First electronic drum gig experience....

MrTheOne

Member
Had a fun new experience last weekend: girlfriend hired me to play drums for her for a casino gig.
However, due to casino/venue rules, I had to play on the house kit, a set of Roland V-Drums (sorry didn't bother to get the model or anything like that).
At first I approached it the same as playing my own acoustic kit, and I soon learned I could basically feather tap the drums/cym pads and get the same sound. Buuut even that wasn't true when the sound guy started to adjust the volume every few bars. That was frustrating, but I'm not blaming him because he was following the venue noise policy, just doing his job (plus he was a good guy and easy to work with).
The rest of the band told me afterward how many times they heard the sound of the stick hitting a rubber cymbal pad over the sound it was supposed to be making. The drums had somewhat inconsistent response dynamically. I was unable to get much of a sound when attempting to play quieter, other times between the sound guy adjusting and the drums themselves, the dynamics were WAY too loud where they should have been quiet or mid volume, or WAY to soft when they should have been loud.
Even funnier (to me anyway) I found myself, through shear force of habit, attempting to mute the cymbal pads at certain times.
There were some frustrations, but overall I just stayed positive and used it as a fun learning experience. Plus I got paid $200.
That's my story. Wondering if any of you all had some fun stories of your own playing electronic drums.
 
a) most decent cymbal pads can be muted. Grab the top and bottom of the edge of the cymbal.

b) e-kits are horrible for live work unless it's very specific stuff.

c) Adjusting the kit volume more than once or twice while I'm playing would piss me off.

d) all my stories about using e-kits in public are not fun stories. I like em for practice but they just aren't great for "real" drumming.
 
The only gig I use my e-kit for is also at a casino. (85db max....we've mastered it, after a few tries.)

Fortunately for me, I use in-ear monitors now, so I can have the kit loud enough for me. The way the stage is configured, we have gotten pretty good at getting enough sound from the monitors for everyone to work with. Tho we have had times where the sound of the stick hitting the pads was louder, I laughed reading that.)

Not what I want to play out with, but I like the gig, and the set-up/tear-down is nice :)
 
I did a show with a prog metal band using a large td-20 kit. The show went well thanks to the sound guy but I would NEVER do that again. So much can go wrong, some things did and I was able to fix them quickly but it's not worth the hassle. People I spoke to afterwards told me it was great but acoustic drums sound much better - I have to agree even with the plethora of VST's and libraries out there.

I'm OK with the hybrid approach - triggering other sounds from your acoustic kit as an addition, but the main sound should be your acoustic kit. Just my .02
 
I'm OK with the hybrid approach - triggering other sounds from your acoustic kit as an addition, but the main sound should be your acoustic kit. Just my .02

This is where I'm coming from. I took the plunge a while back and got a DTX Multi 12 and a couple of outboard pads to add electronics to my kit. At the time I was anticipating a steady gig playing pit in musicals and it was a sound investment. That fell through, unfortunately. For the bands I'm playing with, we've not yet gotten to a point where it's worth my while to lug out the extra stuff and get it in whatever house sound system we encounter... but it's been a great tool to have for songwriting and a few special gigs I've done in the meantime.
 
d) all my stories about using e-kits in public are not fun stories. I like em for practice but they just aren't great for "real" drumming.

I disagree with the above statement. E-kits "can" be almost identical to real drums with two caveats: It really only works on the high-end e-kits, and you HAVE to spend tons of time on the programming and setting adjustments.

I know the Roland series of e-kits and modules inside and out, but I was also a professional audio engineer. You really have to know audio lingo and physics to fully understand what you're doing on a e-module, and be able to get a real drum sound out if it, and also have it be as dynamic as a real kit, and without random "oddities" occurring.

The Roland module have layer upon layer of settings, and you have to spend time and go thru each one to adjust everything accordingly. You first to have spend time on the main system settings, making sure your sensors are programmed to the correct trigger, adjust sensitivities, dynamics, routing, etc... This literally can take hours, and that is before you even begin programming a full kit of sounds (the factory preset kits are useless and have terrible balance).

Once you get all the main settings corrected, it takes hours upon hours to go thru each trigger and not only program it's base sound, but then go into the layers of settings each "sound" had and adjust all the parameters to replicate what you need it to do and sound like. Roland has so many pages and layers to each sound and setting that programming one kit can take hours.

