Electronic foot percussion

[Prime Mover]

I've been gigging around with my girlfriend a bit recently. What we really need is to form a hard rock/metal band, but I've gotta stay so focused on my primary band, that I really don't have time for that. I have been experimenting with trying to play some simple drum patterns with pedals. I really hate to use backing drum tracks if I have to, and since I already play drums, and my feet are relatively unused, why not? We recently put together a pretty amazing (IMO) version of "Sweet Dreams" (just celebrating it's 30th birthday this year), using two pedals for kick and snare. But it's kind of a crude setup, and one of my pedals has a slight delay (maybe 10ms). I've been experimenting with using an expression pedal, which is tricky, but I might be able to play a little faster on.

But if I want to continue this direction, there's a couple different ways I could approach this. I could get a few electronic kick drum pedals, which would be nice and responsive, but maybe a little difficult to manage. Also, no kick pedals/pads I'm seeing have USB out. The other option is something like an organ pedal controller, which also could be useful in other applications too. I'm always designing Max/MSP controller patches, so the type of data it puts out doesn't really matter (wrote a little program to translate CC data into MIDI notes, for instance).

Anyway, I know there's other people out there doing this, what seems to work?

Edit: Actually, this looks almost perfect, for a number of reasons:
IK Multimedia iRig BlueBoard
However, I'm concerned about how responsive it would be. Looks to be more for doing toggle-style changes than accurate percussion. However, bluetooth would be nice, and I could plug my expression pedals into it. I'm currently using an Alesis QS8, which is notoriously bad at recognizing expression data.

[daniel.sneed]

Just to say, I've been thru this and have gone the analog way.

A good piece of spruce wood, four small rubber feet, an electro-acoustic sensor, a matching transformer, an xlr plug and voila.
Only bass drum, sets in seconds, totally reliable, expressive and... great sound.

BTW, you can see the thing at work in my avatar!

[kgdrum]

IMHO trying to trigger drum parts via MIDI is always problematic,most if not all of the top shelf edrum kits trigger via trigger inputs which in my experience are always faster,no perceivable lag and more accurate.
I know this is not what you want to hear but MIDI for me is not ideal for triggering drums or percussion.

[Prime Mover]

No, that's not a bad route. Maybe not affordable now, but there are some good benefits to it. I mean, real kick drum pedals are second to none, IMO. I just wish there were trigger pads that went right to USB, instead of voltage. I could go the arduino route, but all I need right now is ANOTHER DIY project!

One thing that might be really amazing is to get a double-kick pedal with two triggers, and set the left to play a snare (makes sense because my left HAND is used to playing snare anyway). I want to get an acoustic drum kit someday (when I move into a bigger place), so a real kick drum pedal, or even a double kick pedal would be a fine investment. Only problem is, I don't know if anyone makes individual kick triggers that can work with a real double-kick pedal and give you individual sounds. So far I'm just seeing one big head trigger, in which case I couldn't set the left to a snare.

I also have to judge space and ease of setup, and use. I play with an X stand, and I really prefer standing up, though this obviously limits my foot percussion abilities.

[Gravity Jim]

These guys makes several models of wooden analog foot drums with built in pickups.

http://log-jam.co.uk

[Prime Mover]

Meh, to be honest, I'm pretty set on the digital route for this. I play out of my laptop (Jambalaya), and I can cue up different kinds of sounds for different tunes, and I also don't have to worry about running out different signals. I'm already part of the way there with CC pedals, and I like what I'm getting.

At this point, I'm thinking about just buying another good sustain pedal. My biggest problem is that the secondary pedal I'm using right now is a cheapo footswitch that seems to be reading a delay. That and the fact that the pedals keep sliding!!! But this looks like a great solution for that:
http://www.stageworksgear.com/products/ ... effect.htm

I think it would solve a lot of problems if I would just sit down.