'Air drums' ... do they work?

S

Stickman

Silver Member
Seems a lot of ads popping up for these air drum devices lately. I'm guessing they may be tricky to keep in sync.. and require different kind of drum technique (eg. no bounce Lol). Although I did see one ad with an actual pro drummer playing them and he seemed to play them pretty well.

A bass player friend is looking to get a set of e-drums to lay down patterns in his smallish apartment. Wondering if the air drums might work as a solution.. where both sound and space is limited.

Anyone tried them?
 
It looks like a brilliant idea really, though IMO simply reproducing drum sounds seems like just the beginning. In the long run, it would suffer from some of the problems that theremins do, hard to calibrate and not as precise as you might expect, basically just waving hands in the air.
 
I think they would be bad for real drummers. Your hands need the rebound (bounce back) in oder to train and maintain proper muscle memory.
But they might be ok if they work on pillows.

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Hollywood Jim said:
I think they would be bad for real drummers. Your hands need the rebound (bounce back) in oder to train and maintain proper muscle memory.
But they might be ok if they work on pillows.

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Click to expand...

I actually think air drumming is really helpful, it forces you to pay attention to how you respond to rebound.
 
Bo Eder said:
Doesn’t your bass player friend have a drum machine?
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No he doesn't.. but he is a good natural drummer. He wants to lay down his own grooves to jam with or create bed track kind of things. I suppose he prefers the immediacy of playing in real time..
 
Stickman said:
Seems a lot of ads popping up for these air drum devices lately. I'm guessing they may be tricky to keep in sync.. and require different kind of drum technique (eg. no bounce Lol). Although I did see one ad with an actual pro drummer playing them and he seemed to play them pretty well.

A bass player friend is looking to get a set of e-drums to lay down patterns in his smallish apartment. Wondering if the air drums might work as a solution.. where both sound and space is limited.

Anyone tried them?
Click to expand...

Tried - yes. Got a pair floating around here somewhere. (got most things, TBH). Would I recommend? Nah. I'd always recommend pads.
 
I have gigged and rehearsed with Aerodrums extensively (and exclusively) a few years ago. You just have to get used to the fictional drums in the air in front of you. The downsides are of course:

1) Limited rebound, even though you bounce them off of the meaty part of your forearms, fast doubles can get tricky, but it can be done.
2) For Aerodrums you have all the zones next to each other in this airspace, meaning you have to move in a certain way in order not to trigger sound sources accidentally. One option is to assign a dead MIDI note to neighbouring airzones.
3) For Aerodrums, working with light and camera, the space behind you must not reflect any light.

I found an old video of me snapped when I just got the first iteration. Enjoy .... maybe.
 
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