Um stick some Piezos in some Remo practice heads and get the exact same thing.

This ain’t “special” guys. many people have been doing this.

Actually I quite like his. Not in itself – it seems a lot of effort just to play a game, but you could use the same drum construction method to build the Arduino powered electronic drum kit: http://hackaday.com/2009/05/22/laser-cut-drum-kit/

People spend money on pointless things all the time. It wasn’t until Rock Band/Guitar Hero that people like nachowarrior actually started saying anything. Who’s to say that the people that are playing Rock Band and Guitar Hero don’t already play real instruments? I know/know of a LOT of people that play Rock Band or Guitar Hero that played their respective instruments for a long time for real before Rock Band even came out. All I can say is that you need to stop caring so much about what other people are doing with their free time/money.

2nd par – “When you decide you want to really learn how to play drums”. As an old rock muso I think there is a very real chance that some introduced to drumming like this will continue on to become real drummers; certainly more so than the similar guitar-based games. Nice build, very good writeup.

His detail on cheap and durable drum pad construction alone makes this an interesting article; certainly a cut above the more typical practice pad circle of thick ply with tractor innertube glued to the face and maybe a piezo glued to the back.

But as a tech, what is this *fetish* here with micro-controllers?

There are two sensible ways you can go; follow the many builds that use piezo triggers into individual damped oscillatory circuits (e.g. Practical Electronics UK a few years back); or use a micro-controller to spit out MIDI codes so you can voice *anything* on a given pad. Each method has strengths and weaknesses depending on where you go next (e.g. performance or recording).

While I have a state logic (non-PIC) circuit sketched out for a pedal clavier-to-MIDI sender I know there is a PIC-based solution on the net that would be better, *but* I can’t see the point of doing damped resonators in *code*.

A particular problem with amplitude granularity arises with a signal that must decay away such as a splash cymbal – as you get to the tail of the decay the steps in amplitude become apparent and are annoyingly unnatural. Been there.

Analogue resonators for each channel are about as complex/simple as a fuzzbox build so its a good “third project”; they all differ depending on what drum or trap they are imitating (and present a rich field for modding and tweeking); offer the opportunity to learn a lot in a small project (resonance, noise, bandpass and envelope shaping); allow direct control of resonator characteristics to get just the sound you want; and don’t require a third-order post filter to block the sampling frequency.

By the time you add the required pre and post processor analogue conditioning it will make the direct approach look simple.

Then, if you really must add code, what also makes sense is using a micro-controller to trigger these analogue voicing circuits to get a very flexable drum generator/beat box, bit like a player piano. Likewise a MIDI to analogue resonator interface.

With an analogue solution *touch sensitivity* which is required for expressiveness, is easy but a serious complexity with a coded solution.

Best song “Paranoid” Who doesn’t remember this during Gran Turismo2? ;)

Anyways, I really like the construction of the drums they look to be more strengthened.

Very interesting set of instrument. I don’t know how to play drums, i only know how to play guitars but that stuff is so cool!
I wonder if we have that here in my country..
Thanks for sharing that!