Perhaps there's another reason for those weirdly set up kits... Electronic kits have one unique ability – in the words of the great Bill Bruford, talking on Rockshool back in the early 1980's about his electronic kit “Any pad can be any thing, at any time”. And that go me thinking... I once
Acoustic instruments are marvellous things – we hit them, stroke them, caress notes out of them, and they never swear at us or refuse to make a noise (of some sort, not necessarily the noise we want though). They continuously react with their surroundings (clap your hands with your foot pressing down on the sustain
For some reason, anyone can play the piano, or violin, or clarinet, and the world smiles benignly and wishes them well in their endeavours. However, as soon as the chosen instrument becomes drums, everyone has a problem, from family, to neighbours, to law enforcement agencies (try telling a policemen you play drums and see how
There a lot of talk about midi on various forums, but theres also lots of threads which suggest that theres still quite a bit of misunderstanding about what actually is, so I thought I'd have a quick look at it this time. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, and it was invented (in a
For live work with electronics, flight cases are your friend OK, so we looked at what sort of gear you could use last time, but a recent Facebook post about module failures got me thinking about using this stuff practically live. I've seen enough function bands who use electronics setting up to know
Is this an acoustic kit? Or is it a triggered kit with mesh heads and real cymbals? Can you tell? Your audience definitely cant. 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
A little bit of history At the very start of this article I should point out that there really is nothing new under the sun. While most people think that the mesh head was new when the TD10 was launched back in 1996, it actually goes much further back. Somewhere on my computer I have
There was a time (a long, long ago, in a galaxy, far, far away) when certain members of any band would be the butt of all the jokes. Traditionally, the drummers were thick and dribbled when they played, bass players would be failed guitarists who could only count to four (so felt more comfortable playing
OK, so last time we looked at sampling. How does all this differ to modelling? Well, lets have a look; The idea of physical sound modelling has been around since the early 1970's. The principal is very simple – any sound can be approximated by adding other sounds (or waveforms) together. The more sounds you
Ah, the first of probably a few contentious subjects! If you are under 40, this may mean nothing to you. If you are over 40, the word 'sample' may mean something entirely different... So, you know that lovely electronic kit you own? How are those sounds made? How do they come to be
