For fun I thought I’d give a little glimpse of something I’m working on. I’m kind of tired of all the electronic drum stuff i’ve been using lately and wanted to design my own. Here is a little glimpse at the prototype for the trigger pad. This has four switches inside and a piezo element (what your hearing is an old alesis D4 module using the piezo). I want to be able to layer multiple circuit bent toy sounds (via the switches) and circuit bent drum modules (via the piezo).

Built in May by myself and my padre - Don Bwack - for the group Family Force 5 - a seven foot square MPC style midi controller. Weighs in at 750 lbs including intel mac, 22″ screen, 10 knobs, 8 momentary switches, 2 mod/pitch wheels, and 16 led backlit silicon pads.

This is in my garage the night we finished it. Sorry, the frame rate only catches about half of the led hits. This gives a good idea how the pitch wheels work with Ableton…

Here it is with the band Family Force 5 on the Warped Tour this summer…

I found this photo today on my laptop.  Wow.  I used to like Carter Beauford.  A bunch.  Can you tell?  I still have a heavy dose of respect for him, don’t get me wrong.  I’ve just moved on.  No hard feelings, just moved on…

Photo taken - Summer of 2001

Other ways I’ve moved on:

1. Monstrosity of an electronics setup.
   • SP202 sampler.  Ancient.
   • Both an Alesis DMPro (for the sub kick sound) and a D4 (for the click sound (the Tama triggered the D4)).
   • MIDI loom both to and from the 50lb Drum Kat.  Professionally loomed with cheap blue, green, and white electrical tape.
   • Two Mixers, harder to see is the blue Rolls mixer in the rack
2. Percussion
   • Woodblock - I do not miss it. You shouldn’t either.
   • Cowbell - I should bring this back.
   • Tambourine - The Hi Hat mic is really competing for space now.
   • Wind Chimes!!!
3. Other
   • I used to organize my stick bag.
   • My ride was mounted vertically (and it’s a Z-Custom!)
   • Extra pedals - Subkick and bank change switch.
   • Splash Cymbal - Shane Wilson won’t give this one back.

If there’s something I’ve missed.  Let me know.

I’ve recently made a major switch in my use of loops on stage. I’m now using ableton live as a software sampler instead of the sampler built in to the roland spd-s sampling pad. I still use the spd-s but only for triggering the loops in ableton.

I’m calling this a work in progress because for now i am still working out bugs and leaving hogan’s rig untouched until we decide if this route is stable enough to rely on full time. Hogan and I talked about eventually having his rig minimized with maybe a 303 sampler for a few sounds and loops he needs to run with the turntables and his synth setup. So far I am pretty impressed as ableton has not had one glitch or foul (any errors so far have been mine (sweet!)).

One of the biggest advantages to using ableton is having my click and loops locked in at all times. I can bring loops in and out of songs and all the while the click never changes. Also, ableton’s editing and clip features makes any changes to loops or arrangements quick and painless.

I’m using an edirol fa-101 as my audio and midi interface as well as my monitoring system and mixer. The hardware monitoring feature allows me to mix any of the four stereo inputs (eight if mono) with any audio from ableton to the headphone out. So my monitor mix from the engineer goes into inputs 1/2 and loops from hogan are in 7/8. I’m sending the loops from ableton out of 3/4 and the click out 5 using aux sends in ableton. Doing it this way I can monitor the loops directly and still have control of the amount i’m sending to the band both for loops and click. The spd-s is sending its midi into the edirol fa-101 to control ableton.

The little silver device is a griffin powermate. It is basically a simple usb volume knob, but I’ve implemented it as a scroll wheel and launch button for live. In its preferences you can have it send keystrokes so i used that to cursor up and down through scenes in ableton. The controller next to that is an original oxygen 8 that i’ve cut down to just the controller section and recased in plywood (kind of a temporary solution inspired by frugalpole’s stimey controller). I also removed the spring from the pitch bend wheel so i could use it as a volume fader along with the mod wheel. Eventually i want to make it a little smaller (maybe an electronincs project box) and replace all the knobs with faders and turn the key inputs into launch buttons.

Here is the back of it…

edit: i forgot to mention that i’m using a lexar lightning jump drive to hold the samples which makes latency from the drive practically nothing. copenhagen talked about this in another thread so i tried and it worked great. i got the lexar lightning because it boasts the most bandwidth, which is important for streaming audio. at this point the only latency i’m dealing with now is about 7ms of midi latency from the drum controller.

so my tracking experience might be over. the percussion stuff (tambo, bells) is usually my last chance. joy!

