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Kris Myers
E-drums: could they be a common thing for small bands gigs?
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EOengineer
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That is certainly one way to handle it.
I lost a good chunk of my HF hearing (>12Khz) in my right ear from playing in bands with acoustic drums. I can clearly recall leaving band practice with my ears ringing every week. I have struggled with the mix out front for over 10 years before going to vDrums in my band .... so my personal experience leads me to say no acoustic drums in my band.
While this does tend to thin the herd of potential band mates when we lose a drummer (lost my last one to retirement up North in Michigan back in 2018 but was fortunate to find another within a couple of months), the pay-off is that my band can play ANY venue and keep a smile on the owners face as well as the audience.
... and that is really what it comes down to for me personally. I get a kick out of having a great crowd. Good Lord knows I am never going to break even on my time and equipment I used for the band .... its much more like a fun hobby that costs a bunch of money, but that people provide a small pay check for a few times a month. It's also nice to have venue owners as us when we can come back. As pointed out, there are fewer and fewer venues even hosting live music these days. Used to be 20 years ago you could drive down any major street in a decent sized town and find a live band venue about every mile you drove (in New Orleans and Austin Texas you can find much much more
). Today, in the Detroit suburbs, I know of about 10 decent places within a 20 mile radius.... and the competition to get into these places is tough. Telling a venue owner that you are going to do it your way or the highway will most certainly get you straight to the highway!That venue I said made the band stay below 95db? It's in a popular area in Ann Arbor Michigan. Not exactly a hole in the wall, and certainly not a crap venue by any standard. He has no difficulty getting bands. Starts booking in May of every year ..... fills up by the 2nd week in May.
"But how is it possible to stay below 95db" you say? eDrums sure do make a good starting point (as does a good modeler/profiler).
FWIW, it isn't the bottom end that gets you in trouble. The SPL meters being used in venues are tuned to the A weighting. This is used because it is the weighting used for hearing protection. A weighting is nearly deaf at lower frequencies.... but those cymbals, snare and guitars? That will peg it pretty quick.
From here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_Weighting_(spectral_analysis)
FYI, when purchasing speakers the SPL is usually gathered in A weight .... which is nearly as useless as tits on a boar unless you want to determine the effectiveness of a bull horn.
paisleywookiee
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Drummer from Karnivool.
HotRats
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Baard Kolstad from Leprous
If the goal of a rock band is to have repeatable great mixes in all venues, mixes not destroyed by acoustic kits being too loud so that the audience can't hear the other instruments, or the other instruments being forced to attempt to match the acoustic drum kit's stage SPL, which then makes the band too loud for the venue, and/or stage volume drowns out FOH so the audience can't hear the acoustic kit's FX processing, then eDrums and/or Triggers on a muted acoustic kit are a great answer assuming that the music can be played within the eDrum's triggering limitations, and the drummer has the needed skills to play them.
To be sure, eDrums do have limitations with regards to some drumming techniques, but to a large degree these limitations don't effect rock music, so if the goal is the best possible mix in all venues eDrums can help, plus they can also help by elimnating the hassle of mic'ing and FX processing an acoustic kit (compressors, gates, room tone and reverb, EQ's etc), which in itself can be a great reason to use eDrums or Triggers too.
To be sure, eDrums do have limitations with regards to some drumming techniques, but to a large degree these limitations don't effect rock music, so if the goal is the best possible mix in all venues eDrums can help, plus they can also help by elimnating the hassle of mic'ing and FX processing an acoustic kit (compressors, gates, room tone and reverb, EQ's etc), which in itself can be a great reason to use eDrums or Triggers too.
MirrorProfiles
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If a soundguy can't get a reasonable sound with an acoustic kit, an electric kit isn't going to help. Even very average venues are designed and equipped to deal with acoustic kits. We’re in a golden age of technology being affordable and good sound being commonplace. This notion that drum kits and amplifiers will somehow spoil everything is just assuming humans are all incompetent and venues are ill prepared for the one thing they’re designed for.
