Alternative solutions for connecting electronic drum kits to Rock Band

Posted on 2008/10/26 by richardykuo

To summarize, the GHWT drums are the easist solution, but lack of standalone availability makes the option somewhat painful.  Buying and building the MSA-P is highly flexible, but requires a lot of hacking and is time consuming.  The adapter from sethmeisterg works very well, but not working with the XBox 360 is going to cut out many of the potential userbase.  Finally, the J5 Kickbox takes a different approach from the other adapters by accepting individual pad inputs, but the lack of drum brain controls is cumbersome and potentially game affecting in some cases.

The MSA-P from Highly Liquid

The first practical, somewhat affordable, solution for connecting a drum kit to Rock Band, and the basis of a large portion of this FAQ.  Up to now, building this box has been the only option for connecting a drum kit to the XBox 360.  Because of the encrpytion used on the XBox, an existing Rock Band drum kit must be used as an intermediary part of the solution.  It is fairly complicated and time consuming to build this adapter, although obviously this FAQ simplifies the process as much as it can.

This adapter is not capable of velocity sensitive output…although, to be fair, the velocity sensitive features of both Guitar Hero and Rock Band drumming have been rather widely panned.

If you have a choice between the MSA-P and the GHWT controller, keep in mind that the MSA-P is soldered directly to the wired kit and consequently has about 5-10 ms less lag than any wireless solution.  If you are an extremely serious player, this sort of difference is noticeable and can affect your scores.  I always switch to my MSA-P when playing Rock Band, even though I have a hacked up GHWT box for Guitar Hero as well.

MIDI adapter from sethmeisterg

This home brewed adapter produced by a forum member on rockband.com serves as an equivalent to the MSA-P converter, except it acts a direct converter.  While somewhat clunky looking in appearance and suffering from an occasional bug or two with updates to the Rock Band platform, many PS2 and PS3 owners with this box seem to be quite pleased with it and have even gained new functionality over time such as velocity sensitivity and cymbal detection.

There is no version of this adapter for the XBox 360 due to the controller encryption on the platform.

J5 Kickbox

This is actually an adapter that accepts the 1/4" TRS jacks of electronic drum pads and triggers.

While slightly easier to deal with than the MSA-P, this approach eliminates some of the advantages of involving the drum brain in the solution, such as managing crosstalk and triggering between pads.  It also makes switching between the drum brain and playing Rock Band very cumbersome.  Personally, I would skip this.

Guitar Hero: World Tour drums

The drum kit for Guitar Hero: World Tour is likely to be the best option for a converter for any platform now that it is available.  The GHWT drums have a MIDI input .. what else is there to say?  You just need to make sure you map your MIDI output notes to what the GHWT drums expect … this is listed below.  Also, the controller section is fairly easily separable from the rest of the kit with some hacking, making it a nice and modular piece that can be mounted to your own electronic kit.

The biggest current disadvantage is that you can't find these drums to purchase standalone yet as of 1/1/2009.  Obviously, this will change at some point, but we don't know when.

In summary, as a mass produced solution that is easily connected to any electronic kit, modular, and capable of being used on all platforms, most of the home brewed solutions from the community are likely to be obsolete moving forward.

From http://www.scorehero.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=80389

Red=38
Yellow=46
Blue=48
Orange=49 (unused in Rock Band)
Green=45
Purple=36 (orange in Rock Band)

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TV’s in a (large) nutshell

Posted on 2008/09/07 by richardykuo

I recently rearranged my living room to be a bit more spacious…and the 24" monitor I was using for a TV wasn't cutting it any more.  I thought for a long time I could get away without a TV, but the monitor was looking awfully tiny in the corner … and with friends coming over for Rock Band and other reasons, it was time to take the plunge.

I realize this is a stereotypically male topic, but hey, as I learned recently, the male brain is more interested in visual engagement.  So you'll have to excuse me, but I can't help it … I'm genetically predisposed. =)

The short of what I did was I bought a Sharp LC46D64U 46" LCD TV.  Didn't like it so much, so sold it to a Googler for a fair price and ended up picking up a Panasonic TH-42PZ85U 42" plasma TV.  Very happy with this one.

Read the following and learn what I learned.

Looking at TV's in a store

You should do it, but you need to be aware that stores set the TV's to blow out the color and brightness…basically settings that look OK in a harsh store lighting environment but will look like crap in your home.  Whatever you see on the TV's in a store isn't what it's going to look like in your house or apartment and should be taken with a heavy grain of salt.  If you can, go look at TV's in a darkened or specialized home theater dealer … you'll be better able to judge what you like there.

Black levels

This refers to how "black" your TV really is when displaying a black image.  For an example of ideal blackness, if you were in a completely isolated and unlit room, you would not be able to see a TV displaying a black image.

Of course, in reality, this isn't the case.  You can definitely see TV's in a dark room displaying black.

The reason is that LCD's don't perfectly block the backlight, so light gets through.  Plasma TV's have residual/constant charge in the cells, so they still emit a small amount of light even when displaying a black image (or something close to it).  In general, however, the plasma approach results in better black levels, and the LCD approach is rather fundamentally flawed here.

Contrast

How much of a range of brightness can this TV show?  AKA, what is the difference between the darkest level of brightness the TV can display vs the brightest level?  The more, the better.

Manufacturers like to fudge these numbers, as they do with lots of numbers, by quoting contrast levels obtained by dynamically adjusting the image and backlight based on the content of the image or the ambient lighting.  Usually this is the "dynamic contrast ratio".  This is basically bullshit, but seems to be standard operating procedure these days.

LCD's are beginning to approach plasma constrast ratios, but plasma still takes the win on this one too.

Read this article from Gizmodo for a nice primer, and note the pictures.

Power consumption

Plasma TV's generally consume more power, but not as much as you might think.   Here's why.  The transmissive nature of LCD's mean that the backlight is on all the time.  Plasma TV's, on the other hand, only use power when charging a cell.  The maximum power consumption of a plasma TV, therefore, occurs when the screen is completely white.

Obviously this almost never happens.  So while plasma TV's are rated to consume more peak power, on average, they consume nearly the same amount as an equivalent size LCD.  In reality, the variation between individual manufacturers in power consumption is far more important.  In general, expect around 50-150 dollars in energy cost per year to run your TV. 

Here's a good CNet article about HDTV power consumption that goes into more detail. I did not consider this to be a factor when making my purchase.

http://reviews.cnet.com/tv-power-consumption/?tag=rb_content;rb_mtx  

Weight/Size

LCD TV's are generally slightly slimmer and lighter than their plasma counterparts.  We're talking about a 10-15% difference.  For example, my 46" LCD was around 70 pounds…and my 42" plasma was about the same weight. Interesting, but essentially a non-issue.

Motion Blur

This one is interesting.

On a TV, good motion resolution characteristics are important for tracking small objects and continuing to see fine detail as an image quickly pans or changes.  So while a static image may look great on any particular TV, how moving video looks on a TV is an entirely different story.  Typically, the type of consumers looking for good performance in this area are game players and sports aficionados.

Put another way, under motion, the effective perceived resolution of a display may drop.  Your 1080p display may only look like a 900p display when things are moving.

So let's talk about what causes this.

