Allright... I'm going to admit it. I'm a wanna-be drummer. Whether I'm at work, in class, or at home, I'm always tapping out rhythms on my desk, my keyboard, or whatever is available. I would love to start getting somewhat serious about it but my problem is I live in an apartment, and while I have no immediate neighbors, I couldn't be playing on a real drum kit without seriously disturbing everyone in my building.

So I was getting my mind thinking about electronic drum kits. I have MIDI capabilities on my PC, and I've seen electronic drums which actually have a trap-set arrangement with bass and hi-hat pedals, etc. Of course it won't be a natural drum feel, but it's probably as close as I can get without getting evicted.

Anyway I have done some net searches but couldn't find any good unbiased reviews. Since I'm just getting started I'd be looking on the cheap, probably at $1500 max. I stumbled upon some in the $600 range but they looked kinda flimsy. I want something that can take a bit of a beating.

So, if anyone out there has any experience and can recommend brands, models, etc. or even just some good sites which review them, that'd be cool. Any online stores that sell electronic kits would be cool too.

Well, i have no clue where you live so i don't know if there is a Sam Ash around you, but they have good stuff and people who know what they're talking about. http://www.samash.com, they have 6 electronic drum sets listed on their website ranging in price from 1000 - 5000. Check it out.

The ultimate electronic kit I've seen is the Roland V-drum system.

I don't know if you've ever seen the Roland virtual guitar system, but it's been around for several years and it worked like this:

A hexaphonic pickup with a 6-conductor cable grabs the vibration of each one of the six strings individually. Once upon a time, these would have triggered a MIDI synthesizer, but there was processing delay associated with that, as well as tracking error.

So instead, they now take the raw signal of the string's vibrations and do realtime DSP and computer processing on the sound so that they can do all sorts of interesting things to the sound. Not just synthesizer sounds (although that is possible), but more importantly, they can MODEL the sound so that your guitar can emulate the sound of any other guitar. For example, turn your 6-string into an authentic-sounding 12-string or Nashville-tuned guitar. Or make your electric sound like an acoustic. Or make your Fender sound like a Gibson. It also has models for different types of pickups, bodies, amplifiers and speakers. For instance, you can dial up a hollow body Gretch playing through the bridge pickup into a Marshall stack with Celestion speakers. You can also program alternate tunings, so that you can do nonstandard tunings and open chords (Joni Mitchell used this extensively on a recent tour as I recall). Since all of this is happening in real-time on the real string signal, all of the tracking issues associated with synth-guitar are gone. Everything you do to the string (including scraping the pick along the string) is reproduced faithfully. You can play as fast and as sloppy as you like, and it will all come through (something you can't do with MIDI).

The Roland V-drum system is the logical extension of that concept, just applied to drums. You have these almost-normal looking drum heads which have these little pickups attached to them. They intercept the signal and model it into any kind of drum kit you like. You can mix and match authentic African drums with techno-synth drums, etc. But what makes it great is that it responds like a real drum-head would respond. For instance, you can still use brushes to scrape across the drum head, and it still sounds natural. You can't do brushes with synth drums. Your snare rolls will be perfectly accurate, instead of being glitchy MIDI-interpretations of snare rolls. But at the same time, it'll do pure synth-sample stuff, too, so you can trigger sound effects and even little melodies with drum hits.

I have a friend with one of these kits, and it's pretty darn amazing. Very very fun to mess with, and I'm not even a drummer. There's actually a bunch of sequencing stuff built into the drum system, so he can do this total one-man-band routine with just the kit. Blows me away when he does it, just wild.

Oh, and in case you're worried that these almost-natural drum heads will make too much noise when you are practicing, don't worry. It's very quiet when you're playing, it's not like playing real full-volume drums. If you use headphones, it's quite appropriate for practicing when you live in an apartment or if you don't want to disturb other members of your house. You could, for example, practice with one of these in the next room while your spouse watches television, and you would not disturb her.

Look into it.

Hmm, looking into it further, I see that they also offer the V-drum system with plain old rubber pads...

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/g=home/search/detail/base_pid/442370/

Wouldn't be quite the same as the natural heads...

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/search/g=home/detail/base_id/40974/

... but would probably still work well.

visuvius:

I live about 10 minutes from a Sam Ash, but I always thought they were a little pricey. They have occasional "blowout sales" that I might try to hit soon.. I thought there might be cheaper outlets, possibly online ones, where I could happen upon a set with a little thinner retail margin than Sam Ash seems to have.

tfabris:

The technology and concept of V-drums sounds great, but also sounds really expensive. I'll look around, but if these are truly the best drum technology on the market, I don't know if they'll have a model in the sub-$2000 range... Even that is a lot of coin to blow on a hobby I'm just getting into. But it does sound light years ahead of just hitting a rubber pad and getting essentially the same sound out of it each time.

