Electronic Drums?

D

dmckissic

New member
I know a lot of people are using midi or sampled drums for recording now, (but call me old fashioned...LOL) I like to do my own thing. I have a nice set of Pearl Drums that I keep in my church, couldn't fit them into my my 12x12 home studio. Also it would be an acoustic nightmare, not to mention my wife would probably leave me. ;)
problem is its too much trouble to go the church and set up just to do a drum track. Been thinking about buying an electronic set. Ive had no experience with them. Does anybody use them or have any idea if theyre worth the cost and how are they for recording?
Right now Im using the midi on my Yamaha 625 keyboard, sound good but I cant do on it what I can do with a real set.


PS:
hope I posted this in the right place. Only been a member for a week and already got in trouble twice for posting in the wrong place:D
 
Well... lot's of ways you can go with this. What's your budget? Have you ever played on edrums anytime? Some drummers absolutely hate them. The newer Rolands are better - many drummers can tolerate the V-drums with mesh heads. But expect a couple thousand dollars.

One thing about the edrums - record the midi info and then substitute the sounds from which ever library of sounds you like, or can afford. You didn't mention how you do your recording - DAW or stand alone digital recorder or analog tape?!

The cymbal sounds from most of the edrums aren't the greatest. Some people will play real cymbals instead, or like I said above - substitute from another library.

Hope this helps and gives you more to think about.
 
It's worth it if you want to track in a house of sleeping people at 3am, or if you have grouchy neighbors when your band practices, etc.. In general, drum tones sound great, cymbal tones don't. There's a wide range of drum kits and lot of cool sound fx. Room acoustics obviously don't matter, so you skip a common pitfall which is a nice plus. Mesh head drums are expensive but worth it. Sticks bounce and roll a lot more like a real drum head. My drummer plays em all the time and he likes em. And they're addicting, I ended up with a 2-module 18 pc super kit!

If you want to record the module audio - You don't get a lot of outputs from the module, so you basically have to have the drum mix right on the module and record a stereo track. Some modules like the TD-20 have like 8 outputs, but there's still some sub-mixing going on before you track it. And if you CAN isolate tracks, there's no drum mic bleed. So the tracks you get sound weird individually, but you can make them work.

You can also record the midi along with the audio. Of course you can edit, copy/paste, make corrections, etc. and run the midi back thru the module to get your perfect track. You also have the option of running it thru ezdrummer or something with even better samples, that's the most realistic sounding drum tracks I've ever heard. Well, except actual drums that is.. :D
 

Attachments

  • vdrums.jpg
    vdrums.jpg
    32.3 KB · Views: 58
Im running an MBox 2 with pro tools mainly< had just upgraded to Sonar 8 before I bought the Mbox which came with Pro Tools, been using it mainly wanted to learn it, I think now Im hooked.
I thinking about 7-800$ on an e-set with maybe a couple of hundred for software. Ill check out this EZ Drumer, seems I seen it on the net somewhere but never paid much attention.
I mostly record DI since my room is so small, do some acoustic guitar miking. But regular drums in here would be a disaster.
what kind of out put is most common on the e-sets, midi, usb? I have a Yamaha 625 keyboard with midi to usb, like that pretty good.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top