Building a mallet xylophone trigger

[Marki]

Im contemplating on building a electronic xylophone but there 2 things that concern me that I hope you can help me with. 1. Unlike a drum trigger where you imput each drum, I need to have all the triggers on the xylophone exit thru midi (like a MIDI piano)Do you know of a way how this can be done. And 2 does the Mega drum do this or could you adapt the mega drum to do this? I have been a drummer for over 40 years but have just recently gotten into electronic drums and im curently building a e-drum set and have a brain to give it sound. T
hat project is almost finished. But id like to build a e-xylophone and was wondering if you could help me out?

[airflamesred]

Welcome,
And yes, all that you need to do, is possible with a megadrum. The 56 inputs can give you 4+octaves. Keep us posted as I'm always interested in the construction of these.

[Marki]

Question: Do the 56 inputs connect to the Mega Drum via 1/4 inch cables or is there another way to do this. This is the part that I cant quit grasp yet. could you explain how I can go from triggers to a midi cable?

[airflamesred]

The megadrum it's self takes piezo signals (up to 56) and processes those signals, then converting them to midi data. That midi data is sent out via midi or usb.

How you connect your triggers/piezos to megadrum is potentially up to you. You might even be able to build the megadrum within your mallet (the board is about 3x4 inches)

Am I right in assuming you can solder?

[Marki]

yea soldering is no problem. And after looking at the units that are prebuilt, The 56 input modual uses dual triggers on each 1/4 input. So what I would do is to hard wire the 56 piezo "keys" to what ever the 1/4 inch jacks are wired to and mount the display on the top of the unit along with the switches and knobs and install the midi and the usb jacks on the back of the unit. Now to design a unit that dosent weigh a ton yet strong enough for the road........

[airflamesred]

Great,
Get the full kit and you won't need to use any jacks, just solder as you have described.

Keep me posted as I shall be doing something similar myself.

[Marki]

How much is the full kit plus shipping in US dollars?

[airflamesred]

Dmitri is the man to speak to, just send him a site mail.

[dmitri]

See viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1420 for all kit versions including prices. You can estimate cost in USD using http://www.xe.com

[Elegantdrum]

If I was going to build a MIDI Xylophone, I would try to talk to the people at KAT/alternate mode as they already have this on the market and may avoid some learning curve.

I would expect the main problem to be cross talk to adjacent keys. I would expect the structural and vibration part of the design to be the most difficult. Exactly what kind of rubber will be used where is your main problems. Natural rubber is the best and expensive. Aside from the rubber and foam, real xylophones typically suspend the keys from ropes to solve this. But then you would have an open design with wires everywhere.

If it was me, I would start with the smaller Megadrum and one octave. Once you get the kinks worked out. then build a big one. Use the starter small unit and a 56 input.....build 88 keys!