electronic drums

my buddy wants some electronic drums for demo'ing songs and home recording. in my 12 years of drumming, i have accumulated about zero knowledge about gear, and LITERALLY zero knowledge about electronic drums. here are the ones she's looking at - http://www.musiciansfriend.com/compare?base_pid=444815&base_pid=447838&base_pid=483503 - any prefs out there, or any similarly-priced better kits?

thanks doggs!

Sorry if this is too obvious, but before she actually purchases them, she should make sure to actually play electronic drums for an hour or so. Several years ago, I decided I really wanted to purchase some electronic drums, because I got all excited about the samples I could trigger and the prospects of being able to practice with headphones, without being a public nuisance.

I did my research for a few weeks and was still set on it. Then I actually sat down to play an electronic kit. Maybe it's just me, but the feeling of thwacking a rubber pad made nauseous, like I had come down with a horrible fever and had spaghetti arms. The "cymbals" in particular, god. I played a few top of the line kits, a Roland and a Yamaha, and the samples included with both were almost embarrassing. It felt like a Tim & Eric skit, a few years before that show even existed.

I'm sure she could obtain some new samples if the included ones are horrible, and maybe she won't mind the feeling of striking the rubber. But to me the difference between a real kit and electronic is like a real guitar and guitar hero. She should make sure she sits down on one for a good amount of time before sinking a few thousand dollars into what could be a huge mistake.

signed,

The Scrooge of Advise

ADVICE

this isn't any help but man, i hate electronic kits. they only sound good when you play very simply and machine-like, in which case, why not just program? for me:

making live drums sound electronic = cool and fun
mixing live drums with programmed drums = great
programming using electronic and/or live sounds = cool
playing an electronic kit = rarely sounds awesome

but then again i've never spent a ton of time on it, just messed around in music stores.

xp

i once saw a band... somewhere... the drummer had a kind of hybrid kit: a fake kick and bunch of pads with toms and other shit on them, but a real snare and some real cymbals. it sounded all right!

good story i know

sorry i messed up on this story a little: my buddy wants the elec drumz, and his gf is getting them for him for his bday. so her playing them isnt quite gonna do much, but i think he knows he's interested in having them.

xp's - yeah yeah i mean, im no huge fan of elec drums either, but thats ok. i dont need to be.

vdrums are ok, all the rest aren't worth it, really. i've got my friend's full vdrum set at my apartment, and they definitely fulfill my drumming jones (can't have drums in an apartment, see). they're the old version, so the cymbals are just pads (snare drum is more realistic; made of a mesh that more accurate reflects the feel of a real snare. ditto with the kick drum). haven't messed around with the newer, more realistic cymbals they now have.

and really, this guy has been procrastinating putting this stuff on ebay for YEARS, and i haven't been prodding him to since hey, free vdrums in my room. but if you're interested, i could list all he's got (more than any of those sets), and get him to give a price.

what kinda condition are they in?

however, i badly want one of those sampler pads so that i can trigger handclaps and effects while playing kit, wish they were cheaper.

pretty good condition. haven't been used all that much, really, considering he bought them, what, 8 years ago? Were sitting in boxes in his basement for a few years. they've got the updated chip for the brain, which gives you a bunch more sounds and fixed the bugs.

cool, i asked her how she felt about buying used... if she's down, can you see if he'd be willing to sell to arrive in DC by 10/18?

i'll ask but i doubt he'd be able to get it together in time for that deadline. off the top of my head, there's 4 "snare" drums (can also be used for toms), 6 cymbal pads, and the kick w/pedal. Don't remember the model # of the kick, but it was the best the offered at the time and I believe still is.

OK, different but related question...

Are electronic drums OK to learn on? I haven't even played around on an acoustic kit in 15 years, so I'm not going to miss the "feel" of them. But I do want to be able to practice IN MY TINY LONDON FLAT (so acoustic drums are not an option) on a daily basis.

If I practice on an electronic kit, is getting on a "real" kit going to be a helluva shock?

I have done loads of programming of drum machines already - I want a live feel with an electronic sound, really, ideally a la Kraftwerk.

You don't have to hit electronic drums anywhere near as hard, so going from an electronic kit to an acoustic kit is going to be a shock because of the additional physical effort needed.
For a Kraftwerk-with-live-samples sound, maybe get a Roland SPD?

I have in the past been put off playing drums at all because of the physicality of hitting acoustic drums so hard. So this isn't actually much of a put-off.

Getting an acoustic kit really isn't an option for where I live. So it's basically a choice of... play electronic drums or don't play at all.

