Midi kick pedal

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

Not sure what would be the name of such a device, but I would like to have a pedal or 2 to use as a kick drum with my model cycle. It would need to send a midi message, of just a hit (or sustain too?) for a certain midi note and channel.

I know there are some midi pedal that you could program to do that, but most of them a click button that aren’t meant to me being played all the time. The shape of the pedal or the button is not practical for such use.

It wouldn’t need to be a real kickdrum pedal, but something that could sustain a regular pressing action.

Any product like that or I’d need to hack something toghether?

#2

why not just get a footswitch controller that you can program the midi message and then use any pedal you want with it so you aren’t so limited in your choices.

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#3

Yeah either a food switch controller, something like this: Miditech MP-1 – Musikhaus Thomann

Or you get a proper kick pedal, eg something like the fantastic Roland KD9 (Roland KT-9 Kick Trigger Pedal – Musikhaus Thomann) plus some form of trigger-to-midi converter (eg Alesis Trigger I/O).

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#4

THIS.
i found footswithch pedals just horrible tactile-wise when tried to use them for kick drum input, and never was able to get acceptable results with them (tried two or three different ones).

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#5

ok thanks, so there is really no such a product as a midi kick trigger pedal. I wonder why this is not a thing? Like it would match really well with finger drumming and a couple pedal no?

Thanks for the different solution, I’ll see what works best.

#6

I guess it’s because e-drums and the likes mostly use triggers, but like already mentioned, you can use a trigger to midi converter.

#7

they made it but it comes with some, ahem, limitations.

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#8

Yeah - ok well the simplest of what I can see is;

Diy stomp box + piezo => ardiuno => midi

Battery powered. Got the piezo, the arduino and the know how… now just have to find the time!

I hear you that there are the trigger to midi converter but these are huge and complex for what I had in mind!

#9

I’ve used a roland td-3 brain I got on the cheap for kick trigger to midi, relatively compact, much smaller than rack. Multiple ins etc. They probably have other small brains but that was the smallest I knew of at the time and is a little older so you might be able to find a used one cheap like I did.

The most compact setup for a live show I’ve seen used was a roli block on the floor of the stage at the flight of the Conchords show. You would need a Bluetooth receiver or a usb/midi converter for the hardware so not cheap but very small and has the velocity. Not sure it would hold up to heavy kick abuse but thought it was an interesting setup

I used a sustain pedal on the footswich input of mpc 1000/2500 to trigger kick and other samples, no velocity though

Many ways to achieve this with features integrated into other hardware I have but not sure of an obvious dedicated off the shelf solution. I like the physical beater action, but if you just need a foot tap switch it wouldn’t be to hard to hack up something cheap and make it smaller rehousing the circuits and inputs you need