Ableton Forum

Hi,

what I'm looking for is an interface that can convert 1/4" jack inputs (for trigger signals coming from drum pads) and a midi output.

At the moment we're using the "brain" of our electronic drumkit but that means having to lug around that expensive piece of equipment to every rehearsal just to use it as a converter from trigger signals to midi. I couldn't find anything that does just that, (without built in sounds or effects which increase the price and wouldn't be used anyway) but it seems weird as I would guess it's something a lot of people would need...

I've seen that it's pretty easy to build a similar thing using an arduino but in not sure if I would trust that in a live situation. Is there anything commercially available?? The pads have a simple jack output.

Thanks!!!

The Roland TMC-6 is a device which does exactly what your asking....

http://www.roland.com/products/en/TMC-6/

I use it with a hart drum pad and it works well. They can be found used on eBay all the time.

What are you planning on triggering? Samples? If so, there's aptrigga.

http://www.apulsoft.ch/aptrigga/

Run one instance of aptrigga per channel in ableton, and use the 1/4 outs from your drum pads directly into your audio interface.

Hi and thanks for the replies!

The TMC-6 would be the perfect solution if it wasn't that it basically costs pretty much the same price as the brain of the original drumkit (didn't find it on ebay either...). But thanks anyway maybe something we'll think about at a later stage...

To answer to Landwhale, yes, we would simply need to trigger samples. I'm familiar with aptrigga but I thought it would require audio in order to be triggered.
Basically what you're saying is that if I plug a drumpad into one of the audio inputs of the soundcard when the pad is struck the peak would be read as audio by aptrigga and therefore the sample would be played? Is that correct?
Have you tried this before? Does it work ok? Wouldn't there be a latency issue?

Thanks!

Yes. It will even work just snapping your fingers into the built in mic on the laptop.
I've mostly been using it for drum replacement and layering, but plan on using it on live drums for shows soon.

Basically any audio spike works. According to their website, there is ZERO samples latency induced when triggering.
Here's some key specs copied directly from the site.


Features:
Audio plugin for Mac OS X (VST/AU) and Windows (VST)
Triggers mono & stereo samples by analyzing audio signals.
ZERO samples trigger latency.
prev/next sample buttons to scan through folders.
powerful multi sample modes with dynamical sample selection and crossfading
The triggered samples can be modulated by level, by pitch and by a low pass filter.
Drag'n drop support for aif, wav & sd2 sample files.
Midi-Input, can be used as a midi sample player.
Includes spikeGen, a spike pattern generator


How can this be used?
Replace recorded drums with samples.
Add spice to a drum loop by adding a sample.
Sequence drum sample patterns with spikeGen.
Extract single instrument rhythms from drum loops
Use your laptop as a drum trigger module. <<-------------
Produce atonal melodic patterns from grooves.

aptrigga works great for that. ive been using it for live shows in the past couple months. (a rack with 6 instances per channel with dummy clips selecting the chain).

i kinda wish there was a plug out there that could easily convert audio to midi (on osx/intel).. will have to wait for m4l.

swishniak wrote: i kinda wish there was a plug out there that could easily convert audio to midi (on osx/intel).. will have to wait for m4l.

There is. I tried the demo awhile back for live guitar to midi.
http://www.widisoft.com/english/widi-au ... i-vst.html

It's pretty amazing, but I ended up sticking with the sonuus G2M unit to save $$ since i had already bought the sonuus before finding this plug. The only thing I didn't like was it giving me too many "wrong octave" triggers, it kept accidentally triggering the right note but at the wrong octave, usually too high.
It's more flexible than the sonuus, and I probably just didn't spend enough time fine-tuning it.