Comments on: Arduino – making a basic drum machine

By: larry

larry — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:35:04 +0000

This is true and perhaps I should have referred to it as a basic electronic drum kit? But the fact is you can record ‘hits’ if I were to hook it up to Processing etc.. and there are a quite few drum machines that let you do the same e.g play a pattern, recording it for looping etc… In fact on most drum machines you can record a loop in real time by setting the tempo and then pressing the various buttons to record, rather than pre-programming them, granted this is pressing buttons and not hitting them, I’ll dig out the model names if you’re interested (think one I used was by Roland). So I actually don’t think that the use of the term ‘drum machine’ is a mis-use. With a keyboard you press a key, not hit it – so I’m using a percussive method as the piezo sensor registers force of impact not a press – the harder I hit, the louder the note.

Course what I would like to do is to take apart the piezo sensor and then build a trigger system for my drum kit (a real one!) to record, etc.. when I play my drums – no idea how I’d do cymbals yet though…

By: Jx

Jx — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:10:15 +0000

Wouldn’t this be a basic synthesizer or keyboard? This device plays tonal sounds corresponding to different buttons. A drum machine allows one to sequence a series of rhythmic patterns made up of synthesized or prerecorded drum sounds. It is not normally “played” in real time, but pre-programmed by the user.

By: larry

larry — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:11:44 +0000

d’oh!, yes thats a M! I’ll amend that now – cheers for pointing that one out.

By: unwind

unwind — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:53:41 +0000

Your parts list says “2x 1Mega Ohm resistor (Brown, Black, Green, Gold) – that’s 1,000,000K Ohms”, but that ‘K’ is probably a typo. 1 MOhm = 1,000,000 Ohm.