Franken-Kit 1.0

[shaugnd]

Ok, so I want to preface this with the fact that I am a total and complete newbie to this scene. I've read through the docs and the FAQ's that I have come across. Now I'd like to share some information about my project and get some feedback.

I'm building a 'Franken-Kit' out of various parts that I have been given and/or picked up for cheap. I started out with a very nice Roland HD-1 and that worked for me for awhile. I had always been an acoustic drummer so the electronic thing was more of a toy. Now, however, I've seen the new dimension that electronics can bring to the experience and I'm going at it full tilt.

I've assembled a collection of Roland PDX-60 and 80 pads along with and Roland 3 zone ride and three dual zone crashes. I've now got all of the pads from the original HD-1 mounted (I had to do some minor engineering to get that to work) onto a rack constructed of random bits of Roland rack and some rigid electrical conduit from Home Depot (that stuff actually fits together with the brand rack stuff quite nicely, though it is a smidge thicker). I can post pics if anyone cares but I didn't want to presume that anyone gives a rats about what my kit looks like and waste board resources.

I've successfully wired up everything so that all of the pads are connected to appropriate jacks on a 56 input unit that I purchased. (I have neither the patience nor the skill to do that myself. As Clint Eastwood once said, "A man's got to know his limitations.") I've also tested out all the triggering and everything checks out great so far.

Now, added to the mix is an inherited Roland HPD-15. This thing is one of the greatest electronic instruments I've ever come across. It has some great sounds and a very nice built in brain. Given that it has MIDI In/Out/Through capabilities, I'm thinking I could use it as a sound module to begin with until I get some experience with the PC software that is available.

I have zero experience with MIDI, though I've been a programmer for 20 years, so I should be able to understand most of the concepts.

It seems that the HPD-15 will listen on channel 10 for triggering information, so I theorized that I should be able to trigger the HPD-15 sounds by sending triggering information from the MegaDrum to the HPD-15 assuming cabling is done correctly, audio components are properly connected, etc.

Problem is, I can't seem to get the setup for the MegaDrum done right. So, on to the questions:

1. Has anyone tried this sort of thing with the HPD-15 before?

failing that,

2. Has anyone tried this sort of thing with another Roland brain? and if so, would you be willing to share any insights that you have picked up.


Also, if there is a document that I have not found/read yet, I'm more than happy to RTFM if someone would be so kind as to point me in the right direction as I have not been able to get this working with the documentation that I have read so far.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Shaugn

[dmitri]

2. Has anyone tried this sort of thing with another Roland brain? and if so, would you be willing to share any insights that you have picked up.

I tested it with Roland TD-20 and it was just a matter of plugging MegaDrum MIDI Out into TD-20 MIDI In.

[shaugnd]

Wow! It just worked with all the defaults? Now that's a beautiful thing. I've had no such luck with the HPD-15 Handsonic unit. Probably because it wasn't designed to be used as a brain. But, I have it, so I want to try to figure it out before I spend a bunch of dough on a dedicated sound module or even software. You wouldn't happen to remember what channel the TD-20 was listening to, would you?

[dmitri]

You wouldn't happen to remember what channel the TD-20 was listening to, would you?

Channel 10. It is a standard channel for drum sounds. Make sure MegaDrum's Drum map (note numbers) match HPD-15's Drum map. If needed, adjust MegaDrum's notes to match HPD-15's.

[Sylv1co]

Take care that if you use the channel 10 to send notes to a TD-20, it will trigger the same instruments that are also triggered by the pads that are directly plugged into the TD-20. You to need to use the channel 11 to trigger a percussion set, you then can choose which instument to be trigger with each note. Problem is that you can't get the cymbal choke to work on a percussion set.
I don't know for HDP-15, but it may have the same functionning.
I Know that it can't explain why you can't get any sound to be triggered, by I thought it may be useful.

[shaugnd]

Thanks for the information. I don't mind if the pads end up triggering the same instruments that are assigned to the HPD-15's onboard triggering surfaces. In fact, that might might be the preferred behavior, I don't know. The instrument note thing is an interesting element that I had not considered. I am going to work with that tonight and see what I come up with. I may just be sending the wrong notes. I need to dig up some docs on the Handsonic's MIDI implementation.

<------- Begin irrelevant information about my kit. Page down to skip these details------->
Meanwhile, I took a couple of snaps of Franken-Kit if anyone is interested. . . .

The black round pads came with the HD1 and are mounted on horizontal HD1 rack pieces (cut down a bit with a hack saw). I use those for aux sounds like cowbell, tambourine, etc., that's why they are over the hat.

The PDX 60 and 80 pads are used for the four toms. I played a lot of marching percussion so my tom configuration is set up like a set of marching quads with the snare in the center. So the tom order (if anyone cares) is top right = tom 1, top left is tom 2, bottom right is 3 and bottom left is four. This lets me use a lot of triplet fill patterns without complicated sticking arrangements. It is kind of strange, but I enjoy it for now. Though, in some mappings, I might use three toms in a conventional arrangement with a second snare or timbale or something on that fourth "tom".

