The drumming was just a bit of a ruse, really. It was always about the research and experiments for me

Bloody hell, here we go again. I’ve woken up and found myself in this mess once more. When was it, Autumn 2022? Yeah, that’s when I started acting like a total show-off, reckonin’ I could design my own drum case. Back then, I thought as long as I could play me favourite tunes on an e-kit, I’d be happy as Larry. If I could go back two years and tell myself, “Listen mate, you’re about to put on a bloody ‘blood, sweat, and tears’ shitshow,” I probably would’ve just laughed in my own face. What a bloody nutter.

During COVID (2020-21), I started diggin’ into all sorts of random hobbies. By the end of ’21, I decided to actually do somethin’ about it. But the real chaos—the proper challenges—didn’t kick off until 2022.

I’ll save the “beautiful isolation” stories of 20-21 for another time. For now, let’s do a quick squiz at the absolute madness I got up to with these drums between ’22 and ’24.

Sept 2021: I decided to fix the kit. Never touched a soldering iron in my life, but there I was, obsessing over circuit boards.

Back then, I was stoked just to play DTX… (Me in Sept ’21)

https://youtube.com/shorts/_YFi9ydbSWI

Feb 2022: Finally playing the fixed kit. Looking like a total freshie.

Sawing by Day, Soldering by Night – The MegaDrum Saga

Forgot all about the fact that spinal surgery costs fifty grand and spent months ruining my neck, soldering audio jacks one by one onto a MegaDrum PCB I ordered from the UK. (Check out the ‘soldering battle’ posts if you want to see the full struggle).

After that, life happened—work, uni, the whole lot—and I completely dropped the ball. Truth be told, I was shitting bricks because it was my first time building electronics from scratch, and that PCB kit wasn’t cheap (blew about 600 dollarydoos on it).

Got the components together, but making a case to embed ’em in was another nightmare. I ended up drawing blueprints in Affinity Designer, sticking ’em onto a plastic case, drilling holes, and chiseling away… Why is my life just one long string of manual labour this year?

Late 2022: Getting Somewhere (Sort of)

The case was actually starting to look like something. But then I tried converting an acoustic kit to an e-kit. It “worked,” but once I finished, I saw a million things to fix. Ripped the head off the floor tom and swapped the trigger. Classic.

Since I was modding the acoustic kit anyway, I had heaps of spare parts—cymbals, bass drums, pads. Couldn’t let ’em go to waste, could I? Ditched the cheap drum module and started modding a new one. I tried to buy an ‘eDRUMin’ MIDI controller first, but the $150 ones were always out of stock.

So, I found an alternative: MegaDrum. Bloody hell, I didn’t realize it’d be such a mission. It was the hardest “piece of shit” I’ve ever worked with. No joke, hardest challenge of my life. Never soldered, never touched a PCB, knew bugger-all about signal processing. Making the module was a whole different beast compared to the snare or cymbal conversions.

Finally finished the soldering, did the case design in late ‘22, and didn’t actually get the bloody thing running until 2023.

Early 2023: The Brain Transplant from Hell

Trying to give “Franken” (my kit) a new brain. Why am I doing this to myself? Oh wait, I’m the one who opened my big mouth.

The Moment of Truth: Connected the power… and the bloody LEDs were on backwards. Strewth. Had to rip it apart, and in the process, snapped the wires. Almost fried the whole board trying to resolder it while staring at data sheets. My heart was in my mouth.

The top panel was a dog’s breakfast too. The switches didn’t line up with the internal frame, so I just left the holes and drilled new ones elsewhere. Reckon I need to learn 3D printing because this manual labour is killing me.

The Never-Ending MegaDrum Shambles

This is Franken now. Most of it’s electronic. The rack and floor toms are a bit dodgy—sometimes the piezo doesn’t pick up the stroke properly, so the MIDI doesn’t trigger.

Ran out of AUX cables, so I tried to link my old Medeli 402 brain via MIDI In-Out. Didn’t work. Thought I’d fried the MIDI component. Spent all weekend soldering and resoldering like a madman… only to find out the MIDI cable I had wasn’t meant for MIDI Through. Weekend wasted.

Eventually got the triggers “working” (barely) and started testing MIDI signals. But then, the MegaDrum firmware started acting up—bugs everywhere, “Syntax signal” errors, wouldn’t save my MIDI values… Conclusion: The struggle must go on.

When it rains, it pours (and the snare rips)

Look, I swear I don’t hit ’em that hard. But the mesh head on the snare ripped anyway. Then the cymbal triggers kept misfiring, so I had to swap out all the piezos.

The double bass setup? I did a few fast runs and the whole pad fell off the stand. Back to the workshop. Ended up stitching the snare back together and swapping the floor tom to a mesh head while I was at it.

Just play the bloody drums already.

I was using Clone Hero and DTX Mania just to read charts, but the signals started getting wonky. I wanted more cymbals and double bass, but the more I added, the more the signals went haywire.

