32 The Blame Game

Do you think you have a problem with a piece of gear..?

Is it frustrating you..?

Can I make a suggestion..?

Yes? Thank you... Then, do NOT go online and slag off the piece of gear without checking that it really is the cause of your problem!

(Aaaaaaaaaaannnnddddd... relax.....!)

At the moment there seems to be a LOT of blaming the wrong thing for your issues (I'm talking in the electronic drum world here, but obviously the rest of the world is currently equally applicable). 

If you play an electronic kit, then you are an electronic drum specialist, to a greater or lesser degree. We choose to use different equipment to many of our fellow drummers, because we feel/ know/ can prove it offers us something in addition to just playing the acoustic side of our instrument. Because of this we need to know how our equipment works. It's our responsibility. No one else is going to tell us on stage or in the studio how and why we should tweak our sample or our threshold. Its down to us.

If you don't know how your equipment works (and are proud of that fact) then don't make bold public statements online and prove how little you know. Ask questions, please. Ask for advice (but please don't read the first reply from Mommurder, Idaho, and think a) its correct, or b) you are now an expert), but be really careful if you make sweeping statements.

Last week, I got into an online conversation with someone who was having issues with a hi hat controller. I knew that it was unlikely to be the controller, and that there was probably another issue behind it. There was. He wanted a new kit, and publicly slagging off the hi hat controller was his way of trying to justify this. When he realised that those reading the thread had sussed he was full of it, he did what every self respecting and respectable person would do.

Did he hold his hands up and go “Fair cop!”?

No, he deleted he thread. Nice.

And a couple of weeks earlier I had someone tell me that ALL electronic kits were useless, because they all used USB2 and were 'too slow' They needed USB3 apparently...

Alarm bells began ringing immediately. It transpired that the person was in fact taking the USB from his cheap Alesis kit, plugging it into a 10 year old PC running W8 and monitoring through the headphone output, heard the latency caused by the cumulative old tech, and had come to the conclusion that it was the Alesis which was the cause.

Would the person believe me that, perhaps they were misunderstanding the issue at hand here, and that they should be looking elsewhere (ie the computer)? No, of course not (though to give him his due, he did relent later).

So thats a very small example of whats been happening recently. Actually, as much of it has been to do with latency, maybe I should just say this right now, and it might be the most useful thing I've written all day;

If you have a latency issue when you are using a computer, it is probably (with 99.9% certainty) the speed, or lack of it, of your computer's processor, or the lack of audio interface, and the fact you are monitoring through the laptop headphone output which is causing the problem. 

It is NOT the USB cable (“USB3 leads are like, 10 times faster than USB2 cables, man!” - true quote) which I've been told recently.

It is NOT the electronic kit (“So I'm going to buy a new electronic kit because my old one has latency” - another true quote), as I hear 5 times a week.

But, it IS possibly the fact you are expecting MacBook Pro performance from the massively underpowered Windows XP laptop your Mum's work was throwing out 6 years ago.

If you want to be taken seriously, you have to know your stuff. 

Tours and sessions are not places to learn your gear. NOW, especially in lockdown, is the time and place to learn your gear. So get learning.

And finally, I don't want this to be a Mac vs. PC thing, but I know of no bands or artists who tour with PC's running their plug ins etc. I'm sure there are, but I don't know them and I've never worked with them.

If you want a computer that will do what you want, off the shelf, with no tweaking, then buy a Mac. There. Said it. 

I'm sure there are many people who use PC's for their music making at all levels, but they have probably spent hours tweaking and honing, and are much more computer literate and expert than me. I don't have that time or expertise. If you want to get something which does the job. Right here, right now. Just get a Mac.

All is not rosy in the land of Mac though. As I've said before, I got talking to an Apple employee at NAMM a few years back who was asking me about the MacBook I was running my demo on. He said that if I wasnted to run VSTi programs (such as Superior Drummer 3, Ezdrummer, Addictive Drums, BFD) I should keep my 2012 MacBook for as long as possible, as the latest MacBooks are not as good for running them.

And also, Mac doesn't have to be expensive. A good reconditioned Mac (from one of the many worldwide Mac resellers) will only cost the same as a new ride cymbal, rather than a whole new kit.

Thank you. I feel much better now.

Simon

31 Online Teaching Part 2

I thought this month I'd follow on from last months look at quickly getting an online teaching situation up and running.

Hopefully the world has calmed down a little since then, and we have all got a little more used to our situation. I, like many drummer and other musicians I know, has been teaching online, but I've also been assisting many, many other drummers with their technology to get things sorted.

Because of this I've heard, first hand, what problems they have been experiencing, so I thought I'd put some of these thoughts down incase you were looking for similar answers to common situations.

1. Zoom is the 'new kid on the block'... but doesn't have the best audio quality.

After a month of numerous online lessons I personally have moved away from Zoom as I was never 100% happy with the audio quality. I thought it was just me, but talking to others, it seems that Zoom has difficulties with broad frequency reproduction... even with all the extra audio setting turned off.

2. Skype might be the best for audio.

Like many others I have move over to Skype, (which I would have used anyway but like many others I wanted to see what the Zoom hype was all about). Skype seems to have made some changes to its audio settings over the past few weeks (and I've read similar things) as I can now have an online lesson on Skype and hear the full frequency range of the other person and they can hear me properly. I'm sure it wasn't like that 4 weeks ago, but things change.

In order of preference, I'm now using Skype, then Facetime, then Google Handouts. If the student cant handle one of those, then there are some serious questions to be asked.

3. Older students cant handle it.

I'm not sure about anyone else, but when this Covid19 thing all kicked off, my older students seemed to have more difficulty dealing with the change. All my students over 40 unanimously decided to have a break from lessons until things got back to 'normal', where as my younger students seemed to handle it much better and are loving the remote lessons. 

What I see (Thanks to Joe)

4. Both Skype and FaceTime are brilliant with multiple cameras

I've spoken to quite a few drummers who have developed very complicated systems for having multiple cameras on their kits for lessons – one overhead, one on the feet, a general camera etc etc. These set ups have involved ManyCam, GoToMeeting, iCam etc and have involved switchers and expensive cameras.

My teaching set up

However, what you might not know is that if you plug multiple cameras into Skype or FaceTime via USB or WiFi apps like EpocCamHD, you can switch between them simply by clicking on the little picture of you on the screen and choosing a different view. 

Overhead Camera

Quite by accident I discovered that a USB webcam I had bought and forgotten about worked brilliantly as an overhead kit camera and it only cost £25 off Amazon.

EpocCam allows you to use your mobile phone as a remote camera either by USB (fast) or WiFi (slower but no cables). When I needed to show a student to intricacies of some small finger movement during a lesson it was easy to pull out my phone, open the app and show them, direct on Skype, what I was talking about. The wireless option is too slow for capturing playing, but its very useful for detailed shots.

