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

[metropolis_4]

The main issue I see against the raise of popularity of e-drums is that they complicate things, if you want to extract the most out of them, some how like like guitar modelers do.
They complicate things without bringing substantial advantages.

To operate them properly you need to understand, learn and manage things that are not about playing drums and, on top of that, your instrument feels worst, reacts differently and has limitations (and this is a big different with the modelling the guitar world, where the instrument stay the same).

Not a lot of player are willing to do that, we see that among guitarist where most of them out there buy a modeler, never read the fucking manual and spend tons of money on presets that sound like shit instead of learning how to use the device they've bought.

And if you’re a competent drummer there’s not much incentive to deal with the extra complications, limitations, and expenses vs just getting a decent set of acoustic drums

 

[HotRats]

And if you’re a competent drummer there’s not much incentive to deal with the extra complications, limitations, and expenses vs just getting a decent set of acoustic drums

And if you really need to keep the volume down you can buy low volume cymbals, dampers, plexiglass shields, remove resonat heads and so on.

 

[Orvillain]

@Orvillain probably has some understanding of this; I know SD3 does a fairly decent job with this, but the majority of e-kits I’ve played do not; something that lends itself to the machine gun sound is a sample being re-triggered every time it’s hit, which is fundamentally not how hitting a real drum repeatedly works as a drum will build resonance inside the shell, causing it to sound differently as it’s being hit, which changes as you continue to hit it. A capable/aware drummer will play off that resonance, changing the dynamics of their hits and sometimes where on the head they’re hitting something in response to that resonance.

Pretty much nailed it.

Sample to sample to sample is just fading out the previous sample when the next one is triggered. There is no mechanical or physical interaction.

Which is not true for a real drumkit.

In order to add that next level of realism, you can brute force solve it by recording a ton of 'double excited' and 'triple excited' hits - but congratulations, you just turned a 10 day recording session for 1 drumkit, into a 30 day recording session (assuming you maintain all other levels of quality)

No. That isn't sustainable.

What is needed is some level of physical modelling being applied to the sample sets, in order to build up those excitements and those resonances in realtime. But that isn't a solved problem as of yet. You can kind of do it with one mono or stereo drum sample. But doing it realistically across 11-28 odd channels?? Fugetaboutit.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Pretty much nailed it.

Sample to sample to sample is just fading out the previous sample when the next one is triggered. There is no mechanical or physical interaction.

Which is not true for a real drumkit.

In order to add that next level of realism, you can brute force solve it by recording a ton of 'double excited' and 'triple excited' hits - but congratulations, you just turned a 10 day recording session for 1 drumkit, into a 30 day recording session (assuming you maintain all other levels of quality)

No. That isn't sustainable.

What is needed is some level of physical modelling being applied to the sample sets, in order to build up those excitements and those resonances in realtime. But that isn't a solved problem as of yet. You can kind of do it with one mono or stereo drum sample. But doing it realistically across 11-28 odd channels?? Fugetaboutit.

I’d imagine there’s some sympathetic resonances and behaviours that happen between drums, stands, heads etc that are totally dependent on the tuning and position in the room, as well as things like the temperature/humidity etc that affect how things are ringing out together. Sampled pianos sound amazing but just lack that magic that real ones have because of all those sympathetic interactions and things happening in the room that a musician intuitively responds to. It’s also way more intuitive to just move an instrument or close a soundboard or change a mic stand or open a door etc which just isn’t really feasible with a drum library

 

[deathbyguitar]

What is needed is some level of physical modelling being applied to the sample sets, in order to build up those excitements and those resonances in realtime.

Funny that you mentioned that. I bought IK MODO DRUM for 50 bucks last night just try it out. I think it definitely has promise but the interface is a nightmare, the midi mapping is nonsensical and there are just all sorts of crazy design choices. But they will probably change a lot of it for version 2. Considering this one was 75% off, they will probably launch a version 2 right around the corner.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I’d imagine there’s some sympathetic resonances and behaviours that happen between drums, stands, heads etc that are totally dependent on the tuning and position in the room, as well as things like the temperature/humidity etc that affect how things are ringing out together. Sampled pianos sound amazing but just lack that magic that real ones have because of all those sympathetic interactions and things happening in the room that a musician intuitively responds to. It’s also way more intuitive to just move an instrument or close a soundboard or change a mic stand or open a door etc which just isn’t really feasible with a drum library

While I absolutely agree, pretty much none of that is really relevant live (which the entire debate is merely about). Mic'ed up drums on a live stage don't really transport all those nuances. And you can't open a door, either.

 

[DrewJD82]

I’d imagine there’s some sympathetic resonances and behaviours that happen between drums, stands, heads etc that are totally dependent on the tuning and position in the room, as well as things like the temperature/humidity etc that affect how things are ringing out together. Sampled pianos sound amazing but just lack that magic that real ones have because of all those sympathetic interactions and things happening in the room that a musician intuitively responds to. It’s also way more intuitive to just move an instrument or close a soundboard or change a mic stand or open a door etc which just isn’t really feasible with a drum library

Yep. If ya ever get a drummer who doesn’t give a shit about all the rubber pieces coming off his drum rack, tell him to bring towels and duct tape to a recording session if everything is getting mic’d. Spent forever one evening trying to sort out a “Aaoooonnng” sound coming through the mics, it was one pipe of the rack that had no rubber caps and only one tom mounted on it, every time he hit that tom you’d hear it ringing out.

