MIDI Drum Controller

MIDI DRUM CONTROLLER ECE 476 Project -- Spring 2005 By Siew Im Low and Zheshen Zhuang
Home Introduction Design Hardware Software Results & Conclusions Appendix	[ INTRODUCTION ] MIDI Drum Controller Our Final Project for ECE476 was to build a MIDI drum machine using the MEGA 32 microcontroller. We wanted to make an actual product that can produce “good-quality” percussion sounds. Our drum machine would be played via a keyboard or any sound card with MIDI support. The user would be able to choose from a wide selection of drum types (e.g acoustic, hip-hop), and percussion instruments both common to General MIDI (GM) specifications and native to the Roland RS-70 keyboard. Each drum-pad is fitted with an accelerometer, providing expressive, polyphonic drum play with velocity and volume control. When struck, the drum machine will send the appropriate MIDI messages to the external MIDI sound module. We would also like our drum machine to be able to be capable of short 30 seconds record and playback. The project was a great learning experience about how music is generated digitally and how we can interface a set of external physical drum-pads to an electronic instrument. Home \| Introduction \| Design \| Hardware \| Software \| Results & Conclusions \| Appendix Copyright @2005 Siew Im & Zheshen

MIDI DRUM CONTROLLER

ECE 476 Project -- Spring 2005

By Siew Im Low and Zheshen Zhuang

Introduction

Results & Conclusions

Appendix

[ INTRODUCTION ]

MIDI Drum Controller

Our Final Project for ECE476 was to build a MIDI drum machine using the MEGA 32 microcontroller. We wanted to make an actual product that can produce “good-quality” percussion sounds. Our drum machine would be played via a keyboard or any sound card with MIDI support.

The user would be able to choose from a wide selection of drum types (e.g acoustic, hip-hop), and percussion instruments both common to General MIDI (GM) specifications and native to the Roland RS-70 keyboard. Each drum-pad is fitted with an accelerometer, providing expressive, polyphonic drum play with velocity and volume control. When struck, the drum machine will send the appropriate MIDI messages to the external MIDI sound module. We would also like our drum machine to be able to be capable of short 30 seconds record and playback.

The project was a great learning experience about how music is generated digitally and how we can interface a set of external physical drum-pads to an electronic instrument.