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Electronic Drums – The Future for All Drummers?

Posted 18th June 2010 by Ben     Email article      Share article

I am an avid drummer. I practice nearly everyday at home and play in a church band on Sundays. I play in both the morning and evening services. I practice to an eclectic selection of music from jazz to metal!

I do not own a real drum-kit. When I say this I mean I own an electronic drum-kit! Today I’m going to talk about the many advantages of the Roland range of kits, as Roland are the market leader in this area.

I own a Roland TD20 kit, so will talk about some of my favourite features for it.

We all know what a standard drum-kit looks like; it usually has a hi-hat, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals and toms. So how is an electric drum-kit any different and what does it look like?

The picture above shows the Roland TD-20 kit. You’ll notice the kit is mounted on a chrome rack and there are few wires in site. Unlike older models, the MDS-25 stand hides the wires within the tubes. Each wire is colour co-ordinated so you know which wire leads to which drum. Each drum is connected to “the brain”. This is where the electronic signals from the drums are sent to. The brain understands how hard the drums have been hit and whereabouts the drums have been struck (for example a different sound will play if you hit the rim of a drum). The brain is also able to differentiate between fast and heavy drum strokes. The sound is sent to either an amplifier or a set of headphones. I use headphones so that my neighbors don’t complain!

The drummer can manually change the sound of each drum too. Each drum can be finely tuned to get the exact sound that the drummer wants. I like the snare to sound tighter and higher pitched but when I’m not playing seriously, I occasionally set each tom to be a different note sung by a choir! I really love the variety of sounds in my kit. I frequently mess around on the “haunted house” preset kit, where each drum makes an evil laugh or creaking door sound. The drummer can change which effects are applied to his/her chosen kit sound. Effects range from the booming “Stadium” to the echoing “Cave”.

Watch the video below to see the master of the drumkit, Thomas Lang perform on his Electronic Roland Kit. Will electronic drums ever fully replace the traditional drum kit?