Trying to play synth with Alesis ControlPad while drumming.

[natrixgli]

Hi,

The ControlPad isn't gonna offer you any sort of trigger envelope so you have to look at your synth patches. You could add in a longer release time but I don't think the EA-1 has a ADSR envelope, just one knob, right?

Either way, if I were going to do this I would use samples. It would be easier to tailor the sound to a short trigger envelope such as a drum pad will provide. If you want a "doot" sound, that's going to be hard to achieve using the synth's envelope because adjusting the release time is your only option and that's going to make more of a "DOOOoooooohhhh" sound.

Unless you had a synth that had the ability to draw a custom release envelope a sample is probably the way to go.

[natrixgli]

One thought: Do you have an iPad? The Korg iMS-20 app is a clone of the Korg MS-20, which had a "Hold" option on it's envelope generator. This might allow you to achieve the sound you are looking for with short trigger times....

If you have an iPad, you can get a handy MIDI enabled dock from Alesis.

[natrixgli]

I recently replaced one of the sensors in my ControlPAD with $2 in parts from Radioshack I guess that's one plus for piezo triggers!

[foetus66]

I wonder if there isn't some sort of MIDI device I could put between the two to interpret? Like, it receives a triggered note, and responds by sending a pre-programmed midi sequence, perhaps on another channel? This sequence wouldn't need to consist of anything more than a single note with a good quarter-second before the note-off. I imagine an MPC could do this for me, but putting a device like that into this chain (and this minimal band for that matter) seems awfully superfluous -- same with the ipad solution.. not to mention both are a bit pricier than this is probably worth.

[Alex Aliferis]

I set up an environment in Logic which allows me to set note lengths for triggers from my ControlPad and also easily set up custom scales on the fly. If you're a Logic user, I would be happy to post it to the web for download.

[Jobot]

I had a controlpad setup next to my kit for the same thing, was running to a mpc though, try stacking drum sounds on top of some of the synth notes and as someone said check the adsr settings on your synth and you should be able to get more sustain, or go to a sampler. My control pad lasted a year and a half before the main board fried, i broke each trigger out to a 1/4" jacks i added to the back panel, now its just a trigger pad i run into a module