Using Mouth/Microphone To Trigger Bass Drum

[joeq]

Originally Posted by ToroRojo

Long story short, I have lost the use of my legs.

I still want to play drums. I have a pretty decent Roland vDrum set with a TD8 brain. I've come up with the idea of triggering the bass drum using a headset mic (Shure WH20QTR) connected to the bass drum trigger input. It works, but not very well. It triggers inconsistently and I really need to be loud in order for it to work.

Any ideas on how to improve the triggering consistency or maybe try a different approach?

some trigger devices have adjustable sensitivity
the roland brain is probably expecting something stronger

you could also preamplify the mic to the point where your trigger will respond whatever its sensitivity expectations.

you might have even better luck with a computer and some drum replacement software. If you multi-band the signal you might be able to trigger multiple sounds using different vocalizations. A high sound could trigger something else, like an alternate kick sound or a hi hat

I understand Kenwood Dennard can do some pretty insane thing with a unit he made:

On top of that whole churning, polyrhythmic mesh he sings melody lines through a Shure SM-10A headset microphone. which is hooked up to a Korg DVP-1 Vocoder to give him one or two octaves up or down from the note he sings. His latest addition to the rack is a SynchroVoice Midi Vox. “It electronically reads the pitches in my voice and converts it to MIDI information.” he explained. “Apparently, the vocal chord are good conductors for electricity and this apparatus, which I wear around my neck, sends short-wave signals to the vocal cords. That’s how it knows how high or low you’re singing. And by turning the pitches into MIDI, it allows me to feed melodies that I sing into a Roland MC-500 Micro Composer to make voice- activated sequences. I couldn't do that before with just the Vocoder.”

instead of triggering notes with the MIDI you could trigger multiple drum sounds merely by vocalizing high or low.

[biggator6]

Originally Posted by joeq

some trigger devices have adjustable sensitivity
the roland brain is probably expecting something stronger

you could also preamplify the mic to the point where your trigger will respond whatever its sensitivity expectations.

I'd probably mess with comp/expand/gate until you end up with basically a gated burst of whatever (noise/voice/breath). This should theoretically give you a cleaner trigger signal.


Let us know what you come up with! Good luck!

[12ax7]

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It comes to mind that part of the problem is that your mic is also picking up the drums as well as your voice.

...Which got me to thinking that maybe a different type of trigger might be in order.

Wondering if there might be an off-the-shelf solution, I did a little googling and found "bite-switches", "tongue-switches" and "sip-puff-switches", but these were only on/off devices (kind of limiting, as there would be no dynamics).

I didn't see anything that really looked good.

...That is UNTIL I stumbled across this page from Osaka Electro-Communication University, which has a lab that has apparently been researching along these lines:

http://www.osakac.ac.jp/labs/taku/research.html#rt1

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They just may be interested in working with you on this.
.
Here's the only contact info I could find:

Neyagawa Campus
18-8 Hatsucho, Neyagawa-shi, Osaka 572-8530
TEL (072)824-1131

.
...Might be worth a shot.

.

[johndykstra]

I love gearslutz sometimes.

I have no input to add, only that I think it's awesome when people go above and beyond to research possibilities for strangers.

[biggator6]

Wow 12ax7.. that's spot-on.

[toolskid]

Originally Posted by 12ax7

.

It comes to mind that part of the problem is that your mic is also picking up the drums as well as your voice.

...Which got me to thinking that maybe a different type of trigger might be in order.

Wondering if there might be an off-the-shelf solution, I did a little googling and found "bite-switches", "tongue-switches" and "sip-puff-switches", but these were only on/off devices (kind of limiting, as there would be no dynamics).

I didn't see anything that really looked good.

...That is UNTIL I stumbled across this page from Osaka Electro-Communication University, which has a lab that has apparently been researching along these lines:

http://www.osakac.ac.jp/labs/taku/research.html#rt1

.
They just may be interested in working with you on this.
.
Here's the only contact info I could find:

Neyagawa Campus
18-8 Hatsucho, Neyagawa-shi, Osaka 572-8530
TEL (072)824-1131

.
...Might be worth a shot.

.

Nice one! Thanks for the contribution