some sounds we like

Tomorrow (Wednesday) night we’re going to have the second meeting of SHARE San Jose (see http://share-sj.org for more info). Unlike the first meeting (which was a jam/talk session) this one will be talk/show, at a coffee shop in Campbell. It will be fairly informal - there will be opportunity for people to introduce themselves, talk about how our next jam session will be organized (which will be at Anno Domini), and talk/show whatever people bring to talk/show about. Details:

Wednesday Jan 23, 7:30pm (coffee shop closes at 10pm)
Orchard Valley coffee shop
349 E. Campbell Ave.
Campbell, CA 95008

Feel free to being laptops to show/demo things. Headphones & splitters may come in handy.

…Tim…

Be there!

Technorati Tags: sharesj

I had a much smaller box that I was working with, originally, and then I discovered how insane it was to try to cram all the stuff in there I needed to… I found these project boxes at Halted for $0.25 each. Ha ha! Normally these kinds of cases are somewhere in an unreasonable $12-25 range. So what if they have a few extra holes in them that I won’t be using. Meh. I know a bargain when I see one.

so I have a few things going on here… I have two rocker switches. One is for power, and one is for a persistent toggle. I’m not even sure what I’ll end up using the black rocker switch for yet, I figured it would be a good idea. Maybe I’ll use it to toggle between two different sets of midi notes to send out from the pads. Something useful like that.

Next to the black rocker in the back are 4 pushbuttons. Like the black rocker, those red buttons are all hooked to digital-in pins on the arduino. This will let me trigger drum sounds from directly on the box if I like…

I left all 6 of the PWM pins unattached to anything at this time. I think I’ll probably put an LED on each one to correspond to each of the 6 analog in pins… sort of a visual feedback for each of the possible drum pads.

There’s a hole towards the left side of the front side of the box. This is open for FTDI Serial->USB cable pins on the freeduino board I’m using from Modern Devices..

The silver port in the foreground is the midi port, which I figured out and have fully functional now. (woot)…

the 8-port bank of RCA jacks are what I’ll be plugging the drum pad sensors in to. That leaves two ports empty, so I’m planning on wiring up an LED to an RCA jack, then using one to indicate power, and the other to indicate MIDI data being sent from the box (from the TX pin).

And theeeen we open up the box.

Oof. And I’m not even done getting everything wired up yet. Now I can see where those flat-flex cables (FFC) would come in handy. I guess I should trim down the midi port cable, now that I know where it’s going to live. Then I suppose I can use some cable ties to organize things once everything is wired and verified to be working. I’m putting in one of my two 3V->5V battery packs to power the box, so that means I’ll need to get into this box to replace batteries, so having the cables tidy and repeatably positionable is important.

Technorati Tags: arduino, DIY, drum, e-drum, electronic, engineering

I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with the double or triple trigging notes from my implementation of Tod E. Kurt’s piezo sensor arduino MIDI project. Near as I can tell, the resonance of the piezo seems to be almost as hard as the initial strike to the sensor. I can’t figure out what else would be causing double triggering at every level of threshold I set for the analog in pin.

I’m just stabbing at science on this. Derek said it best just a few minutes ago:

were’s an oscilloscope when you need one?

So a few things that I’m wondering about. One is to keep the analog pin open for a static amount of time instead of the dynamic period of time that the Todbot code prescribes… Two is to make sure that the current going into the analog pin is only flowing one way with the help of a zener diode… Thirdly, it could be is that the surface I have the sensor attached to may be *too* resonant, and is compounding the problem.

so I’m going to try some of these things tonight…

I was very glad to see the Ardrumo project, and in such a timely fashion, too. While I had limited success with it, I wouldn’t chalk it up to anything but my own system and setup. I should try it again and see if it works now that I have my electronics side in much better shape.

Here’s a diagram I made of the setups I’ve tried and am working on… These are your options if you’re on a mac…

Technorati Tags: arduino, DIY, drum, e-drum, electronic, engineering, experimental, MIDI, ardrumo, todbot, trigger

Things are progressing nicely! After mocking up a proof of concept model, I realized that the position of the pedal is crucial to it working correctly. I then consulted my local Guitar Center’s drummer section to get some more insights into how the “real” pedals work. Turns out my original sketchup drawing wasn’t too far off the mark. I made a couple of minor adjustments to accommodate the materials I’m using, but overall it’s turning out how I envisioned it. Not having blocks of metal to work with made me realize how inadequate wood is for some of the heartier mechanical parts. the hardwood “spring block” serves two functions. One is to bind the mallet’s axel to a predictable orientation, and secondly to attach to the springs. Essentially I’m using a too-long 8/32 bolt as a set screw. After grinding down a flat spot on the axel, I torqued down on the set screw, and it snapped the wood along the grain. I recut this piece with a different grain orientation and it still the the same thing… so I ran two smaller bolts along side the set screw to reinforce the wood perpendicular to the grain, and now it’s solid as a rock.

