Hi there,
I was wondering what you guys use to trigger and ‘drive’ BFD3? Not being a real drummer with an electronic drumkit and all?
I have an old M-Audio Triggerfinger, but I’m not too thrilled about it anymore. Maybe it is time for a hardware upgrade?
Curious to hear what you use,
Cheers,
Chris
In absence of my very cheapo electronic kit, I bought an AKAI 218. It’s cheap ~85€, it’s dead easy to set up, it has 6 endless potentiometers (not encoders) that you can use for anything you like, 16 pads and 16 presets. It’s fully customizable on the MIDI front, so you can create preset with different assignments for different tasks.
Velocity wise, it’s not excellent, but it’s not bad either. If you need the sequencer, you could go for the 232, but it’s 200€. Personally, I don’t see the point. 218’s good enough for rock and roll.
It all depends on the budget, actually. But seeing that I’m not a finger drumming god, I make do with the very decent 218 and some editing, when needed.
By the way, when you set up a keymap in BFD3, velocity response curves work wonders. I continue to refine them of course, but the first time I set them brought the response and feel from “okay, works fine”, to “ok now this is a musical instrument I’m playing on.”
Oh, and it also has aftertouch, so that you can choke cymbals by digging into the pad.
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that’s good advice!
thanks. I’ll definitely look into the AKAI 218. I don’t need a sequencer, on board sounds or other bells and wistles, just a good tool to construct my own grooves more.
I have built a finger drumkit myself, based on old CDs and piezo mics. Wasn’t what I intended but after testing a lot of products I finally decided to have my own take. It’s based on an Alesis Trigger i/o which should be very cheap to get. If people are into electronics and programming there are also options to build your own controller based on Arduino (many tutorials and code examples out there).
It allows much more subtile dynamics and faster playing than any pads I’ve tried.
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Wow! that’s really cool!
and does it work?
I just had a session with it today, yes- it’s many years old by now and it still works fantastic.
Especially on tom rolls, hihats and pentatonic stuff (not BFD) like handpans.
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The only challenge really is to avoid crosstalk. This one here has the CDs mounted like cymbals on a wooden pillar that is glued on absorbing material, today I would do it different and just yesterday I thought about making a new one or revamping this one. But, and that’s the reason for the session today, I leave it like it is because it does all I want.
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Here is an even older prototype I did 2014, the CDs have a drum skin glued on, which was a bad idea because they were bending after a while.
The Alesis signal went right to a CV interface for playing the Moog 
https://filedn.eu/lrrvREP7hR4fDnEEFrKIPch/moog.m4v
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Wow, you should get it patented! There is a market for it I’d say.
great work!
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CD crotales? Good job!