Don't plug a sustain pedal into the inputs

jeffe · 2013-09-12T22:01:39.000Z

Tales from the road: Chapter 1

The other night I played a gig with my piano player and another band we brought in from out of town. Lately, we have been sticking with solely the Machinedrum as I just wanted to try a more modern approach than the MPC 2kxl approach we used to rely on. This has brought on a whole new set of songs (we have not converted old ones - workflow is too different), and so we pretty much abandoned the old stuff live.
During practice the night before, two things kept coming between the keyboardist and I:

His sustain pedal was dead on his piano, and this was killing his playing (he plays some more classical stuff).
I wanted to re-ignite the old stuff and had brought out the mpc solely for this - he refused and since they are his songs, and he likes to have this on lockdown, we basically agreed to just be pissed at each other and play a very short, all-new set.

I really love my friend and the music we make, so in an effort to patch things up, during the day before the show, I head to the shops and buy him a brand new, nicest I can find sustain pedal. At least he’ll be comfortable and able to play.
Later, I’m loading up gear before the show and the other band calls from the road. They want to know if I have a kickdrum pedal as they left theirs at home (first night of tour). I don’t, and I don’t know any drummers in town to call in a pinch.
Lightbulb - I wonder if the sustain pedal signal could fake a DC signal that we could use to trigger the Machinedrum via the audio inputs. I mention this to the band, and they get pretty into the idea. Right now I’m thinking, wow, this is why we use Elektron gear - they’ve got all our bases covered. I’m also pretty excited to see if this hack actually works - it would be really cool if it did.

Fast forward a bit to an hour before showtime. I’m setting up my gear, I plug the sustain pedal into input A, and start menu diving looking for the trigger page. I am slowly starting to lose my hope though, maybe I just made up the audio-input to trigger functionality. Well look, I really hate giving up. So I keep digging and finally find it. Holy hell, this is going to work. Gate, Sensitivty, routing - wow I can’t believe how well this is going to …
CRASH.
Locked up. No reaction from the machinedrum.
Turn knobs. Encoders. Big encoder. Trigs. Nothing. Occasionally an LED will change, but it seems random and it never corresponds to what I’m trying to do. Stuck on audio->trigger page.
BREATHE.
Power off the unit.

Wait 15 seconds (oldskool).

Power on. Boot up screen shows as normal, great (wondering if I will catch Elvis). Goes right back into the trigger page, and locked up as it was when I shut it down.
Wiggle knobs, push buttons, nothing.
BREATHE. BREATHE.
Power cycle. Nothing. Same thing.

15 years I’ve been doing this - just waiting for the day when my whole setup crashes on me. Also running through my head is the argument with my singer the night before - I have the MPC there and looks like we will ONLY be playing the old songs tonight. He’s gonna hate me, think I set this whole thing up as a brute-force tactic to win the argument.
My good friend is sitting there over my shoulder like ‘wow man how much did you spend on this thing?’ - and I’m like - I can’t believe this. My most modern piece of gear and its fried.
I’m watching the door guy take cash and thinking - what if there is no show? That’s gonna kill us.
Well look, I really hate giving up.
I’m new to the smartphone game. I get on the Elektron website and get the MD manual. Flick flick flick…factory reset. WOW I can do it and it will only clear the first snapshot - I never use that one anyway. Power off the unit, hold my finger on function …wait. Flashback to second grade, a very poignant lesson, ‘read all the directions before completing them’.
So I keep reading - and there it is, ‘Soft Reset’. Let’s try these in order of severity…
So hold down Function, boot on. Immediately into diagnostic mode. Breathe a bit. Run tests - all 100%. Ok ready Joel? Soft reset time.
Hit it, it boots back in and…thank you. We’re live - minus back a few pages from when I started.
Well WTF was it that did that? Flip polarity switch on sustain pedal, plug it in. Go into trigger page.
LOCKD UP.
I waste no time doing another soft-reset and unplugging the damn sustain pedal from the input.

We’ve saved the machine, but what about this whole triggering bass drum thing? Joel laughs - well at least the machine is ok, forget about the other band, they should have brought a pedal.

Well look, I really hate giving up.
Maybe we can use a mic and lay it on the ground? I have a homemade XLR to 1/4" cable anyway…damn wrong end though.
Joel laughs again - dang dude just give up, relax a little.
Well look, I really hate giving up.
Headphones. I learned at a gig once that headphones WILL work as a microphone in a pinch.
I plug them into the input. Go into trigger page. Start tweaking some knobs and THBBTHBHTBHTBHBHBHTBHBTHBHTBT bass drum starts ringing like crazy.
Breathe.
Tweak some knobs. Sounds stops. Tweak to extremes and start yelling into the headphones.
Boom.
Boom.
Throw headphones on ground.
Boom.
Kick the stage near headphones. BOOM.
I can’t believe it, its gonna work.
The band arrives shortly thereafter and I show them my hack, they are apprehensive but once I say, ‘Try it’, and they hear that 808 boom - they start coming around. They test it with the other members jumping where they will be and the trig works flawlessly - only the lead who plays the bass drum can get it to go off, and he’s really good at it.

In the end, we found a pedal from the music store down the road, so we had an acoustic bass drum pittering about for some high-end, with the pure power of the MD kicking in to beef it up through the PA.

We had a great show.

miketheman · 2013-09-19T10:45:45.000Z

Wow… I´m speechless.

You had great courage treating your MD in such way just before a show, and this only for the other band. They must have been in huge gratitude to you afterwards…

There surely ain´t enough of people like you in the world…

/Mike

jeffe · 2013-09-19T21:20:25.000Z

I really didn’t think plugging the sustain pedal in like that would cause the whole unit to malfunction. I thought at the very least, it won’t work as a trigger.

The shock was that it damn near bricked my MD. Thinking about it more, it kind of makes sense…while I was hastily thinking of the signal the sustain pedal would be sending as a DC signal of some sort, I didn’t really consider that I’m actually short-circuiting the jack. Even then, I wouldn’t expect such a crazy failure even for that.

However the whole thing has inspired me to try using cheap contact mics / earbuds as triggers for my more ‘acoustic’ sets now.

Thanks for your kind words mike.

BoomTish · 2013-10-01T05:46:35.000Z

Great story. And I really understood the “Well look, I really hate giving up.”

B

secretmusic · 2013-10-05T18:19:18.000Z

That’s pretty brave to be fiddling around like this, just before a gig
Nice one !

TrabanT · 2014-01-10T06:26:34.000Z

nice story … inspirational!