Drum Pad Setup Without Sound Module?

[Travis Barnes]

Hi All,
I\'d like to run a drum pad setup using my Giga drum sounds exclusively. I don\'t want to spend the money on a drum module(i.e DM5), but I\'m unsure how else to get the midi impulses into the computer.
How would I go about sending and assigning the various pads to particular midi notes without a drum module?
Any info would be appreciated.
Thanks Travis Barnes

[JonFairhurst]

You need the DM5 or some other module. It takes the voltage from the piezo pickup and converts it to MIDI. It has controls for offset, gain, crosstalk, voltage curve and noise rejection, so you can \"tune\" your pads. It\'s not just a matter of hookin\' up a couple o\' transistors and playin\' the drums.

I tried my DM5 setup with Giga, but the output was way low. Maybe because the note-off command comes too soon after the note-on. I don\'t know.

I didn\'t have any good drum samples at the time, and it\'s a pain to power-on & setup Giga compared to a hardware module, so I haven\'t tried to hook it up since.

Your mileage may vary.

[JonFairhurst]

Another thought. Do you already own the pads? If not, you could get a six or eight pad setup with the MIDI output built in. Roland has a few like that.

I built my own pads using the Pearl Rhythm Traveler. It has Remo mesh heads. It\'s kind of a poor man\'s V-Drum setup. The tracking\'s not perfect, but it\'s usable. A much better feel than solid plastic pads, and quieter too.

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Ditto what Jon wrote...you need some sort of controller in the chain to convert pad signals to MIDI and control the various aspects of their response.

I have a TD-7 kit, which is older Roland solid-pad technology. It works very well. You might find something similar on Ebay since they\'re older units.

The lower-sounding output is pretty universal on drum sounds. Unless they\'re really compressed, they\'ll be very low compared to steady state sounds. Actually a good thing...you want to be able to mix them down the line and get them just right, and a lot of compression up front would just screw you later.