Poor response times 

LCD's have a reputation for poor motion blur characteristics.  This is largely due to the face that early LCD technology did not have good response time characteristics…that is, the pixels couldn't change to the next color as quickly as the images on the screen were changing. As a result, you would see trailing images or blur.

However, this is largely in the past for LCD's.  At a standard framerate of 60 frames per second,  a new frame is displayed every 16 ms.  LCD's have response times around 5-8ms…some going low as 2ms.

Plasma cells have always switched very quickly, so this has generally not been an issue for plasma TV's.

Sample and hold

I found this one really fascinating.

Let's assume your TV is showing you 60 frames of video per second.   Would it be better for the TV to show you

A. Each image for a full 1/60th of a second

B. Each image strobed instantaneously and precisely 1/60th of a second.

As it turns out, according to the way the human eye works, the answer is B.  Think about it this way.  Any particular image being shown to you is only valid for that instant in time. The longer that image is shown to you for the rest of that 1/60th of a second until the next frame is shown, the more "wrong" it is.  This "wrongness" is perceived as motion blur by the human eye.

This effect is called the sample and hold effect.  The "sample", or image, is displayed and then "held" for the entire 1/60th frame time.  The longer it is held, the more blur your eyes perceive. 

So the answer, obviously, is to strobe the image instantaneously every 1/60th of a second.  Of course, nothing is truly instantaneous, so now we've got issues.  The percentage of time spent displaying the image within the frame time is called the "duty cycle".

Regular LCD's have a duty cycle of around 100%…that is, they show the image for pretty much the entire duration of the frame.  CRT's have a duty cycle of 10%…that's really good!  And p
lasma TV's have a duty cycle of around 25%…which is quite good, but not perfect.

New LCD TV's compensate for this by performing either black frame insertion or frame interpolation.  These features get all kinds of weird trademarked names from each manufacturer, so you'll have to dig and interpret the sales literature to determine what features different TV's are actually offering.

I'm not going to get too deep into this, but black frame insertion basically takes the 1/60th of a second and shows the real image for 1/120th of a second and a black frame for the other 1/120th of a second.  This "clears" the image to the human eye and reduces the duty cycle to 50%.  I like this feature in LCD TV's and the effect is clearly visible to a trained eye.

Frame interpolation essentially makes up intermediate frames for the source material.  Since the TV is actually displaying different images 120 times a second, this also reduces perceived motion blur.  The problem of course, is that those intermediate images aren't real.  As a result, weird artifacts, double images, or haze can be displayed accidentally.  Anyway, some people like this feature, some people don't.  Personally, I am not interested in the potential artifacting that can result from this feature, but it's the hot new thing for 2008.

Poor source characteristics

A lot of content you watch already has motion blur built into the image.  You can verify this by freeze framing or pausing something you're watching.  So detecting motion blur in these cases can be really tricky.

Off angle viewing

LCD's used to be absolutely terrible about this…even going so far as to see the colors invert past a certain viewing angle.  Nowadays, things are much better, but not perfect.  You're likely to seeing dropoffs in brightness and contrast as you move more than 20-30 degrees off angle.

Plasma TV's emit light in an unfocused fashion from the cells in the screen, so there's no off angle viewing issues to speak of.

Depending on where you are planning to put your new TV, viewing angles may or may not be important.  In a big living room or common area, you'll notice the viewing angle issues more.

Latency

This refers to the time between when the TV receives an image vs when it displays it.  This is often referred to as input lag.  Today's TV's perform a lot of image processing to enhance or otherwise tweak the incoming image.   Unfortunately, the processing results in a delay before the image gets to the screen.  Typically, this range anywhere from 0 to 100 ms, although on average you'll probably see latency in the 30-60 ms range.

Letancy is important for competitive/serious gaming because every millisecond between when an event is displayed vs when you react to it counts.  Latency is a non-issue for everyone else since as long as the audio and video are in sync it doesn't really matter when the audio and video get to you when you watch TV or DVD's.

For gamers, the problem is, it's really hard to find reviews that measure this specification scientifically.  As a result, you generally have a lot of well-intentioned but misguided people claiming their sets have no latency, when in fact they are simply completely unqualified to make such a claim.

Fortunately, many new TV's are starting to pay attention to this and are including game modes which significantly cut latency.  Having such a mode is no guarantee that your TV can reduce or eliminate latency, however.  If you a serious gamer, you will need to do a lot of research or do hands on testing.

Burn-in

TV's that display the same image for long periods of time are prone to suffering "burn-in".  Basically, the overuse of the same pixels for a long period of time wears down those pixels unevenly and causes them to look visibly different…usually darker.  This leaves a perceptible afterimage on the screen.

LCD TV's suffer very little from this due to the nature of LCD technology.  Since the backlight is generating all the light and the screen is essentially deciding what to let through, burn-in isn't really an issues on LCD's.

Plasma TV's, on the other hand, excite phosphors to generate light and these phosphors do wear down over time.

Even if an image is displayed on a plasma TV for 48 hours straight, it can generally be cleared by displaying a moving white bar over the screen. (this feature is built into most plasma TV's).

Watching 4:3 content on a 16:9 screen can cause noticable burn-in if done often.  There are features to move the image slowly around the screen to prevent burn-in from occurring.

In summary, burn-in is a possibility with plasma TV's, but a multitude of features exist to compensate for this.

Characteristics under different lighting conditions

LCD TV's tend to have better viewing characteristics than plasma TV's under very bright lighting conditions, such as very well lit or sunlit rooms.

However, you can't really expect any sort of good image under harsh lighting conditions.  If this is your goal, buy some cheap LCD TV's and be done with it.

In controlled lighting conditions, plasma TV's have a distinct advantage due to all the characteristics I've mentioned already.

Resolution

Ah yes…what would an HDTV be without the HD?

Most TV's today come in a 720p or 1080p variety.  The number 720p means that there are 720 rows of pixels on the TV.  The "p" means "progressive", which is just a fancy way of saying that each image is displayed all at once as opposed to displaying every other line, which was the default back in the day.

Putting it another way, the resolution of most HDTV's today is either 1280×720, or 1920×1080.

This excellent article from Carlton Bale has charts showing you at what viewing distance you need to be to benefit from different resolutions.

My opinion? Buying a 720p can get you a big discount on the price, and honestly, most people aren't sitting close enough to their TV's to justify 1080p.  Nevertheless, I feel like 1080p is still the way to go … it's such a fundamental characteristic of the television that I think it's worth going for now, and in the future.

Value

Finally, price.  As it turns out, plasma TV's are very competitive with LCD's strictly in terms of size to cost ratio.  However, plasma TV's are generally not manufactured in smaller sizes because no one has managed to squeeze that many cells into a small display yet.  So you generally won't see plasma TV's at sizes less than 42".

Conclusion

OK … believe it or not, I could go on, but I won't.

As you can see, the chips stack up pretty favorably for plasma TV's.  The image is significantly better in nearly all viewing conditions and pricing is competitive.  Having done some homework, my personal suggestion would be the budget plasma lines from Panasonic, like PZ80U or PZ85U series.  You can pick these up from 1100-1500 bucks in the
42-50 inch range.  They seem to win on multiple fronts at competitive prices, especially if you get a discount deal.  LCD TV's are catching up, but as far as I'm concerned, are clearly not there yet.  Don't get caught up in store or marketing hype … avsforum.com has a thread on practically every TV in existence and is an excellent resource.

