urbanovibe

Hey all, can anyone explain me how can i make a piezo pickup to trigger MIDI info? i have piezos in a xylophone which has 37 keys, and would like to MIDIfy it, controling sustain with an ordinary sustain pedal. I have only basic knowledge of electronics, the biggest thing i've done is building the piezo pickups and PCBs for the jack inputs for the piezos. any info will be appreciated, Thanks a lot, Diego

Hi all, I'm new to this board and actually what brought me into it was MIDIficating my vibraphone. As a matter of fact Piezos don't affect the sound of the bars when installed properly in the nodal point of the bar (thats the line to be drawn where the suspension cord of the bar passes through). I made my own pickup system with piezos and sounds awesome (just like a 1,000 dollar system but it cost 40). I glued one piezo for each bar. Each piezo is pluged into a colector rail which has simple mono plugs, the signal is colected thru a single cable (signal and ground) that then goes into an amplifier. Sounds killin' but i'd like to build an interface to send MIDI info... Aguy toldme to put 470k ohm resistors across each pickup jack and using pin connectors to go into a K&K vibraphone interface that costs about 1,000 dollars but was recently discontinued so i don't know what should i do...  will probably making a MIDIbox work? using the piezos as switches?? also, i was thinking of getting a cheap Midiman 4 octave piano-like controller, removing the keys and somehow wiring the switches to the pickups, and also modifiyng a sustain pedal so that it can work along with the sustain pedal of the vibraphone. (more info about vibraphone AKA vibes at http://www.thevibe.net/vn/ ) Thanks a lot, Diego