ddfeb2011_Layout 1 15/01/11 2:58 PM Page 16
part of the communal worship. The other problem with plexiglass is it makes the drums louder behind the glass. So, unless you have a really good monitor system, the drummer is going to have a hard time playing musically because all they can hear is their drums.” Owens sees the biggest disadvantage to be that some drummers “are not familiar with electronic drums at all and it does take a small bit of adjusting”. He is a Roland user and believes the VDrums “seem to be the easiest for most drummers to just sit down and play on comfortably”. Owens finds that most congregations “are fine with (e-drums) if the sound guys are good”. As for other musicians, “the biggest problem … is being able to hear the drums. Again, it is all about sound reinforcement. If they can’t hear them, most people won’t like them.” The drummer believes that electronic drums can play a vital role in a church that has volume issues. “As a drummer, I am in control of the dynamic curve of a song and worship set and the V-Drums are expressive enough to give me that control. There are times when acoustic drums are simply too loud.” The bottom line: “I will always lean towards acoustic drums because that is my main instrument, but there are many sonic situations where V-Drums solve a lot of problems and seem to be a better choice.” Fellow Roland musician Cash McCloy says it is hard to imagine playing worship without his TD-20 kit. “The advantages are that in my church (sanctuary) acoustic environment, we can get a wonderful drum sound while allowing maximum control over the mix commensurate with the acoustics of the room. Simply put, an acoustic kit would be, and has been, a complete disaster - a literal nightmare and unbelievably distracting and unpleasant,” he points out. McCloy was one of the early adopters of the TD-7 kit. “I recall the overwhelming positive response I received from everyone in the church when I introduced that drum kit to worship services in January 1996, especially the grateful response from the sound tech guys. In fact, not long after I started using the TD-7s, one of the older elders of the congregation came up to me after services and said, within hearing distance of the head pastor, ‘this is the first time I have actually enjoyed hearing drums in a worship service’. Very soon after that, the church bought a couple TD-7 kits for the other drummers to use.” 16
McCloy does, however, acknowledge some drawbacks with e-kits: ”First, even though most or all digital drum kits come with an impressive array of factory kits with a lot of great sounds programmed in, they are still not very realistically playable. The factory kit sounds are, at best, a good starting point. It almost always falls upon the individual playing the kit to figure out how to make the digital kit sound like a normal ‘run of the mill’ kit. Now, here is the problem: most church drummers don’t like or want digital drums, even though they know that they sound far better than their ridiculous acoustic kit could ever hope to sound. So, most drummers will not spend the hours it takes to learn how to really make a digital drum talk and sing like a fine instrument. “Also, most church drummers’ basic musical DNA is antithetical to digital drums from the ‘get go’. The drummers, by and large, prefer acoustic drums because it is what they know and what they are comfortable with. Unfortunately, their first concern is typically for their musical/worship experience and not for what is best for the congregation as a whole,” he laments. McCloy urges digital drum manufacturers to tailor their products to the worship market by creating a number of “basic, typical church kits that could be used right away out of the box”. He would also like to see simplified output options to make it easier for drummers and sound techs to map each drum piece to an individual channel on the mixing board. “It just shouldn’t be so complicated,” he says. Roland’s Fournier appears to put the onus back in the drummer’s court, noting that “in the same way that acoustic drums need maintenance and tuning, electronic drums need a certain amount of effort and time to get them to sound best in the church’s PA system, style of music and acoustics”. “Electronics do require a short learning curve, but the benefits are worth it, and the additional flexibility of endless combinations, sounds and effects make the tweaking part extra fun,” he promises. This is re-inforced by Albrecht’s comments on the Sure Microphones site: “The (e-drum) technology is as good as it’s ever been, but my concern about that is that a lot of churches jump to that solution and don’t have the right PA to reproduce the sound. They sound great in the headphones at the store, but without the right equipment, they can sound terrible in church. Technically, you’ve got to be ready to make that work.”
www.digitaldrummermag.com