I hope this helps someone out there looking to buy a TV.  I really don't consider myself that picky, but you still have to do your background when buying the centerpiece of your living room. 😉

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How to use an electronic drum kit with Rock Band

Posted on 2008/06/03 by richardykuo

So, I've been playing a lot of the drums in Rock Band lately.  I don't have any experience playing real drums, but anyone with half a brain can tell that drums in Rock Band are way closer to the real thing than the plastic guitar is.

The first time I tried them, I was at a friend's house.  I did pretty well for someone who had never played the drums before…although I have some musical background, so I'm not a total loss at these things.  And then we got to "Here It Goes Again" … you know, the one with the YouTube video where the band is dancing around on treadmills.  The alternating hand hits + kicks (syncopation) totally destroyed me.  My hands and feet would simply NOT do what the notes on the screen were telling me to do.

Occasionally, I'll make myself good at something just because I know I'm bad at it, and I want to see if I can do better.  This was one of those times.

I picked up a copy of Rock Band a few weeks later and screwed around on some of the songs on expert difficulty.  I probably got through around 20 out of 45 songs or so…and mind you, this is passing the song according to the game, not actually playing the song well by hitting most of the notes.  And then I ran across a thread and video where someone had hooked up his top of the line Roland TD-20 V-Drums to Rock Band.

Well, we just HAD to try this.

Long story short, it's two months later, my hand foot independence is not 100%, but it's off the charts compared to where I was before, and the whole experience has been fun every step of the way.  It's also been interesting observing my own progress starting from basic timing to syncopation to faster and faster BPM songs and kick heavy songs, etc.  My leg used to feel like it was going to fall off in the middle of certain songs…now, it's just not a problem.  Don't get me wrong … leg/foot endurance is still an issue, but rather than just falling apart completely, it just affects my consistency near the middle/end of songs.  Still, I've been seeing improvement every step of the way, so I'm sure this will continue to improve.  And frankly, I'm starting to nail a bunch of the songs that aren't so kick heavy.

Anyway, I enjoyed the whole process so much that I wrote an uber FAQ a few weekends ago collecting all of the information anyone new might need to do the modification themselves and posted it to the relevent community forums.  Probably the equivalent of 10-20 blog posts…so yeah, that's why I haven't been posting.  And surprisingly, quite a few people have gone ahead and used the FAQ to get themselves set up as well.  Nice to know. =)

Anyway, I have zero personal illusions about "real drumming", so to speak.  In between work and other learning/social pursuits, taking things to that level isn't high on my list of priorities.  But the whole process has been an interesting personal challenge, and I thought it was worth mentioning.

 

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Roland FD-8 Hi-Hat Controller.jpg

Posted on 2008/05/11 by richardykuo
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Selecting drum sticks for Rock Band

Posted on 2008/05/11 by richardykuo

Update – 2008-09-14

With six month of play under my belt, I now have a much better feel for sticks in general. My advice still holds…if you are not using mesh pads on an electronic kit, you'll want to pick up some Anti-Vibe sticks at a minimum, and experiment with other types of sticks as needed. The sticks should always be nylon-tipped.

Experimentation will always be necessary.  What I would suggest now, however, is that you adjust the size/weight of the stick you buy depending on your build and general preference.  Again, I have a fairly slight build … and after several months switched to lighter sticks on a lark and noticed an immediate improvement in my scores and stick control.

For the first few months, I was using Anti-Vibe 5A's … which are made of hickory.  The heavier sticks literally started to hurt my wrists.  Currently, I use Vic Firth SD4N's, which are made of maple (a lighter and more flexible wood) and have 7A-like dimensions.  It was actually pretty hard to find maple stick with a nylon tip in the proper dimensions, so I thought I would mention it.  I'm pretty happy with these, and my wrists are also thanking me.

Overview

 

Rock Band drums come with a pair of real drum sticks.  The question is, is it better to use something other than the bundled sticks?

 

The short answer is yes.

 

Selecting drum sticks – newcomer vs experienced drummer

 

First of all, the drum sticks with the Rock Band kit are selected on the basis of low cost and lightness/weight.  The bundled sticks are light so that the average player is less likely to destroy the kit with the sticks.  But they do the job.

 

If you're a real drummer, selecting drum sticks may be a serious issue for you.  On the other hand, if you're new to the whole idea of drumming in general, it probably doesn't matter what kind of sticks you get to start with.  There's no way to know what you'll end up preferring, and sticks are honestly just not that expensive.  So just pick a pair and come back to choosing sticks once you're a few weeks into it and have some context.  Either use the ones that came with the kit or fiddle with different pairs at your local Guitar Center and pick something that feels good to you.

 

Anti-Vibe drum sticks

 

However, the exception here, especially for Rock Band, is that you must get a pair of Zildjian Anti-Vibe drum sticks.  These sticks contain a shock absorbing core that deadens the vibration from traveling up the stick into your hands.  In songs like Reptilia or Blitzkreig Bop with extended and quick beats, your hand can really feel like it's taking a beating.

 

I cannot recommend Anti-Vibe sticks enough if you are playing on a standard Rock Band kit or rubber drum pads like the PD-8…the impact of hitting harder surfaces is exactly where the Anti-Vibe technology shines.  Anti-Vibe matters less if you're lucky enough to be hitting mesh pads, but in general the vast majority of Rock Band drummers would do well to have a pair.  They're only 10 bucks, so it's worth having them around.

 

I purchased a couple of pairs from Woodwind and Brasswind – Zildjian Anti Vibe Drum Sticks.

 

When you're ordering, if you're confused by the different options, just get the 5A nylon tipped versions.

 

What do those numbers and letters next to the drum sticks I'm looking at mean?

 

http://www.pearldrum.com/2002_techspeak/drumsticks.asp

 

Heavier or lighter drum sticks?

 

Heavier drum sticks are a matter of some controversy.  I would recommend playing around with some if you feel it matches your playing style, but otherwise, it seems like there are just as many potential cons as there are pros.  Some feel that strengthening your hands too much can actually lower your speed (it has to do with the type of muscles that get built with repetitive motions as opposed to heavy lifting).  Metal drumsticks in particular may transfer an undesirable amount of vibration back into your hands as well as destroy drums more quickly…especially the Rock Band drums.  Until you know enough to make your own informed decision on the topic, wood sticks with nylon tips are probably the way to go.

 

Wood, aluminum, other?

 

Aluminum is heavy … and we've already covered that topic.

 

Tips (not advice, the actual tips on the ends of the sticks)

 

Nylon tips have a "brighter" sound with acoustic kits, but on e-drums this makes no difference.  Nylon tips should last longer, but heavy hitters seem to have problems with the tips flying off.  I really don't think you should be hitting your e-drums that hard, tho.  Also, if you chip wood tips, they can slowly tear up or wear down mesh head drums.  So, in summary, I would recommend nylon tips.

 

Conclusion

 

I hope this article has been useful.  Basically, I would sum it up as this.  Buy a couple of pairs of Zildjian Anti-Vibe drum sticks (5A nylon tip).  If you know enough to prefer another set of sticks, you probably don't need any advice from me on this front anyway.

