Drum pads for your fingers?

[Consul]

I'm curious as to whether Megadrum could be used with piezo sensors triggered by one's fingers, as most DIY drum pads are designed to be hit with sticks, which creates a lot more force. I'm imagining a DIY version of the ZenDrum (http://www.zendrum.com/), only more customized to my own preferences, and probably a lot cheaper as well. I guess at this point, the idea is to design small pads that can give off enough signal with the amount of force the fingers can create.

Thank you for the help, and also for the cool project and the ideas it gives me. :)

[dmitri]

First:
The Analogue to Digital conversion in MegaDrum uses 10 bits, i.e. can have values between 0 and 1023 which is than normalized to 0-127 velocity levels. As long as difference between threshold and maximum level is more than 128 you will get full dynamic range with minumum velocity step of one. If the difference is less you will still get the full dynamic range but with coarser (larger) steps. E.g. 1,2,3,4,5,6...127 in the first case and 1,3,5... in the second case.
Second:
Regarding hitting piezos with fingers. While testing MegaDrum I used bare piezo and as far as I remember they were very sensitive to finger taps and the difference between threshold and maximum level far exceeds 127 so you'll most likely be able get full dynamic range with the smallest step of 1.

Regards
Dmitri

[Consul]

Great, thank you! This helps me out a lot.

Are there any particular piezo pads you recommend, or will just about any do the job?

Thank you again!

[Consul]

I'm sorry about the questions. It can wait until you're back from vacation.

[dmitri]

I guess any piezo pad will work fine with Megadrum. I have one Yamaha pad, one Millenium Kick pad, one Millenium Cymbal pad, several DrumExtreme (iON) pads and a couple of DIY pads and all of them work fine.

[Consul]

Great, thank you. Looks like I have a nice project coming up.