towpath

Greetings, This is my first post. I'm a musician that got into synths, midi, electronic percussion in the late 90s. Recently bought some Roland PD-120 mesh head electronic drums and some Yamaha PCY electronic cymbals. Waiting for my Megadrum (has it's own forum, it's a trigger to midi converter without internal sounds) to arrive. I want to trick out/mod the drums and cymbals with more ways to control parameters in different physical modeling percussion VSTs. I want to mount a 4" ribbon controller on the side of each drum and underneath each cymbal. I'd like to install an IR or optical sensor underneath the mesh heads of the drums, so that when I press down on them it sends a midi CC. The Korg Wavedrum that I own does this, but that might be an FSR. I also want to mount an X/Y pad (kind of like the Korg Kaoss pad) to the side of at least one drum. I've read somewhere that certain cheap track pads from laptops can be used for this? I'm not looking for these controllers to generate any note on or off messages, just a different CC # for each one. The drum triggers themselves will be generating the midi note on. I just want to have a way to add control to different parameters after the note has been struck. I already use expression pedals which is cool, but difficult to send fine control values with. I know pretty much nothing about microcontrollers, resistors, circuit boards, and coding. I know how to solder and I have computer geek friends that could help me. I'm just looking to get started with some general advice. I'm also looking at the arduino site/forum. But this seems like a better route for what I want to do. Thank you!