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MIDIfy a Marimba/Xilophone


Guest av
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Hi

I want to MIDIfy a marimba. YOu know: a tuned percusion instruments. It have 4 octaves (45  notes).

I need a device that converts one hits on a lamina of the marimba in a note number, with velocity sense and fixed note duration.

Could you help me? What I will need?

Thank you in advance

AV

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Hi AV

Since you propably don't wanna change the sound of your instrument (...looks pretty expensive, a Marimba :P), I wouldn't go for piezos, because they add weight and change the way the sounding bars vibrate as well they'll propably shorten the sustain. There are pretty cheap condenser microphone capsules available (just about 1 or 2 Bucks). You could mount one into each of the individual resonant bodies and trigger MIDI with the signal. (How this works, somebody else has to tell you, since I'm not much into this approach. I saw some posts, so just search the archives). Propably you have to equalize the trigger signals (at least with Low-Cut)

Greets, Roger

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Take a look at AMERICAN THEATRE ORGAN SOCIETY MISSISSIPPI CHAPTER at http://atos.stirlingprop.com/ and click on the knowledge base button. There are a couple of items that may be of use, Diagram for 2 amp solenoid driver (chime relay)      and Applying electric solenoids to tuned percussions. Also take a look at Mechanical Music Digest article on building a pneumatic beater for a xylophone at http://mmd.foxtail.com/Tech/chimes.html . These could be driven by MIDI also, by using small solenoids to valve the air to the pneumatic.

Mickey

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  • 7 months later...

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

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