Electronic Drums and Drum Libraries

[clsimeone]

Hey All,

I've been lurking around GH for about a month and learning much. What a great site and I'm really impressed with the talent here. But enough lurking - it's time for me to venture out into the world of drum making.

If I were to build an electronic drum kit, I would like to use it to drive the drum libraries I've purchased for my PC based studio.

Since I can use a <st1 ="">MIDI </st1>keyboard to trigger my drum libraries, I think I should be able to use electronic drums to trigger them. Instead of buying an expensive drum module, I would need something to send <st1 ="">MIDI</st1> data from the drums to my Delta 1010 MIDI-IN ports.

What do you think?

Thanks,
Chris<o =""></o>

[tcraw1010]

You should absolutely be able to trigger midi from your eDrum pads. Although I am no electronic wizard, I would think that it would simply be a matter of input connector from the eDrum to your keyboard and programming the synth for the input trigger.

Did I just make any sense whatsoever ?? :?




TOM

[clsimeone]

Tom,

What you said made sense. What's in my head is this...

I have an M-Audio Delta 1010 sound card. 10-ins, 10 outs and MIDI I/O ports. I currently hook my keyboard to the Delta 1010 MIDI ports to trigger the drum libraries. However I don't think I would need the keyboard anymore. I should be able to to connect the eDrums to the Delta 1010 MIDI ports and bypass the keyboard.

To do that I think there must be some module that will convert the drum pads electrical signal into MIDI data. That's usually what the drum modules/sampler do. So, I need to find a device that can create MIDI data from the drum pads electrical signal. Then that device will be attached to the Delta 1010 MIDI I/O ports.

Does that sound correct? Has anyone seen such a device?

Thanks,
Chris

[CoronaLou]

Roland TMC-6

Found it!
TMC-6 (http://www.rolandus.com/products/subcategory.asp?catid=5&subcatid=29&page=2)

[E-Dog]

Isnt there a way to upload your created sound library's here or something as attachments? If you can let me know ill create a extension that will accept those file types. .

[clsimeone]

Thanks CoronaLou! That's exactly what I was thinking of.

E-Dog, I'm not sure I understand your comment. I purchased a sound library named "Drum Kit from Hell" (DFH). DFH comes in several Windows based software sampler formats such as Reason, Kontakt, Gigastudio (which I currently use), etc. Using my keyboard I send MIDI data to Gigastudio which is hosting my DFH drum library.

I still have lots of questions. The one I'm thinking through right now is how to trigger various samples based on where you hit an eDrums. For example, I have several ride samples that start at the outer edge of the cymbal and into the bell. I imagine an eDrum cymbal would have to have multiple sensors to trigger the various sounds depending on where you hit the eDrum cymbal. The same goes for the snare. How would you fire different samples based on hitting the snare in the middle or closer to the edge?

As you see, I still have a lot to work out yet.

Chris

[clsimeone]

I just found two cool sites for DIY eDrums:
http://edrum.for.free.fr/
http://www.midibox.org/edrum/

[Orange9mm]

holy crap that DIY Module is insane! I'm going to have my neighbor look over the schematic and see about making that, I mean, he says its only ~$60 to make, and that one has 15 inputs :D

[darksun]

OK I will Try and answer some of your questions. I would recomend the tmc-6 (that coronaLou) This is definetly one of the cheapest ways to go if you plan on only using your computer. As far as triggering multiple sounds etc. this is acutally usually a velocity senisitive thing (so depending on what volume you play determines what sample is used for the pad). I am not completely familiar with gigastudio, I use Cuebase myself. I know that cubase has a vst(plugin) instrument specifically for triggering drums. It is called the lm-4, this plugin allows for I believe 11 zones of velocity range per trigger. This would allow you to get all the tones that you are looking for. I think that it might even have some of the more complicated stuff such as crosssticking for rimshots etc.

If you have dual zone triggers/pads you will have to asign a separate sample for the rim.

Also to note if you don't want to purchase plugins specific to percussion. You could just route the input of the midi from the tmc-6 to what ever chanal the sampler that you are using is and you should be good to go. I hope I wasen't too confusing (this is my first post :) ).

If you have any other questions let me know.

[nk126]

Another inexpensive way to go is getting an old Roland Octapad. I used to have an edrum setup that routed my pads and kick/hi-hat triggers through the octapad's 8 (?) inputs. The Octapad also added 8 more pads to the mix. Turned all of the trigger signals into MIDI data to go out to the computer.

That's what a tmc-6 is -- a "trigger to MIDI converter." Basically takes the electric impulse signals sent from the trigger pads through the 1/4" cables and converts them into MIDI data. Then you can run that into your Delta the same way you run your keyboard into it now.

The Octapad is big and might be overkill if you don't need those extra trigger pads. But you can find them pretty cheap on eBay.