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The webcam method of properly calibrating Rock Band

Posted on 2008/04/13 by richardykuo

Link to Rock Band forums thread

Link to ScoreHero thread

One of the most important things you need to do when playing Rock Band is calibrate the game to your home theater system.  Most flat screen TV's and some audio systems introduce latency between when a signal is received vs when it is displayed.  If you don't account for this behavior by calibrating the game, your timing will be thrown off in subtle ways.  If you are playing with an electronic drum kit, I have to assume you're taking everything seriously and want to play the game right.

The key to this calibration vs other methods (and hence why I call it "reliable") is that it involves the use of a webcam to properly set the first calibration step, which completely eliminates human error from the equation.  No more guessing involved.

Adjust Audio/Video Sync 

1. From the Rock Band main menu, pick Options/Calibrate System.

2. Select the "Manually Set" option.

3. You should be on the "Adjust Audio/Video Sync" screen. Take your best shot at lining up the target with the click per the instructions on the screen, but don't leave the screen once you finish.

4. Now, point your webcam at the screen and record the screen + the audio for a few seconds.  I used the QuickCam application bundled with my Logitech QuickCam.

5. Open Windows Movie Maker (I'm using the Vista version).

6. Drag the recording into Windows Movie Maker.

7. Now drag the clip to the video timeline at the bottom

8. Expand the video track by clicking the plus box on the left of the track so you can "see" the associated audio track.

9. Zoom in as far as you can using the Page Down key so that you can see the blips of sound generated by the calibration process.

10. Use the frame step buttons ("J" and "L") to move the position indicator just after one of the calibration sound blips.

11. Next, use the frame step buttons ("J" and "L") to move the position indicator to the first frame where the target turns white that is closest to the calibration sound blip you are working with.

12. The goal is for you to adjust the A/V offset such that the first frame where the indicator fills with white is also the first frame displayed after the "blip" plays.  Based on the differences you see between steps 10 and 11, adjust the A/V offset by moving the target and repeat steps 4-11 until you achieve synchronization, then press OK to go to the Lag Compensation screen.

Voila!  You have correctly calibrated this step without any guessing involved. 

Lag Compensation

Oddly, the description on this screen which says "Some TV's introduce a delay that makes playing difficult" appears to have nothing to do with this step whatsoever.  What you're trying to do here, as far as I can tell, involves compensating for the lag between your controller and the console.

The step does involve some human error, but it's fairly easy to check the results of this step now since the previous calibration step we executed using the webcam is guaranteed to be accurate.

1. At the Lag Compensation screen, select the Calibrate option.

2. Follow the calibration screen instructions and strum or hit your drum pad to the clicks of the notes.  Two things here are important.  First of all, close your eyes and do not look at the screen while you perform this step.  Harmonix should never have put the moving note and target into the calibration screen here as it misleads people into looking at the screen and not playing to the calibration blips.  Second, be sure to use the same method of playing that you are using to calibrate. For example, don't calibrate this step by using the buttons on the drum controller if you're going to be playing by hitting the drum pads.

3. You will receive a result which should be positive…something like 30 ms, in my case, with my drum kit.  If you have a negative number, you really screwed up as that would mean your inputs are arriving at the console before you enter them.

4. Feel free to repeat step 2 a few times to double check your results or to get a better average setting.  You may want to manually set your offset after checking your calibration a few times.

5. Go ahead and select continue to save your calibration settings.

6. Now, we're going to test your settings.  Go to practice mode and select a song like "I Think I'm Paranoid" or "Dead on Arrival".  Choose to repeat the first couple of intro sections and play them at full speed.

7. The goal is to ensure the timing window for each hit is centered around the targets at the bottom of the screen.  Let's use the drums as an example.  Calibrating with the red drum, first try hitting the red notes exactly with the sound of the drum in the game and verify that the hit happens when the note is completely centered on the target.  Next, try hitting the note earlier and earlier relative to when the note arrives at the target.  The hits should start to "fail" when you strike barely before the note gem touches the target.  Now, try to hit the note later and later.  Again, the hits should start failing when you strike and the note gem has barely left the target.  If the hit window is not centered as I've described, then go back and adjust the Lag Compensation settings manually to shift the hit window in the proper direction (leave the A/V offset as is).

That's basically it.  Right now I consider this method to be foolproof.  It may feel a little weird at first as I had trained myself to play the game and was unconsciously compensating for the game's improper calibration.  But now I'm able to hit notes on target with the music and it "feels" right.  Better yet, the hits line up with the chart on the screen.

Hope this helps everyone!  Happy plastic rocking!

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Programming the MSA-P and your drum brain for use with Rock Band

Posted on 2008/04/13 by richardykuo

Overview 

This is part 7 of the Using an electronic drum kit with Rock Band FAQ.

The MSA-P is a flexible MIDI decoder that can perform a number of different functions.  Now that your drum controller has been modified and your MSA-P has been built out, you're almost done.  Now, we just need the MSA-P to be configured for our special use case, which is that we want it to decode the notes coming from our electronic drum kit and trigger the inputs of the Rock Band drum controller.  Here's how we going about doing just that.

Get your computer ready to program the MSA-P

Connect your M-Audio Uno USB (which you bought from the shopping list, right?) to a USB port on your computer. 

If you have Windows XP, you will need to install the drivers that came with the M-Audio Uno USB.  If you have Windows Vista, you don't need to install any drivers.  It will just start working.

Now, download Bome's SendSX program and install it.  We will use this program to send the command to the MSA-P through the M-Audio Uno USB.

Figure out what command to send the MSA-P

Everything here is documented in the MSA-P manual.  I'm just going to give you the abbreviated version.

The command you are going to send does three major things.

  1. It tells the MSA-P how to behave when it receives a MIDI note.  In our case, we ask the MSA-P to produce fixed width pulses so that we can use the pulses to trigger the controller inputs on the Rock Band controller.
  2. For each output of the MSA-P, it tells the MSA-P what MIDI note should activate it.
  3. It tells the MSA-P how long each fixed width pulse should be.  Some generally accepted testing amongst the community has determined 25ms to be a good length.  However, I have been informed by at least one PS3 modder that a 40ms length was required for his controller mod.

Here's an example SYSEX command.  I'm going to break this down for you.

Header: F0 00 01 5D 02 01 03 26 03 30 03 2D 03 29 03 24 03 00 03 00 03 00 00 31 F7

Nothing to change here.

Outputs (8 total): F0 00 01 5D 02 01 03 26 03 30 03 2D 03 29 03 24 03 00 03 00 03 00 00 31 F7

OK…this is worth explaining.  There are 8 2-byte pairs here…each representing one of the eight outputs on the MSA-P.  The first byte of each pair represents the output mode.  In our case, it will always be "Note Trigger – Fixed Length" and hence always be "03".  The second byte represents the MIDI note which will trigger this output.  This is what you need to pay attention to.

Pulse length: F0 00 01 5D 02 01 03 26 03 30 03 2D 03 29 03 24 03 00 03 00 03 00 00 31 F7

This number represents a 25ms pulse.  A 40ms pulse would be 00 4F.

Footer: F0 00 01 5D 02 01 03 26 03 30 03 2D 03 29 03 24 03 00 03 00 03 00 00 31 F7

Again, nothing to change here.

