Mention why the RB3 kit sucks and other stuff
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Joshua Boniface
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@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ As further motivation, the COVID-19 pandemic did an absolute number on me person
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Drumming is *excellent* exercise. Even if you're just playing basic beats, you're doing cardio, strength training on at least 2, maybe 3 or even 4, limbs, and you can work up a sweat fairly easily. So I knew what I needed to do: I needed to actually *play* my drums. But how?
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Well, there was another thing I did a lot of in my early-to-mid 20's: Rock Band! I love this game, even today. Playing Rock Band drums was pretty close to a real drumkit in terms of workout, and was always fun for me, even solo. I still had all my gear kicking around, and a few months ago my good friend suggested we bust out the game for a small gathering of friends, which was a smashing success. And it really got me thinking: could I play Rock Band with my Strike? It would solve all the problems: I'd get *visual* feedback for my playing, no audio mixing issues, and I could work up to harder songs and longer sessions over time. So I went looking for how to do this.
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Well, there was another thing I did a lot of in my early-to-mid 20's: Rock Band! I love this game, even today. Playing Rock Band drums was pretty close to a real drumkit in terms of workout, and was always fun for me, even solo. I still had all my gear kicking around, and a few months ago my good friend suggested we bust out the game for a small gathering of friends, which was a smashing success. But the fake little plastic drumkit has a lot of pain points: the kick pedal has no rebound and is flimsy and easily broken, the positions of the drums are wacky, and hitting them hard (as I'm wont to do) kills them very quickly. This really got me thinking: could I play Rock Band with my Strike? It would solve all the problems, in both directions: I'd get *visual* feedback for my playing, no audio mixing issues, and I could work up to harder songs and longer sessions over time, while also letting me play the game on a real kit with real positioning and playing feedback (proper kick rebound, drums that didn't feel like a rubber mat, etc.). So I went looking for how to do this.
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It turns out I'm definitely nowhere near the first, and I definitely won't be the last. So, the rest of this blog post will detail my setup, how I got it working, the parts I used, and the challenges I've faced with the Strike, with an eye towards helping others do this as well.
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@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ The first step of this is Rock Band Pro mode. Introduced in Rock Band 3, pro mod
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As part of Pro mode, Mad Catz made the "Rock Band Pro MIDI adapter", which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: you can input MIDI from an instrument into it, and it will "convert" it into the signals that Rock Band's Pro mode can handle. It works with virtually anything as long as you send the right MIDI notes, and doing Pro mode with electronic drums is of course one of the supported options.
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I got the Wii version of the adapter, because according to much of the community, this was the best option as it was widely available and could be easily modified (by removing a resistor) to support the PS3, while costing up to 1/3 of the price of the PS3 version, the only limitation being a lack of shoulder buttons. So I ordered one from Amazon along with a MIDI cable and hooked it up.
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I got the Wii version of the adapter, because according to much of the community, this was the best option as it was widely available and could be easily modified (by removing a resistor) to support the PS3, while costing up to 1/3 of the price of the PS3 version, the only limitation being a lack of shoulder buttons. So I ordered one from Amazon along with a MIDI cable and hooked it up. I then recalibrated the Alesis head module to output the specific MIDI notes that the adapter was looking for (documented in the manual) for each drum and cymbal.
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And it worked!
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@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ Now, many *low-end* drumkits have a workaround for this. You could simply have t
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But, the problem is, that's only for *low-end* kits. See that method of doing things isn't flexible for doing "real things" with DAWs or sequencers or what have you. On higher end kits - and the Alesis Strike Pro is a very high-end kit - what is done instead is to send a single "note" for the hi-hat hit itself, and then also send MIDI CC#4 (Control Channel #4) events containing the position of the pedal. This gives the maximum flexibility for audio equipment to handle the signal. And you can't switch off this mode on the drum kit itself; you're stuck with this mode of operation.
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Now here's the craziest thing: Rock Band 3 can accept that CC#4 signal! In fact, it's what the Hi-Hat pedal in the game is mapped to! But because the feature isn't actually implemented, it's useless. It doesn't affect the chart or rewrite the note for you as it "should" (at least, as I think it should have...). A dead end, so I thought.
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Now here's the craziest thing: Rock Band 3 can accept that CC#4 signal! In fact, it's what the Hi-Hat pedal in the game is mapped to! But because the feature isn't actually implemented, it's useless outside of the "freestyle" mode or fills (which I turn off myself); it doesn't affect the chart or rewrite the notes for you as it "should" (at least, as I think it should have...). A dead end, so I thought.
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## Part Three: An Arduino and a MIDI Shield
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@ -98,13 +98,15 @@ So I decided to replace the Arduino itself with another microcontroller, the muc
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I soldered everything together with my (brand new) [Pine64 Pinecil](https://pine64.com/product/pinecil-smart-mini-portable-soldering-iron/) - which, aside, is the best soldering iron I've ever used - using 22-gauge Ethernet wire I had laying around, and covered it in tape to protect it and the leads as well as eliminate any stray bridging from touching it. I then made a quick little wire mount, soldered onto the potentiometer anchor points of the MIDI Shield, and used this to attach it to the top of my speaker controller for a clean, easily accessible setup.
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The debugging part came in real handy as I worked to calibrate excactly what the threshold between open and closed should be, and also helped me greatly simplify the code I had originally written for maximum optimization and thus speed. At this point I started playing regularly on it, and after nearly 2 weeks I've been playing at least once a day, sometimes even more.
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## Part Five: Pictures and Code!
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What would this post be without some pictures?
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Here is a quick WIP shot of the wiring for the Blackpill and the MIDI Shield. You can see the power along the left and the various signal lines to the shield across the center. A2 and A3 are the second serial UART on the Blackpill; A5 is the button for mode control; and A6 and A7 are the LEDs for status indication. Not shown is the aforementioned heavy wire mount, which was soldered to the mechanical anchor points at the top of the board in this image.
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Here is a quick WIP shot of the wiring for the Blackpill and the MIDI Shield. You can see the power along the left and the various signal lines to the shield across the center. A2 and A3 are the second serial UART on the Blackpill; A5 is the button for mode control; and A6 and A7 are the LEDs for status indication. Not shown is the aforementioned heavy wire mount, which was soldered to the mechanical anchor points at the top of the board in this image. The boards are attached together with relatively thick double-sided tape to keep them solidly together while insulating them from each other.
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