You can literally have rock bands performing live with a full orchestra with good sound, I don't think anyone in this thread needs to worry about acoustic kits being too difficult to deal with.
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It's just people pretending to know more than they actually do. Standard forumer nonsense.
Chocol8
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Around here, average venues aren’t really designed at all. They mostly just find a convenient space for a small stage area with no thought into acoustics at all.
MirrorProfiles
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There’s absolutely nothing about modellers or electric kits that would do anything positive to a sound at a gig like this. This is a tiny pub on a council estate. It simply is not a problem
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I've played there many times. It is always a good crack!
MirrorProfiles
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Did they have enough inputs for your V Drums and Hotone?
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We had to hire a sound engineer with 10 years experience working in American mega churches. That's the ONLY WAY to get hype sound.
Spoken like a guy who has never toured, never mixed a live band in pro environments, and never played the 1500 - 3000 seat theaters in most cities and towns across the US/Canada and EU anyways, many of which were acoustically designed for spoken word and acoustic music, i.e not loud rock bands with gorilla drummers on acoustic kits.
So, which "sound guy" are we talking about...
a) A deaf part-time sound guy who turns on an antique PA in your local pub?
b) A sound guy who travels with you and has quality equipment for use with house FOH rigs?
c) A sound crew who travels with your major international touring act with it's own sound?
d) A sound guy in a performing arts theater or small shed designed for spoken word and acoustic music?
e) A rented sound guy at a out door art and wine festival who could care less and is watching the babes while your band sucks?
Also, what's a "reasonable sound" while noting that a "reasonable sound" by your standards may be considered absolute crap by others etc?
Is your "reasonable sound" the acoustic snare and crash cymbals being the loudest elements in the FOH mix with their faders at zero, or is it with the band cranking out 130db +- to balance with the snare and crash cymbals?
What if instead you'd prefer to sound like your recordings with a perfect mix of all the elements at say a common rock concert volume of 100db +-, and any other "reasonable sound" compromise doesn't cut it for you and your band/management?
So, eDrums/Triggers on a muted acoustic kit and quality sample playback can solve any of these problems quite easily, and are extremely common with modern music production at all levels from pub to arena to studio (assuming the drummer and style of drumming can deal with any triggering limitations like imperfect snare dragging and brushes (not a big deal with rock), tympani sticks on cymbals etc.
That said, acoustic drums do of course rock in the right venues that can deal with their SPL, with the right crew that can mic them and process them as needed.
MirrorProfiles
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Any sound guy who can’t cope with acoustic drums at a 1000-3000 venue should consider a new job. You’re making it sound like every gig that went ahead with real drums is a miracle.
Maybe if you’re playing in a swanky hotel lobby or a conference or something but it’s essentially a game of goal post shifting then.
There’s also no guarantee of sampled drums sounding any better - there’s just as much scope for them to end up sounding bad, arguably more because they totally rely on decent PA as well as nothing going wrong.
Reasonable sound means it can convey the performance adequately to the crowd. I’ve been to some atrocious makeshift gigs with the worst gear imaginable and the drums being acoustic was far from being the bottleneck, and arguably one of the few things that doesn’t cause big issues.
HotRats
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I don't know.
In any venue big enough to need a full foh mix and not just a sound reinforcement, having acoustic drums (or amps on stage) is not a problem and, if needed, there are ways to reduce stage volume or direct sound getting to the audience.
In any other smaller venue, where foh system is used as a reinforcement, is possible to build a mix around the acoustic drums natural sound and volume.
Again, if a mix built around the natural volume of an acoustic kit is too loud for the venue, then that's the wrong venue for a rock band.
I don't see e-drums/triggers as a cure for bad mixes but as a tool for keeping the volume down when low volume is a the main goal, like a band playing in background during a dinner.
Quite often acoustic drums have triggers triggering eDrum samples, and that's what you're hearing or a blend with the mic FOH, plus there are eDrum kits using full size drum shells for the look, though I do agree that the tiny eDrum kits don't look right on a big rock band stage.
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