Transcript for the video "How I Made My Drumkit, Part8"

Note: this page includes very few pictures, watch the video for the complete story!

Hi my name is Marcel and I would like to share with you how I made my electronic drumkit and how you could be making your own electronic drum kit. This is part 8 of a 10 part series. This one is about equipment. As you will understand, it is not easy to make your own equipment. So generally equipment is something you need to buy, in a store or online. In this video I will first show you what equipment you need in general, then what equipment I use in my curent drumkit and how it is all connected.

In general, if you want to play electronic drums you have two options. The simplest option is to use a drummodule. Lots of brands make drummodules, most wellknown are Roland, Yamaha and Alesis. They all work the same really. You connect triggers or pads to the inputs, you assign sounds to the inputs and the output of the module is audio. One good example is the Alesis D4 module. I still use one today, as you will see in a minute. Here in The Netherlands you can buy one for less than 100 euro.

The second option is to buy or make a trigger-to-midi interface, also called a pad-to-midi interface. When I started electronic drumming over 20 years ago, I bought a Roland PM16. A new example such an interface is the Alesis trigger I/O. They work the same. You connect your pads to the inputs of the interface, you assign MIDI note numbers to the inputs and the output of the interface is a MIDI stream. That means that you need to connect the interface to a MIDI sound module or sampler and that component will convert the MIDI stream into sound.

So these are your two options, as I explained the easy option is to use a drum module.

In the 90’s Alesis made several great drum modules and I have been using those for over 20 years. The Alesis modules have 12 inputs. In the beginning when I played 13 pads, I plugged two pads in one input and that worked fine for me.

When I extended my drumkit to 17 pads, I started using two drum modules: one Alesis D4 and one DM5. In the zeros I replaced the DM5 with the DMPro.

This year my Alesis DMPro died on me and I decided I would like to try a Roland module for a change. So I bought a secondhand Roland TD8. The Alesis D4 basically serves as a pad-to-midi interface, triggering sounds on the TD8. So the system works just like if the TD8 would have 24 inputs.

I hope these schematics helped you understand the basics and why I use two drum modules in my drumkit. Now let's take a look at my equipment, because it is not just two drum modules. I use more equipment than that.

Below on the right you see the Roland TD8 module. On the left side you see the adapters, fitted in a socket with overvoltage protection. On either side of the socket you can see a small box. The one on the left is my headphone amplifier, I will tell you more at the end of this video. The small box on the right of the socket enables me to adjust my Hi-Hat. I won’t go into that in this video, I will explain how I play Hi-Hat sounds in another video, that I plan to make in the future.

In the middle here I mounted the Alesis D4, one 19 inch rack unit. On top of the D4 on the left side, I have a small mixer. Obviously I use it to mix the different audio signals. The main input goes to the mixer that all band members plug into. However, I want a different audio mix for myself, since I use a metronome and I do not want that to sound on the PA. This mixer has several types of outputs, but the Aux is the only way to create a different mix.

Using the Aux knobs on each channel, I can make a second mix for a set of headphones. So the metronome is included in the Aux mix, but not in the Main mix.

During practise at home, I use this Sennheiser HD485 headphone. it's pretty old, but really comfortable and that's really important if you need to wear it for an hour or longer. During rehearsels and gigs, I use these Shure SE215 in-ears because I do not want to use large headphones on stage. I am quite happy with my in-ears. But when I push them in, they isolate almost completely. So to hear the band I need the main mixer to provide me with the band sound. During gigs, I manually mix the band, my metronome and my own drumming to my in-ears. I do not use floor monitors or 'butt kickers'.

To the right side of the mixer you can see a netbook. It is a small computer but it is the heart of my setup. Being a software developer, I have made software for it myself. I do lots of things with it, so I decided to make a separate video on my software. For now, let’s say that it’s primary function is to play audio and it’s secondary function is to select sounds on my drum modules, through MIDI program change. Also, the software has an intelligent metronome. More on that in the next video!

So those are the main components, seen from the front. To show you how it's all connected, we need to move to the workbench, because there is not a lot of room here to film the back. Obviously to move only the flightcase I need to unplug the multi-connector. Then I need to unplug the power.

To show you how everything is connected, I need to take off the top half. First I need to unplug 12 jacks that go to the D4. Then I can take the top half off.