5. Capture Cards are invaluable for demonstration purposes.

My biggest worry before I started to teach online was how I was going to demonstrate a written pattern to the student who was 20 miles away. In 1-2-1 lessons I have an iPad connected to a large TV screen so I can write down ideas and patterns on Mike Johnston's brilliant GrooveScribe app and show the student, and/or get the app to play it back. That was not going to work over Skype, and I didn't fancy holding up a sheet of paper to the screen for the student to copy.

The answer is an HDMI to USB capture card. I plugged an HDMI adaptor into my iPad. I connected that to the Capture Card with an HDMI cable, and plugged the USB end of the Capture Card into my MacBook, and now my MacBook sees my iPad as another USB camera which I can select to show the student. Really useful. I can also do screen grabs off the GrooveScribe app and email them to the student as part of their notes from the lesson.

What the students see using a Capture Card and Groove Scribe on an iPad

6. Call recorders are useful too.

On my Skype I have the Ecamm call recorder software. This automatically records all Skype calls, an that includes all the lessons, so I can email the student an audio recording of the lesson at the end, in case there is anything they need to check before the next lesson.

So, after initially thinking that online teaching was going to be a nightmare, I'm really quite enjoying it!

Simon Edgoose

30 During C19 Lockdown - Online Teaching

Online teaching

Since I wrote my last article, the world has become a very different place. As the social isolation rules were bought in around the planet, drummers everywhere realised that if they wanted to carry on teaching or having lessons, they had to get their online lesson setup sorted out.

While this might, on the surface, appear to be quite simple thing to do, for many drummers it has proved to be the cause of a lot of head scratching. So I thought that this article ought to be about how you can set yourself up online to be either a teacher or student. 

This is not meant to be a definitive article, but merely give you some pointers if you are having trouble and hopefully explain why some things work and others sound terrible. Its the same information regardless of which 'end' of the lesson you are on. 

What do I need?

1. A device

Firstly you need a device which connects to the internet in someway - this could be a mobile phone, or tablet, or hopefully you own a laptop. A laptop is preferable as the computer versions of the video/audio app/programs you will need to use (Skype, Facetime, Zoom etc) generally have more options for audio than the mobile version (phone or tablet). However, there is no hard or fast rule, so experiment and find out what works for you best.

1. A good internet connection

This could be via wifi or hard wired. Hardwired connection (via a cable, direct from the computer to the router) has distinct advantages as it is less likely to be knocked off by your granny upstairs deciding to watch Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory in HD just as you are getting into the intricacies of Moeller technique.

1. A suitable App

This could be anything, although the old favourites, Skype and Facetime (which I generally use for teaching), seems to work pretty well. I have also had good reports about Google Hangouts (but I haven't needed to use it for teaching yet), while Zoom, the new kid on the block, is also very popular.

1. A way of getting the audio into your device

How you go about this really depends on what technology you have to hand and/or the budget you have. You dont *have* to use anything - I know some people who have had great results just teaching straight into their iPhone 11s while watching their students on the screen, just as I have also heard other people have great success going through very expensive mixing desks with big projectors. 

However, if you are using a laptop or other computer, you can seriously improve the audio quality (over the built in microphone on the device or laptop) by using a decent audio interface. This does not have to be expensive - I recently got something which works very well with my laptop and my iPad for £30 off the Cash Converters website, just to see if it would work. If you are looking to get something then something like the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 would do to start with. This is to make life easier, not really to give you crystal clear audio as generally the weak point is always the audio quality of the app or program you choose to use. 

1. A way of talking to the other person

While we worry about how our drum kit sounds to the other person, we seem to less spend less time thinking about how they're going to hear us talk to them. If you're using a fully mic'ed kit then the other person can probably hear you through the overhead mics if you speak loudly. But does save you having to raise your voice and is easier if you have a separate vocal mike. However, if you're playing an acoustic drum kit you will want to mute this mic when you are playing the kit as the vocal mike will be much louder than the microphone on the drum kit and will distort and sound horrible unless you mute it. Thankfully, in-line microphone mute switches are easy to find (Amazon is your friend here).

1. A way of hearing the other person

Phone, tablet and computer speakers generally aren't that good, so instead of using them to hear what is happening at the other end,You'll probably find it much easier and nicer to use headphones. Using headphones will also allow you to turn up the volume so you can hear them properly without the sound of their voice going back into the microphone a second or so after they've said something. Ideally both ends need to be on headphones as it will really clear up the audio signal between the two of them.

1. A way of hearing yourself

You also need to make sure you can hear yourself as well. You need to get an audio interface with a 'direct monitor' function so that you can hear in your headphones exactly what it going on as its going in, and you will be able to self-monitor and check what the other person is hearing too. 

Otherwise, what happens is your talking and your playing goes down to the other person and (if you're unlucky) you'll hear a bit of yourself a second or so after you've said it or played it. Theres nothing better to totally mess your timing or your talking up than your own self after a short delay. So, self monitoring (through a Direct Monitor feature) is very important.

Technical stuff - skip this box if you want

(It's not essential to know but you might find it interesting)

Voip. All the apps that I've mentioned so far all use something called VoIP, or Voice Over Internet Protocol. This is a protocol which allows people to have conversations online but use very little bandwidth, which allows you to have a video call with someone and not be interrupted by, as previously mentioned, a family member wanting to stream high-definition film. VoIP is all about being efficient.

If you want to look more closely at VoIP, there are some very good, but heavy duty, articles if you go to Wikipedia and look at 'Speech Coding' and 'Linear Predictive Coding', but to be honest they are much too boring and long winded to go into here.

Bandwidth is a major concern. To simplify things a bit, think of your internet supply as a big mains water pipe. Generally your day-to-day internet usage is like turning the tap on in the kitchen - it doesn't really make much impact on the amount of water in the mains water pipe. But then if you imagine everyone in the country all turning on their taps at the same time - that is going to make a big impact on the amount of water in the mains pipe. 

Video especially uses a lot of bandwidth is it requires a lot of data to be sent through the pipe. Therefore if everyone in your road tries to watch a high-definition film at the same time your internet slows down and you will probably see it buffering fairly often.

The same goes with Facetime and Skype and the other programs. If everyone in your houseIs using Netflix at the same time as your lesson, or also on Skype to their family over the other side of the country, you might have a few problems. Therefore it is essential that you take as many of your own devices off the internet as possible if you're having issues so there is as much free bandwidth as possible.

What's the frequency Kenneth?

Programs which use VoIP are optimised for the speech frequencies which are generally around the same pitch as a medium tuned 10” tom. Generally if you just speak then you'll have fine audio for the whole call, but we want to play drums and the volume and frequency range of a drum kit (acoustic or electronic) can really mess things up.

I saw a perfect demonstration of this in action the day before I wrote this when I watched Ben Folds do a solo gig while in isolation in Australia. He was playing an electronic piano and had a vocal mic but as he sung his vocals remained (generally) crystal clear but the (much broader frequency) piano disappeared off into a mush of low frequencies as his playing got busier. 

