Building the 2.1-mhz Drum Console.

Alright everyone, so I'm working on a new project. I'm building my own "drum" console from scratch.

The general idea?

12 Pads, 2 removable/detachable cymbols, and 6 floor switches. plus 1 toggle (get it? 20 controls plus 1 switch? heh)

At any rate. I've got most of my materials and am waiting for my translucent rubber mold stuffs to come in so I can imbed my piezo triggers inside the rubber...but I hit my stall. Would it be possible to have the "intensity" of the drum hit control the brightness of the LED without an arduino to back it up?

Or am I asking the wrong forum? hah.

Will post my preliminary sketches along with some diagrams later this weekend. :)

well i have no idea. but this sounds like an amazing idea and i aboslutely can't wait to see it!

if you don't mind me asking, what made you want to do this / gave you the idea? :)

Hah, well, I made my guitar, I've got a custom keyboard, a light triggered MIDI device, and even a vocal midi triggered device. I figure, drums are the next step right? hah.
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Actually, I've been invited to play drums for a friends band (a few of the folks on this board have heard of the band so i'll keep that one tight lipped. For those of you who already know, keep it quiet! lol). I didn't feel like any of the boxed drum sets or drum pads met what would be visually fun and useful to play. So I sat down to figure out a drum setup that would be useful for both playing drums AND djing/ableton.

So having a large amount of pads (vs the typical 5-8 of a regular set) was important, and having triggers by the feat to start tracks/drum loops etc. would be mega useful. Of course the lights under the pads would be for my benefit and the audience's. Playing drums is extremely visual and crowds love it. To take that and move it over to DJing looks great and is tons of fun with the right crowd.

Part of the idea also comes from my compliant that I could never play certain synth lines because the repetition was just too fast. And I can play the drums a LOT faster than I can keys!

I'm going to build in lots of versatility into the setup to allow some rearrangement and possibly even the ability to condense my entire setup (laptop, keyboard, etc) into it, or still keep it nice and spread out to have a great stage presence.

I've already cute out my base and done a few interesting things. Like I said. Pictures will come later tonight/weekend. But for now I'm just looking for ideas on figuring out how to control the intensity of the LED based on hitting the drum. if it's not reasonably possible or too complicated I'll skip it....just seemed like a neet possibility though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RSDJMoniker

Actually, I've been invited to play drums for a friends band (a few of the folks on this board have heard of the band so i'll keep that one tight lipped. For those of you who already know, keep it quiet! lol).

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=)

You could do it in analogue but a micro controller is by far the simplest method to control brightness based on velocity

Hey midifidler. I figured you'd be the one to chime in!

I guess I just don't wanna complicate things too much since I'm just going to toss things into the trigger i/o. Tossing an arduino in the mix might just make things too complicated....which is why i'm really trying to avoid it. hah.