In the lower left corner, you can see my multi connector. This female connector receives all signals from my drumpads. The 12 cables I just unplugged, were plugged in the Alesis D4. As you can see now, each cable has the exact length required, to avoid cable junk. On the left side, you can see 12 other cables run to the TD8 trigger inputs. The TD8 has only 10 inputs, but the first and last input is a stereo jack than can handle two piezos. So these 12 cables here are connected to 10 inputs on the TD8.

To transport signals for 24 pads, I need 48 pins in my multi connector. I have also put in extra pins for footswitches and LED lights. Some of these are for future use. The multiconnector has 72 slots for pins, so I still have room for expansion.

So that is the trigger configuration. The next thing to show you is the MIDI configuration. On the left here you see a box which is the USB to MIDI interface. It is the Cakewalk UM-2G. That is connected to the netbook through this USB cable. It has two MIDI in’s and two MIDI out’s, but I use only one of each. I don’t have plans yet, but I could use the second MIDI connection for an external sampler, keyboard player, light controller or a video wall.

The blue MIDI cable connects the MIDI OUT of the Cakewalk interface to the MIDI IN of the Alesis D4.

The orange MIDI cable goes from the MIDI OUT of the Alesis D4 to the MIDI IN of the Roland TD8.

The yellow MIDI cable goes from the MIDI OUT of the Roland TD8 to the MIDI IN of the Cakewalk interface, to complete the circle.

The purpose of the orange MIDI cable is to send MIDI note on messages from the Alesis D4 to the Roland TD8. The Roland TD8 also has to receive MIDI program change from the netbook. However, the TD8 only has a single MIDI IN. Therefore I need to send the MIDI program change through the Alesis D4.

The purpose of the yellow MIDI cable is to enable my software to read MIDI messages from my pads. It needs that to to change sounds and to feed my intelligent metronome, when I want the metronome to follow my tempo. I will explain more in the next video!

Now I’ve shown you the trigger configuration and the MIDI configuration, what remains is the audio configuration. These two jack-jack cables connect the main outputs of the TD8 module to inputs on my small mixer. The TD8 does not provide individual outputs, but I am not a fan of individual outputs anyway. I am pretty sure there are sound engineers that can create a great sounding mix from 6 or 8 individual outputs, but I am equally sure there are guys that can't. So I am happy using main outputs only.

As I said I use the Alesis D4 as a pad-to-midi interface so that I can connect 24 pads. All the sounds that the audience is hearing, come from the TD8. However, I play my metronome on the Alesis D4. For that reason there is an audio cable running from the D4 to an input on my small mixer.

To complete the description of the audio setup, I have two stereo cables connecting my netbook to my mixer. The one from my netbook to my mixer is for playing audio, the one from my mixer to my netbook enables me to record audio.

As in most of the videos in this series, I like to show something creative. As I mentioned in the beginning of the video, the Aux signal from my mixer runs to my in-ears. However, the Aux output is a line signal, which means I have to use a headphone amplifier to convert the signal to the headphone level. I had bought a headphone amplifier with 4 outputs, but it didn't fit nicely in my flightcase.

I remembered I had an old Peavy keyboard amplifier that included a headphone output. After opening it up, I saw the headphone amp was a small piece. So I took that part out and built it in this little box. It sounds great and because it is a lot smaller, it can now be placed at the front of the case, where it is the most convenient.

So there is one last box I need to explain the function of. It is this little black box here. With this I control the LED lights. This adapter provides power for the LED's and this knob handles the intensity.

I have a few LED's next to my netbook, to make sure I can see the keys on the keyboard even when it is completely dark on stage. I also have a series of LED's down besides my pedals, to make sure I have some idea on where my pedals and pads are when the stage is completely dark. So these LED's are merely base lights, at this time I do not have light effects on my drumkit. But I might add LED's in the future, that light up when I strike specific pads. When I do, I will make a separate video of it.

Well that’s it. I showed you what equipment I use and how it is connected. As you can see, I don’t use the newest and most expensive equipment. Combining two drum modules is not that difficult, but I have found that the Hi-Hat and the MIDI implementation of the Alesis D4 and Roland TD8 are totally different. If you want to know what problems I encountered and what solutions I came up with, send me an email and I will gladly make a separate video about that topic as well.

If you have found this video interesting, you really should watch the next video too. That one is about my software. As you know now, it does not only send MIDI program change messages, but it also has an intelligent metronome. Be sure to watch part 9!

Click here for the transcript of the next video in this series