MIDI Drums made from Margarine Tubs

[Stopp,Gene]

Hi DIY,

Here's something I built recently that may be of interest to
DIY'ers.....

I've built a MIDI drum set out of a bunch of margarine tubs - those
little plastic round containers with snap-on lids. We have a big
stockpile in the kitchen tupperware cupboard, so I put some of them to
use for musical purposes. They are used as transducers to provide analog
triggers into a trigger-to-MIDI box that I bought for this purpose.

OK, I admit, I didn't build the trigger-to-MIDI box, I went out and
bought an Alesis DM-5. Some things are just worth paying money for and
skipping over the design and building process (at least for me at the
moment). The DM-5 has 12 analog trigger inputs, MIDI output, and a bunch
of pretty useable sounds built in as well. So the DIY portion of this
post is in regards to the trigger pads.

Here's the details: the margarine tubs are arranged in three rows on a
piece of particle board - three on top, four in the middle, and three
below, for a total of ten triggers. I left two triggers un-used for
extra trigger pads, and ten is enough to simulate a typical drum kit.
Inside of each tub is a small block of wood, screwed down through the
bottom of the tub into the board. In the center of the block of wood is
a hole about 3/4" diameter (drilled by a hole saw). Into the hole sits a
PC speaker, with a tight fit by the use of tape wrapped around the
speaker magnet. The speaker faces upward towards the lid of the tub. A
piece of foam rubber, cut to the size of the speaker cone, sits on the
cone, and is held in place by the lid of the tub, slightly compressed.
The speaker wires run out of a hole in the side of the tub, to a 1/4"
jack that plugs into a trigger input of the DM-5. The DM-5 is mounted
underneath the board, so that the front panel controls are accessible
under the front edge of the board. All of the trigger wires run over the
back of the board and into the DM-5.

It works great! The sensitivity parameters of the triggers are maxed out
at 99, but the full range of velocity is available. The foam rubber
under the plastic lid provides enough damped stiffness so that a
drumstick will "bounce" on it, much like a real drum head, so that rolls
are easy to do (assuming you have developed the required drum-roll
technique, something I'll need to work on myself). I use real
drumsticks, BTW. The kids love to bang on it, especially our 2-year-old
duaghter. It's a good thing too, because I had to justify the cost of
the DM-5 to my wife by saying "I'm doing it for the kids!". The DM-5 can
be purchased for between $325-375 these days. The price may drop in the
near future since Alesis has recently come out with a new improved
version (I forget the model number).

Anyway, just another use for PC speakers.....

 - Gene