Hello everyone,
Over the past few years I have tried a bunch of finger drumming instruments, and have followed discussions about the quality of them. Thanks to Quest For Groove for providing a great platform.
Overall I have to say I am disappointed in our choice of instruments. I can drum pretty nicely on a desk, but all these MIDI instruments leave me frustrated and wanting in many regards. I have had to return units that I am dissatisfied with. This hurts my instrument dealers more than it hurts the manufacturers, and I do not appreciate that.
I am interested in disrupting this market. We need a high quality reliable instrument that responds much more naturally. I cannot imagine that the current solutions offered by companies such as Akai, Yamaha, Native Instruments et al. are the best we can get. Right now we are āforcedā to shell out $500 for a Maschine with many superfluous functions. Moreover, the quality is āall over the placeā, causing one unit to be much better than the other. It should be possible to produce an amazing finger drumming instrument for a similar price.
I am here to ask members for some out-of-the-box ideas with regards to sensing touch and velocity, specifically for the purpose of finger drumming. Currently I am investigating the possibility of using different kinds of sensors, such as laser optics. Perhaps some of this boardās members have thought about such things, without necessarily putting it into practice.
If you have any ideas about this topic, I kindly ask you to get in touch by leaving a reply or shooting me a DM.
This is a serious request. I am based in the Netherlands and I have capital ready for research & development. If this forum is not the right place for such a request, I do apologize. Please delete this post if that is the case.
Thanks for sharing! These messageboards arenāt very well populated, so there might not be a lot of conversation coming out of this topic. I can say that it is indeed true that we finger drummers could use a more responsive and higher quality instrument without all the bells and whistles.
A couple of things I can say that might help you in your research.
Have you seen the Zendrum devices that work with piezo pickups? zendrum.com
Wow! Thanks for sharing those Robert! RE: the second video link: Looks like I (understandably) wasnāt the only one with this idea. I would drop my own project in a heartbeat to help this guy. Too bad his last video is from 2 years ago. I wonder if heās still interested in working on it. I will try to get in touch with him.
edit: I see he is still active in the YT comments. Thatās amazing.
I left him a comment. Robert, I know we are in the same country; perhaps we can work together to help him. This instrument needs to be released yesterday rather than today. Otherwise, Iām happy to just wait and buy it. Ideally I would like to help accelerate the process.
I play drums for over 50 years, and electronic drums for many many years, since the beginning, and the best results I could get was with FSR pads from Drum Kat. They need power to work, but are very very sensitive and donāt have any crosstalk.
I played a Yamaha DTX900 kit with rubber and silicone pads, the best feel in the market even for today standards, have one DTX MULTI12 that can be played with sticks and hands but the sensitivity is not as good as the DTX900, and played also some kits with mesh pads from Roland, that have an awful feel but are sensitive. All these based on regular trigger technology.
I really donāt know why other manufacturers didnāt go on the FSR route, maybe because of costsā¦
Unfortunately my Drum KAT burned many years ago, and here in Brazil where I live we donāt have any representatives to fix it.
I am impressed with Sensory Percussion, but donāt know if it is possible to build it with the reduced dimensions of finger padsā¦