Looking for a standalone midi powered drum trigger

P

parsec

Junior Member
Hi,

Does anyone know of a drum trigger that is midi powered and does not require an external controller/brain? I just want to be able to plug midi straight into the kickdrum basically without lugging around another piece of equipment.
 
I think you're a bit confused. A drum trigger does not transmit midi, just an electronic impulse that signals it has been struck. MIDI is a protocol for transmitting note data, so even if you were able to transmit a midi note, it would still have to trigger some kind of brain or a VST in order to produce a sound.
 
There's no such beast. A trigger just pulls the vibrations off a drumhead and turns them into an electric pulse that has to be interpreted by a module before it becomes a sound. Nobody to my knowledge has combined the two. The closest would be a multipad controller with a brain, like the Roland SPD-SX or Octopad, or the Yamaha DTX Multi-12. But those are stick-played multipads, not triggers.

Now, triggers are really not that expensive, and you can get a simple module like an Alesis DM5 for between $100-$150. So for less than $200 you can be into a triggered kick setup.
 
alparrott said:
There's no such beast. A trigger just pulls the vibrations off a drumhead and turns them into an electric pulse that has to be interpreted by a module before it becomes a sound. Nobody to my knowledge has combined the two. The closest would be a multipad controller with a brain, like the Roland SPD-SX or Octopad, or the Yamaha DTX Multi-12. But those are stick-played multipads, not triggers.

Now, triggers are really not that expensive, and you can get a simple module like an Alesis DM5 for between $100-$150. So for less than $200 you can be into a triggered kick setup.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's the answer I was looking for. It seems odd that no one builds/sells one. It's not really about the money, I just want to keep my live setup as simple as possible. One of the things that would be advantageous about a kick trigger that directly generates midi messages is that it could be midi powered as well. Having to source power for the module/brain is something that I would like to avoid as well. I have no need for the functions in most brains. I certainly don't need their samples, and probably only need the most rudimentary velocity adjustment.
 
parsec said:
What? Why?

What makes a device that is a drum trigger that generates midi messages directly not viable?
Click to expand...
Size, for one. You'd have to build a trigger that includes a MIDI circuit board (pictured). And it would have to be powered. And then it still needs to talk to something. Your MIDI trigger signal has to be sent to a sound module that has a MIDI input. And that sound module, then, has to be hooked up to an amplifier.​
This really over complicates what could be/is done with a standard drum trigger ..... hooked up to a drum module.​
 

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harryconway said:
Size, for one. You'd have to build a trigger that includes a MIDI circuit board (pictured). And it would have to be powered. And then it still needs to talk to something. Your MIDI trigger signal has to be sent to a sound module that has a MIDI input. And that sound module, then, has to be hooked up to an amplifier.​
This really over complicates what could be/is done with a standard drum trigger ..... hooked up to a drum module.​
Click to expand...

Size - That seems to be some kind of micro (arduino?) dev board bristling with I/O pins and a USB port that are spurious to the application. A properly engineered solution could be much smaller than that. It could be a single chip solution that could easily fit into the housing of some of the existing drum triggers. This is certainly not a point of contention. MIDI has 5V for power, albeit the current available is small, however the micro or ASIC in question wouldn't need much power.

Yes, it needs to be hooked up to something that utilises midi messages. In my case, this is a laptop that is already on stage that has a sampler running along with other VSTs.

It doesn't overcomplicate what is done with a standard drum trigger hooked up to a drum module. It is a different device for a different situation.

Standard drum triggers are there for people who want to use drum modules. I am not suggesting that this device replace either of those things for those people.

I want to use a standalone VST sampler without the added bulk and complexity of a drum brain and its power supply solely for the purposes of interpreting the drum trigger signal into midi messages for use in an external sampler.
 
Technically speaking you could take this


or this
http://microdrum.altervista.org/blog/products-page-2/nanodrum-all/nanodrum-v1-1/

plug your kick trigger into the board and feed the MIDI out into your PC. If you use MIDI over USB you wouldn't need to provide external power to it.

But you're right - there's not existing solution to it, you still have to solder a few things herre and there.

I'm working on building a practice "brainless" kit that would connect to your smartphone for sequencing.
 
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