Thanks Andy - some excellent suggestions there! Especially the one about the electric drum kit - they produce absolutely no "stage sound."

I remember a few years back at Summer Camp Duane Codrington played his electric drum kit the vocalists were raving about how they were able to hear themselves in the monitors and the overall stage sound was decreased - no crashing symbols in their ears. In our context, I think one particular advantage is the decreased sound up front (on Sunday evenings especially - and especially during communion.

There does however need to be greater overall skill needed for an electric drum kit - the drummers need to know how to use it (the responses are slightly different than an acoustic kit) but the most important part is upon the sound engineer. I know that at the camp I mentioned Duane wasn't particularly happy with his bass drum sound (and I see you all rolling your eyes with an exasperated sigh - "Musicians!") and was quite correct in saying that his whole sound was completely controlled by the sound engineer. Not that I'm against this idea at all - I think it's an excellent one - but we just need to know some training will be required (sound engineers and drummers), and and extra monitor circuit (for the drummer) will probably have to be set up (that's your domain, Andy).

And I agree with your rallying cry, "Procrastination is our enemy!"

Good comments Andy and I agree totally. Interestingly there is a guy at work who has this kit for sale - including the kick pedals for R8000 I think. He says we are welcome to come and try them out !!! What I think happens is that as the drums reverberate so long, they appear to be or actually are too loud. So when we are playing, the rest of us musos need to turn the volume up to hear ourselves think (yes the bassists do possess brain cells) Then the vocalists need more volume etc etc etc. The sound really starts sounding bad when the monitor speakers and monitor amps are over-driven into distortion as they are called to do a greater task than the are able too. Often the monitors are louder than the main system !!! This guy who has the electronic kit agrees with Roger in that they require more skill which makes them more difficult to play as they don’t have the same "feel" as vellum drums. We would need to get the opinions of the drummers. Other thing is that the drummer needs a decent PA so that he can hear himself !!!! (not headphones). Hmm some more kit that we need security for ?

Posted by: Mervyn Low 13 Apr, 2005 - 09:40:36

Kewl Merv - can we book this Saturday morning to go along and chat with this drummer guy? That would be cool. What kit is it? Maybe I can bring along my iBook too and you can see how painfully difficult it is to use a Mac :D

Posted by: Roger Saner 13 Apr, 2005 - 14:45:51