Electric Drums vs, regular drums as input to PTLE

[mfleming]

Got a question:

My son has a kind of small recording space in our old guest room. We've been thinking about making a larger room-in-a-room personal studio in the garage for a better recording space. But, it's damn expensive. I had a thought. Please tell me if it is worth considering.

I know the existing small space (13 x 14 feet) is not great for recording drums. But, what if we had a really good electric drum kit instead of a regular drum kit? Then, the size of the room would not matter. Would it sound as good? Would bands he might track be willing to use it too?

We would be inputing this into a Pro Tools DigiDesign 002R system.

[Third Eye Studios]

In my opinion, if you are going for an acoustic drum sound, no electronic set will match it. No drummer I've ever played with would ever consider substituting and electronic kit either, but they were all pretty stubborn. How high is the ceiling in the room in question? I would think you can get some decent sounds in that size room. I've heard great drum sounds from my friends tiny-slightly larger than a bedroom sized drum room.

[Dogcode]

Agreed..........every drummer I`ve ever tracked with electronic drums could`nt stand the latency, even at 64 or 128. Acoustic drums, even with 2 overheads, kik and snare, are what I`d go with.

[nightshadecrisis]

i've recorded electronic drums with fairly good success, but i always have real cymbals instead of the electronic ones...something about them makes a very large difference, IMHO.
ev

[Dogcode]

Very true..........acoustic snare too is much more covincing....IMO

[Naagzh]

Mixing electronic drums and acoustic cymbals is silly, IMO. The cymbals need space to reverberate, too. And if you did record this way, you'd have all this "tapping" noise mixed in with the cymbal hits. Not to mention that micing a drumset is an important skill to learn as an engineer. It incorporates useful concepts such as phase, the 3:1 rule, polar patterns, stereo mic configurations, ambient mic placement, compression, reverb, dynamics, gating, and on and on. It's a great learning opportunity.

Don't really know if this is an option, but your son could take his equipment to the drummer's house, or to a practice space, and record drums there. Try to find a room with vaulted ceilings if possible. Just beware of harsh, flutter-ey echo.

The rest of the band can do overdubs in the guestroom.

It's not ideal, but nothing beats real drums in a real big room, if either the band or your son is concerned about realistic sound.

[will the moor]

There are some amazing things going on recently with electronic drums but they're still not the real thing. plus, the cost of something approaching the real thing might be close to the cost of fixing the garage. What about not spending much in the garage and instead investing in some long cables? Drums could be tracked there and the guest room could still be put to good use - as control room for the garage and overdub room for everything else.

will

[Joz]

I agree, real cymbals mixed with an electronic kit can work really great sometimes.

I've recorded this drums in a 16 x 14 room. http://www.overnightlows.com/music/leech.mp3 and this one too http://www.overnightlows.com/music/thesearch.mp3

The Key is knowing how to record drums in small rooms, where to place the overheads etc. (in my case, I dont use overheads, but instead room mics)
But thats a whole different topic.

Joz

[will the moor]

hey joz, that's sounds great.

[mfleming]

In my opinion, if you are going for an acoustic drum sound, no electronic set will match it. No drummer I've ever played with would ever consider substituting and electronic kit either, but they were all pretty stubborn. How high is the ceiling in the room in question? I would think you can get some decent sounds in that size room. I've heard great drum sounds from my friends tiny-slightly larger than a bedroom sized drum room.

9 foot ceiling, about a 13' x 14' room (didn't measure yet).