Thinking of an electronic kit.

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boomtap

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If my question is stupid, sorry.

I am thinking of getting an e-kit of some sort, and need some advice.

First, do you typically record the midi that is triggered for later manipulation or do you record the analog outputs from the sampler?

Are the kits that are built with cheap piezo's on practice pads bad? Or do they trigger about the same leaving the real work to the sampler?

Do drum triggers on analog drums work fairly well? I already own a standard kit, and noticed that the triggers are cheap.
 
boomtap said:
If my question is stupid, sorry.

I am thinking of getting an e-kit of some sort, and need some advice.

First, do you typically record the midi that is triggered for later manipulation or do you record the analog outputs from the sampler?

Are the kits that are built with cheap piezo's on practice pads bad? Or do they trigger about the same leaving the real work to the sampler?

Do drum triggers on analog drums work fairly well? I already own a standard kit, and noticed that the triggers are cheap.
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you could put mesh heads on your drums with the triggers. then you gotta get something for the hihat. maybe pads over the cymbals with triggers too.
 
That is an interesting Idea, I like the thought of just using what I have to save space. What kind of mesh heads would work, and do I need a specific trigger?
 
boomtap said:
That is an interesting Idea, I like the thought of just using what I have to save space. What kind of mesh heads would work, and do I need a specific trigger?
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You have to use either a roland or ddrum type of trigger. I think there are only 2 brands of mesh heads. You'll need a soundsource Trigger to MIDI Interface.
If you feel the need to use "electronic" cymbal sounds, You can also buy rubber "practice" cymbals and glue piezo elements to them and use those for cheap E-cymbals. One of my friends (before E-cymbals were on the market) was using rubber frisbees for this! He had also bought some cheap rubber garbage cans to use the rubber lids, and he cut the bottoms out of the garbage cans with a dremel moto-tool.

They worked surprisingly well.

He even had made a "two zone" ride, using two different pieces of rubber with 2 layers of mousepad between them.

I wouldn't necessarily try this at home, but he had bought three used crap-grade cymbals, and put these plastic/rubber piece between them, put a bolt through the middle sandwiching it all together (cymbal/rubber/cymbal/rubber/cymbal) then popped that into his oven for about 15 or 20 minutes at a low setting, and then let them cool, and when he pulled thme apart, the rubber was shaped like the cymbals.

It would be cheaper these days just to buy rubber practice cymbals. :p



Tim
 
boomtap said:
Awsome advice guys, thanks for the info.

Would somthing like this work for the triggers?
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/g=home/search/detail/base_pid/442393/
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Yeah....(he says hesitantly) those will work. I'm not real fond of those.

I'll say this.... IF I was going to buy $100 triggers....I would go ahead and save my money and buy the REAL ones.

I don't like those because they are mounted to the drum with a tuning tension rod.

But, go the route you feel is best for you


Just rmember this. There is a law regarding electronic drums

"Buy Once. Cry Once."

It means you won't be whining about having to contually kick out cash because you tried to go the cheap route the first time, and You won't be complaining about the quality of the gear.
 
"Buy Once. Cry Once."

It means you won't be whining about having to contually kick out cash because you tried to go the cheap route the first time, and You won't be complaining about the quality of the gear.
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That is a real good point. To follow up on that, what is the price point at which I will cry once, $1000, 2000, 3000+?

Are you saying that it would be a bad idea to convert an acoustic kit to electric? I really am lost on this decision.
 
boomtap said:
That is a real good point. To follow up on that, what is the price point at which I will cry once, $1000, 2000, 3000+?

Are you saying that it would be a bad idea to convert an acoustic kit to electric? I really am lost on this decision.
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No, not at all.
I think converting a regular kit is the best way to go.

First, if you are serious about this, I say join electronicdrums.com.

http://www.electronicdrums.com/frames/

It costs $20 for a year, or I think it is $30 for a lifetime membership.

Pay the extra $10 dollars - when your year is up, you'll be kicking yourself in the ass for not paying the extra $10.
I joined for a year, and wish I had joined lifetime....because I had the money then, but I can't seem to come up with the extra $30 to join for lifetime now.
Everytime I have it - something comes up.

What this site will do is teach you how to build electronic drums, and even how to make triggers.... you can even mount them inside the kit if you want to, and they will work EXACTLY like Roland V-drums.


Tim
 
Do you guys like the Roland or the Yamaha drum sampler. I am going to go ahead and convert my kit to an electric using the mesh heads, a kick trigger, and probably a dual zone snare. Then all I need is the sampler, and I am curious as to what people have had success with.
 
Good stuff here. Haven't seen this mentioned, yet:

You record the MIDI info that is triggered. First, you'll save TONS of disk space since you can get the same performance by feeding the MIDI back to the drum synth. Second, you can then edit the MIDI data to fix small timing & timing errors or mis-triggers (l.e. accidentally triggering both the pad and the edge.)

Just make *sure* you like the sounds the synth gives you. Uh...(he hesitates)...I've never heard a set that I like all that much. They sound good by themselves and you'd think they'll work well in a mix, but when the rest of the instruments are laid on top of them they always seem a little flat to me. Its partly the lack of real variations in sticks striking heads and partly that all the variables of room and micing technique are missing.

