Rant about e-drums

[Deleted]

Hi all,

Here's just some random rant about e-drumming.

Both ddrum and other makers of electronic drums, and even users in reviews etc, focus a lot on the dynamic range of their particular brand or technology. But the biggest issue I have found, is the systems ability to correctly track velocity, not just the ability to produce a wide range of dynamics. If the system produces velocity values that doesn't accurately correspond to the playing, the wide dynamic range is more of a problem than a feature.

This is by many e-drummers solved by the "127 method". For example, I first bought the Yamaha XP120SD silicon 3-zone snare. Then I got a Yamaha module, which had a lot of latency. Then I got the drumit3, which was supposed to be compatible with this snare. My main issue with the pad and the Yamaha module, was the inability to track rimshots with a proper velocity response.

When playing rimshots, the point for me is mostly to get the sound, not the volume, although not always. When playing rimshots using this gear, it was very difficult to achieve a consistent velocity response unless employing the "127 method", by which I mean cranking up the gain so that all rimshots end up with velocity 127.

The reason I got the drumit3, was to have the cymbals be e-cymbals instead of normal acoustic cymbals. So I got a set of Yamaha cymbals. With these, the dynamic tracking was horrible. Some strokes get significantly louder than other strokes. Yet again, the only solution was to use the 127 method. But then what is the point of a drum module capable of 99 layers if only a few at the top of the range practically could be used? The Yamaha hihat was completely useless. So I got the 2box hihat. It was even worse!

By the way, if you want the very best hihat function I recommend the ddrum4 hihat and module going via MIDI to a Midi Solutions Event Processor to a ddrum3. With this setup, you get the most MIDI data from the hihat, the Event Processor will allow you to map whatever velocity and other data to whatever you want, and the ddrum3 will have the low latency and the possibility for the user to import custom samples, and it will give you a great e-hihat. The downside is the amount of testing and programming you need to do. I personally just went with acoustic cymbals instead.

[kenjwright]

In my own recent experience, I have found similar issues specific to e-cymbals. Mixing and matching components can be exhausting! And particularly expensive unless you have access to many, many different brands and models to test without making an actual purchase.

My first electronic set was a Roland DDR-30 in 1986 which only provided support for kick/snare/toms and no cymbals. So using a standard cymbal set was the only approach and made for a less traumatic experience when moving from acoustics to electronics (the club gigs we were doing at that time simply had no room for a full acoustic drum set). But we also did not have in-ear monitors back then so the stage mix was always less than ideal. Big, natural cymbal sounds and ticka, ticka on the drum pads! Kinda hard to "feel it".

In 2005 I needed an electronic kick because the arrangement (African Dun Duns) did not have space for a bass drum, and cymbal crashes are just plain weak without a bass drum underneath!! This is when I bought the pre-owned ddrum4 after searching around and finding this to be the top rated unit (oddly about the time it went out of production). I used it for the intended purpose and it then spent most of the following 14 years in the closet.

In 2019 we participated in an event that had an '80s theme. So out came the ddrum4 along with the DDR-30 pads and regular cymbals. I still had never explored and sounds in the module other than what was available in the stock Palette.

After that event, my e-drum enthusiasm was regenerated! Found some used ddrum4 pads and added Pintech PC cymbals, trying not to break the bank. That is when I started to learn about compatibility with various components in a seemingly mature industry. To "modernize" I added a Roland PDX-100 snare. Plugged straight into the ddrum4 it worked reasonably well. But the rim and head separation is not great and positional sensing is weak at best. The Pintech cymbals (all single zone) work rather well and amazingly, due to the trigger placement and mounting, they actually respond to choking if you grab the trigger box just right!! For crashes they are fine (they even "swell"), but not tight enough for a ride cymbal. Next comes the Pintech 18" LTE dual zone for the metal (material, not genre!) feel. Knowing that the ddrum4 module would not play nice with the dual zone, a ddrum DDTi interface was added. But it failed miserably to process the zones. And no positional sensing or Aftertouch.

So on to the next fix, following a recommendation, I acquired a used Alesis DM10. After dialing in it did a pretty good job of managing the Pintech LTEs dual zones and fed the proper Midi notes to the ddrum4 so that the bow and bell had reasonable response and separation with a custom sound file. But thinking that using a full featured drum module to just manage pad input was silly, I looked for a more appropriate trigger interface.

Finally after much research I decided that the MegaDrum would be the killer unit to be the bridge across the generation gap of electronic components. But, alas! After weeks of fiddling with no acceptable degree of success, I have abandoned that for the time being. I had hoped to use the MIDI Solutions Even Processor to translate the CC-16 style of positional sensing into the ddrum4 8 position/midi note style for which it has a prefect recipe, but could not get the CC range of input values from the Megadrum to be anywhere near accurate enough to translate into separate Midi notes for the ddrum4. The cymbal output was all over the board and the PDX-100 had similar issues.

So after all of these months of trial & error I have simply refocused on using single zone pads (drums & cymbals) and with the exception of how well the Pintechs do play nicely with the ddrum4, just sticking with mostly ddrum4 components. After all, at some point I want to play drums versus fiddle!! And along the way have learned how really well designed the ddrum4 module is and how well it reads and processes trigger input, even from non-ddrum components. And I still prefer the stock SE sounds as well as adding my own sounds and taking advantage of the excellent velocity and positional sensing in the ddrum4.

Play on!

Cheers!

Ken

[kenjwright]

Regarding hi-hats; I recently acquired a dd4 hat and have to agree, this is a rather amazing unit, especially considering this is late 90's, early 2000's technology! I sampled my 15" 2002 SoundEdge hats but have not used yet as I found that the stock HHAT_047 59 2002 15_ 7S from the Mega Drumkits Library sounds great. The articulation is quite good and very accurate with respect to timing and pressure. The one thing I have found is that I need to release the pedal ever so slightly earlier than with acoustic hats to allow the open sound to trigger at the correct instant when doing an open/close back beat. Other than that, could not ask for more (btw, using a vintage Sonor HLZ pedal so super smooth)!

Cheers!

Ken

[Deleted]

One interesting experiment, is to connect the dd4 via midi to a computer, and running MIDI monitor or MIDIox. You will find that different hihat sounds produce different MIDI data. I mentioned this in this thread unofficially-ddrum.proboards.com/thread/197/hi-hat-midi

You know a lot more about the file format than me, so you could probably make something very cool with it!

[kenjwright]

I will definitely mess about with that! The hi-hat sound files are a bit more complex than the drum sounds as there is a lot more going on to accurately track the articulation. For HHAT_047 there are 7 samples spread across 9 layers with extensive use of velocity, position, amplitude & filter parameters. So lots to study!