DIY drum sample trigger....

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zebra50

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Joined
Jun 4, 2004
Messages
2,943
Location
York, UK
Hi,

I want/need to trigger some drum samples in reason or protools from a 'real drum' kit.

Has anyone DIY'd a thwack-to-midi converter or similar?

Actually I'm not sure what (or if) I need to build here, or if it is something that can be better done within protools software by gating/replacing a recorded close mic.

Thanks for your thoughts

Stewart

PS I have a nord modular synth too, with audio inputs and a software envelope follower... that might be another approach.
 
Stewart,

I seem to remember that PAIA offers a CV to midi project that can be hooked up to a couple of piezos for acoustic drum triggering. Personally, I swear by Drumagog for drum replacement (Direct X, soon to be VST and RTAS). I have never gotten perfect results with even commercially made triggers. Double triggers and missed triggers are too common. I've also recorded triggered impulses to tape for post pocessing and was surprised at how much cross talk was there, despite the foam decoupling. Close mics are just as good IMHO. With a software replacement, you can tune triggering sensitivity after-the-fact and even alter the input if required (gain change, EQ, expansion, etc. The best part though is that a session isn't slowed down by trigger placement, sensitivity adjustment, etc.

-Chris
 
Chris, are you into fast (black?) metal recordings?
emperor is a bandname too.

Incase you're not, ignore this question ;-)

cheers,

Tony
 
Actually Emperor-Tomato-Ketchup is my favorite Stereolab album (and also my evilbay handle).

Agreed that the VST version is behind and wont be out within the next month or two. Rim is a one-man company and has had his hands full with the port. Though I did help him write the last user's manual and provided a couple of samples for the stock library (the samples named "Gasworks"). :grin:
 
Has anyone DIY'd a thwack-to-midi converter or similar?

I assume you want velocity-MIDI-data as well, right ?

Otherwise it could be as simple as checking for instance the related DIY info somewhere around at the www.sospubs.co.uk site and stick the brain-PCB of a simple plastic MIDI-keyboard to it.

Or try to find a suited second-hand unit with trigger-inputs and add a few piezo elements. Hope I have the type-no's correct and that they're indeed suited for your needs : Akai ME35T, Alesis D4..., Roland PM16...


Bye,

Peter
 
Chris,

Emperor is nothing to do with any metal what so ever i see :)

i asked this because i tried and tried again to get drumagog working for me when having to soundreplace litterally thousands of drumbeats (per song!) in metalproductions, but for some reason i don't like the timing afterwards.
I'l still looking for that metalhead :grin: that can convince me!
Have a look at www.beatcreator.com or www.beatquantizer.com
for a super solution in audioreplacing AND quantizing drums or any audio, in case you need this! 30 days full working demo available too! I bought it after toying 3 hours with the demo (sorry for this shameless plug, but for people struggeling in triggering, quantising, etc this prg means a lot and it is very cheap)

Cheers,

Tony
 
[quote author="clintrubber"]
I assume you want velocity-MIDI-data as well, right ?
[/quote]

Possibly not actually. I can envelope-follow the original drummer line but really this is to add to, and/or 'level out' the 'real' drum part. So just a trigger might be ideal.

Thanks for the directions, everyone.

Stewart
 
This is fairly easy to do with piezo pieces from Radio Shack:

http://www.cse.ogi.edu/Drum/FAQ/triggers.html

I screwed around with this for a while, and finally decided to buy a Hart Dynamics set like this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=10175&item=3765649496&rd=1

It works very well when connected to an Alesis drum module. There is a lot of tweeking involved to make everything trigger correctly, but once you have it set up right it becomes very easy to sit down and play the "drums" into a sequencer, which of course is great for editing later.

Of course it's not quite the same as the real thing, but you can get really close! For those who live in an apartment this is a great luxury.
 
not sure if you are looking to buy or build, but if you just need to get the job done get the roland tmc6 trigger to midi. it is incredible. the benefit of using this box is, you set up triggers on all the drums if you want, record the midi simultaneously with the audio, then you have some nice midi triggers all ready to use when you need. you can also trigger into it from ptools as an audio trigger, send that to reason, bfd or whatver. i trigger snare, hat, toms, kick on every song. i mounted a peizo inside the bell of the top hat, ran the wires out the holes in the bottom which is a zildian quick beat bottom that already had 4 holes. you have to use the roland for this kind of thing to cancel out crosstalk from the other stuff. otherwise it triggers off snare, toms etc.

for triggering the hat, duplicate the track, go to beat detective, then separate the entire hat track after you set the threshold where you think it should be(every hat hit in your case). go in after separation, chop out everything but the front edge of the hat to use as your trigger. once you trigger the roland box and re-record the midi, simply re assign the notes to open, closed, inbetween, foot, or whatever else samples you are using. adjust the velocities if needed in the sequencer.
 
Beat Detective is cool and will help but won't get you back out to a Reason drum kit.

You never know what new versions of PT even post 6.7 will bring BUT for now if you want to get from drum hits to midi you will need a unit.

DIY is fine but I would suggest a second hand D4 to get you started and I'm sure you will find you are in for a shock. It's still not that easy and even if you are in V-drums territory ... especially if you are on PT LE. Latency exists in the midi world also and to play from D4 through PT to Reason does take time.

I do this stuff all the time but do use some methods learned way back in the Simmonds' times.
 

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