Anyone ever perform/record with a drummer that uses e-drums?

[martingibson70]

First time yesterday recording and playing with an e-drummer. Recording was as easy as plugging directly into a mixer, and the drummer/kit sounded great. Push a button or turn a knob to change sounds. No mic's. No /neighbors/police banging on the door. In exchange for the "convenience" I was expecting (and accepting) a more sterile/digital type of sound. Nope. It sounded great.

 

Anyone else care to share their experiences with edrums/edrummers?

[jackcheez]

When I lived in an apartment I had a friend who would bring over the e-drums. It was fun. They weren't bad. It made a lot of things possible.

[ThudMaker]

Depending on the sound samples and the capability/limitations of the specific kit, they are great!

[srsfallriver]

The drummer in my wedding band uses an electronic kit (live cymbals though). They sound great and we can get our stage volume way down. Low volume capability is a must for any wedding/function/corporate band.

[ggm1960]

Man I wish I could talk our drummer into going completely electronic

[succubus]

I've been considering getting a good set of e-drums for my basement.

I'm glad to hear they sound good.

[martingibson70]

 

The drummer in my wedding band uses an electronic kit (live cymbals though). They sound great and we can get our stage volume way down. Low volume capability is a must for any wedding/function/corporate band.

 

 

+1. I'd bet that even bar patrons would prefer their music a little less ground shaking and bowel loosening.

[gtrbass]

I've used Roland V-Drums for tracking. The sounds are useful, but not absolutely convincing. For most stuff they are adequate and far superior to a drum machine.

 

That said, I worked on a project where the drummer used V-drums to trigger a laptop loaded with BFD. That scared the hell out of me. In the mix, there is almost no artifact to indicate it is not a mic'ed drum kit, even when soloing the tracks. Unbelievable...

[HuskerDude]

If I was doing some sort of electronic music, I'd consider it, but that's the only situation. Ever.

[Facejackets]

I'm glad to hear its worked up good for people. My band is recording on Friday, an they engineer wanted to use a Roland TD-20 kit with live cymbals to make things a little easier. If we were paying him alot of money, I'd say "go to hell we are using real drums". But since we aren't paying him anything, I'll go with what he says hahahaha

[GCDEF]

My last drummer used them for band practice. Much easier to set up quickly and much more controlled volume.

 

He used them occasionally in very small gigs, but not often. In the studio it's usually electronic drums and real cymbals.

[Lee Flier]

Can't stand em myself. I'm in a rock band, I need to feel air moving behind me. But yeah I can see where wedding bands/corporate bands would consider them a godsend. If I were doing that, I'd still rather just get a small cocktail type kit and a drummer who's good at playing with a light touch. But that's me.

[SkullCap]

nowadays they're really good. but about 10 years ago we recorded our first cd and we used roland v-drums and i can't even listen to that cd now. i think the drums sound horrible. i don't even think they were velocity sensative at that time. in my home studio we have BFD and that is amazing, but we still prefer to track live drums. it's probably just some purist crap that's embedded in my skull

[BndGrl]

It's so weird/funny to me to stand near someone playing an electronic kit at a show and while they are flailing away you hear "plink plink"

 

[shniggens]

We use a Roland set for rehearsals. Makes the mix much tighter in a small room.

 

When recording, it's best to get a good MIDI track recorded from the drum performance, then trigger a good software sampler. Much more control and flexibility. If you record them via audio, you only get a stereo track of ALL THE DRUMS. You can't pan, adjust volume, or adjust FX for seperate drums.

[Prog]

Many people refused to use electric bass guitars, too.

[Mr. Botch]

Wayne's been using them live for about two years now, I absolutely love them. They DO take a lot longer to set up, but no micing issues, no excess volume (our whole band is ampless and use in-ears), change the sound/type of the kit on a knob twist (and Wayne is excellent at choosing the right drum sounds for the song, plus he uses more humorous samples than I do). I think the guys at both Roland and Pintech know him by name, he manages to break/crack every new design they come up with.

