I am thinking that the CV pedals would be able to translate the analog input “short circuiting” (pedal is pressed) to a midi command but I have no experience with those and I am afraid to experiment with them.
My goal is to trigger a kick sound on the second output and play bass on the first output. It would be a life saver for my work and it would be a great replacement for stomp boxes.
If it cant be done using the analog input, has anyone seen a kick drum pedal with 5 pin midi in the wild? I did some research but couldn’t find any.
Thanks in advance for any help or ideas!
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Fairly certain there are plug-ins that can do drums, as well as synths/sequencers on the platform itself. So you can create your own drum sounds and sequence them.
There are also sample players, loopers, and other tools where you may not need a secondary pedal at all.
Using the inbuilt stuff will also allow you to have both inputs available, as the backing beats can all be programmed internally and routed out of the outputs.
I haven’t actually seen a real drum pedal before, but you can check out the aeros studio beat buddy. However, I believe that can be achieved with the mod platform.
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Hello @lambrosgg,
do you want to use a trigger pedal like these drum bass pads?
These are piezo triggers, but I don’t know if the CV inputs can analyze/convert pressure induced voltage.Then you could use the velocity information coming from the pressure and not just the note-on info…
If you want to use some sort of normal footswitch
you can do that straightforward.
Greetings and God bless, Marius
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Thanks for the reply. I am aware of the sample/generator capabilities, however they seem to be controlled by midi. I was wondering if there was a way to trigger it with a footswitch from the analog input instead.
My mistake, I thought kick drum pads were just “fancy” footswitches. I didn’t think they actually have sensitivity on them. My current setup is a sustain pedal like this (Korg PS-3 – Thomann United States) triggering a kick sample (wav) in an alesis samplepad. It would be SO convenient if I could replace my whole setup (pedalboard and the samplepad) with just the dwarf!
Yes, just a normal footswitch! What’s the most correct and efficient way to do that? I was thinking I should have a small battery connected to and the switch basically opening close the voltage supply, while a CV pedal detects the voltage change. But as I said I am not familiar with CVs and how they work and I don’t want to risk connecting even a small AAA battery on the unit’s input.
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Doable, just very impractical. And on Duo X only, the Dwarf nas no CV input.
- Set CV/EXP port to EXP
- Use a TRS switch (MUST ABSOLUTELY BE TRS)
- When pressed voltage will be max (5V for expression)
- Map the expression to a CV plugin that gives you Gate output
From here you’ll need to convert that gate to a midi note and map that to the instrument and specific note you want to trigger. I’m on the road and without my MOD, so can’t explain further.
Never.
which is a simple switch with TS connector and will short the EXP in.
The audio input? Don’t ever connect anything with more than 100 mV there or you’ll blow it.
There isn’t one.
Cheap and easy DIY Arduino-based midi controllers are plentiful – including here in the forum. You can build one of those and here you could use your current pedal as a switch into that controller and from there send a midi CC or midi note to the Dwarf via USB.
By far the easiest and most desirable solution.
(Unable to take this further until at least late September.)
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Wow bro you are amazing thank you so much. No need to go further, i now know what i have to do thanks to you. A diy midi interface for my pedal is the way to go.
Last question: Why the dwarf has CV pedals if they require CV inputs? I was under the misunderstanding that CV pedals “read” voltage from the input, not special inputs.
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Dwarf has internal CV plugins for modulating pedals and such.
Duo X has external CV I/O to interface with CV based gear and internal cv plugins.
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maybe I missed something obvious but the easiest way would just map a footswitch of the dwarf to the mindi plugin an send that note to a sampler or a drum generator. You can’t go really fast but maybe thats something until you have that footswitch.
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Hello @lambrosgg ,
sorry I made a false proposal here with my first answer above.
As @QuestionMarc stated the Mod dwarf has no CV input and the inputs cannot be used with a normal footswitch.
@spunktsch recommended the dwarf’s footswitch itself what might be your preferred solution. The MOD dwarf can trigger internal sounds and uploaded samples.
If you would like to use your Korg PS3 you need a footswitch to USB MIDI or MIDI interface. DIY is the way to go here, a cheap interface for single or double footswitches might be the beat bars FS2M.
Greetings and God bless, Marius
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They don’t.
One can input expression or midi, and have it perform CV actions.
(In the MODsphere, CV has a lot of functionalities and can be mapped ad nauseam.)
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Who this is a creativity triggering thread!