I bought a rogers holiday (i think its a holiday but i’m no expert) 20×14 bass drum a few years ago. its pretty, and i love the sound of old rogers. we had a rogers kit in a jazz program i was involved with in college and i really liked them. anyway, i’ve been searching for toms to finish it out for a few years no and to no luck. i’m kinda picky. anyway. i borrowed a rogers kit from dan hamilton as well as the snare i told about and i’m using the toms with my kick in the really dry room downstairs. we’re also running the kick through a bass cab in the room to fatten up the low end a little. sounds really good.

we did a track today that needed a really big fat beat throughout. no need for toms, just a fat beat. so we took the toms away and brought out the 14×8 (big!) snare that matches the 24×16 (also big!) kick drum that were provided by kieth at risen drums. they are sounding huge. i can’t wait for all to hear. also i used a set of hats that we’re given to me by my neighbor growing up. she’s kinda the reason i started playing in the first place. these hats are pretty trashed. they are not hand hammered. more like hammered by kids for the last 30 years. and they are thin to begin with. she gave me an entire kit that is a japanese student model from the late 60’s. the original heads are still intact. you could not get their sound anywhere else. go listen to “beautiful collision” if you want a reference. i’ll have pictures for them tommorow maybe.

I have a few new drums that have already been used on tracks for the new record. I’m gonna try and post what drums I use throughout recording for my own sake (my memory is pretty useless) and to give anyone who cares a little breakdown.

We played about a month ago at a church in Austin where a good friend of ours is the pastor. I used the church’s kit that night and it had a Yamaha Copper Snare. I loved it. All the attack and “crack” of a Ludwig Black Beauty but with warmer tones and a little lower pitch. This copper drum was on ebay pretty cheap so I couldn’t resist. The hammering and cast hoops only makes it darker and warmer. It was immediately used on the first two tracks we did “Can You Feel It” and “For A Thousand Tongues”.

Dan Hamilton of The Robbie Seay Band has an old Rogers Wood Dynasonic - Superten hybrid that has been a staple of Crowder records. I think it can be heard at its finest on “All Creatures” on Illuminate, but it has been used on numerous tracks over the years in many, many different ways. It’s basically a wood Dynasonic shell with Superten hardware, which I’ve read was a common thing to do in the seventies. It sounds fantastic. Anyway, I wanted one bad but thay are hard to find and pretty expensive, so i had Kieth at Risen Drums build me a clone. Ten Ply maple shell with reinforcement hoops, with a completely round bearing edge. It’s 14×6.5 and I think it really compares well to the original Rogers. We used it on “Glory of it All”.

I should also note that Kieth at Risen finished the drums from “A Collision”. We were gonna do a cloth wrap that was gonna look very vintage (like they had sat out in a barn for a hundred years) but it didn’t work out. So we did this kinda 70’s retro green fade with silver sparkle which looks crazy good. It has 24×16 and 26×14 kick drums (very big) and 12 14 and 16 inch toms. he also made a 14×8 snare to go with it.

Here’s a short video of the keyboards kinda acting out a little song. I kinda lose control there at the end but for my first attempt i think this is kinda fun. I’ll have some better pics of the building process and final layout soon…

Here’s a photo of my latest circuit bending project. I wanted to build a MOTM Modular synth after hearing a friend’s System 700 but decided that doing a more circuit bent version could offer me more of the sounds i wanted. This is the first part in a series of units that will all integrate together. This unit consists of a Casio SK-1, SK-5, and a Yamaha VSS-30. All bending points are banana plug with 1/4″ ins and outs. Its about 90% done at this point and will hopefully be finished for beepcon.

I’ll post a lot more pics when it is finished…

other inspirations:
http://www.anti-theory.com
http://highlyliquid.com
http://frederic.letaconnoux.free.fr/cpg135/thumbnails.php?album=27
http://electro-music.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=76364#76364
http://www.jz-server.de/forum2/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?233

I’ve been using the same basic setup live for a couple years now. keith anderson of risen drums made the kit. its the first kit he built for me and it might just be the only kit i’ll ever need for live use. after meeting keith at a show in st. paul, and talking about drums for a while, i was really pumped about letting him build a kit for me. i had wanted to do a wood hoop kit since playing joey parish’s kit on a tour a few years earlier. i had keith build me this kit just in time for the summer tour with “smitty” and friends.

it was perfect. every piece of the kit sounded just as i had hoped. so like i said, i won’t be looking for a new live set anytime soon.

to my right i have a sampler, a metronome, and a mixer. the sampler is a roland spd-s sampling drum pad. it has nine drum pads that allow me to trigger sounds and loops. it will hold about 512mb of data and roland has a really great audio compressor which means plenty of room. we’ve been using roland hardware samplers since we bought our first sp-202 in 2000. they have easily been the most stable part of our band. the metronome is a roland dr beat and the mixer is a beringer rack mixer.

i’m basically just listening to either the loops hogan is running, the loops from the spd-s, or my metronome. sometimes i’m using all three but not very often.