What you would generally find if you're listening to another person play kit over a VoIP program is that the first few seconds are clear, but then it quickly descends into sounding like it was being played under water. This is because the audio decoders inside of the app are having problems handling the sudden flood of low and high frequencies of a drum kit.

Watch the compressors

One thing you might notice as you are teaching online is that when you stop playing and start talking your voice is very quiet and then it gradually fades up to its previous volume. This is because all the VoIP software has compressors built into it to try and keep the average volume consistent - It brings down the volume when things get loud and brings up the volume when things are quiet. If you are playing a loud drum kit down a VoIP system the compressors closed down the volume to make sure it doesn't distort. When you stop playing the compressor continues to clamp down on the volume so your speech is suddenly much quieter than you are expecting. You can turn the compressors off on many of these VoIP software apps but then you have to watch that you are not distorting when you're playing the drum kit and that your voice is loud enough when you're not playing. 

Sometimes, the easiest thing is just to leave the compressors on and turn down the volume going into your device or computer just so it doesn't hit the compressors quite so hard.

So thats the gear you need, what about other things?

Considerations

1. Unless you are prepared to spend many thousands of pounds/dollars/euro, your lesson will never sound like you are in Abbey Road Studios. Unfortunately teaching online is all about making compromises. The person the other end will never hear the wonders of your very expensive and perfectly tuned acoustic drum kit, just as you will not hear quite how rubbish the electronic kit put through a cheap guitar amplifier is at their end. 

If there's one thing to be said about lessons online is it does rather even out the audio quality for all concerned. Whether you are playing at £4000 pound acoustic kit or a £200 electronic kit, they will probably sound more similar than you could possibly imagine during a lesson. 

The best drum sound I have had (so far) from a student is an Acoustic to Electronic conversion kit, using mesh heads and triggers, an Alesis DM10 module and low volume cymbals with a microphone over the top to pick up the cymbal sound, all going through a small Mackie USB desk and then via USB straight into Skype on a laptop. Nothing expensive at all.

2. The speed of the Internet changes at different times of the day depending on usage. Since social isolation has come into effect, more and more people are using the same apps as we are to talk to their colleagues, friends and family. To be honest, I'm amazed about the bandwidth in the UK has kept up. Companies usually have a different network to domestic users, so the fact that the domestic network is getting a hammering at the moment and still holding up (mostly) is testament to the infrastructure provided by BT.

3. You are not responsible for the sound of the person at the other end. You might be practising really good, clean audio practices at your end but if the person at the other end is playing on boomy cheap drum kit in a bathroom, the sound you are going to here will be appalling. Unfortunately, unless you go round their house armed with a laptop and an audio interface, there is nothing you can do about this. And of course you cant at the moment anyway.

4. If your lessons revolve around the student playing along with a lot of music, you may have to reconsider this. You cannot play music down the network to them for them to play along to and expect to hear it back in time. Every system has latency which means there is a delay from when you play at your end to when they hear it and vice versa. If you play a track you'll be hearing the music in real time at your end but will be hearing them playing along to it anything up to a few seconds later. Cue sonic mess.

A simple solution?

If you want a simple solution, your best bet is to use something like this;

But obviously, if you have a bigger budget, you could add more microphones, a mixer and a webcam or two.

One box solution?

A couple of years ago, a product appeared on the market which can really help in this situation. The Yamaha EAD10 was originally introduced as a way for drummers to film themselves for YouTube videos and record themselves easily. Now, full disclosure – I was involved with EAD from the beginning so I don't want to be seen to unfairly promote it, but as I can still see nothing else like it on the market, I don't have much choice but to mention it here.

After it was released drummers started to use it to mic their drum kits for gigs, and when the Version 2 software was released last year, the EAD10 gained something called TalkBack. This allows teachers to mic their acoustic kits, hear their students and talk to them all using just the EAD and no other equipment (apart from a drum kit, a pair of headphones, and a computer of course). You literally set up the kit, mount the Sensor on the bass drum hoop, plug it into the module, plug in headphones, connect it to your computer with a USB cable and away you go. To talk to the person at the other end you push one button twice (or hit a pad, or press a foot switch). That's all there is to it.

So...

So to sum up, there is loads more I could have put into this, but I want at least a couple of you to read the whole thing(!). Hopefully it has given you a couple of ideas, and maybe answered a couple of questions, and maybe even offered a solution, who knows? However, it is worth saying that there is not one answer – what works for you might not work for someone else, even if they have identical equipment. The best I can say is – there is no easy answer, and you are going to have to try a few things and work out what works for you. But when you find it, stick with it until something better comes along, and you'll soon take to your new 'norm' of teaching.

Good luck.

Simon Edgoose

13 Using Your Electronic Kit Live

So, do you gig your electronic kit? Or do you use it just for practice? Is there a reason you don't use an electronic kit live? Are there many reason?

Acoustic or electronic drums?

OK, so I think we've all been there. We've have a chance to use our electronic kit in a live situation, a function say...but...well... it just doesn't feel the right thing to do, does it? 

But with venues getting more worried about being sued by their neighbours, many are resorting to noise limiters to enforce sound levels. What can we drummers do to get around this? Well, we can use our electronic kits, but we've already decided that electronic kits just..aren't right... 

Let look at the issues of using electronic kits live;

1. It just doesn't look right – Ok, we we'll come back to this in a bit...

2. I need decent amplification – absolutely. Don't try and put your kit through a practice amp and wonder why you cant hear it. My rule of thumb is you need a minimum of around 1k or 1000 watts of amplification and full range speakers to make an electronic kit move as much air as an acoustic kit, and thats just the beginning – if you want more volume, you'll need more air movement. Or of course, just plug it into the band or house PA

3. It doesn't sound right – I doubt anyone in the audience at a typical wedding or company function will know, or actually give a monkeys, if you're hitting a 1936 Black Beauty or a 2018 2box kit. As long as you are happy playing it, and it sounds good, and the band sounds good, then all is good.

4. It doesn't have the dynamic range. Well, if it doesn't, then you haven't set it up correctly then have you? Quick answer – go back and look at all the other articles in this series and learn how to set it up for you. 

5. It doesn't look right. Ok, yes I get it. Hang on, we'll get to this...

6. It doesn't look right. Yes, yes...ok!

So lets look at this visual issue. Lets face it, electronic drums don't look great on stage. If you turn up to a gig and theres an electronic kit on stage, your heart does sink slightly, doesn't it? But it doesn't have to.

You'll probably have noticed that many electronic drum manufacturers are making full sized bass drum pads/triggers now. This is all in attempt to make drummers gig their kits more. They also come with a sizeable price tag.

But all this doesn't have to be expensive. If you want to go down this route, try this;

1. Buy a cheap kit off eBay or Gumtree (remember – NO ONE in the audience could give a monkeys about what make the kit is as long as the band sounds great). A student of mine bought a £75 kit off eBay and did the following and gigs with it.

