Hey folks, it's been a while!
I've been busy putting my photography career together, but getting back into music just lately.
We played a few gigs over the summer, but have been on hiatus just lately, just trying to put some tracks together for an EP.
Anyway, I have been working on the 'piano' - I've added a drum kit.
I bought one of these partly working for £30 - Session Pro DD 501 Electric Drum Kit
I drilled some 40mm holes into the top of the empty piano body to take the support poles for the drum kit, and sunk the poles into the body of the piano.
I changed my mind about the placing of the poles halfway through hence the extra hole.
The support poles are stood on the main board inside the piano.
Can't get through any jobs these days without kitty trying to help!
And here it is attached to the piano, covering the right hand side. It's pretty solid. It took me about an hour to attach the main poles to the piano. It then took me about 6 more hours to attach the drums because I kept changing the configuration! Got there in the end and pretty happy with the layout.
7 triggers in all - 3 toms, a Snare (body and rim) and two symbols. Two of the symbols wouldn't work, so I opened them up and managed to repaire a loose wire in one of them with some gaffer tape.
Overall I'm pretty pleased, I got the poles set in the piano better than I thought was going to go, and the layout is nice and easy to hit.
As for the drum kit device... well... lets out a big sigh...
It's MIDI yet not MIDI. It's a USB only MIDI. I was hoping to plug the Alesis SR16 into it, but to do that I'd have to route it through an interface and a DAW. I really do not like this trend of removing the MIDI 5 pin and using USB only, it completely destroys any notions of connectivity for those of us not using PC/Mac driven DAW. So it limits me as to what I can actually do with this kit. For now I'll have to use the presets in the device and route the audio into some effects.
I am guessing that as each of these is essentially the same on/off trigger in a variety of housings all with a standard phono socket, that a) I can use these to trigger other devices that accept phono switches - i.e. like foot pedals; and that b) I can buy a decent drum kit module that has MIDI IN/OUT to connect to my other MIDI synth modules.
The main piece of kit we use in all our gigs and songs is the Korg Electribe EMX.
The keyboard with the coloured keys is attacked to a Yamaha sound module.
More mods to come later!