The Weaker Hand

Allan: Thanks for the kind comments! I'll lay into a little heavy, heels-raised double bass mayhem for you on the next podcast. I was just showing a drum student of mine a heavy double bass drum part, playing along with Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" as a joke. : ) God bless!

Hey Stan: Thanks for checking... Things are going well lately. I plan on doing another podcast in the not-so-distant future. Thanks again! -Darren

Thanks for the question, Fred. It's reverb and compression applied through Cakewalk Pro Audio FX Pack 1. I run the whole kit through a Behringer mixer into a E-MU 0404 PCI card (2 channels only). So the whole kit gets the exact same effects applied to it as one instrument. I'm going to be experimenting with micing the kit with just two or three mics soon (a la the Beatles style)... one overhead and one on a the kick.

Jason: Thanks heaps for your question. You're in luck if you want my opinion on electronic verses acoustic drums, because I've played two electronic kits within the last week. Unfortunately, I wasn't really paying attention to what the first kit was. I filled in for an emergency missing drummer situation at a church I had never been to before. Regardless, the second kit I played was better and was at the Guitar Center here in Sioux Falls. It was a Roland TD-6SW.

I've actually been thinking about buying an electric kit just so I could play more often. And a friend of mine has the slightly less expensive TD-3SW. Both seem to be really nice kits that tons of people are happy with according to reviews on www.musiciansfriend.com and my friend is very happy with his, too. And I might go the electric route one of the these days. After playing them both and thinking about it, I thought to myself that if I'm going to spend $1,000-1,500 on drums, I'd probably just like to buy another acoustic shell pack even if I had to play it less. My main concern is that even though these electronic drums are very nice and have some pretty nice sounds, they just still don't compare when it comes to having the subtleties and character that real drums have. If you're never able to play acoustic drums, then I would definitely recommend either of the kits I mentioned. They would be nice, too, if you had to haul drums around a lot for practices. What you will miss out on is the virtually unlimited number of sounds you can create based on technique, stick size/shape, stick placement, head choice, head tuning, muffling, etc. Some of the more expensive Vdrums replicate these choices pretty well, but you're still dealing with a more finite set of variables than with acoustic drums. I hope that helps. - Darren