Building an E-Drumset

[moody07747]

well...........




its done

just have to spend an hour or 2 tweaking all the module settings
and my 3rd cymbal and stand should come an day now

btw, it sounds great...im going to make an MP3 so you guys can here it

 

[Dr.EM]

Great, I look forward to hearing it

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Just to depress all you musician types!.

I've just been on a delivery to a customers house (DVD Recorder), and noticed he'd got a Grand Piano, and a microphone stand near by. Looking round further I spotted a Fostex 16 track digital hard drive recorder, so I asked him what he thought of it!.

He asked me if I knew how to work it?, to which I replied I could probably work it out, but my 15 year old daughter would probably know better, as she's currently half way through an OCN Sound Engineering Course. So he's asked if she could go and help him!.

So, he's spent around £1000 on the Fostex, an external CD writer, a mike stand, and a condensor mike. This is all to record one track only from his piano! - and he can't work it!.

How many here would kill to have that setup?.

BTW, his Grand Piano was £20,000 :!:

 

[Dr.EM]

Hmm, thats quite odd. Presumably he had the grand piano already, but firstly why record it with only one mic, in mono, he obviously has a lot of cash to spend. And also its a bit over the top to use a 16 track machine to do it (unless he has plans for it in the future), a good compact mixer and a PC would be good. If the fan noise were an issue and it couldn't be placed away from the piano, a CD recorder deck would be a good choice. If its in a nice acoustic environment, an ambient mic might sweeten the sound a bit, or if it were recorded on a PC, a bit a quality digital reverb should give a better ambience. £20000 is actually a lot even for a grand, I played a £17000 one at music live and that was the most expensive I saw there.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I've never heard of his piano make before, I think it was something like "Schimmel", and it was really nice looking!. Even better?, it was a limited edition, and was gold plated inside! - although I doubt it improved the sound :lol:

I asked Melissa, she's quite happy to go and have a look for him, and to have a play on his piano!.

BTW, what's the point in recording a piano in stereo?, it's only a single sound source - mono is as good as anything really!.

The shop that sold him the Fostex told him the 16 track one has more facilities than the smaller versions, which is why he bought it! - he didn't know what he wanted, and has more money than sense! :lol:

 

[Dr.EM]

When you hear a piano, you'll hear the upper strings to the right of you more (if your playing it) and the lower to the left, thats partly what its for. Stereo generally gives a more live and natural sound though, at college we mic them up in stereo, and the channels are panned on the computer afterwards, the difference is quite noticeable and its definately an improvement. Also, a single mic might have difficulty picking up all the strings with equal dynamics, to do so it would need to be placed at some distance from the instrument, which generaly negatively effects the sound (depending on the application, for classical recordings, the piano is a long way away from the mics, and its fine for that use, but with a heavy backing track, it will not cut through well at all). Again though, doing it like that requires 2 mics as reverbs don't make much sense to our ears in mono, and reverb is what you'll gain, though in a normal sized house I doubt there is much to be had.

I'd actually be worried about owning something like that which is so expensive :shock: . I bet there are people out there that claim the gold plating improves the sound :lol:

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

The miking will be Melissa's problem 8)

It's good practice for the OCN course she's doing!.

 

[Dr.EM]

Yeah, it will be. Its good to experiment a bit at the location, see what works best for the particular situation.

Sorry Moody if this has gone a bit off topic, you got the third cymbal yet?

 

[moody07747]

ok now its really close to done...just have to work on my final cymbal

today i did lots of metal work making some brackets for teh module

i posted in 2 other forms and dont really feel like redoing it all a 3rd time....

one of these 2 links should work for you guys

http://vdrums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21009&page=5
**broken link removed**

read my last 2 posts on those...

 

[moody07747]

ok guys heres that sound sample....took some work

https://www.tindeck.com/audio/my?loc=2hwj0-Demo 2.mp3

its a 1 minute 12 second audio clip....1.10MB...normally opens in winamp

i had to set up a footswitch to hit while playing that changed to a programed setup and had to record the thing 3 times then mix them all togeather

took 1 hour to set up

and i hit the footswitch more than 20 times while playing

enjoy

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Sounds really good!.

 

[Dr.EM]

Groovy

So, you've recorded all the sequences in, then triggered them with pedals etc? I've never tried anything like that. Is this the DM5, or is that just used to get the MIDI from the triggers? I think my thing is essentially a DM5.

 

[moody07747]

its a dm5 set up with "external triggers"

sorry....but i didnt really understand your questions...

 

[Passn_thru2]

i saw this Electronic Marimba a while back.. aparently there are coils in the base and a magnets in stick heads.. and the pucks change the Gause to sharpen and flaten the note.

can you put pedals on the heads of your drum to alter the tone and 'edge' on the note.?

**broken link removed**

 

[moody07747]

i can see that being done with some time and money but not with my setup and the dm5 module

my setup is a piezo trigger and a pickup cone on top...the mesh head lightly hits the cone which hits the trigger sending a small current to the module, the module then,,,um...uncodes the signal so you get the amount of noise you called for.....its velocity sensitive....

 

[Dr.EM]

I looked inside one of my pads and found just a steel plate with a piezo glued to it. I intend on making some additional pads for it, piezos are easy to get (ordered a few with my latest order). The hard part is obviously mounting the pads to the frame, which you were able to do with you welding skills. I might be able to figure out some kind of arrangement though.

 

[moody07747]

ill help you on that right now
let me grab a pic from the drum site that shows a great mounting shot from the side.....

here we go:

 

[audioguru]

Fantastic! Great sound and you play really well. :lol:
I had my hand on the volume control of my pretty good pc speakers and had it nice and loud. Half-way through, a drum beat nearly broke my fingers because the speakers are ported on their backs and move.
A lot of huffing and puffing even tries to come out of the volume control on their front.