Real versus Sampled drums: the neglected flamewar.

[gaf_thit]

I would like to play along with this drummer, and the live show would be saved too, I'm not stage person, I could hide in a corner:

[Nielzie]

Drummers are mean.

And lazy as f**k.

[sjm]

Sorry to be on topic.

I come at this from the POV of someone who has played the drums in various practice rooms, but is not a drummer.

Sampled Drums will never be able to replace a Real Drum performance, and people who think that they can are just plain wrong.

I'd say drums are definitely something that can be replaced by samples. The music listening public is so used to hearing fake drums anyway; they don't care. A lot of what a drummer does can be replicated with a good sample library; most of the time, the drummer is just hitting a drum with something. That can easily be replicated with a sample.

It gets a bit more iffy with things like hihats and cymbals, which ring out for a lot longer. Snare too, to a certain extent, depending on the snare setting. If the drum/cymbal is still ringing, and you hit it again, it behaves differently than if it is not vibrating. So you lose a bit of that, and you lose the ability to play all the little hi-hat games with the pedal. You can get close though with a good sample library and judicious programming. Close enough, that most of the time it doesn't matter.

I think e-drums are the best of both worlds in a way. I wish I had a kit myself. Instead of spending 15 hours programming the drums, I could just bang the kit for 15 minutes and be done with it. Would be much more efficient that way, and much preferable, because even though I'm not a drummer, I'm still lazy as suck.

I played in a band that used an e-drum kit for years. Loads of advantages, very few negatives. Can be played with headphones. Easy to transport for a gig. Much quicker to set up and pack away than a real drum kit. No need to mic anything, plug straight into the mixer and go. The top end Roland kits are really playable instruments. The stock kits sound a million times better than the beat-up acoustic kits I've played on/borrowed. None of the many drummers had any issues with it either. Maybe takes an hour to get used to, then it's just like playing a "real" kit.


There are a few styles where I think a real kit and the nuances it offers can make a difference; I never felt that the brush kits were quite right, for example. Could just be me though. Absolutely brilliant for rock/pop stuff.

[pljones]

You'll never get a piezo kit to have the right feel for brushes. (This is drifting off topic .) FSRs can do it, sort of, but you still need a lot more triggers and a lot more samples than most e-kits or sample sets generally have to get good feel. And you can do so many, many things with brushes on cymbals that I've never seen attempted by sampled kits... (And these aren't rare techniques - within the brush genre.)

If you're doing a live performance and you want a brush kit, you do need to go with the hard work option of the real kit, I think.

Drummers in bands that have progressive music styles also tend to try to get as much out of a kit as they can -- but they'll pick sampled and do weird shit to it if that suits, just as much as doing weird shit to a real kit...

[jancivil]

It gets a bit more iffy with things like hihats and cymbals, which ring out for a lot longer. Snare too, to a certain extent, depending on the snare setting. If the drum/cymbal is still ringing, and you hit it again, it behaves differently than if it is not vibrating. So you lose a bit of that, and you lose the ability to play all the little hi-hat games with the pedal. You can get close though with a good sample library and judicious programming. Close enough, that most of the time it doesn't matter.

things are better now with BFD3 cymbal swell modeling.
works for the hat as well

[sjm]

It gets a bit more iffy with things like hihats and cymbals, which ring out for a lot longer. Snare too, to a certain extent, depending on the snare setting. If the drum/cymbal is still ringing, and you hit it again, it behaves differently than if it is not vibrating. So you lose a bit of that, and you lose the ability to play all the little hi-hat games with the pedal. You can get close though with a good sample library and judicious programming. Close enough, that most of the time it doesn't matter.

things are better now with BFD3 cymbal swell modeling.
works for the hat as well

How does that work exactly (not being a BFD3 owner)?

[digitalboytn]

Sorry to be on topic.

