Electronic drums live

[BigYinUK]

Hi all

 

Our drummer has just bought the new Roland V-Drums 9KX electronic drumkit and *intends* to use this live to replace his acoustic kit (Tama Crestar).

 

This obviously raises a few interesting questions:

 

1. How will he hear the kit (and the band) ?

 

2. How will the rest of the band hear the kit ?

 

3. Will our PA cope as it will have to reproduce the kit for the audience ?

 

I've been giving it a bit of thought and have a few ideas but does anyone here have any experience of doing this ?

[Bottle]

Howdy

 

Yep, our church in Cambridge has a V-Drums set (one of the earlier models IIRC).

 

We normally take the line out(s) from the brain, pop them through a rack mount DI at the "stage" end of our multicore and feed it through the mixing desk. The drummer then has a set of IEMs fed from a desk Aux, or uses a monitor stack. Mixing is all done from the FOH position. The rest of the musicians also have IEMs, so we can tailor the monitor mix to suit them.

 

HTH

 

Ian

[BigYinUK]

@Bottle

 

How do you cope with the FOH not being able to control individual "drum" levels ?

[Rob_Beech]

When playing acoustic drums, you are mixing the individual drum sounds from scratch, in smaller venues you are balancing the acoustic sound of the drums coming from the stage (and bleeding into other mics not intended for drums) and the sound their specific mics are picking up, this gives a different mix. With the electronic drums you don't get this issue, so the entire kit mixed as one on the stage ISN'T as big a problem as you might think. It's FAR from ideal, and of course, individual control over channels would be much better but it's certainly not the end of the world once you do a bit of fine tuning within the controller. Some setups have this ability to send each channel out separately, I'm unfamiliar with the one you mention. Some also have a more limited (but more flexible than a left and right out) by having say 4 outputs, which you could for example use or kick snare and the rest in stereo etc etc.

[MarkPAman]

Hi BigY

 

There are quite a few options here for the first two questions.

 

I've worked with a drummer who had a mixer & headphones, and got a monitor feed to mix with his own sound. The rest of the band got kit in the monitors, but they were serious 15" bi-amped monitors.

 

I've seen PA systems set up at the side of the stage like side fills, with just the drums in.

 

I've seen a large keyboard amp used, with a quietish band.

 

All the band, including the drummer, could have the kit in their monitors.

 

For question 3, what does your PA consist of? (I know you've probable posted this before, but save us searching please). And what are you playing and how loudly?

 

If you speakers, not forgetting the monitors, are just for vocals, then they'll probably not be up to taking drums too. If you have already been micing the drums & have headroom, then you'll be fine.

[p.k.roberts]

1. How will he hear the kit (and the band) ?

 

2. How will the rest of the band hear the kit ?

 

3. Will our PA cope as it will have to reproduce the kit for the audience ?

 

I went through this with a band I work with some time ago. They typically play pub gigs/small events (up to about 200 audience) It took quite a bit of adjustment by all involved. The band members initially missed the dynamism of a 'real' kit behind them and felt that this affected their performance; but that seems to have settled down now. The foldback did have to be upgraded and tweaked a touch. The drummer had concerns about being able to hear himself, so we initially tried giving him his own small mixer; this was fed with a FOH derived mix, with everything but the drums, and a split feed of the drum kit. This allowed the drummer to set his own 'relative mix'. After a while, when everyone had more confidence, we dropped the mixer and just fed him his own mix.

So all is now happiness. The outcomes are that we have been able to (gradually) drop the levels on stage, which has made life easier (and safer) and have been able to produce a much more balanced FOH sound in smaller venues.

 

Without knowing what sort of music you play, in what size venue and with what PA it's difficult to give more specific advice; but do give yourself plenty of tweaking time and try out different arrangments, whilst remembering it will take a bit of time to 'bed in'.

[BigYinUK]

More info from me then.

 

1. We play rock, usually quite loud. You're right, one of the advantages of using the V-Drums is that we'll be able to set the onstage sound to a comfortable level rather than having to "compete" with the drummer.

 

2. Our PA is 2 x Mackie SR1530s which we had initially envisaged would do us for small to medium size gigs. Having to put the drums through them will inevitably limit the use of these to small (pub) gigs. What we do about the bigger gigs will probably be the subject of a separate post ! In the meantime we'll hire if we do a larger venue.

 

I can see us forking out for RCF TTs eventually

 

I had initially thought that the drummer would use headphones fed with a mix from one of our desk aux outs. IEM is a possibility for sure.

