Building an electronic marimba with triggers - Need advice please

[berryjim]

Hello! My name is Jim and I'm new here. I hope this is the right place to post this.

I want to build a 5 octave marimba that could also play vibraphone, xylophone, piano sounts, etc.
I have 60 bars of wood, and I'm thinking that each bar would need a trigger.

I found this 50-pack of acoustic instrument pickups and I'll need 10 more:
Amazon.com: 50 Pieces - 20mm Piezo Disc Elements with 4" Leads: Musical Instruments

I'm looking for advice on how to proceed. Each bar, when struck with a mallet, will need to produce a specific pitch so what type of hardware setup could accomodate this?

Thanks for any advice!!

Jim

 

[DM60]

If I understand your question, you are looking for an interface that will send a signal out to strike the wood to make the sound and record it back?

If that is true, I think your better option would be to find a sampler for a VST and record each strike and map it to a MIDI note. But what is really easier is, record your part, then through the use of loops, reuse it.

Not sure what your objective is, so more information is required to further assist.

 

[gecko zzed]

If I understand your question, you are looking for an interface that will send a signal out to strike the wood to make the sound and record it back?

I got the impression that it was the reverse, i.e. the OP would make a marimba. Each wooden bar would have a piezo attached. These would all be gathered up and fed into a computer to trigger other musical sounds.

I daresay all that could be done, but it would be complicated. This means that your suggestion of sampler and VST emerges as an easier and less complicated answer.

 

[DM60]

I got the impression that it was the reverse, i.e. the OP would make a marimba. Each wooden bar would have a piezo attached. These would all be gathered up and fed into a computer to trigger other musical sounds.

You mean turn the marimba into a MIDI controller? If that is the case, you're right I missed it.

 

[berryjim]

Yes, I could use samples of real marimba notes. It does seem complicated because I need 60 separate triggers, and would striking a bar make the one next to it "speak?"

Hopefully there would be a sensitivity setting to deal with that. Thanks!

 

[muttley600]

Yes, I could use samples of real marimba notes. It does seem complicated because I need 60 separate triggers, and would striking a bar make the one next to it "speak?"

Hopefully there would be a sensitivity setting to deal with that. Thanks!

If you want to build a Marimba, build a marimba, if you want to go the midi route do that. The two are not really compatible on that instrument. Yes you will get crossover from one struck note to another that is the nature of the beast and part of the sound. setting up 60 piezos is gonna be a real bind and so is tuning the bars... You also need to to have the pipe chambers installed and tuned for it be a true "marimba". There are midi interface units available and that would be the way to go is you want to have the flexibility of other instrument sounds.

When I was teaching instrument tech I would always advise that when considering a project like a marimba you start with a proof of concept by doing a single octave build first then expand it. I can help with the Marimba build regards wood and tuning but others would be best placed to advise on the midi aspect... I really don't think you can easily achieve what you are after with the plan you have laid out.

 

[dogbox]

You could make a midi device easy enough with a microcontroller like Arduino. Theres a huge community of audio geeks making those types of diy midi controller instruments. You could play your own custom controller and trigger your own samples. Lot of hard work. Another way you could do it a lot more simply (possibly) is build your marimba, solder up 50 cables to your piezo disks...feed all 50 into your daw interfaces..and use drumagog to trigger samples. Haven't used drumagog in years, but you may be able to make your own patches. I'd start with making a few contact mics out of those piezo. That'll be a good learning experience as you will soon realise how crappy they sound without some kind of jfet buffer preamp..simple to build. Best way I have found to capture piezo recordings is with a thing called a "charge amp"..google it. Not a lot of info but it eorks well