[funky lime]

Not that anyone cares what I think, but I'd suggest one could find a nice balance by mixing and matching real drums and sampled drums. Sampled hi-hats (and other cymbals to a lesser extent) are notoriously hard to emulate and program/play convincingly, due to the many different articulations possible. It might be worth recording real hi-hats over sampled kick/snare in a separate take, if you have the means to do so. Then you can add "human" feel to your drums without having to mic up a whole kit (or even own a whole kit, for that matter). I obviously can't take credit for this idea, as it has existed long before I ever tried it, but it's still worth bringing up in my opinion.

There seems to be this mentality of "A vs B" when the reality is that we don't have to choose just one or the other; we have both now, and both are great, even/especially when combined.

[Distorted Horizon]

Real drums become sampled after they're recorded

[funky lime]

Real drums become sampled after they're recorded

and your words become ones and zeroes as soon as you type them, so why bother

[jancivil]

It gets a bit more iffy with things like hihats and cymbals, which ring out for a lot longer. Snare too, to a certain extent, depending on the snare setting. If the drum/cymbal is still ringing, and you hit it again, it behaves differently than if it is not vibrating. So you lose a bit of that, and you lose the ability to play all the little hi-hat games with the pedal. You can get close though with a good sample library and judicious programming. Close enough, that most of the time it doesn't matter.

things are better now with BFD3 cymbal swell modeling.
works for the hat as well

How does that work exactly (not being a BFD3 owner)?

It just does. I have no idea what they did.

one assumes it models the dynamics of hitting something that's already in motion instead of every cymbal hit a hit of a cymbal in repose.

I used to do a lot of work around this issue, no more.

[Distorted Horizon]

Real drums become sampled after they're recorded

and your words become ones and zeroes as soon as you type them, so why bother

I don't really speak out loud when I'm writing.. But glad that it helps you

[jancivil]

I hear what you are saying: "But there are subtleties" - yes. but it's usually not happening. It's the same with any vi.

I would say, rather, that they happen all of the time, but that no one really cares about these subtle details. I am not even sure that I care about them, at least for my own music.

"not happening" is just a figure of speech. I'm a beatnik or something.

We're saying the same thing but at cross-purposes now, not sure why.

Because WAR!! That's why.

I don't find your super-exotic scenarios that exotic really, in fact.

No, I found the reason in your other post, in Samples. We're saying PRACTICALLY the same thing. But I was buffaloed by 'Bill Bruford China cymbal' as a particular thing which can't be sussed.

I use drum samples and never drums. You do not use drum samples. So here is a difference between knowledge and assumption.

WAR is ON!!11!1!!

[herodotus]

Drummers in bands that have progressive music styles also tend to try to get as much out of a kit as they can -- but they'll pick sampled and do weird shit to it if that suits, just as much as doing weird shit to a real kit...

This is very true. I also think that drummers in progressive jazz, rock and metal are encouraged to be weird and innovative, whereas most drummers aren't.

In fact, when I get a little tired of stupid drummer jokes, I tell people that of course the drummers in their favorite bands are stupid, because the music they are forced to play is so boring that only stupid drummers would apply for the job.

After that, they just walk away, mumbling 'what a jerk' under their breath.

[herodotus]

I hear what you are saying: "But there are subtleties" - yes. but it's usually not happening. It's the same with any vi.

I would say, rather, that they happen all of the time, but that no one really cares about these subtle details. I am not even sure that I care about them, at least for my own music.

"not happening" is just a figure of speech. I'm a beatnik or something.

We're saying the same thing but at cross-purposes now, not sure why.

Because WAR!! That's why.

I don't find your super-exotic scenarios that exotic really, in fact.

No, I found the reason in your other post, in Samples. We're saying PRACTICALLY the same thing. But I was buffaloed by 'Bill Bruford China cymbal' as a particular thing which can't be sussed.

I use drum samples and never drums. You do not use drum samples. So here is a difference between knowledge and assumption.

WAR is ON!!11!1!!

About time too.

I actually used drum samples a great deal from 2004 to 2013, because I lived in an apartment and had no choice. But since I bought a house (or rather, since I finished setting up a studio in it, which took over a year) it just doesn't make sense. Plus, I have a really beautiful kit that I have been working on for years, and which is set up exactly right for me, so playing is actually fun.

I actually find sampling to be really interesting. I just don't need it for drums anymore.