Soundboard triggers

[iomegaman]

I play guitar.

I am a very percussive player.

Of late I've been kicking around the idea of mounting a couple of piezo transducers on the soundboard of one of my guitars to function as either a trigger for drum samples, or as a built in "stomp block" effect.

I have a breedlove acoustic with midi capable output, but I'm not sure I want to trigger midi drum sounds this way since it would require lugging around my laptop to gigs etc., I've got enough gear to worry about without adding to the equation.

So I'm thinking of just using some piezo's with perhaps a small plate of solid wood on either side of my strings (I hit the soundboard with both my heel of the hand and thumb depending on which side of the strings I am on)...I am wondering if something like this is tunable, doable, or just gonna screw up another guitar for science...

Any thoughts?

 

[dshay]

Piezo's are very sensitive to 'crosstalk',  general vibrations. Electronic drums are built very carefully isolating the different pads so that when you hit one the others don't trigger. This would be difficult to do with something you wear like a guitar. Guitars are made to resonate (sustain)

A better sensor would be something like a force sensing resistor (FSR) by a company like Sensitronics or Interlink, in a voltage divider measured by a microcontroller's A/D.  Run that through a schmitt trigger or better yet, develop a peak detection algorithm in C code and have your microcontroller send a standard MIDI message. 

That peak detection algorithm isn't that easy though.

What you're talking about is doable but not intermediate level. I did it after a year and a half of electronics tech school but I had some prior C++ coding experience.

You could make it wireless with a zigbee radio. You gotta set the baud rate to MIDI, which is hard, because you set it in hex. 31250 is like 7A12 in hexidecimal.

Another thing you could do which I've done is do a similar peak detection algorithm except with accelerometers, or motion detectors. (the same sensors in Nintendo Wi's) I strap them to my ankle and use them as a kick drum trigger with those zigbee radios. Velocity sensitive.

 

[iomegaman]

Yeah I'm thinking I'll just buy a different guitar, like a Cole Clark that has a different system for faceboard pickup distribution...I dunno...

I had not considered how sensitive the piezos might be...

I am not married to midi by any means...although I might tear apart one of my midi drum pads (a usb alesis)...

 

[clintrubber]

You might already be aware of these, but if not...

Maybe there's some info to be found for your application based on looking at boxes
like the Colorsound Logarhythm Stompbox:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Logarhythm-foot-percussion-stompbox_W0QQitemZ160321496084QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20090314?IMSfp=TL090314122003r26611

or the Ellis foot drum:

http://www.revver.com/video/604499/the-ellis-stompbox-and-new-mini-ellis-stomp-box/


Bye,

  Peter

 

[Brolik]

I know it's not exactly what you're talking about, but some version or modification of the monome (monome.org) may be of service.  Also, the iPhone has some interesting wireless trigger technology.  Both of those would require the laptop which you're trying to avoid. but who knows what you could pull off with the iPhone.  I'm doing some experimentation with the iPhone accepting midi and spitting samples, certainly won't be easy...