Modifying a Mesh pad with a Wavedrum type pressure sensor

[glenn.szymanski]

Wondering if anyone has tried or how possible it would be to install some sort of sensor (IR?) underneath the mesh head so that when you push down on it with a finger, hand, butt of drumstick, it would send a CC message to change a parameter (pitch, cutoff, etc).

I just bought 3 Roland PD-120 pads off ebay, waiting for them to arrive.

Would the foam cone in the center make it difficult to put down on the head or would it interfere with a sensor taking a reading of the head depression?

I have a Korg Wavedrum and one of my favorite features is the head pressure sensor. I've just never opened it up to see how it works.

[airflamesred]

Going to be a bit of a stuggle I would say. If your aiming at getting more out of your yamaha synth then I would look at expression pedals or breath controllers. I think it's a sort of practicality of limb usage, and by that I mean that even your ideal solution here (contniuous controller) would require the other hand to operate this. If it's just a switch your after then MD could do that but once again I think something separate would be better.

[glenn.szymanski]

Going to be a bit of a stuggle I would say. If your aiming at getting more out of your yamaha synth then I would look at expression pedals or breath controllers. I think it's a sort of practicality of limb usage, and by that I mean that even your ideal solution here (contniuous controller) would require the other hand to operate this. If it's just a switch your after then MD could do that but once again I think something separate would be better.

I have expression pedals and they're cool, but it's very difficult to use your foot for very fine increments when sending CC messages. I realize that I would be using my other hand to operate the pressure sensor CC. It's not something that I'd be using all the time, just now and then to get some different expressions.

I'm not planning on using the edrums to trigger that Yamaha VL1-m, that thing is all about the virtual reed and brass sounds.

I'm planning on triggering physical model VSTs like Chromaphone, XOXO's radial, and Reason's Kong. Where you can assign a CC for all sorts of parameters like head tension, snare tension, head material, etc.