Guest Deemz Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 If I attach a piezo element to a drumhead in the fashion described in many sites and wire it to a 1/4 inch jack what can i then do with this output? I have no drum module you see. I do have a computer but midification is for a later project! Can I just stick the outputinto an amp? if not, what is the simplest set where I can produce sound from this kind of setup?I'm totally new to this kind of thing (electronics as opposed to accoustics and hardware as opposed to software) so any help would be *very* Very much appreciated!! Thanks!!Nadim ;D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sephult Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 The piezo would send voltage signals when activated. These need to be interfaced with a project such as midibox64. If you check "Latest News" in the forum there are similar projects involving drum triggers. The piezo would send basic voltage on/off signals to some opamps and components, which would control the sensitivity/usable voltage range for the piezos. These signals would then be inputed in either the analog or digital ins for controlling midi on/off messages. Just inserting them into an amp would not be of any use, mainly these are used to trigger midi messages.If you constructed a midi trigger module, you could then send the midi signal to your computer/hardware synths and control synth/drum sounds from your program of choice.-Hope this helps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pay_c Posted September 23, 2004 Report Share Posted September 23, 2004 You really could hook the piezo to some amp, but what you would hear is not very interesting. The piezo sends voltage propotional to the speed it´s moving. So if you sqeeze it you would here some click (something like a single sqare or similar) but not more... nothing really interesting.Like Sephult said: It´s getting interesting with other stuff! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moebius Posted September 24, 2004 Report Share Posted September 24, 2004 Boys, boys..Piezo disc actually works much like (pretty thin sounding) microphone, picking up sound from the surface it's connected. (Many electroacoustic guitars/ basses use piezo mics. Done that glueing piezo under the bridge of acoustic guitar, but never got noise level down enough)For triggering it's put on a drumhead, to get sharp transient tone for fast triggering/ level extraction.. but it will sound shit. (damping ect.)Putting it on drumshell and amplifying that will probably result a weird acoustic drum sound.. ;)Bye, Moebius Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Deemz Posted September 27, 2004 Report Share Posted September 27, 2004 What if I pre-amped the signal, say...through my 4-track, and sent it from there to my amp? What kind of sound would I be likely to get? How safe for the equipment would this be?Are any other soundsources that can be triggered with this sort of thing that are either very simple to construct or filtyh-cheap to buy? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moebius Posted September 27, 2004 Report Share Posted September 27, 2004 Piezos can give you pretty high output levels, so must be very careful.. don't blow your poweramp/ speakers. (As everybody must have learned the hard way: Start with levels way down ;))Pre-amping is good. (Comp/limiter would be useful), just watch the levels.Ok, and for the sound: I really don't know ;DIf you put piezo on drum shell, you'll be picking up sound of a drum shell, not much of a the head - but as proper drums are (designed and build and..) tuned agains shell resonance, this shouldn't be a problem..But piezo discs are very cheap, just go ahead and try ;) (and don't blow anything up)..There are some analog drum synth circuits floating around net.. I'm not sure if you should bother with those.. (ever heard that "PIiiuuu", "Disco snare" sound?)Remember this is only picking up and amplifying drum sounds.. BUT:I think that building a EDrum (http://www.midibox.org/edrum/) or building midibox and waitin' for soon to be released (?!) Midibox Drum Triggers (http://www.midibox.org/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=news;action=display;num=1073069885), even without having a sound module, could be useful. As you have a computer (and soundcard/ midi interface, right?), you already have a sound source to be triggered. Latency is probably a problem (sounds seem to trigger late), but if you get some sequencer software (there are free ones), you'll be having hours of fun just playing some loops to sequencer, and then switching sounds while it's playing back. (Wow, I didn't know I could sound THAT Phil Collinsy)Bye, MoebiusWell, read this: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread/t-7805.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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