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hi,

i'm totally new to this but am really interested in building a drum module. i'm reading up everything i can on understanding schematics and hope to tackle this fairly soon.

i have two questions. first, let's say i put two piezo sensors into a single drum pad, and have each one go into an input in the drum brain. i would assume two equally strong midi messages would get sent out into my laptop, and i'd hear an identical snare & tom (or whatever the two inputs are assigned to) hit?

secondly, and i'm mostly hoping for confirmation on the feasibility of the following (to the best of my knowledge a schematic for this does not exist): let's say i have a drum pad with two piezo sensors in it as illustrated above. would it be possible to build a drum machine that takes the two separate signals (that occurs when the pad is struck) and proccess each one in a slightly different manner? more specifically, take the 'first' signal and have the strength of it determine a particular channel (ie snare, bass, hi-hat, whatever), and then take the 'second' signal and have it determine the velocity/attack/usual parameters (like it normally would) and then send that message out taking into account the 'channel' determined by the first? so, for example, if i struck the pad 'quietly' the signal from the first piezo would tell the drum module to use a snare drum, and then the second piezo would tell the drum module to use a 'quiet' snare drum hit. and if i struck the pad really hard, the signal from the first piezo would tell the drum module to use a crash, and then the second piezo would tell the drum module to use a really loud crash.

i know it sounds a little stupid (ie the whole purpose of velocity would be defeated since each instrument would automatically get a certain 'loudness' assigned to it) but this is exactly what i want. do you think building something like this would be at all possible? do you see any huge problems in what i'm describing? let's assume i just wanted to use one of these pads (ie two inputs) - would building something like this be completely different from the edrum, or would it just be a little different?

also if anyone knows of any good beginner documents/material online i'd appreciate it. i have 0 background in building anything mechanic and all these schematics are just confusing as hell to me!

thanks!