Now I want a simple midi triggering stomp box too; midi velocity would be a nice touch ^^
tapping foot goes down->signal triggered->midi in on Dwarf->selected mini-sequence is played once in dwarf (example a bassdrum hit
…while I sing and play guitar over the Dwarf
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That’s a very good idea (I didn’t know u can assign the buttons to anything) however I wouldn’t feel comfortable pressing that button for a (almost) constant kick drum for 5-6 hours gigs! That’s too much wear for an expensive device. I guess it would be fine if u want to make a song tho!
Is that FS2M compatible with the dwarf?
I think not having a simple pedal input on the Dwarf is a missed opportunity. It can be done with the adapter mj_prod suggested, but having 2 pedal inputs (trigger and expression) makes a LOT of sense on a device like the dwarf. Apart from the kick drum you could assign it to FXs or use as sustain pedal for generators. The expression pedal could be assigned on volume, wah-wah, etc. Well lets hope they include them on the next one!
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@lambrosgg you also have the Control Chain port and the Arduino Shield that you can use to create the controller that you need as you need.
(Just thought that it would be worth to mention here since no one did it)
But maybe a simply MIDI controller with Arduino would work.
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like @jon said: I think this is what the ControlChain port is intendet for.
Unfortunately this is not convenient and only available for the diy crowd but I imagine if the protocol is stable its pretty easy to have some breakout boxes that add that functionality - without using the arduino shield. Have a look at the thread of @TheRedOne.
Or use @Simon project. Again this also diy but with great documentation.
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Hey, I would suggest a Raspberry Pi Pico as an alternative to Arduino.
- It’s cheaper
- It runs CircuitPython (which might be easier for a newcomer than the arduino to use) and
- It can easily be made to appear as a midi device when you connect it to your computer or Mod device.
A proof of concept video:
The footswitch is connected to the GP2 and Ground pins of the Pico:
The Pico is connected to the Usb port of the ModDuoX and the pedalboard looks like this:
The midi transpose is not needed, I just used it to be able to change the sound that is triggered. I have programmed the raspberry to always send a midi note 60 when the footswitch is pressed.
The code that I used:
import adafruit_midi
import board
import digitalio
import time
import usb_midi
from adafruit_debouncer import Debouncer
from adafruit_midi.note_on import NoteOn
from adafruit_midi.note_off import NoteOff
# MIDI setup as MIDI out device
midi = adafruit_midi.MIDI(midi_out=usb_midi.ports[1], out_channel=0)
pin = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.GP2)
pin.direction = digitalio.Direction.INPUT
pin.pull = digitalio.Pull.UP
switch = Debouncer(pin)
while True:
switch.update()
if switch.rose:
print('Pressed')
midi.send(NoteOn(60))
if switch.fell:
print('Released')
midi.send(NoteOff(60))
Whoever wants to give it a try will need to put CircuitPython on their Pico and also download the Adafruit Libraries and copy adafruit_midi, adafruit_debouncer.mpy and adafruit_ticks.mpy from the lib folder of the zip file to the lib folder of the Pico. After that, they can copy/paste the code above to the code.py file in the Pico drive.
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Is this forum even real? That’s amazing! How did u come up with all that so fast? I didn’t even know there was a Raspberry Pi so cheap… I can find that for 5,60 euros here… Definitely beats the 50 euro commercial solution and looks so fun and educational project. I will try it asap!
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Fantastic implementation! So clean and efficient, I love it!
How much more difficult would it be, in your opinion, to make a Control Chain version of this?
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Another idea:
Since I have 0 experience with Arduino, baking Rapberry pies or whatsover,
I though of laying this ‘Bitmi’ on the floor and tapping it with my foot? (tilting it a bit, to have a fgood part of the front of my foot hitting it while using my heel as anchor point on the ground)
midi straight into the usb of the Dwarf.
other option: somebody build me the raspberry pie solution in some simple casing and I’ll pay for parts, construction and shipping ^^. does it only need the usb midi input on the dwarf?
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I am not sure, I will have to check it in depth!
I think that the Control Chain library is written in C/C++ so it would have to be transcribed to python in order to work with CircuitPython, and I am not sure if Pico can handle it on the hardware level. The busio module supports RS485 but it states this on the page:
RS485 support on i.MX and Raspberry Pi RP2040 is implemented in software. The timing for the
rs485_dirpin signal is done on a best-effort basis, and may not meet RS485 specifications intermittently.
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I had a Pico lying around and some free time 
It’s a really nice alternative to Arduino (which I also love). It also has 3 ADCs, which means you could easily modify the code to add an expression pedal input.
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