^ Wow!!
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Meanwhile, I have forever played on a crappy acoustic drum set: Tama shells with the bottom head hardware missing, etc.. Add to that my willful incompetence at tuning drums, all amidst a cramped and untreated room.
I made a couple of half hearted attempts at recording the set with no great results and many cables strewn about, meanwhile my neighbors are complaining about noise on jam night.
So, last weekend I replaced the acoustic set with a yamaha dtx 700K digital set. Got a floor demo and the brain is all but outdated so I got a good price, $1800. Man the thing is fun! The toms sound good for once. Symbols are not bad... I don't have a highly refined ears but I figure a great sign is that the next day my calves were sore from practicing.
The main joy is that the set is so simple and easy to record. Just plug in the left and right brain outs to my Mackie Onyx 1640 -> firewire -> Logic and I have what I think are quite decent drum tracks.
Boom bada bing! Five years of saying "I will soon record some songs with drums on 'em" to recording a song with drums on 'em in one day ( ok, I still have to do the comps because I'm a poor drummer but still, so easy, and I can make takes any time of the day and night! )
I'm sure years of tweaking the set's samples and perhaps even with figuring out the midi recording with high quality samples from the computer won't sound as good as a great drum set in a great room but those start at $50 an hour. Once I have guitars and vocals on top, I am hopeful it's going to work quite well for cutting some master worthy tracks.
Here is a video of the setup before and after the swap where I discover the brain has more than just a selection of simple samples to be triggered
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBd6YHW1OPo
I am very pleased, my main worry is live jamming won't be so good now because of the loss of dynamics and touch and guests having to get used to the pads...Plus my current PA might have too much to handle what with a couple of guitars and vocals going over it as well though my sub should help.
Am feeling pretty good though about a headphone setup for a band practice next week!
I am wondering if any releases I've heard have used these things. Maybe some room ambiance could be 'drummed up' by re-amping a guitar in front of the old snare..