What's Your Sound?: a general discussion question

[Jaay]

When choosing a kit(or Patch, or whatever you choose to call it), are there ever certain sounds that just call out to you? Do you have a general setting for all-purpose playing? I was thinking about my e-drums today, and I was wondering: what do people do for their kits of choice? Do you go for that tight, processed, semi-electric sound? do you try an emulate your acoustics? Do you ever try to "steal" a particular sound from a track you like? Do you have different settings for live playing versus studio recording? Share your thoughts. Inquiring minds want to know.

-Jaay

[GRRAVEE]

i'm all over the map on this one.....each week it seems i'm lovin on another kit.......this past saturday,my brother was layin riffs on his strat along the lines of "sweet memories" by rush.so i just started playing along but with the 1st kit in line.......the tdw-1 kit.it came out so perfectly matched to his guitar sound.i never woulda picked that kit.i actually had to burn the jam to cd just to prove to myself that the factory tdw-1 kit pulled it off.that's the beauty of these puppies isn't it?so i flip flop quite a bit.probably cause i never could with the a's.(love a's too-no flames please)

[fartnokker]

I just let my ears do the decision-making. Different sounds for different situations, but for general kit sounds, I have to go with what sounds subjectively good to me. I don't compare the sounds to any recorded sounds, except what my "ideal" is in my head. That may change from day to day, but I stick pretty close for my basic kit.

The one thing I'm totally in love with is my kick sound. Not only does it work beautifully live, but everyone raves about it on recordings... Mostly people who record acoustic kicks all the time. The snare sound & toms may change, but that kick just rocks, baby!

-Danny

[snared]

I too, am all over the place. It just depends on what I am in the mood to play and listen to. Sometimes I like the raw accoustic sound and sometimes I like the more refined studio sound. I don't like much of the electtronic sounding kits/samples.

I do try to copy sounds from songs I play along with, but that is hard to do sometimes. I had an idea to tweak a few kits to the sound of some of the bands I play along with the most, and then name the kits after the bands. That was overwhelming. So, I haven't finished that yet. I think that would be convenient when I was playing to a CD, but it is so time consuming to do it almost isn't worth it.

I do, however, have a few kits that have been tweaked almost perfectly to my liking I use them the most. Of course I am never done.

[rpg]

agree, playing jazz fusion with some rock and funk styled kits, straight-ahead with a variety of jazz styled kits.

i also have my own kit that is an almost exact replica (sound wise) of my old acoustic kit i used to play in a progressive rock band in the 70s

[hmasing]

Originally posted by Jaay:
When choosing a kit(or Patch, or whatever you choose to call it), are there ever certain sounds that just call out to you? ....
-Jaay

I typically have 3 kits, in 2 variations each. One is based on "ReadDeal", with some mods to the toms since they sound a little processed, Two is based on "Top", which I use for more funk/backbeat stuff since it has good cutting drum sounds, Three is based on "TDW-1", which has a really solid accoustic sound.

I have renamed these kits to:

General
Funk
Accoustic

I also then make "X" kits, with Cross-stick enabled, so I don't get any false triggers of the rim sound on the snare. So, my kits, in order, are:

1. General
2. General X
3. Funk
4. Funk X
5. Accoustic
6. Accoustic X
7. Caliente
8. Pot Drum

Everything above that is my 'scratch' area, where I work on new kits, pull auxiliary percussion sounds in, etc.

Make sense?

Hope this helps for others. The key was that the bands I play in often don't use set lists - we decide on the fly which songs to play, so I like to have the flexibility to quickly move between the kits and know exactly what I am getting. Oh, and I have normalized tha volume levels between all these kits, so that one doesn't blow out the other.

- hans