Playing 'electronic drum sounds' live

joeneau

Member
Hi there,

This is basically a request for help from anyone clued up on the more electronic side of live performances.

In the band that i'm in the process of forming with a few old mates, i'd really like to encorporate some electronic drum sounds into our live gigs...

This is the kid of thing i mean:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpwXMDI9800 go to 2.36

or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS8sYmTcM4w go to 2.28


the differnece is that instead of having them on a sampler or some kind of drum machine... I want to play them live. I'm thinking of having some kind of mixer that the mics go through before they get to the mixing desk, where i can preset different sounds or eqs and footswitch i can use at the appropriate sections to change these presets on.

Does anyone know if this is doable, or what gear i could use to do that? I'm also kinda thing its more than just an eq change for these type of sounds so maybe just a mixer wouldnt be enough?

any help on this would be really appreciated!

thanks

Joe
 
There is a couple of things I use that sound pretty great for electronic sounds. This first is a "Drumbal"...It is basically a small cymbal with a handle placed on a snare drum and it gives you a really great sampled snare sound. For my "Drumbal" I use a 10" A custom splash with a HH clutch for the handle. I also use a auxiliary closed HH stack with a 12" wuhan china as the bottom, and a 10" splash with an inverted bell laying loose in the middle and fore mentioned 10" A custom splash as the top with the HH clutch. So during normal play I can play the aux HH stack normal, and if I want a sampled snare sound I just pull the entire top 10" splash with the clutch off the aux HH rod and then I still have the china/inverted bell splash stack to use. You can get a very wide array of electronic sounds this way...especially if you have 2 snare drums...You can use the "Drumbal" on either snare and they will sound completely different.
 

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Nicotine, that is actually incredibly inventive! I'd love to here what that sounds like!
how did you come up with that?

To be honest i'd love to go down the route of having my actual drums EQed differently and sent to the front desk.

I've been having a think and its actually really only the snare hi hats and kick drum that i use in the more electronic sampled stuff i do. So i'm thinking of actually just having my snare mic for example plugged into a Boss effects pedal...would this work or would it just blow it up?!
 
I got the Idea from Johnny Rabb...he actutally has a "Drumbal" by Meinl and Meinl has an entire line of "white noise / drum n bass" cymbals called generation X. I have found just stacking cymbals amounts to the same effect The first link is my band's myspace. The first song "The River" uses the drumbal....the second link is a Johnny rabb youtube video of him using demonstrating the drumbal...I don't know about running a mic through an effect pedal and Im honestly more intrigued by using acoustic means to re-create electronic sounds. Also check out Jojo Mayer on youtube...he does alot of electronic sampled sounds on a mostly acoustic set.


http://www.myspace.com/corbywhiteband

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERMUaw2qshg
 
Nicotine, that is actually incredibly inventive! I'd love to here what that sounds like!
how did you come up with that?

To be honest i'd love to go down the route of having my actual drums EQed differently and sent to the front desk.

I've been having a think and its actually really only the snare hi hats and kick drum that i use in the more electronic sampled stuff i do. So i'm thinking of actually just having my snare mic for example plugged into a Boss effects pedal...would this work or would it just blow it up?!

In a recent issue of Modern Drummer, the drummer for Depche Mode discuss this.

He has his drums mics running through his computer, where he used software to alter the sounds as he goes in real time. So he can duplicate all the electronic sounds Depeche Mode is known for without having electronic drums.

But keep in mind, he tours with a band that has a dedicated sound man to deal with this. Running a similar system in an average club could present some issues.
 
Seems to me the Roland SPD-S is the machine you might want to look at. What's your budget, before anything else? A used SPD-S can be had for about $350 right now. It is a sampler, about the size of a lap top. And it has 9 triggers on it. 6 pads, and 3 edge triggers. Last one I saw used "in a professional setting" was Robert Plants percussionist. Needless to say, they are not toys.​
One of the "usual" locations for mine is to the left of the hi-hat. That's if I'm running a traditional acoustic kit with electronics added. What I'm running right now, is acoustic snare and cymbals, my SPD-S above my snare, 5 e-kit pads to the right of the SPD-S.​
 
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Seems to me the Roland SPD-S is the machine you might want to look at. What's your budget, before anything else? A used SPD-S can be had for about $350 right now. It is a sampler, about the size of a lap top. And it has 9 triggers on it. 6 pads, and 3 edge triggers. Last one I saw used "in a professional setting" was Robert Plants percussionist. Needless to say, they are not toys.​
One of the "usual" locations for mine is to the left of the hi-hat. That's if I'm running a traditional acoustic kit with electronics added. What I'm running right now, is acoustic snare and cymbals, my SPD-S above my snare, 5 e-kit pads to the right of the SPD-S.​

I concur, the SPD-S is probably the machine for you. I have one, and I love it (pics of my kit and portable electronics rig here). Access to any sound you want in a compact little package. I use mine both to trigger fully sequenced backing tracks (for live use), and small sound effects. A great accessory to any drum kit.
 
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