All of the instructions I’ve seen for these DIY drumpads say to epoxy the sensor onto whatever underlaying material you’re going to use as the drum head, but I used double sided carpet tape…. mostly because it’s wicked strong, thin, and I already had it at arm’s reach when I was working on that part.

the mallet itself is a 4″ x 3/8″ bolt or something similar… with a cut piece of doubled over mousepad, wound as tightly around the head of the bolt as I could get it and then taped over… I found a handful of sample mousepads at work and figured they’d come in handy… I didn’t really have a plan for the mallet, but this worked out really nicely.

I think I can improve on the spring situation by buying one proper spring instead of using two chained together. Like all good DIY projects, my main and primary goal is to spend as little money as possible.

I’m having a harder time getting the software and MIDI to all work… Mostly the midi. The arduino software seems to be working nicely. So hopefully next update will show me happily banging on my fully functional midi drum trigger.

Anyway, I *really* love fabricating these kinds of things. Gotta love that bandsaw. It’s a pain in the ass to change the blade, but I’m back from a 1″ to a 1/4″ blade so it’s back to being more of a versatile tool.

Technorati Tags: arduino, diy, drum, e-drum, electronic, experimental, trigger

here are two ideas I’m working on for a DIY electronic drum kit kick pedal. I just looked yesterday at how much a “real” one would cost, and it’s $345!! Ha, I laugh in the face of this craziness. Mine will require a laptop for sound, but will cost a fraction of what a “real” set costs, and will arguably sound pretty awesome because I can use all kinds of onboard effects through garageband and/or Main Stage/Logic Pro.

Technorati Tags: arduino, diy, drum, e-drum, electronic, kick, pedal

This concept has been knocking around in my head for about 10 years. I don’t know why it took me so long to make a graphic for it.

Basically, the triangle of skills represents the three things you need to be doing if you want to be DJing properly.

* Beatmatching : if you’re not on beat, you’re going to drive everyone nuts with your trainwreck.
* Timing : If you come in at the wrong point of the outgoing song, even if on beat, it’s going to structurally sound weird.
* Selection : knowing what songs go together is definitely an equally important skill as the other two. Creating a flow of tracks that mesh together well is critical.

If you fall down on any one of these three skills, you fall down as a DJ.

This doesn’t even pertain to any particular style of music. Try it against your favorite style of music: Hip hop, drum and bass, house, techno, minimal, Reggae, dub, rocksteady, dancehall, or any of the other subgenres that have sprung from these main branches…
And I’m certainly no perfect DJ. I’m far from it. I just have an appreciation for people who rock all three skills at once.

Attention Peninsula, East, and South Bay electronic musicians!! Share San Jose has begun.

If you want to come join us to collaborate on improvisational electronic music and video, go join the mailing list and read up on what we’re all about.

First meetup is thursday, december 13th, 7pm-ish… so save the date and prepare to jam with us.

It may seem to have been a little quiet here at DoBox lately, but actually we’ve been busy building up a massive release to please your eardrums. ‘Resurgence’ is our largest compilation yet and contains sonic gems by some of our local Techno heroes as well as long-time veterans from Chicago and other parts of the country. Serving up a healthy cross-section of the genre, this compilation is sure to satisfy many a Tech-head out there. Download and enjoy!

Plural - Combative Mind
Kamil P. aka The Influence - Detown Afterhourz
Arturo Garces - Last Night
James Hammer - Gain An Hour
Popkan - Jack The Bass
Qorser - No Justification
Juan Segovia - The Pest (I’m Never Camping With You Again Mix)
Steve Cooley - Goeseast
AEOD-Darkhappy - Sadness
Deadly Venomz - Read A Book
Jerome Baker - Universoul Guitar
Soundthru - Quenchy
DJ Developer - Runner 50
Ellery Cowles - SoulFul
Lester Fitzpatrick - Erica The Beautiful
El Gato #9 - Mercury In Retrograde
Snackmaster - Take 3
Omar Cabaleiro - Delta
Lady Blacktronika - Techno Jihad
The Rhythmist - Deepened
Kit Clayton - Shallow Water
Corey Rogers - Here Voices
Bangers & Nash - The Monk Effect

http://doboxrecordings.com

One of the first things many people say about guitar hero is “this is cool, but it would be so much better if it actually taught you how to play guitar.” Well, I think it’s sort of like algebra. You need to prepare your brain for increasingly complex tasks, and I think guitar hero does that for guitar playing the way algebra does for advanced math.

I’m hoping to put this to the real test soon. After beating 40/40 songs on the hard setting in guitar hero 2, I’ll be making the jump to a real guitar with the help of http://www.guitarvision.com/ …

My interest in playing guitar have not too much to do with the genres they’re focused on, but I’m hoping to get my head around the guitar with their tools so I’ll have enough experience to explore the genres I *am* interested in.

Technorati Tags: guitar, guitarhero, howto, guitarvision

Derek says : oh yeah…you’d like this guys podcasts. bangin’ ass techno… HELL YEAH!!

Technorati Tags: crazyhardtechno, techno