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Author Topic: Electronic Drums or Acoustic Drums  (Read 29089 times)

Arnold B. Krueger

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Re: Electronic Drums or Acoustic Drums
« Reply #20 on: January 31, 2011, 03:50:20 PM »

There was still an issue with the grand piano, being loud at the front seats and coming thru a bit weak at the back when the balance was right in the centre of the hall, and still some sound off the back of the monitors that muffled the sound for the front centre rows. Front fills will solve the latter problem, and I've got a feeling that a $700 stage piano will outperform a $70K concert grand in this setting.
Moral: It is not about the best sound for individual instruments, but what achieves the best overall sound.

I'm glad to hear of your good experiences with the electronic drums, as it is similar to our experiences with Roland TD 12s. I get a really clean life-like sound out of them, with some parametric eq.

On the subject of electronic versus a concert grand, my experience goes the other way.

Our Kawai grand might be classed as being semi-electronic because we run it with the lid closed and a PZM in roughly the center of the underside of the lid with heavy parametric eq tuned to match the piano's acoustic sound. It sounds way better than anything I've heard yet from our >$2k Yamaha synth. 

Ditto for our pipe organ.  The synth's pipe organ patches sound nice, but no matter what its player and I do, we can't really come close to the sound of the pipes on our 16' Moeller. This bugs me because I've played CDs made from the line output of some other church's high end (>$40k) electonic organ, and it sounds pretty close.

Maybe there are some magic patches we need to load onto the Yammy...
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Taylor Phillips

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Re: Electronic Drums or Acoustic Drums
« Reply #21 on: January 31, 2011, 05:35:04 PM »

I've got a feeling that a $700 stage piano will outperform a $70K concert grand in this setting.
  Maybe if the grand is out of tune or cracked somewhere.

Anyway, back to the drums.  I just had a thought and wondered if it might work at all: place some sort of cushions or pillows around the bottom of the inside of the drums shield to absorb the sound.  I know this would look really odd, but would it work well sound wise? 
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Per Sovik

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Re: Electronic Drums or Acoustic Drums
« Reply #22 on: January 31, 2011, 06:45:02 PM »

  Maybe if the grand is out of tune or cracked somewhere.
Yeah, I went through the recording from another night and found that the grand was in average 30 cents above standard tune, but I was more thinking of the positive benefit of having an acoustically silent instrument on stage and not having to balance the PA against an acousticly loud instrument.

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Anyway, back to the drums.  I just had a thought and wondered if it might work at all: place some sort of cushions or pillows around the bottom of the inside of the drums shield to absorb the sound.  I know this would look really odd, but would it work well sound wise?
Cushion filler is an exellent dampener, stuffing all the drums with spare bedroom stuff and taping up the cymbals goes a long way. Once you have a "dead" drumset, you can fix it with eq, reverb, sidechain gates and what have you. Going electronic is so much easier. A compromize is to use an electronic drumset and adding acoustic hi-hat and one or two cymballs.
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Taylor Phillips

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Re: Electronic Drums or Acoustic Drums
« Reply #23 on: February 01, 2011, 10:43:34 PM »

Yeah, I went through the recording from another night and found that the grand was in average 30 cents above standard tune, but I was more thinking of the positive benefit of having an acoustically silent instrument on stage and not having to balance the PA against an acousticly loud instrument.
I was actually referring to the overall sound quality.  It seems like your drums were causing more than just balance problems - bleed, reflections - while your piano is just a bit loud here, a bit quiet there.  The trade off between balance of instruments and sound quality won't be the same. 
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Cushion filler is an exellent dampener, stuffing all the drums with spare bedroom stuff and taping up the cymbals goes a long way. Once you have a "dead" drumset, you can fix it with eq, reverb, sidechain gates and what have you. Going electronic is so much easier.
Well, that is quite a lot of trouble there, and I don't know why it would be necessary to go that far. I was more curious of how the cushions would do around the kit, rather than inside the drums. 
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A compromize is to use an electronic drumset and adding acoustic hi-hat and one or two cymballs.
I actually had a drummer a while ago who did this and didn't find it to be any better than going all electric or all acoustic.