The video only scratches the surface of what I've seen these things do. The important thing is that they can sound exactly like perfectly natural and real drums when you want them to, but then you can add all the synth stuff if you want, too.

Ah, should have waited for your reply. Hmm. So getting the non-rubber more natural-feeling heads adds about a grand to the cost... The club set you linked to doesn't mention anything about the natural sound or having different sound depending on where you hit the drum, etc... So maybe it uses a lesser technology or something.

There's always ebay.

True... The completed items search, however, shows that even the EBay prices start at $2000 for the Concert, Pro, and Custom models which seem to be the ones with the cool natural-feeling heads.

I'll think about it... Maybe scale back one of my other money draining hobbies...

Also remember that those systems are modular. You could start with the rubber pads and later graduate to the natural heads.

This is true. My brush and soft roll techniques leave little to be desired at this point, anyway. Not sure there's much of a market for selling individual pads though.

I absolutely love the cymbal choke and rim shot sensors on the natural head drums. That is such a cool touch.

Must.... resist... urge... to... blow... entire... bank account...

I absolutely love the cymbal choke and rim shot sensors on the natural head drums. That is such a cool touch.

Yes, the cymbal chokes are very important for learning how to play properly, it's interesting watching my friend use them. He played real kits for many years, and then "downgraded" to the V-drum system when he moved into a smaller house in a more crowded neighborhood and needed a more compact, quiet system. It was things like being able to choke the cymbals and use brushes that made electronic drums feasible for him, otherwise I don't think he would have considered it in the first place.

Oh. Suh-wheet.

They just came out with a V-cymbal, so you can have something that behaves like a real cymbal instead of a pad:

http://www.rolandus.com/products/2002/cy-12rc.html

Wait, dude, I've found your product. You say you like tapping out tunes on your desk?

http://www.rolandus.com/PRODUCTS/hardware/hpd15.htm

And in case you didn't catch it on that page, an interactive demo:

http://www.rolandus.com/PRODUCTS/demos/hpd15/demo.html

I like the "Sitar" one because one of the pads is a toggle trigger, so you can do a continuous background chord with it... [edit: must have been a glitch in the demo software, can't do it any more.]

That's something you can do with the V-drum sound module, is create little melodies or chords with the pads. For instance, you can program a pad to play a different note in a melody each time you hit it. So you just hit the same pad ten times to play a ten-note melody, for example. Can be backing chords, too, so you can keep a chord progression going while still doing the rhythm. Quite interesting when you see someone talented doing it.

You can also program alternate tunings, so that you can do nonstandard tunings and open chords (Joni Mitchell used this extensively on a recent tour as I recall

Dang, now all of Joni's shows will be, like, 32 minutes long!

I can play all of about 6 chords and haven't had a guitar in years, but that git sounds interesting enough for me to have to check it out. I could waste at least a few hundred hours mucking around with that!

It's actually not a guitar at all, but just a pickup/soundmodule combination you can add to just about any guitar. Very fun, and quite useful to one friend of mine in the studio, it helps him get all kinds of different guitar sounds without having to buy 20 guitars.

edit: Roland no-frills Page is here:
http://www.rolandus.com/PRODUCTS/hardware/vg88.htm
Item sold here:
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/search/g=home/detail/base_id/42783

Saw the Roland kit at several shows and it's indeed pretty amazing...

What really gets me is how the stuff is demonstrated: Typically you would see a large group (up to 20, 30) of people with headphones around what looks like a complete drum kit, someone playing it in full swing, arms and legs flapping and waving furiously...

Bizarre thing is of course that without headphones you don't hear anything (the little noise that is made is lost in the hubbub of the show itself. Weid but fun spectacle!

Cas.

I really am a drummer and have been playing for more years than I care to think about, but if you want a cheap 'IN' to learning for figuring out, go and get a basic practice kit. They usually focus on making the playing feel right and have nothing like the correct sound, so if you wanted to jump from practice to real it should feel the same.
Most of the inexpensive (and some expensive) electronic kits I have played put all the emphasis on gee wiz sounds but feel crappy to play.
It depends what you want.
If its gee wiz sounds and messing about, go for the cheapest that makes the sounds you like.
But if you want to learn to play, get a no sound practice kit.
Please remember that this came from a guy who will never ever replace his lovely black Premier XPK for the world
Good luck.

That cymbal is SICK! They have a hi-hat too! I must have them!!!

