www.megadrum.info

Hi all of you.

I have been wondering how megadrum handles dual piezo pads. It would be interesting to know when it triggers one sound or the other, what rules it follows, in order to build/adapt my pads so they work better with megadrum (for example, how much isolation for the cone, etc)

Having this in mind, I have been thinking that most of the software samplers that have been released have different sounds for Hit, SideStick and Rimshot. These 3 different sounds are played like this:
Hit = hit the mesh head, the piezo in the center, with the foam cone gets all the vibrations
SidStick = (very used in reggae music) you only hit the rim so the vibrations are catched by the rim piezo and nearly no vibrations are catched by the center piezo
RimShot = in this hit (very used in rock music) you hit both mesh head and rim, to produce a more punchy snare sound. With this hit, you should activate both piezos (i think they would receive similar levels of vibrations)

Commercial modules (roland) only distinguish two different types of hits. "Hit" for one piezo and "Rimshot" with the other piezo (some modules trigger a "SideStick" sound when you hit the rim softly so you can get three sounds but with very limited expressiveness)

I propose all of you to think about if megadrum can produce three different midi notes for the snare so we can use the sounds that a sampler (oftenly) offers.

Dmitri, do you think it would be possible to implement this? I thought that it can be done this way:
"Hit" -> when center piezo receives vibrations and the other doesn't (under a certain threshold, compared to rim ammount of vibrations) it triggers a "hit" midi note.
"SideStick" -> when rim piezo receives vibrations and the head doesn't (under a certain threshold, compared to rim ammount of vibrations) it triggers a "SideStick" midi note.
"RimShot" -> when center piezo and rim piezo produce similar levels of vibrations it triggers the rimshot midi note.

That way we are not limited to velocity triggered rimshot and sidestick, we could have a wide range of rimshot sensitivity and a wide range of sidestick sensitivity. An the software samplers can work then with all of its sounds.

What do you think?

I will think about it.

I forgot to mention that current commercial modules are quite unrealistic about the rimshot expressiveness because of the fact that you must/can hit only the rim to trigger a rimshot sound. All of we that have played acoustic drums know that the perfect rimshot must be executed hitting at the same time (and strength, obviously) the head and the rim. Hitting only the rim would produce a crappy rimshot sound, typical of newbie drummers practicing only with the edrum doesn't help anything to adquire a good technique on this...

maybe some of you have read in the Roland manuals that you can have the three sounds but it is a lie!!. I own a Td-6 and you only have two different ways of hitting. So hitting only the rim, or hitting both rim and head, produces the same results, despite of what manual says. ..Fairly unrealistic...