The kick drum is actually the pdx-80 that comes with the HD1. I've mounted it to the HD1 central pillars with a standard tom mount, fortunately the HD1 core pillars are 'about' the same size as the standard Roland rack. The version of the pdx-80 that comes with the HD1 is only single trigger thought unlike the others, but that works fine for a kick drum. I'm messing around with a 'double' pedal that lets you play double base with one pedal. Still learning that one. The hat is from the HD1 as well and is mounted in the same fashion as the HD1 toms. The cymbals are 2 cy-5's from the HD1 which only have a single trigger and are not choke-able. The third CY5 is a normal one. The ride in the middle is the 12" 3 trigger one from Roland. I put it in the middle because I have a shoulder that doesn't do so well reaching off to the right for extended periods of time so I pulled the ride in so I could keep my elbows close to my body. Actually the whole setup is built on being compact to keep my arms tight to the body as much as possible.

The curved bit of rack on the bottom right in the second pic is actually Rigid electrical conduit (outdoor rated stuff). It works really well as a stabilizing foot, though I've also (in previous configurations) used it as a speaker mount for the Fender Passport 500 speakers which you can see on the bottom left in the same picture.

<----------- End irrelevant information about my kit. -------------------------->

Thanks again for reading my posts and giving me your thoughts. I really appreciate your time and efforts on my behalf.

Best Regards,

Shaugn

[airflamesred]

Looks interesting. Have a look at my post for some mods I made to that same pedal.

[shaugnd]

This post pertains to the use of a Roland HPD-15 as a brain/sound module.

Ok, so with the inputs that I have gotten here, I've made some great progress. There is good and bad news.

The bad news is that this is WAY more complicated than I imagined it would be.
The good news is that this is WAY more powerful, flexible, and capable than I ever dreamed it would be.

It turns out that the HPD-15 (Handsonic) listens for several channels at once. The primary percussion channel is, in fact, 10. For some reason, mine was set to 1. (User error on my part, I imagine.) The unit also listens for Aux Percussion on default channel 11 as well as melody (think marimba, vibraphone, steel drums) on channel 5.

So, there is a whole mess of configuration that can be done here. I am working on building a trigger setup that is organized in a standard keyboard configuration so that I can trigger melodic parts on the fly. All of the pads on the kit right now don't even use half of the 56 input capability of the unit I bought from Dimitri, so I figure I'll use those. I had thought I would need to use the keyboard in the pictures to generate the sounds, but it looks like, with a whole lot of configuration, I'll be able to use the Handsonic to trigger percussion, auxilliary percussion, and melody all at the same time. Maybe. Still not completely sure on this, but that's how it looks presently.

One key dependency is the assumption that the MegaDrum can send on three separate channels at the same time. I have not experimented with that yet.

From here out, my posts will attempt to document the process and capabilities of the Handsonic as a sound module. Given that, I'll probably me asking a few very technical MIDI implementation questions. Hopefully the whole thing will be mildly interesting.

At first blush, it looks like the Handsonic might be more versatile, in some ways, as a stand alone sound module, than any of the Roland TD series. That doesn't make much sense, but that's how it looks. At 600 bucks U.S. on eBay, that could make for a pretty good deal. I dunno, we shall see. . .

Stay tuned . . . .

[airflamesred]

The normally aspirated megadrum will only transmit one channel per input (2 for sterio) but I guess you could connect more channels to the same input (internally) and have separate channel and note(s) and velocity curves come to think, per pad trigger

[shaugnd]

Ok, so you are so totally ahead of me on this. I read your post a couple of times and I don't know enough to understand it yet. I'll get there eventually.

More specifically, what I am thinking is as follows:

I have a 56 input Dimitri brand MegaDrum unit. There are actually only 28 jacks on the back. I figure I will end up using the entire top row of 14 jacks (28 input channels) for pads connected to the kit. Right now, I have one snare, 4 toms, 3 Aux single trigger pads, 1HH, 1 kick, 1 HH control, one 3-channel ride cymbal, two single trigger crash and one dual trigger crash all plugged in. Together, they use 17 jacks. To reduce that to the target 14, I am going to attempt to re-allocate under used jacks, though I haven't quite figured that out yet. My plan is to have everything but the Aux pads send on MIDI 10 and have the Aux pads send on MIDI 11. Once I've finished building the marimba (sort of like a mallet kat, only way cheaper and without any brains at all), I'll wire that up to the remaining 10 or 11 inputs and set them to transmit on MIDI 5. Or at least that is the general idea at this point. It may not be possible. I don't know yet, but I'm going to give it a try.

Ultimately, it would be cool to use some MIDI triggers to activate lighting effects. That's pipe dream material, though.

Heck, with enough work, it seems possible to do a one man show with percussion, melody, vocals, lights and a Slide Show all driven off of MIDI. I don't know that I have the patience to take it that far, but the Percussion and Melody mix would be nice to be able to do.

As always, comments, critique, and humorous banter are welcome . . . .

Shaugn