Single E-Drum-Pad to PC (usb or midi)

[six]

Hi there

Is there a quick, easy and cheap way to get the signals of an average e-drumpad to the PC, resp. turn these signals into midi?

I just saw the Akai I/O Trigger, which seems to be doing exactly this... and then a ton more that I don't need, so it's overkill.

I was also looking into E-drum-practice-pads, but I haven't found any with MIDI-out. So I thought I might take a pad of my HD-1 (or even buy another cheap one) and get something that turns the signal into midi. Any ideas what this 'something' could be?


Thanks & Regards

 

[dintymoore]

The cheapest electric drum set I can think of is an Alesis D4 (I think it has 10 1/4" inputs for triggers) and get a set of stick on triggers, I think I paid $35 or so for my triggers. You could use a crap drumset and put the triggers on them, even put plywood (with rubber on it) discs on the heads if you wanted to make it quiet. Or make a dumset with old coffee and yogurt containers. You can even use the triggers from old smoke alarms and microwave ovens and plug them right into the D4.

For all the D4 gets you it's probably the best deal even if you don't use the built-in sounds, which even today aren't half bad. The later models are better but for what you're doing it doesn't matter.

Yamaha did make some almost toy level drum pads that were velocity sensitive and had MIDI out. They actually weren't bad. I've seen those for $20 and less and that's another possibility although you'd have to figure a kick out somehow.

 

[six]

Thanks for the answer. I should've mentioned that I already have a Roland HD-1. Using it for recording is just a physical problem, so to speak: there's no space for it in my "recording- and mixing-room".

I did, however, find a way to use its snare-pad (which is a pretty good mesh-pad and is unrigged in a minute as opposed to the drum-module) only: plug it into the audio-interface using a regular instrument cable, and then apply a trigger-to-midi plugin... amazing, really. You don't even need an e-drumpad... mic'ed coffee container would do the trick too. Or you could even speak the drumparts .