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MIDI Drum Machine Features
- Eight Velocity Sensitive Pads
- Fast Response, approx 1 ms (plus 2 or 3 ms for MIDI Note-On message transmit)
- Eight Configurable Parameters per Pad (64 total)
- All front panel configuration available while playing, no special modes
- Channel Parameter, which MIDI channel a pad sends onto
- Bank Parameter, set which voice bank, for some mulit-bank synth
- Voice Parameter, set what sound will be played
- Note Parameter, what note (pitch) will be played
- Harmonize Parameter, TODO: what did this do...
- Threshold Parameter, TODO: what did this do...
- Sustain Parameter, how long will the sound last
- Limit Parameter, TODO: what did this do...
- "All Notes Off" Button
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Front Panel Operation
To adjust parameters, the user presses the Pad button to select which
pad to configure. The one of the 8 LEDs arranged in the shape of the pads
lights to indicate which pad is selected. The Option button is
pressed to select one of the 8 configurable parameteters, indicated by the
8 LEDs on the far right. At all times, the 3 digit display shows the
configured value of the select option and pad. Pressing the Up and
Down buttons increments and decrements the value. By using this
simple interface, each pad to easily to configured to play a custom sound
from any synth connected to the MIDI network.
MIDI is Required
This simple diagram shows how the MIDI Drum Machine would be used.
It only produces MIDI output messages. There is no direct audio
output. The MIDI network (red lines) requires synthesizers to
receive the MIDI commands and play sounds, which are typically
mixed (plus symbol) and of course amplified. Of course, more
complex systems are possible. The key point is that this drum
machine only prodives MIDI output messages.
TODO: Create some pages that explain the bits and bytes of MIDI, and
specifically how they are used by this project.
TODO: Add a section about the other cool features that were planned
but never got implemented (MIDI merge, interrupt driven serial I/O,
other things I probably don't remember anymore). Most of these ideas
had provisions in the firmware and hardware, which should be explained
somewhere.
Take a look under the hood.
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Features
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