That E-Drum sound..better than the real thing?

  • Thread starter Thread starter LemonTree
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LemonTree

LemonTree

Suck 'em and see!
Is there such a thing any more? I remember the old thread on here "fake drums sounding real" we've moved on a bit since then. I'm going out on a limb here and I'm gonna say with my hybrid e-kit of roland brain & cymbals and koby mesh pads all round and superior 2.0 I can CONSISTANTLY (key word) get a sought after drum sound time after time that would be difficult to replicate in a decent sounding room with a mic locker 5 times the price of my investment in e-drums.

Programs like superior 2.0, BFD, SSD, EZX..programing midi paterns in all day may still not get you the desired "feel" you are looking for BUT, using the same programs with a real drummer on an E-kit triggering these has now surpassed what can be got in a real studio now...oh that's gonna sting! :D
 
LemonTree said:
Is there such a thing any more? I remember the old thread on here "fake drums sounding real" we've moved on a bit since then. I'm going out on a limb here and I'm gonna say with my hybrid e-kit of roland brain & cymbals and koby mesh pads all round and superior 2.0 I can CONSISTANTLY (key word) get a sought after drum sound time after time that would be difficult to replicate in a decent sounding room with a mic locker 5 times the price of my investment in e-drums.

Programs like superior 2.0, BFD, SSD, EZX..programing midi paterns in all day may still not get you the desired "feel" you are looking for BUT, using the same programs with a real drummer on an E-kit triggering these has now surpassed what can be got in a real studio now...oh that's gonna sting! :D
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tomas hakke (meshuggah drummer) and morgan agren (mats/morgan band, fredrik thordendal's special defects--and the greatest drummer of all time; yeah, i said it) were both involved in the development of BFD, and hakke even used it on 2 meshuggah albums ("I" and "catch 33"). the sound is very good, and on catch 33 i would've never known it wasn't his acoustic set if they hadn't made that info transparently available.

to that end, sound replacement has come a long enough way to fool us all when utilized properly. is it better? i'm not entirely sure. it has its place, especially in metal, but can you imagine using it for jazz? imo, the nuance that a master like antonio sanchez or dennis chambers brings to the table is simply not currently available in a software bundle. i won't go so far as to say it's an impossibility, but it ain't here yet.

the "bleed" feature of BFD gives it an upper hand for sure, but you would probably need at least 100 degrees of volume alone (much less overtones, reverb, etc) and something much more sophisticated than touch sensitivity OR randomization to really capture the technique of a jazz master.

i do get what you're saying--consistency is a beautiful thing, and certainly makes life easier. i suppose i'm making sort of a digital vs analog argument here (although i'm a drummer who uses a digital platform, so you figure it out :D).

i guess a better way to put it is--would a mahavishnu orchestra or led zeppelin album sound "better" with sound replacement? i doubt it. the "feel" can often be much more than just real playing.

besides, what self-respecting drummer wants to play with triggers? :p:D
 
drossfile said:
besides, what self-respecting drummer wants to play with triggers? :p:D
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apparently the drummer for the band that i just ran sound for did on his kick. funny thing is that the band that played after them used the same drumset without the trigger and the kick sounded way better.


and geez using canned drums for recording just seems like giving up to me unless it's metal or hiphop or something where that is part of the sound.
 
second skin said:
apparently the drummer for the band that i just ran sound for did on his kick. funny thing is that the band that played after them used the same drumset without the trigger and the kick sounded way better.


and geez using canned drums for recording just seems like giving up to me unless it's metal or hiphop or something where that is part of the sound.
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heh. i guess it all depends on what you're after. i'm with you on the "giving up" view. i'm a drummer, so i'm pretty unmovable on this issue. i guess it works for some people, but count me out. i know how to tune my drums, and i saved up a whole lot of money to buy the kit i wanted. i'll be damned if i'm not gonna hear those drums on my recordings. i'll take my engineering limitations over "consistency" any day. :cool::)
 
For me if I learn that a song has no real drummer, it's like finding out that an intake or fancy exhaust on a car is fake. May look good but the content is that less interesting to me, even though I still may like it. You may accomplish your goal but for me...
I'll let yall know when some of my favorite songs have the most boring instrument ever invented. The computer. We thought it was good in the 80s too. It just sounds a little better now.
 
The549 said:
For me if I learn that a song has no real drummer, it's like finding out that an intake or fancy exhaust on a car is fake.
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I'm not talking about having no drummer. I'm talking about recording a drummer playing e-drums and triggering software like Superior 2.0 or BFD.

The reason for making the statement is that this is, less we forget the Home Recording forum and I can't have an acoustic kit being bashed 24/7 in my neighbourhood. Where I live there are probably 100 studios in a 100 mile radius of me but out of that 100 there are probably only half a dozen you would book specificaly for their live room sound for the drums. Smaller studios are 10 a penny and mostly all suffer from the same thing, lack of space and a decent sounding drum room. So what would you rather have? A shitty acoustic drum sound or software triggered by e-drums played by a REAL drummer?
 
LemonTree said:
I'm not talking about having no drummer. I'm talking about recording a drummer playing e-drums and triggering software like Superior 2.0 or BFD.