Here's Wayne's "godzilla":

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[martingibson70]

Can't stand em myself. I'm in a rock band, I need to feel air moving behind me. But yeah I can see where wedding bands/corporate bands would consider them a godsend. If I were doing that, I'd still rather just get a small cocktail type kit and a drummer who's good at playing with a light touch. But that's me.

 

I completely understand and appreciate the raw and primal feel of "air moving" from real drums. For me though, the lower volumes and no micing are more than worth the trade off. Probably the result of too many angry neighbors bangin' on my door.

[Lee Flier]

 

Many people refused to use electric bass guitars, too.

 

 

Yeah, so we should force them all to do it, and make fun of them if they don't want to, right?

[Lee Flier]

I completely understand and appreciate the raw and primal feel of "air moving" from real drums. For me though, the lower volumes and no micing are more than worth the trade off.

 

Well then you don't completely understand. If you did, nothing would be worth the trade off.

 

Probably the result of too many angry neighbors bangin' on my door.

 

Well, for practice, anything goes. I can totally understand someone wanting to avoid angry neighbors in their practice space, apartment, hotel room or whatever... hey, I've even got a POD for that purpose. But I wouldn't use it at a gig.

[tucktronix]

I recorded a CD with a prog band a few years ago. The drummer used a Roland V-drum kit in one of tracks and we completely hated the sound of it in the recording. The snare had this weird stereo effect to it and the whole kit lacked the intensity and punch of his acoustic kit. Needless to say, he sold the Roland kit.

[C JoGo]

Exclusively e-drums live & studio ~~ for 10 years now.

Trap Kat w/Kurzweil & ALesis samples

[Electric Catfish]

Exclusively e-drums live & studio ~~ for 10 years now. Trap Kat w/Kurzweil & ALesis samples

 

You're playing electronic drums with what looks to be a chamber quartet? Interesting. I'm generally anti electric drums, but I'd like to hear that. A full kit probably wouldn't work with that kind of a lineup, though, unless it was a really small kit played exclusively with brushes.

 

For rock and roll, though, I'm with Lee. Electric Drums sound cheesy as hell in a rock and roll (let alone country or blues) context, to me. The comparison to electric bass doesn't really work though...Electric Bass is more akin to mic'ing an acoustic drum kit, in that the source of the original sound a completely phyisical, acoustic phenomenon, and the pickup just, well, "picks it up", much like a microphone picks up an acoustic drum kit.

 

Electronic drums, otoh, get their sound from a completely synthetic place from the get go. I could see triggering samples working better than the typical "triggers into a brain" setup, but even with that, there are a LOT of subtle dynamics, particularly with the snare, that effect not only the volume, but the nature of the vibration of the snares, etc., that they're still a LONG way from getting anywhere near that kind of dynamic sensitivity, even with the "good" ones.

 

They'd probably work well for most rock drummers, as most rock drummers don't really have any subtle dynamic control to start with...I'm not taking about "loud parts/quiet parts" dynamics, rather dynamics from one beat to the next. The snare drums on the ABB's "At Fillmore East" are a good example of that,imo.

 

Imagine The Allman Brothers At Fillmore East, except with Butch and Jaimoe playing V-Drums.

[Mr Songwriter]

I've played with drummers using Edrums quite a bit, a couple of things I noticed: one of the drummers brought a Bass guitar amp along that he'd bought because the bloke in the shop had told him they were 'good' for playing Edrums through, but the treble response was crap, regardless of EQ settings, so we put them through the vocal PA instead and they sounded a lot better, we also spent a couple of minutes going through all the different kits to see which sounded the best through the PA - the cymbals on some of the kits did sound a bit too sibillant.

 

I've also used them for recording too - this was a cheapo Yamaha DD55, we used the MIDI out to trigger samples in BFD and the results we got were almost always much more live sounding than anything we could manage with step time recording.

[Gorgon90]

Two experiences:

 

First, the drummer in my last band bought the top of the range V-Drums stuff and spent a good two months at home with it tweaking all the sounds before he brought it out to practice.