2. Make the kit look nice, or at least so it appeals to you visually. Set it up how you normally set up your acoustic kit. Remove the badges if they worry you.

3. Buy some mesh heads to fit the batter heads of the kit – don't buy expensive ones as they have zero affect on the sound, don't trigger any better, and don't necessarily last any longer. Remo make Silentstrokes which are single ply. ZED make one, two and three ply heads which are very reasonably priced. If you are worried about the logos, remove them with nail varnish remover.

4. Buy some triggers. Buy a reputable make, but don't just buy the most expensive ones – they all work in exactly the same way, and I'll show you a hack later which will make any of them work. Look at ddrum, Yamaha, Roland, 2box (these ones can be found at great prices at the moment, and work great).

5. Put the mesh heads on the kit. Tighten them up higher than you would do normally. Mount the triggers on the far side of the drums. Keep the normal heads on the non playing side to make the kit still look like an acoustic one.

6. If the drums feel too bouncy, buy some 2” thick upholstery foam. Cut it to size so that it can tightly wrap around the inside of the shell, all the way around. Cut it 1cm deeper than the drum is deep so the heads hold it in place. Put the foam in the drums. This makes the feel much more positive and less bouncy.

7. On the kick, put pillows inside it, up to a point just below where the beater hits. Leave a normal, full head on the front to make the kit look like an acoustic one. Put the trigger at the top of the head.

8. Don't use a felt beater on the kick! Use a plastic one or you'll go through the head in a matter of hours.

9. Put the whole kit together. Plug it into your module. Plug in your cymbal pads.

10. Turn it on and play.

If you have problems with the triggering, I'll let you in on a little trick/hack that works great, only requires a little tweaking, and allows you to not have to totally reset all the trigger setting on your module.

I don't honestly know if I came up with this, but I used it on a tour about 15 years ago and I didn't change a single thing from start to finish. I put the drums in the cases with the triggers still attached and everything was great. I'd used it before then, but that tour was proof for me that it was road worthy.

Anyhow, rather than tweaking the module to suit the heads and the triggers, how about hacking the triggers to give the same output as rubber pads and save all the hassle? To do this, just buy some Moongel or similar silicone damping gel, cut each piece in half and squash it between the mesh head and the trigger sensor. The silicon gel acts like a mechanical noise gate – it absorbs smaller vibrations and only lets through the bigger ones (the actual stick hits).

The only tweak you might have to do in the module is turn up the Gain so that the module hits 100% only on the strongest hits. This is because the gel absorbs some of the power of the stick hits, so makes it slightly quieter. But turning up the gain is a minimal price to pay for the convenience. Theoretically, you should be able to plug your normal pads back into the module without having to change anything, apart from possibly just turning down the gain.

So, follow these simple instructions and you should end up with a kit which you can play almost silently, can gig with in noise sensitive venues, which 99% of the audience wont even realise is an electronic kit, and without breaking the bank.

Hopefully, that should be a no-brainer.

PS As I guessed someone would ask, after I wrote this, I grabbed a few items from my collection of gear just to prove how easy this is, and how well the hack mentioned above works. I grabbed (completely at random) an Alesis DM10 module, a ddrum Pro trigger and a ZED three ply mesh head. In under three minutes, using the hack, I had pretty much perfect triggering from a module that is notoriously difficult to set up for some triggers. Easy.

PPS I've just remembered that I used this method in Austria last week on a low end kit that was never designed to work with triggers and mesh heads and only has basic triggering parameters. Needless to say, it worked perfectly.

Simon Edgoose

29 The Stuff Of Magic...

Since I started using edrums I have also taught drums, and I've also had some very, very good teachers myself (luckily). And while I've been teaching, or being taught, there was always one thing that I always thought would be brilliant as a teaching device if it could ever be made...

What I wanted was a device that could listen to you playing on a drum kit, and immediately after you had finished, could show you on a screen what you had just played in tidy, perfectly written, corrected drum music. Then I could press one button and print it out on nice clean A4 so it looked like 'proper' music.

Imagine a lesson where the teacher demonstrated something, hit a button and handed the student what was just played on nicely written manuscript paper – no hand scrawled notes. 

Imagine the student playing something, and instantaneously the teacher being able to show them, in perfect, printed drum notation exactly where they were going wrong.

That is what I wanted.

Well, for the last 2 or so years, I've had this ability and it has been an absolute brilliant. 

There's been a couple of Logic templates to do this kicking around for a while, and instructions on how to set it up, but none of these worked on my computer (Mac) despite a lot of tweaking. So after following a lot of threads on different sites, and a LOT of head scratching, I created a template of my own on Logic Pro (10.4.1) on my Mac. 

What happens now is that when I connect an electronic kit (or Multipad or any other 'hitty' device) it shows me on the screen in real time exactly what I am playing as 'normal' drum notation. Nice, neat, properly written with all the notes looking right, and all the instruments on the correct line or space.

I also have Toontrack's EZdrummer 2 loaded up on a parallel channel so I can hear my playing at the same time as I play it, with whatever drumkit and cymbal sounds I desire. 

The electronic kit outputs its regular midi data, but the template in Logic transposes the notes to the correct position on the stave and changes the note heads to correct shape ('x's for cymbals etc and you can choose exactly how it is shown).

Then I just tidy it up if required (sometimes I have to nudge a couple of notes back in place and make sure that pieces with mixed meters are shown correctly) and I can print if off for teaching, or file it for later. It's brilliant and save hours of transcribing things that I have played, or that students have played to me.

I also have a separate channel just for audio tracks I want to play along to. I drag the track in, make sure its in time and the bars of the Logic project correspond to the bars of the piece, hit record, play along and just watch the score appear before my very eyes.

Absolutely fabulous and very useful for teaching.

So recently I was approached by a local Scout Band (yes, I know, very rock'n'roll...!) who had a problem...

Their lead snare drummer had been with them for many years and knew the snare drum parts for all the pieces the band played, but there was no written music – it was all inside his head. The drummer couldn't write music, could only read very basic music, and the band wanted all the snare drummers to play the parts as the main drummer did. They just lacked the written parts for the other drummers to learn.

So what they wanted was to get the snare drum parts for maybe 20 pieces 'out' of the head of the lead drummer, onto written music, so the other drummers could learn them.

Could I help?

Initially it looked like a lot of work. I guessed I had 3 options;

1. I could video the drummer playing each piece and then transcribe each one by hand (which would be a LOT of work)

2. I could teach the drummer how to write drum music to a high enough level so he could write the parts himself (but this would be a VERY long term project and they didn't have the time), or

3. Put my money where my mouth was and use all this technology I surround myself with to find a really good way of doing it, quickly and cheaply (they didn't have a big budget). Now this sounded much more fun...

But how to do it? After a bit of thinking, this is what I did;

1. I videoed the drummer playing each piece with the band. I simply filmed him playing each piece on my iPhone, close up, so the drums were nice and loud.

