MIDI programming drums that kick serious booty...

[Myth Healer]

Having hacked my way through the MIDI drum programming of a few songs on the Oxygen 8, I've decided that this is a crappy way to go about laying a decient grooving drum track. I've had one of those Roland TMC-6 trigger MIDI converters for over a year now and just last night decided to get it out and stick the triggers on things.

I purchased three round chip board disks from a home depot. I went to a rubber suppy place and bought some of their scrap rubber, the type they ussually use for practice drums. I actually sat there in the front office with my drum stick and chip board circle, placing each sample square of rubber on the chip board survace and hitting it with the drum stick. There was only one type of rubber that had the right feel. I took all this back to my home studio and (after overhauling the entire rack setup, it needed this) I hooked up the Roland TMC-6 and a couple triggers.

I set a trigger on the back of the chip board circle (I never expected it to work in this mannor) with a perfectly round cut piece of rubber on the top surface. I tapped on the surface with the drum stick and to my complete amazement the entire surface was active. It didn't matter if I was near the pickup or not.

I spent the previous afternoon in a couple music stores looking at the design of different drum pedals to see if I could modify them for triggering midi. I never did purchase a pedal. This next little experament suprised me. I'm glad I was cautious about purchasing a kick drum pedal because just last night I set a trigger against one of those chip board circles and placed it on the floor. I played air drums and simply tapped my right foot on that home made pad and this simple design actually worked. I was able to play 16th notes by useing both feet, wow.

Thinking over the goal, getting the midi programming to be done more profficiently and with a better feel, I've decided on making two independant triggers on the snare, and kick drum. I will isolate by placing independant half circle layers of foam, duct tin and the rubber pad. It is my understanding (after reading about this on the net) that the under surface should be solid. The tin will add a solidity to the striking of the surface yet it will be isolated from the bottom surface by a thin layer of cushy foam rubber (I hope I can find some of this stuff, arts and craft supply?).

Today I will be building a MIDI drum programming hand set out of 2" PVC cut to 4" lengths and attached to a 1' X 1' wooden plaform. I've allready tested it out (air drum wise) for comfortable distance between surfaces for fingers to strike while doing fills, beats, switching between ride and hat type beats. I think it will work fine. The little guy will be mounted on a percussion stand and sit next to my DAW station. I will simply rotate around and lay down a midi drum loop. The kick drum will be programmed with that floor pad I created alghough, I plan to have two isolated pads for right and left foot.

For a non drummer to get a feel for a drum pedal takes months. Doing a foot tapping set up with a floor surface that triggers, and right and left foot??? This should be a fun and fast way to get the MIDI drum tracks compleated.

wudya think?

[kennerb]

Sounds cool. DIY drum triggers are fun.

I'd love to see some pictures of your projects.

[ilynx]

i am waaaaaaaaay interested in what you end up with! please keep us updated. and yes, photos would be awesome!

[barton986]

this technique looks really intriguing.
i'm a drummer and i recently joined the real world and moved out of my parents house and into an apartment, which = NO DRUMS

i've got a question about how these DIY setups work once the signal leaves the trigger. how do i turn this into a midi signal?
i'm looking for an inexpensive way to record drum parts into songs without a real drumkit, so does this require some sort of expensive hardware to connect the triggers to? i'm assuming they don't connect directly to a midi interface input.

[MrYellow]

You connect them to a drummachine/midi brain that takes a trigger input
and processes it into MIDI. Such as the Alesis D4.....

The devices have a number of settings so that you can make sure triggers
don't cross-trigger, setting min noise floor signals and such....

I'm actually halfway through writting my own software for a PIC chip to do
all this.... So far so good, but kinda got busy halfway through it. Got it to
the point where it reads the pads and outputs velocity sensitive MIDI, but
need to bring all the LCD interface code in from a separate test project and
make it all fit together. If you don't need velocity you can find cheap kits
to do it, however if you need velocity you'll need to write your own as the
only kits that provide velocity have the code pre-compiled so that you can
edit it (because it takes a lot of time and energy to write velocity code)

I'll release it as a cheap product someday........ When I'm happy with it....

Also checkout zendrum.

-Ben