Usiing An Electronic Kit With Addictive Drums For Live Performances

H

HighVoltage101

Junior Member
I just recently started using/learning the technology of using my electronic drums as a MIDI interface for recording, while using Addictive Drums to get a better, more natural sounding kit....My question is can I/how do I do this for live performances? (for my smaller shows where an acoustic kit is just too much)

Theoretically (in my head at least) I could just buy a cheap set of electronic drums and somehow use addictive drums to get the same sound for live shows as I do when recording,,

I hope I explained this well, all of this is still very new to me
 
is this something you want to do or is your band pushing you into this?
What kind of music do you play?
You will need a lot of expensive gear to accomplish this and too many things can go wrong. I don't know how much but i would say in the 1000s. Don't waste your time and money with this, get some drum lessons and learn how to play in low volume settings.
So my answer is drop this whole thing and focus on playing and improving.
 
It can be done, but it gets complicated.

You have to bring a computer to the show, set up the e-kit, run midi to the computer (via some sort of interface), and then audio out of the computer.

In terms of "for my smaller shows where an acoustic kit is just too much" I think you'd find dragging all the computer gear and cables and the hassle of making sure it's al just right to be "too much for a smaller show".
 
Perhaps more so than anything else, I would like to be able to set something up permanently at my church for playing on Sundays...the lugging of equipment, etc doesnt make much of a difference to me. My biggest question is how difficult it is/ is this something that can be reasonably done
 
Your biggest hinderance will be latency especially since you'll be going from drums to computer through software back out to an audio interface to the system. Like veggo said you'll need some good equipment to try and keep that latency to a minimum.
 
BertTheDrummer said:
Your biggest hinderance will be latency especially since you'll be going from drums to computer through software back out to an audio interface to the system. Like veggo said you'll need some good equipment to try and keep that latency to a minimum.
Click to expand...

Could you explain latency to me a bit? (Again, I'm new to this and am learning every day)
 
HighVoltage101 said:
Could you explain latency to me a bit? (Again, I'm new to this and am learning every day)
Click to expand...

Latency is basically the delay it takes from what you do to get to where it's going. For example you hit the drum pad, but the sound doesn't actually happen for like half a second.

With some instruments it's not too bad and can be overcome, but with drums it can cause quite a big problem.
 
You're introducing a ton of new points of failure, and frustration. Every stage and system is different, and trust me, you don't want to be fiddling with cross-talk settings when you've only got a 15 minute change window after the previous band is done. I mean, nobody likes a software error on stage, or even a hardware error because some idiot spilled beer on your computer.
 
Latency on modern hardware is much less of a problem than it once was. It's just a case of having enough RAM and processing power - which pretty much anything can do. To be honest, your best bet might be a tablet (probably an iPad with decent software). That is the most portable and integrated system. You'd need a MIDI converter cable (or a USB out on the module).

I've toyed with the idea of taking a laptop system for playing ambient guitar music live but there are a lot of points of failure. It's feasible but setting it up at local shows with almost no changeover time is difficult and if one part of the system fails, you're in trouble. There's no 'Plan B', unless you want to use internal sounds on the module - which are almost always terrible.

It's complex. I'd be practicing changeovers constantly before any performance to make sure that I had the settings down and checking everything intently before I left for shows. For me, it would be too much.
 
Dr_Watso said:
You're introducing a ton of new points of failure, and frustration. Every stage and system is different, and trust me, you don't want to be fiddling with cross-talk settings when you've only got a 15 minute change window after the previous band is done. I mean, nobody likes a software error on stage, or even a hardware error because some idiot spilled beer on your computer.
Click to expand...

I'll second this statement. I was casually looking into going this route until I had a discussion with my guitarist and sound man who firmly said no.
 
I'm not clear on exactly what you are trying to do.

During one live performance I hung up some trigger pads on my acoustic drum set. They were not on the acoustic drums but positioned around the drum set. I ran them through my Alesis DM5 to produce some percussion instrument sounds. Then the output of the Alesis went into an amplifier.

It worked good. Except I needed a volume control that I could operate with my left foot. As it was I had to reach behind me on occasion to adjust the amplifier volume.

.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top