Commercial Electronic Hand Percussion

In an attempt to find a little inspiration I spent a little time searching for commercial products that were of a similar concept as my curent Cajon-inspired DMI idea. I was mostly interested in aspects of ergonomics, design and control as well as sensing technologies. I first found the Roland HPD-10:

Roland HPD-10 product demonstration
Official product page

The HPD-10 is based around a set of 10 drum pads. Each pad is pressure sensitive and are able to detect the position of the strike on their surface.

Of more interest to me is the Korg Wavedrum:

Korg Wavedrum product promotion
Korg Wavedrum official product page

The Wavedrum is especially interesting for two main reasons. Firstly the instrument does not use a typical drum pag style interface. The instrument actually uses a real drum skin as the main portion of its interface. The skin is surrounded by a rim with a control interface at the top. The instrument consists of four discrete triggers; two are part of the rim, one is just below the control interface and the fourth is the drum skin itself. The use of the skin should instantly give the instrument great tactile feedback when playing with hands or sticks. The second reason is the sensing method. The skin and rim are equiped with pickup sensors allowing the vibrations of the instrument in response to strikes to be sensed. These signals are then used as the input to the synthesis algorithms. I can imagine this allowing an amazing sense of connection and intimacy with the instrument since any conceivable interaction with its playing surface will have an audible effect which is unique each time for each player as well as a rich amount of nuance (given an appropriate and effective software strategy which I'm positive is used here). As well as this, the skin is equiped with a pressure sensor to pick up extra detail from the player's attacks. This is similar to what I had in mind for my own DMI with my idea to use piezo microphones to monitor the vibrations of the instrument body (inspired by a conversation with Hugues Genevois). The addition of pressure sensing is also an appealing idea.

There are two things however that both these controllers seem to lack and they are vibrotactile feedback and sound localization. Neither controller (as far as I can tell) has any kind of built in sound production and would rely on external speakers, removing the immediate sense of presence of an acoustic instrument. Also, neither instrument provides any kind of vibrotactile feedback system even if only as a result of active internal sound feedback. Although I can imagine this situation being better in the Wavedrum since it incorporates a much more freeling vibrating membrane (as apposed to pads) I still can't imagine it compares with being in bodily contact with say a cajon and feeling it vibrate in response to your gestures.

The Wavedrum especially then provides some interesting sensor applications as well as some evident areas that I can attempt to work on to make my DMI a little more individual