In order to do all of the appropriately, it really helps to have an understanding of audio and know what everything is really doing when adjust a setting. I can't imagine trying to do that without understanding the audio world. Once you really take the time and do all this, you can make a kit that sounds and acts exactly as you want it to, and just like real kit. It just takes decent gear, time, and knowledge. Without going thru the effort, e-kits will act unexpectedly, oddly, and sound funky at best.

I've spent hours, days, months of life programming e-kits, and the final results are fabulous.
 
I disagree with the above statement. E-kits "can" be almost identical to real drums with two caveats: It really only works on the high-end e-kits, and you HAVE to spend tons of time on the programming and setting adjustments.

I know the Roland series of e-kits and modules inside and out, but I was also a professional audio engineer. You really have to know audio lingo and physics to fully understand what you're doing on a e-module, and be able to get a real drum sound out if it, and also have it be as dynamic as a real kit, and without random "oddities" occurring.

The Roland module have layer upon layer of settings, and you have to spend time and go thru each one to adjust everything accordingly. You first to have spend time on the main system settings, making sure your sensors are programmed to the correct trigger, adjust sensitivities, dynamics, routing, etc... This literally can take hours, and that is before you even begin programming a full kit of sounds (the factory preset kits are useless and have terrible balance).

Once you get all the main settings corrected, it takes hours upon hours to go thru each trigger and not only program it's base sound, but then go into the layers of settings each "sound" had and adjust all the parameters to replicate what you need it to do and sound like. Roland has so many pages and layers to each sound and setting that programming one kit can take hours.

In order to do all of the appropriately, it really helps to have an understanding of audio and know what everything is really doing when adjust a setting. I can't imagine trying to do that without understanding the audio world. Once you really take the time and do all this, you can make a kit that sounds and acts exactly as you want it to, and just like real kit. It just takes decent gear, time, and knowledge. Without going thru the effort, e-kits will act unexpectedly, oddly, and sound funky at best.

I've spent hours, days, months of life programming e-kits, and the final results are fabulous.

That's fine, you can disagree if you like. It's not just settings that make the pads feel like trampolines and settings can't change the fact that e-drums can never feel, sound, or react like the real thing. There's also still missing dynamics and reaction from the drum and cymbals across the surface. I know roland attempts to mimic that with their cone-response design, and it is fun to play but does not feel/sound anything like a well trained hand on a real kit. The drums actually aren't as bad as the cymbal play and response in my opinion.

I think in studio, and especially for certain types of music the sound differences become negligible like you said, only with well setup high end kits, and a lot of it is because studio captured sounds are heavily processed anyway; but even then simply the difference in feel can throw off drummers who aren't used to it.

They're basically two related but different instruments in my mind. There's places for both, but they will never really be the same, to me anyway.
 
It really only works on the high-end e-kits, and you HAVE to spend tons of time on the programming and setting adjustments.


The Roland module have layer upon layer of settings, and you have to spend time and go thru each one to adjust everything accordingly. You first to have spend time on the main system settings, making sure your sensors are programmed to the correct trigger, adjust sensitivities, dynamics, routing, etc... This literally can take hours, and that is before you even begin programming a full kit of sounds (the factory preset kits are useless and have terrible balance).

Once you get all the main settings corrected, it takes hours upon hours to go thru each trigger and not only program it's base sound, but then go into the layers of settings each "sound" had and adjust all the parameters to replicate what you need it to do and sound like. Roland has so many pages and layers to each sound and setting that programming one kit can take hours.

In order to do all of the appropriately, it really helps to have an understanding of audio and know what everything is really doing when adjust a setting. I can't imagine trying to do that without understanding the audio world. Once you really take the time and do all this, you can make a kit that sounds and acts exactly as you want it to, and just like real kit. It just takes decent gear, time, and knowledge. Without going thru the effort, e-kits will act unexpectedly, oddly, and sound funky at best.

I've spent hours, days, months of life programming e-kits, and the final results are fabulous.

I think I'd rather just play acoustics and make them sound like I want them to. I can't imagine doing all of that just to play some music. What happens if the "brain" crashes, and you have to do all that again? Forget it. They aren't for me.
 
E-kits are completely different instruments from acoustic sets.

Close...but not quite...

I tried going hybrid(mostly electronic) - I blame Bill Bruford for that : )

Would be great if I had a soundman, roadie and tech person to figure it out in terms of stage presentation like Bill has/had...but as a replacement when you are trying to nail down paying work...I don't recommend it.
 
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