Tomikaza
Junior Member
Hello there!
I've been drumming for almost 4 years now and things are going well and I really enjoy playing the drums. The only thing what bothers me is that I can't get the right sound out of my kit. I'm not very good at tuning drums and I don't have enough time for it to master it. (I'm studying physics at university for the moment which absorbs a lot of my practicing time)
Not only does it seem impossible for me to get the right sound of it, I also have problems with the volume of the toms (except for the floor tom).
While playing the cymbals, you can barely hear the toms because my crash cymbals sound very loud even if I don't hit them that hard.
Other problems arise when I'm playing fast stuff (typical Nick Barker, ex-Dimmu Borgir, kind of drum fills, rolls etc.). Then my toms will resonate or something and all you hear is a large whelm/ wall of sound and sadly not the individual hits.. :/
While surfing on the Internet I came across a video where someone was testing his acoustic to electronic conversion and I was quite impressed.
To be honest I prefer the sound of a real, beautiful sounding acoustic drum kit, but for me it's almost impossible to achieve this sound with my Pearl Export ELX.
I thought of converting my drums like this (not shure if it works):
First I'll put mesh heads on top of my drum shells after muffling them completely, then I'll put triggers (like DDrum or DDT) on my bass drum, snare and toms. Then I connect them with a cable to a Trigger IO (Alesis Trigger IO for example). I've learned that this device will convert the triggered hits on the drum heads to a MIDI-note/hit, so if I connect the Trigger IO to my laptop (which I already have). Maybe I can use EZ Drummer to attach a sample to my hits (snare hit gives snare hit sound as output for example).
For the final step I thought of connecting my laptop to a large speaker with a build-in amplifier, so when I hit my drums they will be hearable through my cymbals which are not mic'ed (if the gain of the amplifier/speaker is large enough, not sure which gain is the minimum for it to get the job done).
But I'm not shure if this is the right way. And I'm quite affraid to get started with it since all of those things will cost (perhaps) a lot of money. Not that money is a huge problem for me, but I don't want to waste money on things that won't work.
I'm also affraid that there will appear some random noise or distortion or a lot of latency when I hit my drums.
So this is why I'm asking your help or advice since I'm completely lost in this world of information.
It would be fun if I can get that clean crisp sound so I can play along with my favorite metal albums.
I hope you guys can help me out and explain me which things I'll have to buy and why.
Thanks for your time and keep on drumming!
-Greetings from Belgium!
~Tom
I've been drumming for almost 4 years now and things are going well and I really enjoy playing the drums. The only thing what bothers me is that I can't get the right sound out of my kit. I'm not very good at tuning drums and I don't have enough time for it to master it. (I'm studying physics at university for the moment which absorbs a lot of my practicing time)
Not only does it seem impossible for me to get the right sound of it, I also have problems with the volume of the toms (except for the floor tom).
While playing the cymbals, you can barely hear the toms because my crash cymbals sound very loud even if I don't hit them that hard.
Other problems arise when I'm playing fast stuff (typical Nick Barker, ex-Dimmu Borgir, kind of drum fills, rolls etc.). Then my toms will resonate or something and all you hear is a large whelm/ wall of sound and sadly not the individual hits.. :/
While surfing on the Internet I came across a video where someone was testing his acoustic to electronic conversion and I was quite impressed.
To be honest I prefer the sound of a real, beautiful sounding acoustic drum kit, but for me it's almost impossible to achieve this sound with my Pearl Export ELX.
I thought of converting my drums like this (not shure if it works):
First I'll put mesh heads on top of my drum shells after muffling them completely, then I'll put triggers (like DDrum or DDT) on my bass drum, snare and toms. Then I connect them with a cable to a Trigger IO (Alesis Trigger IO for example). I've learned that this device will convert the triggered hits on the drum heads to a MIDI-note/hit, so if I connect the Trigger IO to my laptop (which I already have). Maybe I can use EZ Drummer to attach a sample to my hits (snare hit gives snare hit sound as output for example).
For the final step I thought of connecting my laptop to a large speaker with a build-in amplifier, so when I hit my drums they will be hearable through my cymbals which are not mic'ed (if the gain of the amplifier/speaker is large enough, not sure which gain is the minimum for it to get the job done).
But I'm not shure if this is the right way. And I'm quite affraid to get started with it since all of those things will cost (perhaps) a lot of money. Not that money is a huge problem for me, but I don't want to waste money on things that won't work.
I'm also affraid that there will appear some random noise or distortion or a lot of latency when I hit my drums.
So this is why I'm asking your help or advice since I'm completely lost in this world of information.
It would be fun if I can get that clean crisp sound so I can play along with my favorite metal albums.
I hope you guys can help me out and explain me which things I'll have to buy and why.
Thanks for your time and keep on drumming!
-Greetings from Belgium!
~Tom