E-drums: could they be a common thing for small bands gigs?

[OneEng]

It COULD have sounded good all night with eDrums, but there's so many other factors that come into it that its a stupid argument (because you can just "what if" with acoustic drums too). eDrums come with their own set of requirements that could easily make something relatively straightforward all go to shit. For every "eDrums would have solved this" they create just as many problems that don't exist for acoustic drums.

BS. I have mixed the same band with eDrums. It would have sounded great at any volume level.

Golf course restaurant. Checkmate. Drums bad.

In all fairness, it was one of the better sound stages I have seen indoors. The majority of places I have gigged have had a much smaller stage and dance floor than this place had (it's in the middle of >2M homes on 2 lakes).

Mixing around acoustic drums may well be what lots of people have done, and yes, you CAN make it sound good in the right situations (especially larger venues and outdoors), but anyone that does much mixing will tell you that for most bar gigs, the use of eDrums makes a much better sounding mix for rock bands (not Jazz).

While you may be able to raise the volume on a kick drum or bass guitar, those cymbals drive people away and plug up the vocal mics with noise.

 

[Orvillain]

A bunch of toff cunts in a golf club don't like loud rock music?? COLOUR ME FUCKING SHOCKED!

 

[OneEng]

A bunch of toff cunts in a golf club don't like loud rock music?? COLOUR ME FUCKING SHOCKED!

And of course you would assume that they didn't like loud music. SOME people that were there early didn't like loud music. The music was thunderous by the end of the night and the dance floor was packed. It was loud enough that the cymbals were no longer crazy out of wack with the mix.

Didn't make the early part of the night any less painful.

 

[DrewJD82]

A bunch of toff cunts in a golf club don't like loud rock music?? COLOUR ME FUCKING SHOCKED!

They do in Boca! The band I joined a couple years ago got booked regularly at one. I went there to check them out before I played with them, they were definitely using real drums. This isn’t them below, but a different band at the same golf course, Winston’s On The Green-



Man, that sound guy must have had a bitch of a time dealing with ALL that goin’ on back there….

 

[Chocol8]

To be fair...(que up Letter Kenny) That does appear to be outside, and the stage looks like it is about 10x the size of many indoor stages at smaller venues.

 

[HotRats]

 

[[Nathan]]

This thread has kept my eyes and ears peeled for how good acoustic kits sound in all environments.
I rewatched this track for other reasons but its crazy how good the drums sound... and in general such a brutal track for late night TV even by 2025 standards

 

[Alex Kenivel]

This thread has kept my eyes and ears peeled for how good acoustic kits sound in all environments.
I rewatched this track for other reasons but its crazy how good the drums sound... and in general such a brutal track for late night TV even by 2025 standards

It must have taken me a day and a half to download this from Kazzaa back in HS. I would watch it over and over

 

[[Nathan]]

It must have taken me a day and a half to download this from Kazzaa back in HS. I would watch it over and over

I sent it to another mate and he said the same thing about Kazaa . Totally different to limewire and bearshare .

 

[jay mitchell]

Here's an on-topic (and true) war story from the time I served at Showco:

Prior to the beginning of rehearsals for ZZ Top's "Afterburner" tour ca. 1986, the late ML Procise, their FOH engineer, brought all the drums from Frank Beard's kit into the shop, had piezo sensors glued to the heads, lashed them all up to a MIDI drum synth (I don't recall which one), and set thresholds so as to get reliable triggers from drum hits. I found this interesting, and later, over a blunt, I got him to spill the story. Seems the entire album had been made sans Frank, who hated the sounds Billy Gibbons wanted for those tunes ("sound of the '80s") and refused to participate. Those sounds were largely, if not entirely, synthesized, and Frank adamantly refused to concern himself with duplicating them for the tour. The solution was to use the acoustic drums to trigger the MIDI drum synth - which ML had with him on the mix riser - and send that mix to FOH only. Frank did not want to hear those sounds at all, so the full kit was mic'ed, with a mix of acoustic drums only sent to Frank's headphones. For the entire tour, the audience heard only synthesized drums - with the exception of cymbals and possibly the snare - and Frank heard only his acoustic kit.

I've got a couple more war stories from that tour, but they're OT here.

 

[la szum]

Why do we get so precious about "real" drums when none of us have heard real drums
live or in the studio for quite some time now?

Seriously. Drums have been more hyped/augmented/lifted/massaged than virtually
any other instrument in a Rock context outside of Vocals and Autotune.

Hell, I bet Drums take the cake as the most Synthesized of all Instruments outside of actual Synths.

Throw in playing to a click, aligned on a grid, and virtually anything and everything that is
"real" and "authentic" about drums has been neutered and removed from the process entirely.

 

[jay mitchell]

Why do we get so precious about "real" drums when none of us have heard real drums
live or in the studio for quite some time now?

Is this tongue in cheek? I hear real drums at least once a week, as do the other 14-15 people who play in the same big band. In the past 2-3 years, I've heard live bands in contexts ranging from 50-seat night clubs to 2500-seat theaters, and the drums have without exception sounded at least as natural as the other instruments and vocals. Admittedly, none of the acts I've seen have been metal or EDM, but several have played loud rock.

Seriously. Drums have been more hyped/augmented/lifted/massaged than virtually
any other instrument in a Rock context outside of Vocals and Autotune.

While the amount of signal processing - limiting, gating, and equalization - applied to drums is often substantial, lots of that is targeted at preserving the natural sound of drums and cymbals while minimizing bleed in drum mics and compensating for mic types and locations. Kick drum is the biggest exception to that, but the worst offenders there are IMO narcissistic sound guys who pride themselves on using 100% of the headroom in a sound system just to create a chest-thumping kick sound. When I hear that kind of mix live, it's usually a matter of minutes before I walk out.

 

[Chocol8]

I go to see a lot of small venue stuff which often means acoustic drums with no mic reinforcement. Not usually "rock" and the drummers have to be able to control their volume, but I would say I hear real drums live rather frequently.