Opened the MegaDrum case a million times. Resoldered everything. Still crap. Especially the Hi-Hat—the signal was all over the shop. Turns out, the audio jack was dodgy, causing a voltage overload. I was absolutely fuming. I could never do electrical engineering for a crust; I’d die of a heart attack from the stress.

The God of Destruction returns?

They used to call me “Thorny Hands” because everything I touched broke. The peace lasted a while, but then… snap. Broke a drumstick clean in half.

By late 2023, the kit was falling apart again after a house move. Repairing, fixing, repairing… “Bugger this,” I thought. “I’ll just work and buy a second-hand Roland or Yamaha Hi-Hat.” Then I saw the price. $5,000?! That’s three times what my car’s worth! Back to the soldering iron…

The Mid-2023 “Win” and the DAW Rabbit Hole

I finally “finished” the drum brain around mid-2023. The sense of achievement was massive. But because MegaDrum is a pure MIDI controller, I had to learn DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) just to hear if it worked.

Started with GarageBand, then moved to Ableton Live for better tuning. Spent ages learning the tools. Then I discovered VSTs and MIDI mapping. Then came the signal drops. To fix those, I had to dive deep into audio engineering and producing.

Through all the noise in my life, drumming was the one thing that kept my self-esteem from circling the drain. But constantly fixing the gear was exhausting. Eventually, I hit a wall and just… stopped. Stopped playing, stopped fixing. My mental health took a massive hit, but that’s a story for another post. Let’s just say drumming was my “survival supplement.”

If I can’t play ‘em, I’ll analyse ’em.

I figured, “Hey, maybe I can make my own drum charts?” I tried to make charts for Clone Hero. Used VSTs to analyse kick and snare sounds. Got sucked into the world of audio analysis and Machine Learning (since I was back at uni anyway).

The Mirage of Automation

I dreamed of ML automation, but ran into a brick wall (mostly Python dependency hell). I wrestled with TuxGuitar, Logic Pro, and Superior Drummer. I spent Nov-Dec 2023 staring at Audacity waveforms like a zombie.

I even tried extracting drum scores from images. Total fail. But hey, at least I became a grandmaster at fixing Python dependency issues. When everyone else in my data class was crying over broken pipelines, I was chillin’ because I’d already been through the wars.

AI? Don’t make me laugh.

I realised AI isn’t a magic wand. If you don’t know the basics, you’re stuffed. YouTubers hyping up “AI drum transcription” clearly haven’t tried using the output—it’s garbage. If you don’t have the eye (or ear) to verify the results, AI just wastes more of your time.

Back to Basics: Guitar Pro and Manual Labour

I went back to Guitar Pro. Studied Songsterr and YouTube covers. I realized that making tab scores is basically high-level manual labour. I set a goal to map “Die Young, Die Fast” by 10-FEET for Clone Hero. Little did I know, it was just another “blood and tears” mission.

The Mac User’s Struggle

Most rhythm game tools are built for Windows. But Windows is a nightmare for MIDI—signal errors, AUX issues, you name it. I’m stuck in the Mac ecosystem for the stability, even if it means doing everything the hard way. It’s my destiny to suffer, I reckon.

Finally found a legend on GitHub who shared code to convert tabs to MIDI. I tweaked it, added a bunch of features, and finally finished the 10-FEET chart. Success.

2024: The Final Reality Check

Tried ML again with Demucs and Keras. Better, but still not “automatic.” It still needs human ears and grit.

Funny story: I spent days hacking the open-source Demucs to work for me, only for Logic Pro to release a “Stem Split” feature a few months later. Bloody brilliant. (Sarcasm intended).

I spent days debugging code for a tab I could’ve finished manually in 5 hours. “Human labour is cheaper than machines”—the ultimate truth. My failed project did help me with a uni project later, though, so not a total loss.

The biggest headache was BPM. The song was 108 BPM, but the MIDI came out as 94 BPM. Absolute shambles. I had to manually stretch and move every single note. By the time I finished the Love Rocket chart, I was buggered.

Most people told me, “Mate, no one listens to music by measuring every beat like that.” I was shocked. You mean you don’t see the bassline and drum beats as a graph in your head?

Survival Instinct in Disguise

By March 2025, I had a massive epiphany. All those routines I used to survive when I felt like giving up—singing, dancing, sprinting 2km at midnight, and drumming like a madman? I found medical journals saying these are actually “antidote stimming” strategies for neurodivergent folks.

My hobbies were actually survival instincts.

My obsession with drumming was just a desperate attempt to manage my own brain.

So, where am I now? Still staring at a monitor, pulling my hair out over code. I wonder why I do it, but then I remember that buzz of finally making something “mine.”

The dream of “automatic drum charts” is dead, but I’ve accepted that I’m just an otaku following my instincts. The “blood and tears” shitshow will continue. Might as well see where this madness takes me next.

Related Articles

2022-08-14-hallyucon-astro-kai-oh-my-girl-soldiering-megadrum
2022-08-15-Megadrum-soldiering-battle
2022-08-16-website-drumming-update-16.08.22
2023-07-16-my-drumming-journey-2023-jan-to-2023-April-kr