that can read the trigger signal and convert to midi. However if you don't need velocity the cheapest solution would be to buy a sustain pedal to plug into APC-40.

Post Reply