2. I loaded the audio from the video into Ableton Live. I then EQ'ed the band in the background out as best I could so the snare was as loud and clear as possible.

3. I dragged the performance into time. Ableton is brilliant for nudging performances onto the grid or completely changing the timing of a performance (shuffle version of a Metallica tune anyone?) as are many, if now all DAW's (Cubase, ProTools etc). By spending a couple of minutes doing this, the performance perfectly lined up with the built in click and made the next stage much easier.

4. I right clicked on the audio file in Ableton and then clicked on 'Convert Drums To New Midi Track'. This is why I used Ableton for the initial stage - what this does (and again, it is SO useful) is create a midi drum part from an audio recording of a groove (or just a snare drum in this case). Ableton analyses the audio and puts what it guesses the snare/kick/hats etc parts onto the correct midi notes. A few years ago this would have been impossible to imagine, but now I use this everyday and don't even think about it. If you are a drummer, its worth buying Ableton for this feature alone.

5. I exported the newly created midi file. So again I just right clicked and exported the midi file of the snare drum performance onto my desktop.

6. I imported the midi file into Logic Pro running the drum scoring template I had created. As mentioned above, I usually use an electronic kit to generate the midi data, but in this case Ableton generated it from the audio of the snare drum performance.

7. I let the Logic template create a written snare drum part from the midi file. This needed a little correcting, which I did by comparing it the original video file of the drummer playing. I ignored the embellishments (ruffs, drags, flams, rolls) as I knew I could add those onto the written part later – it was the 'meat and potatoes' of the track which I was after here.

8. I exported the PDF of the drum part out of Logic.

9. I loaded the PDF into Keynote, so it appeared on my computer screen like a piece of written music and added the title, tempo markings, dynamics, any instructions and any written embellishments that Ableton hadn't been able to detect (flams, buzzes, rolls etc). The part written by the Logic template automatically added the correct bar numbers so it was easy just to check it against the video again.

10. I printed the new sheet of music out. 

And that was it.

If you'd told me I'd be able to transcribe marching snare drum parts without using drum sticks or pens, 90% automatically (adding the embellishments was the only bit I needed to do 'by hand') I'd have never believed you three years ago.

I reckon the time used to transcribe the 20 tunes was about 3 hours (probably just under 10 minutes per track) in total and as most of it was done automatically, I could do other things, like drink coffee and each lunch all at the same time. I dread to think how long it would have taken to transcribe those 20 pieces by hand. 

If you run Logic Pro, then its worth spending some time trying to get this to work. There's plenty of info out there if you Google it, and before you ask, no, I cant share mine I'm afraid – I've tried and it doesn't seem to want to play ball. 

But, if you can get it to work, it is priceless.

Simon Edgoose

28 Cymbals

If you ask 100 drummers what they like about using VST drum plug-ins, they will tell you that they love the variety of drum sounds and all that sort of stuff. If you asked them what their biggest dislike about plug-ins is, and playing them from electronic kits, it’s usually the hi hat and the cymbals which come up for most criticism.

This isn’t because the cymbals or the hi hat sound bad in any plug-in. Quite the opposite-the cymbals and hi hat in Superior Drummer 3 and Addictive Drums, and lets face it, pretty much all plug ins, sound amazingly lifelike. However, the big issue, and why it feels strange for drummers, is the actual playability of the sounds, when 'played' from pads.

The hi hat is probably the hardest instrument to mimic electronically. There’s so many little nuances and changes that we make to the hi hat as we play it - varying the pressure with our foot, moving the position of the stick slightly, or by simply changing the top or bottom cymbal.

This is very very hard to recreate, and we've got used to how electronic cymbals 'play' but they aren't the same as real acoustic cymbals. Yes, mopdern developments are pretty impressive, and the digital ride on the latest Roland kits is great to play on, but its not the same, regardless of what anyone tell you.

The crash and ride cymbals are usually much easier to mimic. But if you think about your typical ride cymbal, the sound varies minutely as the stick moves over every square centimetre of the surface of the cymbal. Some sounds are more obviously different, and some sounds are much more subtle, but you never, ever get the same sound out of a cymbal twice.

So if cymbals are difficult to recreate electronically what can we do about it?

Well, we are all fairly happy with the sound of sampled drums - thousands of drummers every day use plug-ins connected to their electronic kit to provide a drum sound for tracks and/or practice. If you turn on your typical commercial radio station, you’re probably hear sampled drum sounds from plug-ins on most of the tracks. In most commercial music nowadays, it won’t be a drummer sitting behind a five piece kit in the studio somewhere who provided the drum sounds. It will be a programmer or producer who probably replaced all the drum sounds after the event.

If you’re practising at home, playing electronic cymbals – rubber pads or low volume metal cymbals – is okay, but it’s not the real thing. I remember having lessons with my drum teacher for many years and trying to justify to myself that practising on electronic kit was okay. It wasn’t. He was teaching me how to actually play a ride cymbal, not just hit it, and how to draw the sound out of the cymbal by utilising the stick. You just can’t do that on a rubber cymbal pad.

So maybe, what we ought to do is look at this from a sensible, new direction. If we are happy with the drums sound and playing pads or drums with mesh heads and triggers on to generate them, but not cymbal pads, why don’t we just use real cymbals? After all, we have spent lots of money buying them and if we are doing a recording, why not use those real cymbals?

I remember the first time I did a recording where I used electronic drums and real cymbals and I couldn’t quite believe the realism of the finished product. By generating the drum sound from a plug-in, I had complete control over the acoustics, the drums, the effects and everything else. And to be honest, cymbals are much less influenced by the overall room they are being played in as they don’t have so much of a transient (attack) which is what highlights the acoustics of a room. So with a bit of careful thought, you can trigger drum sounds off pads, play real cymbals which you pick up with overhead microphones and blend the two together to come up with something really realistic sounding drum tracks.

Yes, we might not have the convenience of being able to change the ride cymbal sound after the recording, but surely we’ve only got used to this because we’ve been spoilt by the technology. If we actually have to get a good performance down in the first place then maybe that will encourage us to put in a bit more effort into the actual recording process.

The other thing I have found which works very well is if you use real drums with mesh heads and triggers, the sound of you hitting the mesh head, albeit quietly, and in particular the sound of you hitting the rim of the drums, either as a rimshot or accidentally, can add lots of realism to the cymbal recordings through the overhead microphones. When it’s all blended together and everything is time slipped together so that’s the sound of you hitting the pads or drums is perfectly in time with the samples then the 'accidents' can really add an extra layer of realism.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, because you’re using your cymbals and you are generating your sound using your sticks it sounds more like you.