I was listening to a demo from a band I was auditioning for that sound *really* good, but there was something about the production that was wrong. I kept trying to figure out what the engineer did to make the drums sound so bad. Did he have a compressed submix up too loud? Were the room mics accidentally muted? Did he over compress the snare and kick or something?

When I finally got to talk to the drummer at the audition it turned out they were using V-drums on the recording. Now I don't don't know what they did with the MIDI or how they processed the audio after they got it into Pro Tools, but I don know from my own experience that it takes a LOT of work to get triggered samples to sound like a real kit.

That all said, I *really* wish I had a set of e-drums for preproduction and songwriting! MIDI is so convenient and I'd love to be able to lay down drum tracks a 2am. :)

Take care,
Chris
 
That is good advice, thanks.

What do I need in order to lay the midi tracks down equipment wise? I have never recorded the midi before only analog. Any suggestions on equipment that might work for that. Since it is midi I am assuming that instead of the traditional drum samplers, I could use any synth module in cubase and just let the midi trigger those sounds. Sorry about the lameness of my questions, I just have never dealt with the world of midi recording and I like you want to be able to track at 2am.

I guess my goal would be since I have a synth already and it has some drum sounds is to just trigger the drums, record the midi, and use as much of what I already have to make it work. I would like to spend as little money on new things as possible. I am just using the tracks to get my song ideas assembled, and so tones and acurate sounds are not a big issue.
 
Not lame at all. I've been recording for almost 17 years, but I'd have to ask the same kind of "lame" questions if I sat down behind a bit of technology I've never used before. "How does it work?" isn't a lame question, its a good one.

Lessee.... the drum triggers usually go into a drum brain which converts that info into MIDI and have a bunch of sounds that can be triggered. That's the part I know the least about. Once its MIDI you pipe it around with MIDI cables more or less the same way you do with audio.

So MIDI goes out of the brain (or drum synth) to the computer where its recorded as MIDI data. That MIDI track is then sent back to the drum brain (again, as MIDI) where it can be replayed and listened to. The MIDI track plays the sounds instead of the drummer hitting the triggers. The audio from the brain or synth then has to get to your moniters of headphones somehow. If you have a mixer that makes it easy, otherwise patch it into some inputs on your soundcard and monitor through that.

So you record MIDI drums onto a MIDI track in your software, then set the output of that track to the drum brain. That way the brain plays the audio and saves you from having to record the drums as audio until you're done editing, mixing, arranging, whatever.

That's the deal with getting triggers for your acoustic set- what are you going to plug those triggers into that will convert the trigger signals into MIDI. Do they come with a brain?

You can use software synths for drum sounds, but they eat A LOT of memory and CPU power. I use them a lot because I work on a laptop and its just easier to have the whole song with me. The hardware units almost always sound better, though, unless you've got one of the newer drum programs that let you mix and match drums, mics, and rooms (!).

Take care,
Chris
 
i did drum conversion, works pretty well, but is a bit of tweeking.

go there
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/DIYedrums/

helps a lot and is free

for recording you can use radioshack piezo transducers, 2$ each and just tape then on the head of your drum.

those piezo's are the same thing used in hart drums mesh head

here in canada, it costed me like 350$ to convert and buy an old drum brain, which is much cheaper than getting somme 3500$ us e-drum..

depend on you budget...
 
If you're just going to use the drum module to record midi out; I'd recommend a Roland TD-3. They have 9 trigger inputs and best of all, they are inexpensive.
 
That is good info... I will post some photos, and some samples when I get mine built.

What do you typically use for the kick? Do you just get a stand up Vdrum kick or can you get a mesh head that big?
 
Hey man,

Check this site out. I don't know how great your electronic work is, but you can build a set fro less than the roland and have more triggers.

http://www.edrum.info/index.html

It's pretty inexpensive, plus there is a lot of help to get it completed. He is trying to upgrade from 16 triggers to 24 I believe. Check it out.
 
Great thread - lots of information here!

I'm thinking about possibly getting an electronic kit and using it with DFHS. Would I be better off building or buying? In other words, how much would I have to spend to buy a kit that would work as well as the home-made Remo pad kits? I'm taking a guess here that the homemade kits work better than some of the cheaper electronic kits, otherwise why bother building them? Just a guess though - please correct me if I'm wrong.
 
All depends on how well you can do electronics, or if you have an inate technical abillity. If your not one who can swing a hammer correctly, go out and buy one, you'll save yourself the headache. If you think you can handle building, then I would say go ahead. You'll probably save about $600-$1000 as long as you do it correctly. I advise against anyone who chooses to build knowing they haven't got a clue what a resistor is compared to a capacitor. An electronic drumkit is not a good beginner project, though some have done it, there is a lot of technical stuff invovled. I still recommend building one if you invest time in learning what is going on, you'll save money, but don't try to just jump in without a life jacket.

Hope that helps
Specs
 
Based on what I've seened so far, I feel pretty good that I can handle it. I've built stompboxes from scratch in the past and I've modded tube amp circuits, so I've got a little bit of experience under my belt - the actual construction seems to be the toughest part (specifically, the deconstruction of a drum pad and reassembly as a trigger) - from an electronics perspective, I didn't see much soldering at all in making the drums themselves - just the piezo connections to the jack.

Just to be safe though, I'll probably start with just one drum pad, to see if I can get it to work, before I go out and get a whole practice pad kit to build off of.
 
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