Drum Kit Note Numbers

The following list shows what MIDI note numbers represent the different drums in your Roland kit.  Below is what represents the mapping for my Roland TD-3 … your mappings may be different.

The strikethroughs in particular instruments represent "edge" or "rim" shots produced by hitting the edges of the pads on your kit.  Rock Band really has no concept of this, and the last thing we went is the occasional off center hit to not register as an actual hit in the game.  So we need to remap the edge/rim shots to the "primary" instrument note number.  Please follow the instructions for your drum brain to do this.

The italicized instruments don't really have a clear equivalent in Rock Band (that I can see).

The bolded instruments have obvious equivalents in Rock Band.

  • 22 – CLOSED HI-HAT (Edge)
  • 26 – OPEN HI-HAT (Edge)
  • 36 – KICK
  • 38 – SNARE (Head)
  • 40 – SNARE (Rim)
  • 41 – TOM 3
  • 42 – CLOSED HI-HAT (Bow)
  • 44 – PEDAL HI-HAT
  • 45 – TOM 2
  • 46 – OPEN HI-HAT (Bow)
  • 48 – TOM 1
  • 49 – CRASH 1 (Bow)
  • 51 – RIDE (Bow)
  • 52 – CRASH 2 (Edge)
  • 53 – RIDE (Edge)
  • 55 – CRASH 1 (Edge)
  • 57 – CRASH 2 (Bow)

Rock Band instrument mappings

Remember, Rock Band has only five lanes in the game, but in reality there are more instruments than that in each song.  So what ends up happening is that multiple instruments are mapped into the same color lanes.

Fortunately, Rock Band does tend to map multiple instruments into the same lanes consistently, with few exceptions.

  • Red – Snare
  • Yellow – Closed Hi-Hat, Tom 1
  • Blue – Ride, Open Hi-Hat, Tom 2
  • Green – Crash 1, Crash 2, Tom 3
  • Orange – Kick 

Let's outline the approach we are going to take to remapping.  First, we need to identify five primary instruments, one for each lane in Rock Band, whose notes will trigger the outputs on the MSA-P.  We will pick one instrument for each color.

Let's use the following instruments. 

  • 36 – KICK
  • 38 – SNARE (Head)
  • 41 – TOM 3
  • 45 – TOM 2
  • 48 – TOM 1

In hex, this is

  • 24 – KICK
  • 26 – SNARE (Head)
  • 29 – TOM 3
  • 2D – TOM 2
  • 30 – TOM 1

And ordered by drum color, it is

  • Red – 26 – SNARE (Head)
  • Yellow  – 30 – TOM 1
  • Blue – 2D – TOM 2
  • Green – 29 – TOM 3
  • Orange – 24 – KICK

So now we have our SYSEX command.  It is:

F0 00 01 5D 02 01 03 26 03 30 03 2D 03 29 03 24 03 00 03 00 03 00 00 31 F7

Save this for later use.  Also note that the last three outputs of the MSA-P are unused…hence the three "00".

MSA-P – Send the SYSEX command to it from your PC

Connect the MIDI Out of the M-Audio UNO USB (which is somewhat confusingly labeled as "To MIDI IN") to the MIDI In port of the MSA-P.

Connect your MSA-P to your modified drum controller using a standard CAT-5 cable.

Remember, we are powering the MSA-P from the drum controller.  So make sure your drum controller is connected to your XBox 360.  Then turn on the XBox 360.  The LED on the MSA-P should light up green when powered up.

Run SendSX.

From the Midi Out menu, select the "USB Uno MIDI Interface".

Cut and paste the SYSEX command you generated above into the Midi Out window on the left hand side.

Click Send.

There will be no indication of success from the PC side, but once you send the command to the MSA-P, the green LED on the MSA-P will blink 3 times in quick succession.  Depending on whether your MSA-P is sitting inside an enclosure, you may or may not be able to see this happen.

MSA-P – Set to listen on a specific MIDI channel

The standard MIDI channel for drums is 10.  By default, that's the MIDI channel your drum brain will be outputting on.  So, following the instructions in the MSA-P manual, you want to physically set DIP switches 1-4 on SW1 on the MSA-P board to the following:

  1. ON
  2. OFF
  3. OFF
  4. ON

MSA-P – Connect to your drum brain and test

Now, disconnect the M-Audio Uno USB from the MSA-P and use the MIDI cable you purchased from the shopping list to connect your MSA-P to the MIDI Out of your drum brain.

With the MSA-P now connected to the drum brain, if everything is working properly, you should now be able to navigate into Rock Band with your drum controller and play the game with your electronic drum set.  Only the five instruments you've mapped so far will play in the game.

Drum brain – Remap note numbers

But wait, there's still more.  You can, and probably should, reprogram the drum brain so that all of the non-primary instruments are mapped to one of the primary instruments of the same color that Rock Band uses.  And we still need to fix the edge hits so that they trigger in the game as well.  That way we can hit the "correct" instrument on the drum kit, rather than limiting ourselves to the five Rock Band drum colors, and still trigger the correct color drum in the game.

Any instrument that is bolded in the first list, but not a primary instrument, needs to have its note number remapped to the primary instrument of its color.  The following is for a Roland TD-3 … your settings may depend on your drum brain.

  • 42 – CLOSED HI-HAT (Bow) -> 48 (Yellow)
  • 46 – OPEN HI-HAT (Bow) -> 45 (Blue)
  • 51 – RIDE (Bow) -> 45 (Blue)
  • 49 – CRASH 1 (Bow) -> 41 (Green)
  • 57 – CRASH 2 (Bow) -> 41 (Green)

And any edge variation needs to be mapped to the primary color instrument as well

  • 40 – SNARE (Rim) – > 38 (Red)
  • 22 – CLOSED HI-HAT (Edge) -> 48 (Yellow)
  • 26 – OPEN HI-HAT (Edge) -> 45 (Blue)
  • 53 – RIDE (Edge) -> 45 (Blue)
  • 55 – CRASH 1 (Edge) -> 41 (Green)
  • 52 – CRASH 2 (Edge) -> 41 (Green)

Use these remappings on your drum brain and you should notice that all of your cymbals and pads now trigger the correct lanes in Rock Band.

Drum brain – adjust crosstalk and mask time settings

Crosstalk refers to vibrations from hitting one pad reverberating through the stand and triggering another pad.  In Rock Band this is especially bad because it will break your streak.  Once I realized I had crosstalk issues, I checked the crosstalk for each pad, adjusted the setting, and my scores went way up.  Be sure you save yourself the trouble and check for crosstalk issues ahead of time.

Most drum brains have adjustable per pad crosstalk settings, but the way to configure it is specific to each drum brain.  Just be sure to read your instruction manual.  Simply watch your drum brain and give each pad several especially strong hits.  If your drum brain indicates that a pad other than the one you hit registered its own hit, then you'll need to adjust the crosstalk settings.  On my Roland TD-3 drum brain, you adjust the crosstalk setting of the pad that is registering the erroneous extra hit.

Mask time is a setting which prevents extra notes from the same pad that appear too soon after an original hit from registering.  Basically, the assumption that is that another hit within the mask time of an original hit must be accidental or a mistriggered extra hit.  Again, this is adjustable per pad.  Personally, I haven't found changing this setting to be necessary.