Obviously this is nothing new. Back in the 80s electronic kits had rubbish cymbal sounds, if any at all, and so it was fairly common to see a drummer using electronic drums with real cymbals. The first time I heard it being used live was on the Mike Oldfield Tubular Bells 2 live gig at Edinburgh Castle. Ian Thomas was playing a ddrum kit with real cymbals and if I had my eyes closed I would’ve just imagined it was a real acoustic drum kit, albeit processed (as fitted the drum sound of the time).

Nowadays this is still very common. I went to see a very large show at the O2 arena in London awhile back and the drums were completely triggered (although they looked like an acoustic kit, just with mesh heads and triggers) and the cymbals were real. It sounded great, it looked great, and the front of house had maximum control over the drum sound and processing.

And this is one area that acoustic cymbals have a distinct advantage over electronic cymbals – they look so much better. Dark rubber cymbal pads look rubbish, especially if you are a drummer, and they generally come in slightly smaller sizes than we would generally use so if you are a drummer you can very quickly tell with a quick glance at the drum kit whether the drummer is using real or electronic cymbals. If they’re electronic cymbals, then it’s likely to be an electronic or triggered kit as well. So very quickly, the whole story unravels. But with real cymbals, and acoustic drums with mesh heads and triggers, it’s much harder to tell.

Yes you might be saying “I don’t want to spend money on microphones to mic my cymbals and surely it must be hard difficult?” Well, no not really. You can get a really good cymbal sound just with a pair of (not expensive) overheads in a spaced pair or XY postion (Google them if you are unsure) or if you are particularly lucky, use the Glynn Johns method for a very natural, but simple two mic cymbal recording set up, but GlynnJohns does require more space around the kit, so doesn't always work. 

Drummer generally want their hi hats mic'ed as well, but again if you listen to commercial radio you very rarely hear the hi hat and the hi hat is not an integral part of the groove to the audience - it’s mainly just a kick and the snare which make them want to dance.

So overall, what I’m saying is if you use electronics live, or for recording, and you are unhappy with electronic cymbals, either the look all the sound of them, then why not try using acoustic cymbals with your electronic drums and get the best of both worlds? 

If you’ve never thought about it before, take my word for it, it works. And it works very well with a little bit of planning and thought. And it makes you sound more like you, and unlike a wholly electronic kit, you’re getting sound back off the cymbals rather than just a dead thump, which makes for a much more pleasant playing experience.

Simon Edgoose

26 Module v VSTi Part 2

Ok, so we left off last time talking about the fact that modules (or rather most of them), have limited storage for the samples, and computers have much more, but thats not strictly true as we'll see.

Before we go on, there's one very important thing to think about. Acoustic drums will NEVER sound the same twice. Ever. Because it is acoustic, each hit, regardless of how accurate the player is, will have differences that you'd probably need an oscilloscope to see. This is because everything on an acoustic kit wears out every time it is struck – the head, the stick, the bearing edge etc plus the acoustics in the room will be different – the breeze may be pushing the sound slightly away from the microphone, or the flapping of the drummer T shirt changes the reflections in the room. Yes, it really does get that reliant on minutiae, without even considering the skill of the drummer. So to recreate this, drum modules use lots of samples to try and recreate the sound of an acoustic drum, and all these samples need storage, or memory.

There are a few drum modules out there that use cheap memory and use it in a very efficient way. If you ever play with a 2box Drumit 5 or Drumit 3 they use cheap SD cards for their memory (and they can handle up to some pretty big capacities too). The lowly SPDSX also uses SD cards and it loads samples from the card to the RAM (quick access playback memory) every time the patch is changed, which explains the delay you get when changing large patches. Incidentally, these cards can be replaced with a larger one for a fraction of the new price. There's plenty of DIY videos on YouTube if you want to have a go. 

But the 2box has one distinct advantage in that it was programmed by a rather clever Dutch guy, who now lives in Sweden, who we'll call 'Rik” (because that is his name) who devised a way of streaming sounds off SD cards in real time, so it almost acts like an instant access computer hard drive. This means the 2box can start to load large samples almost instantly, and start to play them back at the same time too, before that whole sample has fully loaded, in effect streaming the sample off the SD card in real time, whereas other SD based devices have to load all of the sample into RAM before it can play back any of it. 

That is really clever. Is 'Rik' a rich man from all the edrum companies biting his arm of to get this technology which would drastically improve their products? No, he is not... Thats the edrum business for you.

But anyway... on with 'computers'.

So your lowly laptop has infinitely more amounts of storage than your drum module, which means it can store lots of your lovely drum samples. It probably has an SSD (or solid state hard drive) meaning it can fire information off incredibly quickly without having to find it like an old 'spinning platter' hard drive would. This makes it perfect for big drum and cymbal samples.

What these VSTi programs do as well is load the samples you need into RAM (the even faster action memory where your computer stores stuff it needs quickly), so its all ready to fire the correct sample when you hit the edrum kit that is connected to it. It does this in a few milliseconds – I was using a system a few months ago that reacted to the midi information coming into it and fired off the sample in just over 1ms, but that was an exceptional (and expensive) case, and is actually faster that the sound would get to your ears if you hit an acoustic drum with a stick.

Now the one module I'm not talking about here is the Pearl Mimic, which is almost like a dedicated computer running a special cut down version of Steven Slate Drums 5 (SSD5) in its own dedicated box with trigger inputs and audio outputs, as this is closer to a computer than any other module currently on on the market. However, although it is a superb module with great audio quality, it runs less layers than a computer running the 'full' version of SSD5 (plus it cant do your tax return, surf the web, and show you picture of kittens in washing machines), so a MacBook running SSD5 will give you greater audio detail, but not by that much. The Mimic really is unique at the moment.

But where as most modules have a 'few' layers – and I mean here different samples for different volumes – VSTi often have loads, because they can – they have the hard drives to store is all. One VSTi talks of its 256 layers, which is probably overkill, but should be applauded for dedication. I cant imagine how long the studio sessions were - “Can you hit it a tiny bit harder please? Only another 236 to go!”

But as well as the layers, there are also the 'round robins'. These are multiple strikes for the same layer, so that even if you are accurate enough to hit exactly the same velocity twice in a row, the two hits will trigger slightly different samples. For some reason, companies seem to have settled on 5 or 6 round robins being a good number. So if you have 256 layers and 5 round robins, that is 1280 samples per articulation (head, rimshot, cross stick) per drum, which makes an amazingly large amount of data.

What the clever companies are doing is making the sample selection more random and doing away with the round robins – if you hit two notes exactly the same, the first one will be the 'correct' sample, whereas the next will be borrowed from from a slightly louder or quieter layer, but the volume adjusted to compensate. 

Thats probably enough for this time, next time we'll look at this a bit more and also talk of machinegunning.

Simon Edgoose

25 Module v. VSTi

More and more electronic drum users seems to be using VSTi instruments now, from club drummers up to massive stadium bands (see later), but why? What's better? How does it work? 

So this month I thought I'd start to look at why drummers use this technology and why it is 'better', if it indeed it is.

