[sdiy] Percussion synthesis, any interest?

[The Peasant]

Hi Tim,

> 1) I think you might be able to leave off the Skin Attack
> controls. I can
> see having a slow attack for the shell tone (especially
> if you're
> synthesizing a very large drum), but I think the skin
> wouldn't need it.

OK, good suggestion. But I would like to be able to make as 
wide a range of sounds as possible, and I found it useful 
to have attack controls when testing the circuit on the 
breadboard, especially for the VCO and LFO envelope 
modulation. Would you think that it would be more important 
to have choice of square or triangle VCO FM or to have an 
attack control on the skin envelope? Can you suggest any 
other interesting or (more importantly) realistic 
modulations that I may have missed?
 
> 2) I know it means more knobs, but how about including
> pan controls for the
> outputs? Especially for the toms.

I really wanted to have these, but simply do not have the 
space. I do intend to have a stereo output with each drum 
panned to an appropriate position, but with internal 
trimpots.

If you look here, you can see the lower panel drilled for 
the controls:

www.angelfire.com/electronic/epeasant/projects/ssdrums/panel
2.jpg

I have placed a 10 X 15 matrix of controls within the plate 
size of 14 X 20 inches, allowing 1 1/4 inches per control, 
reasonable but dense. I wish I had more space, but this 
project is intended to be an easily transportable 
performance unit, and the wooden case on the webpage is 
what I have to fit it in.
 
> 3) I really like the /2 and /4 outputs for the toms.
> Should get you some
> very beefy sounds.

Thanks, that's precisely what I am hoping for.
 
> 4) I might label things a bit differently
>      
>      VCO Sweep         as   Tone Sweep or Freq Sweep
>      LFO/VCO Attack    as   Mod Level Attack or Mod Level
> Envelope Attack
>      VCO LFO           as   Tone FM or OSC FM
> 
> I personally found the LFO/VCO nomenclature a little
> confusing. At first, I
> thought you could switch the mod source between sub audio
> (LFO) and audio
> (VCO) rates. I figured it out after looking over the
> block diagrams, but I
> think different terminology might make it easier to
> understand. On the other
> hand, if you're the only person who'll ever use it then I
> wouldn't worry
> about it. :)

I would like it to be as clearly understandable as 
possible, and the lettering will be Brother p-touch labels, 
so I can always improve them. I like your suggestions.

> 5) Along the same lines as item 4, maybe draw a box
> around the LFO section
> and use the panel graphics to make the different 'blocks'
> more apparent
> (LFO, EGs, VCO). I do a lot of interface / face panel
> design so I could take
> a stab at this if you'd like. Just some simple boxes and
> lines might make
> things easier to interpret. Of course, the really cool
> way would be to show
> a block diagram on the face panel and then graphically
> link the controls to
> the different 'sub modules' but this would take much more
> panel space.
> 
> Whaddaya think?
> 
If you want to suggest some panel graphics that would be 
great. As you can see, there is very limited space, so it's 
a bit of a challenge. As well, I was going to use 
pinstriping and labels for graphics, so I can't do anything 
very fancy. I was considering color coding the knob caps 
however.

Anyone care to suggest a good mixer circuit for this?

Thank you very much for the feedback!

Take care,
Doug
______________________
The Electronic Peasant

www.electronicpeasant.com