 

[paisleywookiee]

Yep. If ya ever get a drummer who doesn’t give a shit about all the rubber pieces coming off his drum rack, tell him to bring towels and duct tape to a recording session if everything is getting mic’d. Spent forever one evening trying to sort out a “Aaoooonnng” sound coming through the mics, it was one pipe of the rack that had no rubber caps and only one tom mounted on it, every time he hit that tom you’d hear it ringing out.

It's not the size of the Aaoooonnng, it's how you use it.

 

[Orvillain]

Funny that you mentioned that. I bought IK MODO DRUM for 50 bucks last night just try it out. I think it definitely has promise but the interface is a nightmare, the midi mapping is nonsensical and there are just all sorts of crazy design choices. But they will probably change a lot of it for version 2. Considering this one was 75% off, they will probably launch a version 2 right around the corner.

It is a shame it sounds like proper cow bowel tho.

 

[metropolis_4]

While I absolutely agree, pretty much none of that is really relevant live (which the entire debate is merely about). Mic'ed up drums on a live stage don't really transport all those nuances. And you can't open a door, either.

All of that is relevant live. In some styles and settings more than others

 

[OneEng]

While I absolutely agree, pretty much none of that is really relevant live (which the entire debate is merely about). Mic'ed up drums on a live stage don't really transport all those nuances. And you can't open a door, either.

Yea, but you can definitely hear the cymbal bleed through every open mic on stage.

I guess the question comes down to if the effect of the stage bleed outweighs the effect of the lack of nuance in the particular situation of live venue we are talking about.

 

[OneEng]

All of that is relevant live. In some styles and settings more than others

So you believe you could pick out a real drum in a live mix compared to SD3 in a live mix?

I believe this about as much as I believe you could pick out a real amp in a live mix vs a good modeler/capture device in a live mix.

 

[spawnofthesith]

The Dead “solved” a lot of these “problems” during the “wall of sound” era 50 years ago

 

[metropolis_4]

So you believe you could pick out a real drum in a live mix compared to SD3 in a live mix?

I believe this about as much as I believe you could pick out a real amp in a live mix vs a good modeler/capture device in a live mix.

I’ll go back to this video again. Do you believe you couldn’t pick out SD3 compared to real drums if you were in this audience?

Say one of them was using e-drums for this performance and the other was using real drums. If you were in this audience and blindfolded you don’t think you could tell which was which?

 

[DrewJD82]

So you believe you could pick out a real drum in a live mix compared to SD3 in a live mix?

I believe this about as much as I believe you could pick out a real amp in a live mix vs a good modeler/capture device in a live mix.

Now I think you're trolling.

Either that or you've cared so little about drums you've managed to not actually listen to them the entire time you've been playing music.

 

[paisleywookiee]

So you believe you could pick out a real drum in a live mix compared to SD3 in a live mix?

I believe this about as much as I believe you could pick out a real amp in a live mix vs a good modeler/capture device in a live mix.

So now we’re up to gigging with a full eKit+laptop running low latency interface? This is getting a bit silly.

If it’s a modern Roland kit, the sounds will be good. If it’s the shit Alesis kit you posted earlier, nah. That sounded like my SR-16 from 1994.

Serious question: how do you explain all the amazing-sounding shows so many of us have seen over the past few decades, with real amps, real drums, etc?

I mean, trust me. I LOVE modelers. But I’ve been to more shows than I can possibly remember that sounded amazing top to bottom. I seriously would like to know how you think that happened.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

While I absolutely agree, pretty much none of that is really relevant live (which the entire debate is merely about). Mic'ed up drums on a live stage don't really transport all those nuances. And you can't open a door, either.

I wasn’t trying to imply they’d affect live performance, it was related to the limitations of sample libraries. The posts before were talking about where things are at and how to close the gap further.

There’s a million reasons why electronic drums sound bad live, but there’s so many other reasons it’s a bad idea that have been discussed endlessly here

Yea, but you can definitely hear the cymbal bleed through every open mic on stage.

I guess the question comes down to if the effect of the stage bleed outweighs the effect of the lack of nuance in the particular situation of live venue we are talking about.

Bleed is only a problem if it sounds bad. Up to the sound engineer whether they make it a problem or not. I have a friend who is a very accomplished live sound engineer who almost exclusively uses dpa mics, with one major reason being the bleed sounds much better than other mics. Maybe heavily EQ’ing and gating is creating more problems than it solves?

 

[Orvillain]

While I absolutely agree, pretty much none of that is really relevant live (which the entire debate is merely about). Mic'ed up drums on a live stage don't really transport all those nuances. And you can't open a door, either.

This is 100% false.

 

[Orvillain]

So you believe you could pick out a real drum in a live mix compared to SD3 in a live mix?

I believe this about as much as I believe you could pick out a real amp in a live mix vs a good modeler/capture device in a live mix.

You don't know anything about the physics of drums. Sit down.

 

[Orvillain]

Serious question: how do you explain all the amazing-sounding shows so many of us have seen over the past few decades, with real amps, real drums, etc?