Sigh. I see bad things happening to my bank account.

Teheehee... Well tapping on my desk would be unnecessary (or less necessary) if I had me-self one of them fancy 'lectronic drummin' kits. But that thing does look pretty cool... More of a novelty item than anything else though. I am certain that thing was the product of a four beer Friday lunch in the Roland engineering department. It'd turn a few heads, though, for sure.

Thanks for the advice. I'm not big into "gee whiz sounds," I really want to learn to play. I don't think I'd ever get involved in a real band and start gigging, but I want to play because I love music and love playing on real drums when I can. It's a real good physical release too. After a rough day of coding and dealing with my six bosses "a la Office Space", I'd love to bang on a bunch of drums and make them make loud noises.. Just need to keep those loud noises in my headphones to avoid eviction.

I think some of these electronic kits look like they'll be good sets to learn on, too. Especially with what they're saying about the feel. I think I'll stop by the local Sam Ash and see if they have a demo set to bang on.

Well tapping on my desk would be unnecessary (or less necessary) if I had me-self one of them fancy 'lectronic drummin' kits.

You haven't hung around many real drummers in your life, have you? All the drummers I know simply cannot stop tapping and banging rhythms on things.

Most of the inexpensive (and some expensive) electronic kits I have played put all the emphasis on gee wiz sounds but feel crappy to play.

Exactly why I think those V-drum natural pads are so cool. Now, I'm no drummer, but when I mess with them, it seems to me that they feel like real drum heads.

When I was in a band, one guy who used to hang with us brought in a set that was like the V-Club set (It was Roland, but an older model). I'm no drummer, but damn those things were fun to play! I used to go down to the studio all the time to play them.

Funny you should ask. In my lifetime I have had four good friends who are drummers, one in a rather successful band that release an album on Atlantic records. Of course they all love tapping on things and all the other stereotypical drummer jokes. Knowing so many drummers throughout my life is what got me started with this. However, this is the first time in my life that it was actually feasible (financially) to invest a couple G's on a set of drums.

My point is, not being a "real drummer", if *I* had a drum kit, *I* would get a lot of that tapping out of my system and not be doing it at inopportune times, such as during staff meetings (true story behind that one.)

Yes, getting more into it will make me more likely to have rhythms banging around in my head, but at least with a drum set at home, I might be inclined to wait to have a real vehicle to get those impulses out, rather than having people stare at me while my manager is trying to talk about how far behind schedule our next release is.

Make sense?

"All the drummers I know simply cannot stop tapping and banging rhythms on things."

Now see I've found that its always the guitar players banging on things and drummers playing air guitar. . .

I know what you mean, folk are always telling me quit banging on the table, chairs tin cans, anything.
The thing I find most satisfying about a real kit is the skill involved in getting things like rimshots without smashing sticks, real hihat timing, true power sensitivity and of course the main thing, the satisfaction of beating seven colors of s**t out of something and making a great noise.
These electronic dealies that give you full power from a little tap are just not as satisfying!
The noise each part of the drum head makes or the variation in tone from different parts of a cymbal make it all worthwhile for me.
Of course, having neighbours several hundred feet away does help

Still a dedicated acoustic kit dude.

Yeah... if I could do it, I would get a real kit. It's just not an option living in an apartment... So the V-Drums sound like the best approximation I can get without getting evicted. Apparently they handle all the scenarios you're talking about, including hitting different parts of the cymbal and getting different sounds, etc. Of course it's technology doing it and not real metal, but the key requirement is that I get to beat "seven colors of shit" out of them and have them not wake up my neighbors. Only electronic kits can do that.

Now I just need to head over to Sam Ash after work today and try them out.

Just a follow-up on my foray into the electronic drum market... I finally did it. I broke down and bought the Roland V-Club set. Got a GREAT deal from www.kraftmusic.com... List price is $1500, Sam Ash has it "on sale" for $1295, but Kraft Music had it for $1099. Another site had it for $1069 but it was back-ordered, but Kraft Music matched their $1069 price, along with free ground shipping. Not too bad if you ask me!

Since my original budget figure was $1500, I splurged a little and added in the CY-12H hi-hat. I consider the hi-hat the second most important part of a kit (the snare being the most important) and I couldn't quite justify spending $350+ for a mesh snare pad from Roland. Plus those seem to appear on E-Bay a lot more often than the V-Cymbals do because they've been around longer.

So everything should show up sometime next week. I'll hit the local music store tomorrow to buy a throne and some sticks to make the package complete. I'm really glad I was able to get into a kit and stay within my price range.

Anyway, thanks for all the info guys.