This is my idea of what a Midi Hang Drum would be. I’ve always thought the Hang Drums and Hand Pans and all that kind of stuff was really interesting. But of course they are a bit expensive and also pretty limited in that they are tuned to a single set scale and a single key. After looking around, I found a fantastic and free Hand Drum VST plugin called the CloudDrum from Ample Sound.

So I decided to build my own hardware unit to control the the plugin with midi. I wanted 9 pads and an touchscreen LCD I can use to change the scale, the key, and the octave. This way I can have all the hang drums in one bit of hardware. I integrated a leather cushion into the bottom so it is nice and comfortable to sit on the lap.

I wanted to make it out of some nice wood so I used some rough cut cedar that I had and planed it down, cut out my panels, routed the holes for the pads and cut all the angles for my 9 sided round shape. I designed and 3D printed a cutout for the center of the piece to hold the LCD. I also added a USB extension to move the USB connector to the top side of the drum.

The input design is quite similar to my midi kickdrum pad. I used a Teensy 4.1 and a custom ADC board that I designed. You can see the ADC with the Teensy mounted to it in the photos below. Each leather pad has a piezo transducer sandwiched in-between a couple of layers. The piezo’s are connected to the ADC through some protection circuitry then the ADC talks to the Teensy over the i2C bus. When the user slaps a leather pad, the Teensy reads the ADC and sends off midi notes. There is also an LCD touchscreen display that communicates on the SPI bus with the Teensy. This is where the user can control the scale, the key, and the octave.