Ask the percussionist/drummer

[percussion]

@mack

If I may…

Sound-wise electronic drums are quite excellent for practice and performing situations where not a lot of nuance is required. Pads these days have zones and velocity sensitivity so you can, for instance, on the ride cymbal pad play a ride cymbal sound and move up to the bell area and play a bell sound. the downside is that’s it - a ride sound and a bell sound. You can’t really coax any other sounds out of it like you can a real cymbal. Same with the snare drum and others. They also come in a variety of materials from rubber to fabric to regular plastic heads.

My Roland kit has a mesh head snare and rubber everything else. I have it configured like my acoustic kit. The mesh heads are more forgiving than the rubber but so far I haven’t suffered from any tendonitis type maladies which I’m fairly susceptible to at my age (45).

I bought an electronic kit because I had two little girls, couldn’t play the acoustics, and wasn’t playing enough. The electronics were a godsend. Another aspect is that the modules, besides coming with lots of different sounds, including “the tom sound I’ve always wanted”, have extras like clicks, sequencers and loops of various styles you can play to. And of course you can mix in whatever music you want to play along with so it’s like you’re right there in the studio or wherever and you can play a concert in your head. It’s a blast.

So, IMO, they’ve come a long way and have their uses especially keeping up with the physical/coordination aspects of playing but there’s still nothing like an acoustic kit to bring out everything you’re capable of.

There are pads out there that will give you a bit more of a response than bell and cymbal…they are high end but there for sure. Its kind of like keyboards, if you get the 100 dollar one then your probably left with one dynamic each time you press a key, get a higher end korg and the action is very similar to a real piano

[balbitz]

Im looking for a four mallet set for marimba. I allready have Van sice m115’s but i want something for the lower octaves of a five octave marimba. The piece im playing is Bach’s cello suite movement one (played on marimba). So anyway, what mallets do you recommend? (also im not gonna go spend $300 on mallets so if they are affordable that would be nice)

[johnpost]

you like Taiko ensemble drumming?

[twickster]

Welcome to the SDMB, balbitz. This is an older thread – what we call a zombie – so I’m not sure if the person who originally started the thread is around right now or not.

I’m going to move the thread over to Cafe Society, our forum for music and the other arts, and see if someone there can help you.

Again, welcome!

twickster, MPSIMS (and Cafe Society) moderator