hey Guys.
I'm part of a maker space and have recently gotten interested in electronics.
I'd like to make simple drum machines and samplers, where I have decent quality hits being triggered by small pads (ideally velocity sensitive), and also have some cool lights / screen access.
I'm quite new to this stuff, and wondering if an Arduino with a shield would be good for this kind of application, or if I"m better off going with say, a pie connected to a usb midi controller playing wav samples off a memory card?
If someone could give me some feedback as to the feasibility of Arduino with music gear, and point me in the right direction I'd be quite thankful.
You might want to have a look at the Audio Hacker shield. It allows you to record audio samples and play them back based on Arduino input. (full disclosure: this is my product)
I did a Drum Machine project where I recorded various samples into SRAM and then played them back in loops. The program lets you tap out a rhythm for each track, then play them back looped and mixed together. http://nootropicdesign.com/projectlab/2013/07/05/drum-machine/
Hi,
With Due, you don't need shield.
Look at my blog here : Groovuino: Groovuino groove box demo
In the end of video, you can see a pad which trigger the drums with velocity.
Audio is 44 kHz/12 bits, and samples are stored on an SD card.
You can make sampling, MIDI, synthesis, sequencing...