 

How our foldback will cope is another matter entirely. We use a pair of JBL ER-105 15" monitors and a pair of no-name wedges with Eminence 500w 12" drivers in them. We drive this lot with a TA 2400. This has proven to be more than adequate up to now but the bass response needed to get a decent drum sound for the band with the V-Drums may be an issue. Its also possible that having to reproduce the drumkit will tear the JBL 15" drivers apart. We'll have to suck it and see.

 

Thanks for the responses so far.

[Bottle]

@Bottle

 

How do you cope with the FOH not being able to control individual "drum" levels ?

@Big Yin

 

Well, I've never encountered a problem with the FOH mix - the relative levels of the kit can be controlled from the brain, and to a lesser extent, by playing style. We just take the stereo line output into the mixer on two adjacent channels, and pan them left and right to give a sensible stereo image at the FOH position.

 

Monitor-wise, as the others have posted, can be down to personal preference, and the size of the venue. We have four channels of IEM foldback, fed from desk auxes, for the various musicians and singers - typically the drummer and bassist are on on the same channel. I've also experimented with a drum fill stack, with drums, bass, a bit of keys, and lead vocal, and the drummer seems to be happy with this, although YMMV

 

As Rob Beech has pointed out, this is less than ideal, and we are looking into getting an acoustic kit, although it's unlikely we will need to mike it in our current venue.

 

Again, hope this helps. Feel free to drop me a PM etc

 

Ian

[Stuart91]

Some drum brains also have an auxiliary in - however these are designed for inputting a CD player, say, for the drummer to play along with when practising, so whatever comes in the aux also comes out of the main output, as well as the drummer's headphones. I found this out the hard way when someone sprung an electric kit on me when we were out of monitors.

[cedd]

2. Our PA is 2 x Mackie SR1530s which we had initially envisaged would do us for small to medium size gigs. Having to put the drums through them will inevitably limit the use of these to small (pub) gigs. What we do about the bigger gigs will probably be the subject of a separate post ! In the meantime we'll hire if we do a larger venue.

 

Those Mackie's are pretty loud! I have SA1521's and have never had issues with volume, or clipping in any of the medium sized gigs I've done. Ok so some subs may add to your kick sound.

 

It all depends on if your kit was left without any mic's beforehand. If so then really all you gain is the portability and lack of "fighting" the drummer with everything else. But remember that people inevitably want drums for rock type music at at least the acoustic volume, so your vocal and guitar levels will still have to be equally as loud.

If however, the kit had a set of mics on it, you've lost at least 8 mics from which feedback could occur (particularly the overheads) and you've suddenly gained 7 channels on your mixer (6 if you run the kit in stereo).

 

Personally I see v drums as the ultimate gift! Saves a lot of hassle, cable, mics and mic stands. And they do sound good when running through the right system.

[BigYinUK]

Looks like it may be possible to control the mixer in the "brain" with midi, so we *could* send midi down to it from a controller by the desk and adjust the individual "drum" levels. I'd need to know the midi notes etc which even the Roland rep doesn't know atm.

 

Subs for the Mackies..... Hmm now there's an interesting point. Normally we just mike up the kick, a little goes to FOH to add thump and we send some to drummer's monitor mix and some to our mix.

 

I like the idea of having a "mic'd up kit sound" without any microphones. IMO this is an essential sound for a rock band but a pain/impossible to achieve in small venues so you're right the V-Drum is a gift from that perspective. Not having to worry about microphone bleed is a big plus point.

 

Someone has suggested that the drummer could consider a "thumper stool" to add feel to what he'll hear through IEM.

[Rob_Beech]

Is your desk on stage with you, or out front with a separate engineer. Midi isn't good over distances above about 15m. That's not to say it WONT work down a multicore (only 3 cores are needed) but there are no guarantees.

[BigYinUK]

Is your desk on stage with you, or out front with a separate engineer. Midi isn't good over distances above about 15m. That's not to say it WONT work down a multicore (only 3 cores are needed) but there are no guarantees.

 

It depends on the gig/space/whether we have an engineer.

 

What about this for extending midi ? http://midiextender.com/Twisted_Pair_MIDI_Extender.htm

[PoppaDom]

Midi in theory isn't good over long distances although for simple data streams I have had success at distances up to 150m down a good quality audio multicore.

 

Poppadom

[gnomatron]

you can download the vdrums manual from the Roland website, presumably it has the midi mappings on there.

 

Is portability the reason for going for the Vkit? You might find that a bit of a false economy if you end up having to beef up your monitors and add subs to your FOH rig, not to mention the expense of doing so.