There are other settings to play with, but I'll leave those to you to explore.  In Rock Band, crosstalk is the important issue you'll want to address proactively.

Conclusion

That's it…your MSA-P and drum kit should now be configured properly.  Use the above as a guide to go back and tweak your settings further, if needed.  Congratulations…and get ready for a truly rewarding musical and gaming experience!

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Exposing the Rock Band drum controller inputs

Posted on 2008/04/13 by richardykuo

Overview

This is part 5 of the Using an electronic drum kit with Rock Band FAQ.

As we noted previously, the Rock Band drum controller contains a unique chip that identifies it as a drum controller to Rock Band.  Although it would be nice if we could connect our electronic drum kit directly to the XBox 360, we can't fake the presence of this chip.  So we will need to use the drum controller as an intermediary.

Rather than connecting the MSA-P directly to the Rock Band drum controller, we're going to wire up the inputs of the drum controller to a standard RJ-45 interface.  This will allow us to keep the pieces of this mod cleanly separated, and it will make it easy to rearrange/connect/disconnect the MSA-P and the Rock Band drum controller with a standard CAT-5 ethernet cable.  The various buttons/triggers of the Rock Band drum controller can then be triggered by the MSA-P over the cable.  Also, as a bonus, the drum controller is powered by the XBox 360 over USB, and that can also be used to power the MSA-P.

To destroy or not to destroy?

You will need to decide whether, in the process of doing this, you want to cannibalize the Rock Band drum kit completely or leave it operational and slightly modified.

Pros of cannibalizing the Rock Band drum kit

Just to clarify, this involves completely removing the center controller portion from the Rock Band drum kit and accessorizing your electronic drum kit with it.  You throw away the plastic drum stand and drums.

First of all, the Rock Band drum kit takes up a decent amount of room in addition to the electronic drum kit you just bought.  It's also highly unlikely you will want to play on the Rock Band drum kit at all once you finally get the electronic drum kit connected.  Why have the whole thing around taking up space?

Second, properly cutting out the center controller section of the Rock Band drum kit gives you the option of mounting the controller somewhere nice and stable on your electronic drum kit stand.  If you do this, you won't have to step over to the drum kit every time you need to do something that can't be controlled by the pads (aka speeding up and slowing down practice mode, mostly).

Also, it's slightly simpler to cut away the controller portion from the kit (less finesse required) than it is to mount a port or extrude a cable from the overall kit.

Pros of NOT cannibalizing the Rock Band drum kit

Read more about k1ds3ns4t10n's modified kit.

You can always cut away the controller portion later after everything is verified as working.

You may feel safer during the whole modification process.  Most likely you'll still have a working Rock Band drum kit if something goes wrong, short of catastrophic damage to the drum kit controller board during the whole process.

You can practice on the Rock Band drum kit occasionally if you want to be able to play the game well when visiting friends.

Leaving the Rock Band drum kit operational might be good for guests or for kids you don't want touching your expensive electronic drum kit.

What I did 

Initially, I decided to just wire up the Rock Band drum kit, but leave it intact.  This seemed like a safe approach if things went wrong.

I cut a hole near the rear of the drum kit and put my CAT-5 cable through the hole after soldering in the connections.  Then I put an RJ-45 coupler on the cable …and voila, an RJ-45 port was hanging out of the drum kit that I could plug the MSA-P into.  This wasn't really as clean as mounting a port directly into the drum kit, but I didn't have the parts handy at the time.

However, after a couple of weeks, I felt that the Rock Band drum kit was just getting in the way.  So I opted to just go ahead and cut away the controller section from the rest of the plastic drums, as you saw in an earlier picture.  Plus with new drum kits now being sold in stores, I felt if something actually went wrong I could replace the drum kit very easily and quickly.

This has been great and I don't regret doing it.  However, I haven't yet gotten the parts I need to mount the controller to my Roland drum stand, so the controller is just sitting next to my drum throne for use when I need it.

Modding instructions

Exposing the controller board

Unscrew the three screws on the center underside of the Rock Band drum kit.  The following picture shows the screw holes that secure the plate.

Remove the plate secured by the screws and set it aside.  You should see something similar to the following…minus all the wires … this picture of someone's controller, post modification:

If you see a four wired USB connection, gently remove it from its jack so that it isn't in the way when you start soldering.

Getting the wires ready 

If you have decided to keep your kit intact, then measure out approximately 18 inches of CAT-5 cable and make a cut.  One end should be an RJ-45 connector, and the other should be cut and exposed wires from the middle of the cable that we will solder to the controller.  You need the extra inches so that the cable can extend out the front of your drum kit.  If you are not intent on keeping your kit intact, however, or if you want to just route the cable out the bottom of your drum kit (more on that later in the article) then you may consider cutting as little as 5-6 inches.  A longer length of wire will just get in the way and make the controller less self-contained.

Using some scissors, cut away about two inches of sheathing from the exposed end of the CAT-5 cable.  This will allow you to expose the eight wires inside the CAT 5 cable.  Untwist/separate each pair of wiring.

Now, strip about one cm of insulation off the ends of each individual wire.  The wires are 24 AWG (this refers to the diameter of the wire) so use the 24 AWG setting on your wire stripper to remove the insulation for you.

Soldering – a quick introduction

The next step is to solder the wires to the board.  So here are some quick tips.

This should be painfully obvious, but the soldering iron is HOT.  Don't touch it or you WILL burn yourself.  Be very careful with resting it on its stand and don't leave it plugged in and unattended.

Plug in your soldering iron and give it up time to heat up.  It will take about five to ten minutes.  It will probably be good to have a folded up wet paper tow
el or sponge around so you can clean extra crud off the tip in between soldering jobs.

If you are using the soldering iron for the first time today, I recommend you "tin" the soldering tip…that is, coat the tip in a very thin layer of solder.  Simply cut two inches of solder from the roll, grab one end with your tweezers, and melt about half a cm from the other end onto the tip of the iron.  Wipe off any excess solder on the tip with the wet paper towel in a very quick motion by "pinching" the tip with the towel.

Before each solder, I recommend you also "tin" the exposed wire.  Each individual wire is actually made up of about 8 copper strands.  First, just twist them up lightly with your finger to keep the strands together.  Next, take your tweezers and grab the wire by the insulation a couple of cm before where the exposed wire begins..  Touch the soldering iron to the flat exposed tip of the wire.  Then touch the solder to wire and hold it in place until the solder heats and flows into the wire.  Again, about half a cm of solder will probably be sufficient.

Some gotchas.  Try not contact the solder with the soldering iron…the idea is to heat the wire itself to the point where the solder melts over it.  Second, the heat of the iron is likely to melt away a bit of the closest insulation on the wire.  Don't worry about that too much, it's not a big deal.  Third, you'll note that you need to grip the wire with your tweezers, apply the solder, and hold the soldering iron tip to the wire.  In a perfect world, you would have three hands to do this.  In a less perfect world, you can try holding the wire plus the solder with one hand and the iron with the other (this is what I did).  You can also get a friend to help you hold one of these pieces.  Or you can get a stable vise or clamp to hold one of the pieces in place for you.  Your choice.

