A Kickstarter campaign has been launched for a drum sensor called Sensory Percussion, which is aimed at bringing the finesse of real drumming to the electronic music world.
The sensors are made by Sunhouse and the device connects to the user's computer via a standard audio interface and XLR cable connections.
"Sensory Percussion understands where and how you hit the drum," says the company on the Kickstarter page. "It not only lets you map different parts of the drum to any sound desired (from samples and synthesizers to digital audio effects), it also lets you control those sounds in an intuitive, expressive way. Sounds follow your playing in real-time — so rather than twiddle knobs and push buttons, you can control the experience simply by playing the drums."
There are a number of key differences between Sensory Percussion and standard drum triggers made by the likes of Ddrum and Roland. For example, the Sensory Percussion experience really is a combination of hardware and software, with the Sensory Percussion software allowing users to teach it the nuances of their drumming and drums. Using a combination of different sensors, users can trigger different sounds from different areas of the drum. While standard drum triggers might allow for one trigger from the head and one from the rim of the drum, the Sensory Percussion trigger allows users to trigger different sounds from the center of the head, the edge of the head, by doing rimshots, sidestick hits and so on.
Therein lies the use of Sensory Percussion. For those simply wanting to trigger acoustic drum sounds from their drum kit as a way to augment live playing or a way of more easily editing recordings, the standard drum triggers will work fine. Sensory Percussion is aimed at those wanting to combine acoustic and electronic playing, using the drum kit as something of a drum pad setup. Users can also layer sounds to create their own unique beats and hits.
Of course, this extended usability doesn't come cheap. A single sensor on Kickstarter costs $595, with a pack of two coming in at $869 and a pack of three for $1,115. Prizes go all the way up to $4,000, which will get the user a set of four chromed units with a custom engraving of the user's choice. The device works via phantom power, so users are limited in how many they can use at one time by how many XLR inputs with phantom power they have.
Check out an interview with Sunhouse founder Tlacael Esparza here.