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Jamie Vernon

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Re: Electronic Drums or Acoustic Drums
« Reply #24 on: February 02, 2011, 10:41:28 AM »

As a drummer I've played electronic kits and I've played acoustic kits. I have fun either way.  :) 

I found this video from this past NAMM on YouTube.  It's Zildjans's new Gen 16 cymbal system.  It looks interesting and I thought it would fit well within this thread.

Evidently they are extremely quiet "real" cymbals with condenser mics mounted underneath.  Then they use some sort of tone shaping with samples to create the sounds. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9G4_GZ_zk4

Thanks,
Jamie


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Jamie Vernon

George Dougherty

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Re: Electronic Drums or Acoustic Drums
« Reply #25 on: February 02, 2011, 12:31:13 PM »

If the sound reproduction system (speakers/amps/EQ/room dynamics) is poor (and I assume you can have a good mix since the IEM sound is good)  as you state below 300 Hz, then you will have a problem with electronic drums too. Correct the "reinforcement system" first, then work on the drum problem.

+1 For most insightful so far.  This was my first thought when you mentioned the reinforcement in the room issues.  Unless the real issue is that you've got people with poor skills behind the board doing a poor job mixing the kit, an electronic kit won't do much for you as you're dealing with poor reinforcement in the room before anything else.
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John Fiorello

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Re: Electronic Drums or Acoustic Drums
« Reply #26 on: February 02, 2011, 03:11:17 PM »

I found this video from this past NAMM on YouTube.  It's Zildjans's new Gen 16 cymbal system.  It looks interesting and I thought it would fit well within this thread.


I saw that on PSW last week.  Very interesting.  I'll definitely be giving them a listen when they show up at the closest GC. 



JF
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Ryan Fluharty

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Re: Electronic Drums or Acoustic Drums
« Reply #27 on: February 02, 2011, 07:14:06 PM »

As a drummer, I am very interested in the idea of the Gen 16 AE cymbals.  These could be a God send for electric kits as imo the cymbals are always the worst sounding and most unrealistic sound of the kit.

I have a few reservations of using them with an acoustic kit though.  I feel like drummers will bash them harder b/c they're quieter, and that will cause them to bash the rest of the kit harder, which is not as quiet.  Like mentioned before, they won't sound good through a poor system.

Now if they could figure out a way to make a good sounding acoustic-electric drumset, that would be ideal.
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Jamie Vernon

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Re: Electronic Drums or Acoustic Drums
« Reply #28 on: February 02, 2011, 10:58:16 PM »

I've never tried this before with an electric kit, but has anyone tried localizing the amplification of the kit actually at the kit?

I mean, we always try to patch the things straight into FOH when drums are meant to be heard in a space.  I know there's ambiance added into each sample that's coming out of the drum module, but what if you used a dry kit and used a full range (stereo) setup at the kit.  If you worked on it enough you could get it to sound like a kit in an actual space (i.e. the room).

Yes, you'd have stage volume, but now you could control the level of each piece of the kit.  Add a little bit of the stereo mix to FOH and I think you'd have something that was controlled AND sounded good in the performance space. 

This is all a mute point if the space is extremely large.

Jamie
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Jamie Vernon

Brad Weber

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Re: Electronic Drums or Acoustic Drums
« Reply #29 on: February 03, 2011, 09:27:44 AM »

Jamie's point of how the environment can affect the sound is likely very relevant to the issue as some of the low frequency problems being experienced are likely due to the sound of the acoustic drums interacting with the room, other live sources and the reinforced sound.  Electronic drums reproduced through a well designed and operated audio system, and as Bob noted the sound system being properly designed for the space is critical, could potentially address many of those issues.  However, the same electronic drums with the speakers located at the drums would likely encounter many of the same problematic interactions as the acoustic drums.

In a 1,000 capacity worship space I doubt that 200-300Hz issues are room mode related as those would be very high order modes where the density and level most likely means they are not perceived as discrete modes.  But these are the types of issues where knowing more about the current space and audio system can really help in assessing what is happening and potential solutions.

Perhaps the bigger issue here is that you can't look at just the drums and drummers, you really have to take a more encompassing view that includes the physical conditions, the people and the goals involved in each individual application.  Have the same drummer and drums in two different churches and the results could be and/or be perceived quite differently.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2011, 07:42:54 AM by Brad Weber »
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ProSoundWeb Community

Re: Electronic Drums or Acoustic Drums
« Reply #29 on: February 03, 2011, 09:27:44 AM »


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