Now, practically speaking, you might be able to get some melted solder on the tip of your iron to simply rub off onto the exposed wire.  This doesn't really work as well as you might think, tho…it tends not to stick or flow into the strands of copper as well as if you apply the solder properly.  Still, if you're feeling lazy, you can try it.

If you've tinned the wire properly, odds are that you won't need to apply extra solder to the connection itself.  This is good, because if you do need more solder, you're going to need to do some three handed soldering again.

Let's assume you have the wire properly tinned.  Simply bend the wire a little bit so that it's naturally "coming into" the connection at a good angle.  Next, grab the insulation of the wire with your tweezers a little bit above the exposed end of the wire.  Now…

1. Hold the tip of the wire to the connection point.

2. Quickly heat the connection (which should also have a bit of solder on it) with the soldering iron tip.

3. Let the tip of the wire melt/merge into the connection.

4. Remove the soldering iron tip from the connection.

5. Allow the connection to cool…this happens within a couple of seconds, but be steady with your hand for a few seconds or so.

6. Let go of the wire.  The wire should be secured to the connection now by the soldering you just did.  Examine the connection and verify that no extra solder has crossed over from the connection to other connection points.

If you've made a bad/weak/off center connection, then you can try to reheat the connection and make a better connection with the wire tip.  If you've somehow used too much solder, you can lift off extra solder with a braided cord or soldering pump as mentioned in the shopping list.

The points to solder

OK, now that I've explained how to solder each connection, you just need to go and do it a few times.  Each connection you make will allow that pad to be triggered by the MSA-P on the other side of the cable.

The ethernet cables I use are color coded according to the TIA/EIA 568-B standard.  See this link for reference.  From what I can gather, every ethernet cable is wired this way.

Here are the connections I suggest you make.  We will make equivalent connections on the MSA-P side using this color coding.

  • Orange/White or Light Orange – Red drum
  • Orange – Yellow drum
  • Green/White or Light Green – Blue drum
  • Blue – Green drum
  • Blue/White or Light Blue – Orange drum (aka the kick pedal)
  • Green – unused
  • Brown/White or Light Brown – 5V
  • Brown – Ground

For the XBOX 360 drum controller (green board):

Here's a diagram of where to solder the wires if you have the following controller layout.  Note that since I do not have this board, I can't tell which wire for the USB port will give you 5V.  You can identify the 5V connection by looking at jack when the USB cable is plugged in and seeing which one has the red wire.

Post-solder pictures (minus the 5V connection, because people didn't know you could use it for power at the time)

 

For the XBOX 360 drum controller (blue board):

  • Red drum – right side, 5th pin down.  Connect the Orange/White or Light Orange wire.
  • Yellow drum – right side, 7th pin down. Connect the Orange wire.
  • Blue drum – right side, 6th pin down. Connect the Green/White or Light Green wire.
  • Green drum – top side, right most pin. Connect the Blue wire.
  • Orange drum (aka kick pedal) – bottom side, 5th from the left. Next to an unconnected pin.  Connect the Blue/White or Light Blue wire.
  • 5V – top most wire on the rear of the USB jack.  It's exposed on the right side of the jack and is not visible in the picture.  If you examine the USB cable that plugs into the connector, the red wire of the USB cable plugs into here.  Connect the Brown/White or Light Brown wire.
  • Ground – Right most pin in the pair of solder points beneath the USB connector. Note that even though in the picture both solder points in the pair are glommed together, I would try to avoid doing that.  You only need to make a connection to the right most solder point.  Connect the Brown wire.

For the PS3 drum controller:

I don't have very precise details for this.  The best post so far is here.  But it doesn't make specific callouts for the color of drum to particular pins, nor does it try to USB power the MSA-P.

For the Wii:

Coming at some point.

 

Exposing the cable

OK, now you need to route that cable somewhere.  The Rock Band drum kit wasn't designed for us to make crazy modifications like this, so we n
eed to open up a hole somewhere so the cable can get out.

If you followed the shopping list, then the soldering iron you purchased also has a hot knife tip attachment.  This can be used to cut/melt through the plastic of the controller.  Don't worry, the plastic doesn't smoke up the place or anything.  It doesn't smell great or anything…I would still ventilate the working area well, but it's not nearly as bad as you might expect.

If you chose to cut the controller out of the kit, then this is really easy.  Just route the cable out of the controller section like so.

If you chose to keep your drum kit intact, then you have a few more decisions to make.

If you want this over with quickly, then just cut a small hole in the bottom of the controller section like Flash did and slide the cable out of that.

If you're feeling like a completionist, then you can use the knife attachment to cut a hole in the rear of the drum controller.  You will need to route the ethernet cable out of the controller section, through the inside of the drum and out the hole.  This will involve disassembling the kit further. (more to come)

The following pictures illustrate where I chose to cut the hole … in the yellow drum in an area with some space to work with.

 

If you are particularly adept and have the tools, you can mount an RJ-45 port directly into the controller where you might have opened up a simple hole, as you saw in k1ds3ns4t10n's modified kit.  In addition to looking cleaner, this has the advantage of placing strain on the jack instead of tearing out the cable if you accidentally trip on it.  Unfortunately I didn't do this, so I can't give you more details.

Wrap up

Close up your drum controller, plug it back into Rock Band and verify that each button on the controller still works.  If you opted to keep the drum kit intact, also verify that the pads still work.

You're basically done now…you should have a drum kit or controller that can be used with the MSA-P to control Rock Band.  Unfortunately, it will be a little difficult to test the connections on the other end of the cable without getting the MSA-P up and running.  But congratulations, this is the toughest part!

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Wiring up the MSA-P and the enclosure

Posted on 2008/04/13 by richardykuo

Overview 

This is part 6 of the Using an electronic drum kit with Rock Band FAQ.

First, cut yourself about 5 inches of CAT-5 cable, with both ends exposed.  Remove the outer sheath and unwind all of the twisted pairs in the cable so that you have eight separate wires.  Strip about one cm from the ends of each wire.

The keystone jack you purchased from the shopping list will serve as the RJ-45 interface for the MSA-P to the Rock Band drum controller.  The jack itself as well as the instructions that come with the kit will show you which wire colors should be punched into each respective slot on the jack.  Remember we are using the TIA/EIA-568-B standard.  Follow this mapping precisely and you should have the correct pinouts.  Watch this video for an example of how each wire is punched into the jack.

Note that the jack comes with a simple plastic punch tool so you don't need to get your own fancy puncher.

Connect wires from the RJ-45 keystone jack to the MSA-P

After following the above instructions, you should have an RJ-45 jack with 8 wires coming off of it.  You now need to connect those wires to the MSA-P.

The following diagram shows you where to wire everything, presuming you have an XBox 360 (instructions for a PS3 are slightly different and I don't have time to get into it right now).  Ignore the yellow wires on the right side of the picture…these are for the MIDI jack and we'll cover that later.  The wires going to the terminal block set on the left side of the picture are color coded according to the drum they will activate, so use the above mapping of wire to drum color to figure out which wires to connect.

The only tricky part here is that ground is needed in a lot of places.  You can just route wires in series from one ground to the next to connect them all together.

Also note that we are bypassing the voltage regulator of the MSA-P.  The MSA-P accepts 7.5V to 12V on its power input leads, but the voltage regulator accepts this and generates 5V regulated power for the rest of the MSA-P.