But first, we've all heard of 'drum plugins' such as Superior Drummer, ezDrummer, BFD, Addictive Drums, Slate Drums etc (there are MANY more than just those, but these ones tend to get the most limelight), and we've heard of VSTi's but are these the same thing? Well, yes they are. VSTi stands for Virtual Studio Technology Instrument and the name/phrase was created by Steinberg when they started to include 'virtual' instruments in Cubase.

In effect, it just means a program (or 'plugin' – an 'app' that runs inside another program, such as your DAW – Digital Audio Workstation – like Cubase, Logic, ProTools, Ableton etc). This 'plugin' receives midi information from a keyboard, or electronic drum kit or other connected midi device, and plays back digital samples of whatever instrument the user is expecting to hear. 

So if you press the middle C on a controller keyboard attached to a computer running a Fender Rhodes piano plugin/ VSTi and you'll hear a middle C played on a sampled Fender Rhodes piano. Hit a snare pad on an electronic drum kit connected to a computer running a drum plugin, and you'll hear a snare hit from whatever snare was sampled at (hopefully) the same dynamic.

So surely this is exactly the same as a drum module? Well, yes, but with one BIG difference. Modules have very little storage for all the drum sounds.

Drum modules are built to sell. Therefore, every drum module (yes, even the expensive ones) has had corners cut somewhere to save on price. After all, who would buy an amazing sounding module, designed for entry to mid range players that cost £2500? To save on price, manufacturers try to squeeze as much voice data into as small as possible a space as they can. This saves a (proportionally) large amount of money.

They do this, because reliable digital storage is (sort of) expensive. Yes, you can go onto eBay and buy a 16GB USB memory stick for a couple of pounds/dollars/euro but its cheap and wont last long, maybe a couple of years or so. We drummers often keep our electronic kits for quite a few years so we don't want our kits failing before the warranty has run out, and neither do the manufacturers.

So making a kit with reliable memory is paramount. Also, if the whole sound set can be squashed into a few megabytes then even better. To my knowledge, there are at least a handful of current electronic kits which have their whole sound set on less memory than 3 floppy discs (remember them?). That is a TINY amount of space.

At this point you might be wondering why, if memory is so cheap, why manufacturers don't use more of it. Well, a very useful thing to consider is if a better or bigger component costs the manufacturer $10 more in the first place, it will increase the cost you pay in the shop by a minimum of $60. And thats is just one component. Put other better components in and the street price has just gone up by $200. On a $400 kit, thats a 50% increase.

Thats just how things are, so to keep the final price down, everything has to be as cheap, but reliable as possible. Its all a trade off – trying to keep the price down while using components that last long enough, and making it all for a target price that you know your customer will pay.

There are also different grades of components. The better the grade, the more reliable, consistent, fast and expensive they are. The lower the grade, the less reliable, the less consistent and the cheaper they are. After all military electronics get the best components available to man – a drum module made from military components would be incredibly reliable and would probably be working fine in 150+ years, but at a massive initial cost.

The components also have to be the correct sort – a 16GB USB memory stick off eBay is useless for storing data on an electronic kit – its too slow, not reliable (as already mentioned) and will have too much variation from component to component to give a consistent level of operation.

So electronic kits have generally very little storage. Unlike computers, which have almost unlimited storage. And thats where we will start next time...

Simon Edgoose

24 A Mass Of Software

I'm not sure about you, but as I have bought lots of drum software from different manufacturers in the past, I regularly get emails with offers and special deals. These could be anything from sample packs to new sound packages, to new MIDI packs and I'm often tempted.

But should we buy software, just because we can?

Over the course of the last few years I have probably bought much more drum software than I actually seriously needed. However, in the last couple of days I was reminded why it's good to have too much software, rather than not enough.

I was very recently contacted by a long time friend who is a samplist. In other words his profession is to make samples for different companies, whether it be for software packages, or for the free CDs and DVDs which are given away with music magazines (or more normally nowadays, the free downloads). He's very good, very quick, and you've probably heard loads of his stuff, but you wont know his name.

He needed me to record a load of 'jazz' loops and patterns which would be chopped up and affected to make them sound like they were from particular genre/time. Normally when I do these things I get given a little bit more information to go on – tempos, track references, an idea of the sound of the kits that is required etc but on this occasion it was just “Help! I need a load of 'jazz', can you do it?”

I'm always up for a challenge, but I was only just back from the UK Drum Show and had a week of preparation for my next job, so I knew time would be tight. “Of course... when do you need it?”... 

“Yesterday...”

Ok, so how to knock out some really good and realistic sounding loops and parts in no time at all?

Well, I always have a sample pad/multipad connected to my studio Mac, completed with pedals for hi hat and kick, for exactly these moments, so I was good to go from a performance point of view, but what of the sounds?

A couple of days before, one of the major drum software companies had released a 1950's big band expansion pack (I'm sure many of you will know exactly who I am talking about), so that was my first option, but I also needed some different sounding kits as I wasn't 100% sure how the final drums and patterns would end up sounding – I knew they were to be chopped up and messed about with, but that could be 1930 feel or something totally different I hadn't even considered.

So this was when having too much software was perfect. There is no point in owning software if you never listen to it and know exactly what it can offer you, sound wise. If you buy something, you need to check it ALL out, otherwise it is just clutter on your hard drives. 

I knew I had a few other expansion packs from the same manufacturer which had some great sounding stuff, both using sticks and brushes, so I selected three different kits, with stick and brush performances for a total of 6 very different drum kit sounds. All I had to do was capture the performance (MIDI data in this case) of me playing using the multipad and play it back through the six different sound options. Easy.

I then decided that the tempos I'd use would be 120, 140, 180 and 220 giving me lots of options. 

The easiest way to capture the performance data (ie me playing on the multipad) was to use the midi recorder built into the stand-alone software version of the drum software, which had a click built in. After playing for a few minutes, I just had to drag it onto my desktop, name it with the correct tempo and if it were more stick or brush content, and my performance was done.

Then I had to play back my chosen performances back through the drum software to capture the sounds.

I opened up a new Logic Pro X project, dragged in the data, opened the drum software again and found the kits I wanted to use. Then I played the midi data back through the drum software and let Logic export it as audio files. This generated 55 minutes of stereo audio files, which I loaded into a Dropbox folder for my friend to download, edit and tweak.

Now, this doesn't sound particularly difficult, and it wasn't, but even 5 years ago I could not have done this and had such excellent results. Though I say it myself, the realism of the recordings was pretty incredible, thanks to the sound of the drum software.

Because I knew what sounds I needed and where to find them, it was fast (probably an hour from start to finish) but my 9 minutes of playing, through 6 different sounding kits made almost an hour of content.

A couple of days later I received copies of the final result – effected to sound rather different from what I had imagined in my head, but still recognisable.

So the simple answer is, yes, its a good idea to have as much software as possible, but only as long as you know what sounds it can make. And as long as you know where to find the sounds, then doing emergency programming sessions is a totally feasible thing to do.

