Technique

[Mohawk10]

Hi...I'm new to e-drums (been an acoustic drummer for 30 years)and this site/forum. I have a TD8 and a Hart pro 6.4 kit(purchased by my church). I've been trying to get up to speed quickly since they expect me to use these next Sunday. Are there any books available that can explain the various techniques that can be used while performing such as switching sounds or kits quickly. It took me several hours just to get one kit setup properly. I can't imagine how you change sounds in between songs. HEEELLLPPPP !!!!!!!!!!

[jayafisher]

Is there a 'chain' function?

The td-10 has the ability to create a list of kits (chain) that can be cycled through. It takes a little getting used to, but it works pretty well.

[Mohawk10]

Yes there is. I'll check that out. Thanks for the tip.

[acidbran]

Hi,
Unfortunately there is a period of learning.
But if you are under the gun so to speak..just pick a set and go with it.
E drums take a lot of tweaking and many hours of play to get used to.
After the initial gig, get real familiar with the brain and just play with it, every set is different, and it will vary from pad to pad just like acoustic drums.

This forum is the best on the planet and I think you will get all the help you need from the fine players here.
Enjoy.
Jeff

[blecrone]

Keep it simple

We recently switched to a Roland kit with a TD-8 at my church. While I don't have any suggestions for books like you asked, my main suggestion is to keep it simple at first, until you get used to the module. The first couple of weeks I used ours for worship, I didn't try to do any switching around or anything - just stuck with one kit. Now that I've gotten more familiar with things, the chain function works great for switching things around between and during songs. The main thing I change right now is I have two identical kits setup, except that the CY14C crash cymbal has 2 crash sounds assigned to it with the one kit and a swell sound in the other for cymbal rolls/swells. It's easy to switch by just tapping the inc/dec buttons with the tip of my stick.

[HonoluluDrumguy]

Re: Keep it simple

Originally posted by blecrone
... my main suggestion is to keep it simple at first, until you get used to the module. ... The main thing I change right now is I have two identical kits setup, except ...crash cymbal has 2 crash sounds assigned to it with the one kit and a swell sound in the other for cymbal rolls/swells. .

Blecrone, you speaketh well... since I started using my TD-6 with Hart pads at our church three weeks ago, I have been messing around with around 7 kits, but finding that it has been a bit too much. (including more of a problem, since apparently the TD6 does not have a chain function )

I used to play an SPD-20, and I had a very predictable chain in the worship set: Goes from rock kit to pop kit to congas/litepercussion back to pop. (In a 4-5 song set)

-drumguy

[Mohawk10]

Thanks to all for the great suggestions. I know it will take time to get used to working my way around the module and the feel of the cymbals. The Hart crashes feel like I'm slapping a plastic plate. I just hope the sound of the other instruments cover up the stick noise. It's pretty pronounced when I practice with the headphones.
I'll definately keep it simple though till I get my wings(so to speak).
BTW...Did I misinterpret the manual or are POPXSTK and JAZZXSTK the only kits where you can assign all three sounds to the snare..head/rimshot/crossstick.

[BarT]

Originally posted by Mohawk10
BTW...Did I misinterpret the manual or are POPXSTK and JAZZXSTK the only kits where you can assign all three sounds to the snare..head/rimshot/crossstick.

Well, no.......and yes.

No, you read correctly (on Page 42) that those two are the only *preset* kits which use velocity switching to get both rim shot and cross stick on the snare rim.

But you can change the snare rim sound on any kit to be one of the six listed on Page 180 of the manual which have "*x-stick" in the REMARK column (i.e. V-snare 156, 159, 162, 213, 216 or 219).
It's explained in the second comment at the bottom of Page 183.

I wasn't too happy with velocity switched cross stick on my setup, so I just copy some complete kits and only change the rim sound on the copies to one of the cross stick only sounds (318-324). This makes it fairly quick and easy to switch the rim sound from rim shot to cross stick before, or perhaps even during, songs.

Once you have a few good basic kits, using the copy kit function and then changing one or two sounds is a good way to get slight variations of those basic kits.