Fortunately, 5V regulated power is already provided by the USB drum controller.  So all we need to do wire the 5V and the ground from the drum controller to the 5V output and ground of the voltage regulator on the MSA-P.  As shown in the above diagram, we can actually accomplish this by wiring 5V and ground into the power outputs of the MSA-P.  The power outputs of the MSA-P are directly connected to the 5V and ground outputs of the voltage regulator, so making our connections there is completely equivalent and has been verified to work.

You could do what I did and solder wires directly to the pin outs of the voltage regulator, but I can't think of any reason you would want to bother with that approach now that the approach of powering the MSA-P through the power outputs is confirmed as working.  See the below picture for the obsolete approach.

Connect MIDI In to the MSA-P

The following diagram illustrates how to connect the MIDI In port to the MSA-P.  Picture borrowed from Flash's article on this modification.

Ignore the other portions of the diagram…just worry about the two wires that run from the MIDI In port to the MSA-P.

You will probably want to solder the two wires from the MSA-P to the MIDI In port.  This is a really easy soldering job.  Just thread the wire leads through the connectors of the MIDI In port, wrap it around once, and apply the solder.

Enclosing the MSA-P

Believe it or not, this is all the connecting you need to do.  The next step should be to put the MSA-P in an enclosure so that you have a nice and neat little box to interface with instead of an exposed board and connectors hanging off of it.

Unfortunately, I do not have any advice for you right now on how to put this together.  I have a custom enclosure that was made by a kind forum member and those are gone for good.

 

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Using an electronic drum kit with Rock Band – The parts list

Posted on 2008/04/12 by richardykuo

Overview

This is part 4 of the Using an electronic drum kit with Rock Band FAQ.

This project requires you to make use of a pretty varied set of tools and assorted gadgetry.  For your convenience, I've collected everything you need to buy into a shopping list. 

I'm assuming you've picked out a drum kit already.  If not, visit the guide to selecting an electronic drum kit.

No major modifications are required to the electronic drum kit to use it with Rock Band…which is good, because operating on something costing hundreds to thousands of dollars would be a little scary.

To connect the electronic drum kit to the game, you need a module that will decode the MIDI data coming out of your electronic drum kit and convert it into XBox controller inputs.

Unfortunately, because there is a special chip in the Rock Band drum set that we can't duplicate the behavior of, we need to actually use the Rock Band drum kit itself as an intermediary between ourselves and the XBox 360.  So there are four major pieces to the entire setup.  In order, they are…

  1. Electronic drum kit
  2. MIDI decoder
  3. Rock Band Drum Kit
  4. XBox 360

Main parts and connectors

1. One 10ft. MIDI cable – Amazon link OR One 3ft MIDI cable – Amazon link

This cable will connect your drum brain to the MSA-P.  A 10ft. cable gives you a lot of leeway to put the MSA-P enclosure within the general vicinity of your drum kit.  A 3ft cable will barely reach the floor, but if you plan on mounting the MSA-P on your drum kit near the drum brain, you likely don't want 10ft of cable getting in the way.

2. One MSA-P – Link and One MSA Terminal Block Set – Link

This is the MIDI decoder mentioned above.  Buy the Terminal set together with the MSA-P … and request in your purchase notes that the Terminal Blocks be assembled onto the MSA-P.  Add the 29.95 for assembly … it's a giant pain if you have to do it.

What the terminal block set does is allow you to simply insert wire leads into the holes in the blocks and tighten screws into the leads to secure the connections.  This is immeasurably easier than soldering each connection.  You want this.

3. A suitable enclosure for the MSA-P

Unfortunately, I have no suggestions for this.  I bought this enclosure back when he still had a few in stock.  The MSA-P product page suggests some SERPAC enclosure model numbers…whatever that means.  Wish I could be of more help here!

4. One ethernet cable – Amazon link

This will connect the Rock Band drum kit to the MSA-P.

5. One Roland MDP-7U Mounting Plate – Woodwind and Brasswind link

If you decide to cut away the controller portion of the original drum kit, you can attach the controller to this plate and mount the controller directly onto your drum kit.

6. One Roland MDH-10U Hatched Pad Mount – Woodwind and Brasswind link

The MDP-7U mounting plate will attach to this clamp, which in turn clamps to your drum kit.

Accessories and tools

5. Xacto X73780 Precision Soldering Iron & Hot Knife Tip – Amazon link

The soldering iron is what you need to assemble some parts of the MSA-P and especially to make all the necessary connections to the Rock Band controller board.  The hot knife tip attachment will let you melt/cut through the plastic drum kit.  You'll either be cutting a hole in the drum kit for a new cable to be exposed, or entirely cutting away the controller from the kit.  Optionally, some people have opted to use a Dremel rotary tool to cut through the kit.  Either way is fine…although the Dremel will probably look nicer if done properly.

6. Solder

Not much to say about this.  Just buy some solder from Radio Shack.

7. Braided cord or desoldering pump – Amazon link

Not 100% necessary, but good to have around as a safety net if you're new to soldering.  Basically, these suck up extra solder if you happen to get too much onto the connection and/or neighboring connections.

8. M-AUDIO USB Midisport Uno MIDI Interface – Amazon link

You use this in conjunction with your computer to program the MSA-P.

9. Wire stripper/cutter – Amazon link

You'll be cutting and stripping a lot of wires.

10. Assorted screwdrivers and tools – Amazon link

A standard home tool kit with lots of screwdrivers and other goodies.  If you want to open the Rock Band kit, you're gonna need these.  A lot of you will already have a tool kit lying around somewhere.

11. Two ethernet cables – Amazon link

We're going to use these ethernet cables and harvest the wires in the cables with the wire stripper using the 24 AWG setting.

12. Tweezers – Amazon link

For holding wires to the solder points without burning yourself or otherwise picking up/controlling tiny objects.  Again, many of you probably have some tweezers lying around for other stuff.

13. Snap-In Category 5e RJ-45 Jack – Radio Shack link

Lets you punch all the wires coming out of the MSA-P into a single easy to connect/disconnect from ethernet/RJ-45 jack.

14. Snap-In RJ-45 Coupler – Radio Shack link

Put this on the end of the ethernet cable you're going to be wiring to the Rock Band board so that you can again, attach and detach an ethernet cable from it at will.

15. Velcro – Amazon link

A nice way to mount the cut away controller to the MDP-7U mounting plate in a non permanent fashion.

Optional real drumming equipment

Ro
c-n-Soc Nitro – Woodwind and Brasswind link

A proper drum throne helps quite a bit with posture and comfort.  What makes this particular drum throne stand out is that it has a very comfortable padded seat, the seat is slightly bouncy, the height is quickly adjustable because it has a nitrogen piston and lever similar to any ergonomic chair, and the chair swivels smoothly.  Many cheap drum thrones have none of the above.

DW5000 Kick Pedal – Woodwind and Brasswind link

You'll need a kick pedal to go with your drum kit..so if you haven't picked one up yet, you might want to try the DW5000.  I don't have one of these yet, but I want one.  Many of the top scoring drummers on Rock Band use this pedal, so I figure it can't be all bad.

Drum sticks – We'll talk about these in another article.

Conclusion

With the above parts, you should have everything you need to begin the modification process.

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