i was thinking about positional sensing, or maybe better termed zone detection, without the need for a center-cone-trigger or a side-mounted trigger in combination with a (non-piezo'ed) center-cone/stressball/etc.
I am guessing we all are at one point or another
To try something out, i just taped two piezos to the underside of a meshhead (drum-tec pro, which is why i also stuffed the drum with a fleeceblanket) - one piezo at the utmost edge and one in the center.
I wired them like you would normally wire a head/rim-piezo pad. This actually worked quite well and not even the crosstalk was an issue, since hitting head and rim under normal circumstances would create a rimshot in this case it just created a head or half edge sound (depending on which note i selected).
Of course it worked best/only in the quarter to half part of the drum into which i placed the edge-piezo.
So using the tweakability of Head/Rimshot/Rim triggering, one can actually achieve some form of zone detection. Maybe that's not actually news, for me it was.
But of course the downside comes when actual Rim/Rimshot triggering is added.
Since the spot on the mesh-head which i usually strike when doing rimshots lies in the zone i was using to only play the head-sound and not the half-edge-sound, i wired the center-head-piezo (additionally to the existing wiring) and a rim-piezo like a normal dual-pad and plugged that into a second input.
Configuration wise this would also go like a normal dual-pad except that the head-piezo would not be used to actually trigger a sound, only to decide wether the rim was hit alone (rim click) or together with the head (rimshot).
Pretty sure you guessed it, because of the wiring of the center-head-piezo in the first input i would get a rimshot only accompanied by a normal head-sound. Soundwise not the worst, but looking at BFDs/Mainstages Midi Log it was either one or the other that was received first which could result in some timing discrepancies.
This also means that the possibility of loading a second instance of BFD and for example choking the snare with the head-sound in one instance when playing the rimshot of the same snare in the second instance is there but not consistent in what will come first.
But none the less building a drum with one reflection plate for head- and another for half-edge-triggering (maybe a "circle" on the lower and something like "half-a-circle" on the upper part of the head where one would be more likely to play the half-edge-sound...).
Any ideas how to get rid of the "double-sounding" center-head-piezo?
Having the rim-piezo control a relais which disconnects the wiring to the first input
?Implementing something like a two-step-midpoint/width calculation inside megadrum for three piezos
?Or using something like an arduino to take the input of all three piezos, see which one was struck how hard and then give out those exact values to the corresponding inputs of megadrum
?Very happy to hear your thoughts!!