Simon Edgoose

23 A Little Bit Of Effort Goes A Very Long Way

I'm wandering over old ground here, but this months subject is due to the many questions I've read online or that have been sent to me directly to me in the last few weeks, that frankly, shouldn't need to have been asked. We really need to know our gear, not necessarily inside out, but with a good enough knowledge to do some basic twiddling.

Yes, you've guessed it - its back to trigger settings again!

Frankly, setting your trigger settings to suit you and your playing – and we ALL play differently so we all need our own settings, not anyone else's or those that came from the factory – should not take lots of time. Maybe two minutes per pad. Say fifteen minutes for the whole kit to get it all dialled in.

So when I hear someone say “I got the kit six months ago, I'm still tweaking it, but I reckon it will be playing great in a couple of months”, then alarm bells start ringing. Thats like saying “I'm 26 now, and I reckon I'll get that hang of this “breathing” thing soon, maybe before I'm 30”. Its a bit silly really.

So, I'm just going to go over how to set up your pads for the most dynamic, great feeling performance with the minimum of problems, and then tell you a true story about why it is important. Yes, there might be a few little tweaks needed, but to be honest following these three instructions should see you right 99% of the time. If I'm setting up a kit, or triggers, for someone, I just follow these, and all is good. I might only need to do anything else (set rejection values etc) a few times a year, but thats normally down to the location of the kit (shaky stage, wobbly stands etc).

So, to set your pads up, you need to do the following, methodically, in this order, with EACH pad, and make sure you save it all at the end.

Adjust the gain so the pad is only hitting 100% on the very strongest hits.

Adjust the threshold so the pad doesn't trigger at anything below your lightest hits

Choose a velocity curve to give you the feel that you want from that pad.

And thats it. If you set these correctly, you really shouldn't need to do any thing else.

And you need to do it in this order too – if you set the threshold before the gain, then it will change and be wrong if you then adjust the gain. If you set the curve first, then you wont get a good enough idea about where to set the threshold setting. It needs to be those three steps in that order for each pad.

But why? Does it really make that much difference? Well yes, it does, and here is a true story to hopefully explain why.

A few years ago, Zildjian asked me to do a European tour to promote Gen16 cymbals. I would be visiting loads of music shops in many countries over the space of a few weeks, teaching the staff one-on one how to get the best out of them. That bit was fine and it was great fun, but to do the job, I would be putting the cymbals onto whatever electronic kit was available to me in each store, and it would not be my choice. That was the deal, and in situations like that, you just have to go with it.

At one large store in a major capital city, me and my fabulous sales person/ helper/ driver/ security (Hallo Thomas!) arrived early to find the drum department rather busy and all the drum staff who I would be training, dashing around getting stuff sorted for customers and mail orders. Therefore we would have a little time to kill.

We were shown to the kit that I'd be working with and to put it politely, it wasn't my first choice... or my second... probably not even my fifth. It was by a manufacturer that few people associated electronic drums with. Even the shop staff member apologised about the choice, but politically, I had to use that kit because of... well... lets just say political reasons to do with distributors. The kit was something I'd played before in a store, and hadn't been particularly impressed with (though the sounds were good), so my heart sank a little at the idea of having to spend a day on this particular kit.

So after I'd set up, I though I'd spend a little bit of time tweaking the kit to see what it was capable of. Now, I have to be a little bit sensitive here as I don't want to offend anyone (and I'm definitely NOT going to say what the kit was) so bear with me and I'll explain what was 'wrong' with it.

The kit just felt terrible – it felt lame, uninspiring and an effort to play. It's sounds were good, as I mentioned above, but it just didn't feel like a decent kit and the dynamics just felt lumpy and uneven. To sum it up, it felt like it had been set up by a guitarist (which I found out afterwards, it sort of had been, as a guitarist had signed off on the final settings at the factory). 

And all this was strange, because the kit looked great, with full size shells, was pretty expensive, was flexible for multiple uses, and looked great on paper. It was just the reality wasn't as good.

So I sat down, drank some coffee, and proceeded to set up the pads using the three steps I mentioned above. It was pretty obvious that the kit (which was still in its factory set up as no one had been bothered to tweak it) had never been set up correctly in the first place. 

Adjusting the gain, so it only got up to maximum volume on the strongest hits, instantly increased the dynamic range – it went quieter and it went louder. Adjusting the thresholds of each pad made the cross-triggering stop (where one pad triggers another because vibration travels through the stands and/or rack), and finally choosing the correct velocity curve (how quickly the pad goes from quiet to loud depending on how hard you play) made it feel like a proper kit. Before, it felt laboured to play but now it felt good – exciting, and raring to go. 

All this took about ten minutes and I didn't really think any more about it, apart from the fact I was now looking forward to using it as felt SO much better to play.

Now, I haven't written all this to boast or anything. What happened next surprised me. 

As I'm sure you're aware, people who work in drum shops are usually pretty good players. After all, they handle drums every day, are able to play on everything in the store, and they usually develop some nice chops and often have a nice little fill they play when they sit down at a new kit, consciously or subconsciously. Its just one of those thing they do.

So, the first member of staff to be trained (lets call him Ralf) eventually came over, sat behind the kit, and performed his stock “I'm-sitting-down-behind-a-new-kit” fill. He instantly looked confused and slightly concerned.

“What have you done?” he said (in perfect English of course). “This isn't the same kit”

I assured him that it was, and tried to proceed with the training.

Ralf paused again, “No, no. Whats changed? Have you updated the software on this?”. Again, I assured him I hadn't.

He sat there looking confused and proceeded to play the kit slowly, like he was playing electronic drums for the first time. Of course by this point I realised what he was referring to – I'd tweaked the dynamics, and the kit was playing in a much more 'drummy' and realistic way - so I explained what I'd done. 

“Wow! This is brilliant” said Ralf, and rattled off another few chops and grooves. 

Then he called other (now free) staff members over and they all started playing the kit, and all making very confused but favourable noises about it. Eventually, after everyone had played it, we got on with the training...

So, a few minutes of tweaking had turned a kit which hadn't done very well in the stores (even though as I said, it looked great and was great on paper) into something the staff at the store suddenly enjoyed playing. 

Now, why none of them had sat down at the kit and tweaked the trigger settings I don't know, but suddenly they were all fans and were convinced I'd performed some secret tweak or change, when what had actually happened was that I'd followed the three steps above and made the pad response suit the module correctly, and suit my playing.

So the manufacturer of that particular kit, in their wisdom, or lack of it, had set up, and was selling, the kit so it didn't actually feel very good. I have no idea how many drummers had been put off buying one, just from their initial 'rattle around the kit', when all it needed was some very basic tweaking. Unbeleivable.

So if a few well spent minutes can convince six experienced drum shop staff that the kit they thought was a bit rubbish, was actually rather good, how could your kit feel with a little well spent button pushing?

Simon Edgoose