Since she’s already working in the context of a drum kit, maybe it makes sense to find a second-hand e-drum kit with midi out, and only connect up the drum pads you need? I guess the tradeoff would be that it’s a bit more space per pad than something like the SPD/Octapad style pad triggers, but whether that’s a pro or a con seems related to how much space she has for the drum kit, and whether or not it’s easier to have something more like a drum head to hit.
Piezos on practice pads seems like it might be a good DIY Project Recommendations, if you have time for that sort of thing
Quite sturdy… I have it on a Gibralter mounting bracket and stand… the whole thing is pretty solid. I’m a heavy handed drummer, and it seems to work well. The whole thing is covered in a very thick silicon jacket (which is field removable and replaceable!) and the back is an aluminium plate for rigidity.
Very cool! I’m also a drummer and backed their kickstarter. I might be behind in getting mine as I missed all the emails asking for my address! But hopefully I’m not too far back in the line.
Dynamics with fingers is really great and expressive. With sticks a little less… but, er, that might be more due to me being a heavy drummer (and using a BopPad for so long which really requires a thwack)… hopefully it’ll let me learn to lighten up my technique.
I’ll try to make a demo video of the dynamic range soon.
Really awaiting more reviews because the price tag isn’t impulse buy territory (and also nothing is impulse buy territory for me) but this seems really great. I wish it was slightly smaller because I don’t need all that real estate but damn it’s an interesting offer that ticks a lot of boxes.
This, but also it overlaps a lot with both the Linnstrument (as an MPE controller) and the Nord Drum 2 (as a drum pad controller, though that is also a synthesizer) so buying one would mean selling something for me. One plus of the Linnstrument is that the firmware is open source so if Roger Linn and G.Bevin ever abandon it there is nothing to stop the community from maintaining it. As far as I can tell the Erae Touch’s firmware is proprietary which while I understand from a business perspective (you don’t get people mucking with your vision by forking your firmware) it means if it isn’t successful then you’re stuck with the last version. I’d hope something I spend this much money on I could still use in 10-20 years with a computer that is potentially not compatible with the current software.
To pour a little more GAS onto the fire: I asked the devs of the Erae touch if it’ll have a more low level API (because was worried that I wouldn’t like the workflow of plugging together building blocks) and they said that it’ll be able to report every bit of data from the FSRs and that you’ll be able to control the display on the individual LED level (both via SysEx). This was a few months ago and I’m not sure if any of that already exists (it was still in development then), but it sounded very exiting to me.
The Erae team hasn’t yet decided to open source… but several of us are pushing.
There is already an API element that you can put in a layout, and have that section of the surface (lights and sensors) interact with your software via SysEx, while the rest of surface does the other normal things you can have it do. This is nice as you don’t need to reimplement all the stuff it does already.
BUT: I wouldn’t buy this just yet: It has some significant bugs in the firmware - like MIDI getting fucked up mid-performance - so you don’t want to go live with it just yet. They know about these bugs, but we’ll see how fast they can fix them.
Agreed on all points. Which is why I have my fingers crossed for the success of this one as I think inevitably it would compel them to make a smaller one.
This large pad seems like something that could have a ton of uses besides drumming and I’m excited to see how folks end up enjoying theirs. Especially once lower level access is given.
On a cheaper spectrum, the haptic feedback addition to the new, kickstarter only FreeDrummer 2 set also has me curious. I’m sure they’re nowhere near the “real deal” of hitting a drum set. But for a guy who just wants to play for fun and maybe make some simple hat and drum patterns as basics for early writing process, it seems potentially worthwhile. Anybody have/play with a freedrummer 1?
For real? That’s insane. Screw that. I didn’t read too much about them, but that paywall of MIDI protocol of all things has taken them right off of my list.
