Monday, January 8, 2007
Cheap DIY drum trigger converter: The Triggerlution
It’s hacking time again. My friend Fabian is the drummer in our band and we both thought about building some kind of drum trigger-to-MIDI solution, as cheaply as possible. Commercial plug-and-play solutions are expensive, but we have two cheesy 1990 Yamaha DD-11 digital drum sets (pdf manual). These are quite cheap and have eight trigger pads and MIDI out (and that’s what we need; of course you can play the 100 built-in rhythm and accompaniment sets if you’re into casiocore music).
The plan now was to check if the built-in drum pads can be substituted by regular professional pads like Roland’s V-Drum pads. Actually they work like a charm and so we began taking apart the first DD-11.
As you can see, the DD-11’s eight pads are made of aluminum discs covered with rubber. A simple piezo buzzer converts the hits into short current peaks. Commercial or diy drum pads (like this tutorial at the eDrum project shows) work absolutely the same way. For this project, we only want the DD-11 circuitry and will abandon the orginal case, built-in loudspeakers and trigger pads (which we will keep for future projects).
We hurried a little with this first version, so we kept all the internal electronics. When I do the second conversion, I’ll try to leave out the original amp circuit as well. The amp and power supply circuits are a single module and I could not yet figure out what parts can be left out.
The green mainboard is the most important item here. The small board on the right holds the power switch and volume slider. The brown board on top contains the MIDI in/out (left part) and power/amp circuits (right part). We had a little trouble finding a proper case for the electronics. Most commercially available cases are too small or too expensive and we finally settled for a sturdy metal tool case from Bauhaus (diy store) for 7 Euros only.
I’ll skip the build process itself because drilling holes is not really interesting. Here’s a summary of what we did:
- get everything needed out of the original case, desolder everything else
- cut out the original button/display area and reattach it to the board
- solder eight 1/4″ TRS jacks to the original pad connectors
- desolder all original jacks and relocate those needed to new jacks in the case (MIDI out, Audio out)
There’s no way to change settings without opening the case, but Fabian decided that would be okay for know. The device just starts as soon as a power line is connected, always using its “00″ setting with a certain fixed allocation of pad number to MIDI note. The sound to be played on that event will be set on the sampler to be connected to the MIDI out. In the end there’s no use for opening the case.
Fabian dubbed his new spanking red contraption the Triggerlution. Please ask in the comments if you want to know more. I just found this description of a similar conversion (putting a DD-11 into a 19″ rack) on the net. He did what I was also thinking about for Triggerlution v2: Relocation of the keypad area by rebuilding it on a new board.
So I’m a bit confused. Was the point of this project just to port it to a smaller case? Do you plan on attaching switches with 1/4 connectors?
( By the way, I love the blog. Keep it up! )
No, we plan to attach regular electronic drum pads like the Roland V-Pads. They have 1/4″ plugs and can be used with our modified hardware.
You can also make similar drum trigger pads yourself, there’s a tutorial at the DIY eDrum project.
Ah yes, that makes so much more sense. I could also see it using programmed switches for a drum machine effect.
True. You can always use the internal sounds and trigger them via MIDI in. But this time the goal was just the opposite.
I have the yamaha dd-5 and I was thinking that the dd11 might be along the same lines in its midi configuration. I was wondering if you know the way to change the midi assignments 0-127 on the dd11 so maybe i could try that on the dd5. Maybe you ran into the same problem? The dd5’s onboard pads will only trigger certain midi notes 0-127. I just wondered if you knew a way to change this after breaking into the unit.
Thanks
JRW
As far as I know, there is no way to change the notes sent by the pads. (Actually, the midi note numbers are assigned to the sounds, not the pads, so, e.g. the “hi hat” sound will always send midi note xxx).
We (actually, my drummer, who uses the hacked dd-11) just programmed his sampler to respond on the eight midi notes sent by the dd-11’s pads. This workaround, ie. configuring the device you want to trigger to follow the dd’s notes, is my only suggestion.
This is very cool.
Before I go spending too much money on an old drum machine – do you have a list of machines by Yamaha or others that could be adapted in the same way?
I have a Dr Rhythm 550 which has small soft rubber buttons instead of large pads and I wonder if this is a different triggering method than the piezos. Any idea? Could i do the same thing with it?
This kind of project is at about my level of circuit bending and if I could make it work I’d be delighted to get some humanized drumming into my sequencer!
Thanks!
The DD-5 is very similar to the DD-11. But the DD-5 does not respond to velocity(does the DD-11?).
It works well triggering loops, but not great for “real” drum sample hits.
You can change the MIDI note numbers that each pad send, but it does not save the changes once the unit is turned off.
So, I do as philip does, and just program your receiving device to the DD’s note numbers.
I have trigger outs and trigger ins on my DD-5.
AWESOME project! This was exactly what I’m looking for!