Are real drummers "extinct?"

Well, even artists who create with programed drums still take "real human drummers" out on tour.
 
We need real drummers! Saw the Who a couple of weeks ago with the son of a real, but not terrifically talented drummer replacing Moon on drums - and boy this guy could play. Yeah it was Ringo's son Zak. I'd hate to see somebody try to program some of the stuff he played ...
 
Somehow it always comes down to the "real drummer" playing a "real kit" or someone who is programming drums. Has this thread even touched the subject of a "real drummer" playing the samples on an e-kit(like myself)? I believe it's the performance alone that is the most important thing - i.e the drummer. The way you move your limbs ahead and behind the beat with x numbers of ghost strokes in broken quintuplets over 11/16 in between with some metric modulation thrown in now and again. Anyone programmed Weckl's stuff yet? Or Buddy's? Maybe Dave Garibaldi?
 
Not yet by a long shot....

Maybe we should hedge our bets though and start cloning some of the better ones just in case...
 
There's drummers and there's drummers. I so much easier to work with a human than a machine. The problems is there are so few drummers out there with a great sense of the groove and even tempo. Sadly, there's a lot of mediocre ones out there which makes a machine more attractive.
 
I think it all depends on what the song or piece of music is calling for. Let me try and explain what i mean ...

If you have to maybe write a short ident/sting/bed and the drum track is quite literally only there to keep time (beleive me i have had clients who REALLY don't like drums ...) and it will be burried in the mix a bit, then "sim" drums or a drum machine might work perfectly well. Also if you put a desent amount of time into the programming of the drum then they will work where the drums are more important (i'm possibly the worst person for sometimes not giving the programming enough time).

But lets be honest, you cannot beat live drums can you ... as long as you have access to a good drummer. It's only when you have worked with a really creative drummer that you realise the differance they can bring to a song. The drummer in my band Just Fontaine is one of those. He always writes "for the song". He will do things like this ... Maybe he has 4 beats in the bar, he might do something like missing one of the bass beats, letting the note played at that point by maybe the bass player be that missing beat. Therefore the rhythm of the song isn't just a drum part and the bass part but a true combination of the two, interlocking, flowing and tighteening the whole song up. He will also do it with other parts of the arrangment to a lesser extent, so where you maybe expected a hit-hat is instead a note from the singer or on the guitar.


Well thats my take on it :)

mcf
 
Real drummers have been extinct for a long time. Most of them do only one beat or one genre. The rest are idiots who think what they do is what your music needs, not what you want is what they should be able to do. That being said, most non-drummers can't program great drum beats or drum parts. Get a drummer to do that or use drum tracks done by Mick Fleetwood or another great drummer. Here's the truth, though. Put an average drummer behind a great band and the band sounds average. Put a great drummer behind an average band and they sound great. You figure it out.
 
Speaking from a one-man-band hobbyist perspective, I find that playing and tracking real drums myself is much better than using drum machines and loops as I did for many, many years in the past.

I'm quite limited in my playing and have cheap mics, but everything I've done since I started using the kit sounds superior to me to what I did with (objectively better sounding) loops.

I'm sure it varies greatly depending on what kind of music you're doing, but generally, I'd rather track even mediocre real drums than use great sounding loops or other fakery.
 
Here I am playing live electronics no sequences I am triggering all the little samples. YouTube

But anyhow drumming is here to stay globally more now than ever. This thread is ridiculous. As an example Latinos we have been playing Salsa, Merengue, Bachata and Cumbia to young top 40 crowds for almost a hundred years now. I am talking about big bands that rival Count Bassie on his prime. As always sorry about my English skill set.
 
Greg_L said:
Drummers have only become obsolete to those that are content with just getting by.
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I believe this to be true, as far as how hard it has always been for me to choose a competant drummer, even though the musc I write and cover leans toward familiar territory by design. That having been said, I can play enough to write a song, and with the popularity of the electronic kits, I can play in my big bedroom studio and not disturb my family for what seems finally like the first time ever this year.:thumbs up:
 
LToro said:
Here I am playing live electronics no sequences I am triggering all the little samples. YouTube

But anyhow drumming is here to stay globally more now than ever. This thread is ridiculous. As an example Latinos we have been playing Salsa, Merengue, Bachata and Cumbia to young top 40 crowds for almost a hundred years now. I am talking about big bands that rival Count Bassie on his prime. As always sorry about my English skill set.
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True! Latino big bands RULE.
 
mcfontaine said:
The drummer in my band Just Fontaine
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Ah, Just Fontaine, 13 goals in 6 games in the 1958 world cup. What a star ! We are unlikely to see his like again......
Real drummers have been extinct for a long time. Most of them do only one beat or one genre. The rest are idiots
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An unfortunate comment, Rod, a comment that only God could justifiably make.
Hey, that's pretty neat, God not Rod !
This thread is ridiculous.
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Why ? From a home recording perspective, it's anything but ridiculous. It would only possibly be ridiculous if no one here used samples and machines ~ but many obviously do.
Personally, I'm with Pete the Heat on this one
I'd rather track even mediocre real drums than use great sounding loops
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VomitHatSteve said:
A couple people have touched on the difficulty of recording drums, which is I think an important part of why actual drums are not so in vogue as they once were.
To record drums you need a drummer, a drum kit, space to practice and record, an array of microphones to record with, an interface or recording device with enough channels to handle all those mics, and the skills to track and mix it.
As compared to most any other popular instrument where you just need the instrument itself and one channel worth of recording chain.

So you can see why - especially in the homerecording world - actual drums aren't as prevalent as they could be.
Add to that the changing taste of the pop-music crowd, and you'll hear a lot less drums overall.
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^^^^^^A very important summary.
I think some of the objectors have been projecting their personal feelings {many of which I share} about acoustic drums in general and not being objective.

Supercreep said:
People who only hit acoustic drums are now specialists.
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Which would tend to bear out the OP's OQ.

There is also a distinction to be made between thinking that drummers are becoming and at the moment are, not as crucial as they once were and thinking that that is the way it should be and that "technology is everything".
20 years from now, it may be a non question, whichever way it goes.
 
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