I've used sample pads (not the Roland SPD but something similar) before and while it's fun, it's not really drumming. I need to learn how to coordinate legs and arms. That's always been the major stumbling block for why I play drums so badly. And that requires just plain practice.

If I practice on an electronic kit, is getting on a "real" kit going to be a helluva shock?

yup. electronic drums are fine for just getting that basic coordination down (so maybe fine for your purpose), but you can never learn how to get a good tone from them, which is so important.

btw you don't have to hit acoustic drums that hard. they are drums, they are loud.

^ jazz guy

I need to learn how to coordinate legs and arms. That's always been the major stumbling block for why I play drums so badly. And that requires just plain practice.

For about a year before I could finally got a drumset, in 8th grade, I would actually set up pillows on my couch and play along to songs on the radio. By the time I got an actual drumset, I was pretty far along. Of course there's a difference between pretend drums and real drums, but I'm only saying that just because you don't own a drumset doesn't mean you can't work on your coordination.

You'd think, from all the left hand/right hand interplay on guitar and bass, combined with having to have foot coordination for hitting pedals, that I would have a clue about being able to use all four limbs separately to play drums.

I don't.

I really do need to sit down and learn to do it through the sheer physicality of it.

btw you don't have to hit acoustic drums that hard. they are drums, they are loud.

― Jordan, Tuesday, September 30, 2008 10:22 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

don't neeeeed to

Kate otm, that shit's awkward.

^ jazz guy

ha. one of the things i like about ben is that he has a pretty light touch for a dude who hasn't been playing drums all that long.

that's because he's a wuss

yeah drums are meant to be smashed, smashy smashy

In my last band, EVERY SINGLE MEMBER, including the singer, could play the drums better than me. It was so embarrassing, I was shamed into deciding I had to learn to play properly.

I was talking to my mate Mattock at the weekend (he actually gives proper drum instruction now) about how hopeless I was - I told him I could do exactly two beats - the Happy Mondays Step On Disco Beat and the NEU! apache beat. And that's it!

But he was very encouraging and said if I had the NEU! beat down that I was halfway there, and was giving me tips on building up the coordination required - like do two things at once (kick and snare) then try two different things at once (snare and hi-hat) and then put them together. Slowly. If he thinks there's hope for me, then there's hope for me.

Yeah, in the very little drumming I've done I basically had to go realllly slowly, completely over-think it and just be really rigid, and keep at it until suddenly I wasn't thinking at all and just had some sort of nearly passable groove going on.

it's not like i never play hard, but for me the trick is to keep the non-accented notes really quiet and to not play the cymbals as hard as the drums.

Those mesh-head v-kits actually feel very similar to acoustic drums. They do however cost a bazillion dollars.

I play some ancient Simmons electronic drums (the goofy hexagon pads); they don't feel or sound anything even remotely like an acoustic kit, and I only play them with my feet, but boy howdy are they fun. Lots of great BEEEEeeeeooooooooouuuuuu noises and some almost-808 thuds etc.

They do however cost a bazillion dollars.

that's why it's key to have a friend who works for a music supplies business. and then have another friend leave the drums he bought from the first friend in your room.

speaking of which, friend #1 heard me telling friend #2 about possible sale of v-drums, and stepped in and said he wanted them. sorry for any hopes being raised :(

I keep an acoustic kit in the band's rehearsal space and an electronic setup at home.

My electronic setup is an SPD plus external pads for the hat and snare, and hat and kick pedals. That way I can play basic rock beats with roughly the ergonomics of a real kit, and the eight pads on the SPD can then just be a row of cymbals and a row of toms. Which is still not really "drumming," but it's enough for low-volume practicey stuff. I will occasionally use it for a demo recording or to make a quick home solo thingy. Or when I want that Simmonsy DOO! DOO! DOO! sound, or a kit made up of horn hits and tabla and barking dogs of various pitches.

My main beef with the e-drums is that the acoustic kit samples somehow manage to sound bad while also sounding annoyingly good. That is, they sound like a very good, very clean recording of a very good drumkit, in perfect conditions and mic'd and gated and reverbed Just So. Which is exactly NOT how an acoustic drumkit sounds when you put it in a room and play it for a human audience.

I wish I knew how to make them sound simultaneously "worse" (in the sense of "not sounding soapy and too good to be true") and "better" (in the sense of "imperfect in the way a live drumkit really sounds to a pair of ears in the same room"). Even when I physically play every note, it sounds like it came out of a drum machine, and so sticks out like a sore thumb in a song that's otherwise made up of grungy low-fi-ness.

You need a better brain module. TD-10 allows you to put all kind of effects and atmospherics on each sound individually. You can choose to simulate lo-fi mics, recording in a wood/glass/plaster/bathroom studio, change the room size, etc etc