Digital Drum Pads?

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A1A2

A1A2

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I borrowed this little thing from a friend: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2537158350&category=38069

and started to wonder if any of you people use this here?
I think it's a wonderful little box that one can add some human feel to their midi drum tracks. I tested it in conjunction with FL on the ride and highhat, then have snare/kick programed with FL, and it turned out quite alright.

Is there any trick you might wanna share making the best out of this toy? I'm looking into maybe getting this: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2536521487&category=10175

since it comes with padels for the kick and highhat.

Any opinions??

Al
 
Those units are ok...the sounds are a little cheesy though. Great for lap drumming and playing around.
 
Stealthtech,

thanks for stopping by. I began a research after I posted this thread, and I ran into the Vdrums and the likes.

How do electronic drum pads work? I mean those seperate kicks, cymbal pads. Does each pad have a midi port, then go to a sound module? or they use their own kind of cable.
I don't really need any module cuz I'm planning on using my computer as a sampler/moduler. So, I'm basically looking for some pads that will trigger my softwares via MIDI, and of course something as big as those Vdrums will be nicer than that tinny Yamaha box I mentioned earlier.

Any thoughts?

Al
 
A1A2 it's odd that I'm reading this because I had done a bit of research to solve the same problem and came up with roughly the same results this morning - the DD55. I have a nice drum machine already, but I'm soooo tired of pattern-based programming.

If you have the budget (I don't) to be considering a real electronic kit, you might want to look into Yamaha's line (something like the DTXpress). Roland's kits are extremely spendy. Either way you go, you'll be able to MIDI into your PC.

As I understand it, most full-sized electronic kits use individual cables from each pad into the module which generates the audio and MIDI. So for your purpose, you'd just plop a MIDI cable from the module to your PC and you're ready to go. That's what I'm hoping to accomplish with the DD55 (much cheaper and smaller).
 
drum pads are pretty simple things. most are just piezo elements hot melt glued to a bit of wood or plastic with some rubber/cloth/foam on top of it. connect leads of piezo to a standard jack.

the roland ones are a bit more fancy, with some fancy padding and so forth, but the concept is the same. you can order a handful of piezo elements for a few bucks online, a few more bucks for the jacks.

constructing the pads can be tuff... but is pretty fun.

the piezo elements send a little electric spike over the cable, it gets read by the drum brain, changes that to midi or uses it to trigger a sample or a synth.

you can also build little speakers out of the elements, or make cool contact mics... a piezo and some funtack and a cord can make good acoustic instrument mics.
 
thanks for the info, guys.

I continued my research last night and found some real interesting results. People actually DIY the whole kit with some disposable plastic plates or clocks and, like eeldip said, piezo and set on a PVC rack:eek: On top of that, they build their their own brains/modules!

I think I will try that minus the module cuz it just seems real technical for my ability...Does anyone have any hands-on experience with building an E-drum?

Al
 
i've built two such sets.

one set i used "rackama" paddles (those wood beach game paddles) with some rubber pads glued on top of them. then i used standard drum hardware to grab onto the slighly modified handle (took off plastic handle, glued and screwed a slotted hardwood dowel in its place).

looked boring. but was very road/studio worthy.

then i made this "electro tree" out of a giant block of wood for the base (painted orange), from which sprouted copper pipes like one of those lego flower pieces. at the ends of the pipes i built wooden square pads (painted orange) with clear orange rubber on them.

looked cool, but i had all this crosstalk problem, and the pipes would bend, and it all fell apart when i actually played it in a real setting. it only worked with my dm5 cause it has all those great crosstalk filters...
 
groovy, do you still use them? how's the feel compares to the roland mesh heads and etc? Care to post some pictures of them?

Al
 
sorry, both sets are long in the garbage.

which is the problem with the home made jobs... you really got to build them to last!

right now i am down to these pollard industries syndrum pads which are late 70's pads that are pretty damn similar to the roland ones, only a little louder cause they use real drum heads. those things were built to last. they have been gigging for 7 years or so and are still going strong. they use tama rack mounts so hardware isnt a problem.

the tree thing actually was a real pleasure to play. the pads had a lot of bounce and give. the paddle set was like an early generation simmons pad- really rough on the wrist. reminded me of little league tryouts... 40 degree weather and an aluminum bat!
 
eeldip,

you are great! Thanks for all these info. One more question, I believe my last question, are these pads compatible with each other? Say if I buy a roland mesh snare, a hart kick, and maybe some DIY cymbals, hats and so on. Is the brain/module gonna be able to read them alright?

again, thanks

Al
 
afaik, the Roland brains are a little sensitive to their pads but something like an alesis d4/dm-5/dm-pro will accept almost everything...

AND it's cool for drum replacing, too!

aXel
 
I have two of those DD5s you show in the top post. One that I got in 1988 or so to trigger a drum machine (when it was actually a current product), one that I got a few years ago for next to nothing. I don't use them for anything except the MIDI output.
 
different brains can react differently. the dm5 is really good in terms of it being able to filter out garbage and getting good trigger signals out of almost anything.

the brains that come with specific sets of pads tend to be optimized to those pads, and can be a little tuff to deal with. a noise gate and maybe a gain attenuation to the trigger signals usually clears up the problems, but then you are looking at getting a bunch more gear.

i got rid of the dm5 cause i didnt like the way it sounded, but i could have always just used it to send midi info to a sampler. at the time that seemed too complex...
 
sjjohnston said:
I have two of those DD5s you show in the top post. One that I got in 1988 or so to trigger a drum machine (when it was actually a current product), one that I got a few years ago for next to nothing. I don't use them for anything except the MIDI output.
Click to expand...

johnston,

can you tell me how you assign the midi channels with the dd5s?
I borrowed it fro a friend, and he forgot how to do that.

Al
 
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