The reason for making the statement is that this is, less we forget the Home Recording forum and I can't have an acoustic kit being bashed 24/7 in my neighbourhood. Where I live there are probably 100 studios in a 100 mile radius of me but out of that 100 there are probably only half a dozen you would book specificaly for their live room sound for the drums. Smaller studios are 10 a penny and mostly all suffer from the same thing, lack of space and a decent sounding drum room. So what would you rather have? A shitty acoustic drum sound or software triggered by e-drums played by a REAL drummer?
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yep, i totally get you here. i can understand the space and noise limitations. as far as the sound of the room, though, i filled my small studio with homemade broadband absorbers for far less money than it would've cost to get software and triggers. best studio investment i ever made.


oh, and i have to correct myself. hakke and agren were in on the dfh development, not bfd.
 
I've owned a set of V-session's for about 6 years now. I'm not even a drummer.:p I'm a guitar player, and can't play drums for shit. I got them for recording. A lot of drummer's I brought down her a few years ago bashed the V-drums, and claimed that's why they couldn't get the part down. Now I talk to a lot of them, and since then they have bought their own E-drums, and they no longer have that complaint. It would seem that the reason they had trouble was they didn't practice the part, and blamed the instrument.

Anyone that claims it "doesn't sound like 'real' drums, or a 'real drummer', are pretty much old school, and most of the time you will find that they simply don't know what they are doing with the e drums. Electronic drum sounds, and the e drum software has come a long, long way in the last few years. I don't even think it's a legit question, anymore.

I've always said, it's not what you have....it's what you can do with it.
 
I've heard some pretty impressive tirggered-drum recordings. But one thing that still always gives it away is the cymbals. I can tell fake cymbals right away.

As far as room size, I record in a 9'X13' room with a 7' ceiling, and I have no complaints about my drum sound. In fact, I, and anyone who hears my recordings, am quite impressed by it. :D
 
RAMI said:
I've heard some pretty impressive tirggered-drum recordings. But one thing that still always gives it away is the cymbals. I can tell fake cymbals right away.
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Yup.

For me, I'm rarely - if ever - impressed when someone uses fake/sampled sounds with E-drums or triggers. Yeah, it's technically still a human playing, but I'd always rather hear real drums. The "art" of miking and recording real drums is part of what interests me with home recording. Any old mongo can plug in his E-drums or triggers to a module and use samples. Blech. If you can't use real drums because of your living situation, then fine, it's totally understandable. But for me, I can bang away all day long, and I'm gonna mic it, try to make it sound good, and enjoy the process.

And for playing live, nothing screams fucking gay like a rubber cymbal'd E-kit. :D
 
Greg_L said:
Yup.



And for playing live, nothing screams fucking gay like a rubber cymbal'd E-kit. :D
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Now that I gotta agree with lol

Our drummer uses an old white premier pictured below from last month

l_5a34af770d4d441d85af2b03033f86d1.jpg
 
I've been a drummer for 20 years or so and I've done it all...miced acoustic kits, owned a set fo Roland E-drums, I have Addictive Drums software...at the end of the day, all I care about these days is the final sound and product. Whatever means gets you the sound you're after then that's the correct approach. There's simply no need (not saying that anyone here has) to bash one side or the other because this guys uses edrums and that guys swears by acoustic etc. Remember many moons ago when electronic pianos and such were totally bashed by the purists...they're just a fad, they sound like crap...but guess what, technology evolved and now electronic keyboards are more than acceptable, they're often preferred - probably excluding the jazz scenario mentioned before - and edrums, software etc. are no different. I put out a few demos last year with three different drum approaches: live acoustic drums miked, live drums triggered using drumagog, and Addictive drums where I never picked up a stick. Excellent results for all and no one, not even close musician friends of mine whom I highly respect, had any idea I ever did anything other than miking an acoustic kit. Subjective like everything else around here. I think all these methods have their place and I like them all. At least engineers have options with their approach to drums these days, and options are always a good thing.
 
PlatinumSamples said:
Care to listen to our demos?

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Rail
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That's definitely impressive. I still hear something not 100% real to me. It's not the cymbals or even the drum sounds. I think it's the programming (if that's the right term for how they're put together). The hits, especially kik, all have the same volume, it seems. It lacks dynamics. But very little, I do think they sound great, don't get me wrong.
 
Greg_L said:
Yup.

And for playing live, nothing screams fucking gay like a rubber cymbal'd E-kit. :D
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Agreed.

As a drummer, I'll keep playing the real thing. But I have a nice kit, I have really really nice cymbals. AND I can play. My drums sound nice mic'ed up in a smallish room with low ceiling and I also have API and m160s and the whole bit to run them through. Also, I am a jazzer in the Elvin Jones vein. Even when I am playing rock the jazz comes out a bit.

You can take the jizz out of a drummer, but you can't take the jazz out of a drummer.

I have never tried drumagog and all that. Maybe I would like it. I can see it for rock beats and whatever, I can't see it working for my style. I do have a Yamaha DS11 electronic kit that I got for practicing when I lived in apartments. I would like to trigger my real drums with it to catch midi so that I could do some simultaneous triggering or whatever.

Electronic drums rock for electronic music. And I dig playing that kit for that stuff alot. But it has not been played for a few years.

If I go to a studio I expect a kickass room with high ceilings and royers or coles ribbon mics for room mics in stereo. And a nice kit there, if I care to use it. I expect a freakin stellar headphone mix. Otherwise I will just do the tracks at home.

I know that a lot of starter studios are cash strapped and whatever and still staffed with good engineers with protools and whatnot but ... I didn't come there for that. I can nail my own takes and I bring good sounds with me.

So, I will shell out the real money for a real studio.
 
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the whole e kit thing is going to be based on genre and how up front the kit is rock sure trigger away metal absolutley a livish sounding jazz trio with anykind of ride or hihat work not going to cut it not even close
 
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