Electronic Drums for Cover Band

[sm49341]

Well that was short lived. Drummer found issues and anomalies with the kit. Mainly, hitting toms causes cymbals to sound. Hitting the snare causes the cymbals to sound. I'm kinda pissed because he paid good money for this kit but won't spend money on getting a good drum mic set.

Thats crosstalk. There are settings for it.

 

[seamonkey]

eDrums are great, just as good as a good ePiano
Live and in the studio

 

[electracoyote]

A question for rock cover bands using electronic drums... does your drummer choose one "kit" and pretty much leave it alone, or do they cycle through a number of kits during your show? If your drummer is using multiple kits, how do you keep a consistent FOH mix?

My drummer has a Roland V-Drum kit. He insists on using 5-7 different kits for each show in order to approximate the drum sound from the original recordings (rock kit, ballad kit, funk kit, reggae kit, garage kit, etc). Inevitably, the volume and mix of each kit ends up all over the place. It's nearly impossible to maintain a good FOH mix (lead singer mixes on-the-fly on stage). Dialing in each kit in rehearsal is a waste of time, because the guy can't go 10 seconds without tweaking something on the drum brain mixer. To make matters worse, he's essentially deaf in hi-freq -- so he quickly gets WAY out of control with cymbal volume.

My band is in the exact same situation.

My drummer has around five or six custom kits. He only uses a different kit for fairly extreme applications, songs from a distinct era (80's Lin drums, etc.) or kits with lots of exotic percussion.

At first, it was a challenge to get his levels similar enough they didn't cause problems in the mix. But we kept tweaking and finally got it reasonably consistent. It can be done, he's going to have to make it the goal because you can not have your drummer futzing with his kit after every song.

 

[musicman7722]

Well two gigs under my belt. Happy overall. I am wondering if I should turn my eq settings off on the FOH board and let the sound coming off the T30 head do the work? I did put compression on some of the channels but took it off. I felt it wasn't needed. Any thoughts or experiences?

 

[Bullitt5135]

My frustration continues...we spent a good hour dialing in the drums last week. Got the drummer's in-ears sorted so he can hear his cymbals and reverb better (he has profound hearing loss in high freq). At last night's gig, my daughter came up to me during the first break (she's an talented drummer) and said, "tell your drummer to stop messing with his cymbals...they disappear every couple songs." I was watching him out of the corner of my eye -- he changes kits between every song, then futzes with the sliders on his controller. In addition to screwing up the FOH mix, he's always scrambling to get set for the next song. He should be using that time to focus on the setting the correct tempo for the next song (that's another LONG rant of mine).

At rehearsal the other night, I expressed that I would prefer to have ONE main drum kit for the entire gig. I can see changing the snare and aux percussion sounds to suit particular songs. Other wise, hands off. The drummer says he listens closely to the original recordings and tries to match his kits for each and every song (just like the guitar players do). So, if he thinks the original has quiet cymbals, he'll dial back the sliders on his drum module. Why the hell don't you just stopping hitting them so hard, dude?

 

[prd004]

There's your problem.
Mix the levels for FOH, then send the drummer his monitor feed and boost the HF ???
Option 2: ?? Get another drummer!!

I vote for option 2

 

[seamonkey]

I like it when keyboardist should pick different key sounds for different songs, and when guitarist are just one sound the whole night. It's great that drums can do this now.

Practice makes perfect, but a gig isn't a place to practice with the knobs. Rehearse it first.

The brains also have multiple outputs, where cymbals, snare, bass, toms can all be on different channels. That same sound engineer has all the tone controls and compressors for the other acoustic mics and vocals.

Many edrums understand MIDI and a talented sound engineer can switch the kits, and adjust the sound by sending a few control messages. It is common to have off stage "programmers" settings the sounds in the big shows for keyboards and such.

 

[EastCoastThump]

The drummer says he...tries to match his kits for each and every song

Me: "That's a great goal! Keep practicing that at home, and once you've gotten lightning quick and super-reliable at it, *then* let's try it once or twice at rehearsal and see how it goes. It would be cool to eventually be able to work that into our shows."