Given the age in which we live, it’s no surprise that technology has made its way into drumming. Electronic drums have been around since the early 70’s and their quality has greatly improved over the last decade. However, still to this day, many drummers have vowed to never play electronic drums. In this first post in our series, we are going to discuss some key benefits of using electronic drums.
They've got brains too!
5 Benefits of Using Electronic Drums
1. Electronic drums are virtually silent. This is critical since many church facilities are acoustically challenged. The worst thing you’d want to have in worship is an overpowering drummer who plays incredibly hard. However, since electronic drums are silent, you can play as hard as you want with the sound techs controlling your actual output volume.
Bonus: If you have a few minutes to spare while vocalists work on parts, you can always practice with headphones. The same would be true if you want to practice at home or live in an apartment.
2. No need for drum microphones. Imagine that! You will still see patch cords all around your kit but no mics. Instead, they usually have a line-out or midi connections. This is great news if you have a small church with a small music budget. No drum shield, and no mics. Just one 1/4-inch jack. This is also ideal if you have a home studio and not a whole lot of cash to drop on mics and stands.
3. Electronic drums are very portable. Youth retreats. Outdoor services. Christmas Musicals. As a church drummer, the truth is, there are a myriad of events that you need to play at. Electronic drums bring introduce ease to transporting, setting up, and tearing down your kit. You can literally “pick up and go”.
Bonus: What’s more, if you are crammed in a tight spot you are not worried since your electronic kit is more compact than your standard acoustic kit.
4. You can experiment with a plethora of sounds. Hip hop. Power Rock. Jazz Brushes. Latin. The beauty of electronic drums is the ability to access a large sound bank of drum kits and percussion instruments – all without spending more money (i think your church treasurer will like that).
5. They come with a built-in metronome. This is another cool feature since you are not obliged to go out and purchase a one – although I would recommend that you eventually buy your own metronome at some point.
These are just some of the benefits of using electronic drums. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think that many churches purchase electronic drums for budget reasons? Are you a fan? Either way, let us know what you think. this should be a fun series. 😉
My experience is that electronics are the only way to have drums in churches that are fairly traditional in nature. It’s rather ironic how older people are deaf but don’t want the music to be loud.
Electronic drums also cuts down on the inevitable noise caused by some adventurous teen stomping to the stage after worship service – or during Christmas play practice – and deciding to torture everyone with his personal version of wipeout.
I owned a set of electronics and had difficulty getting the dynamics and voices that I wanted out of them, especially from cymbal pads. Getting different tonality out of cymbals is crucial in worship drumming IMO. The basic bass, hat, snare worked OK except for playing the open hat sound. There was a small time lag from me lifting my foot and the voices were either open, closed, or the sound of closing when you press the pedal. Perhaps higher priced brands (out of my budget) range do not have the same problem, but these drove me crazy. I will stick with my acoustics. 😉
Electronic drums at our church have been allowed to become central to the worship teams setup.. I say allowed because at first, many of the drummers did not appreciate the versatility of the Ekit till a few months and many good compliments from the congregation..
I have played Ekits for many years and see so many advantages of the Ekit.. The new ROland TD30 module is able to play really effective cymbal washes and able to reproduce many a players nuances but the sound is controlled and sits in the mix.
http://www.fulwoodfmc.net/
I love our Yamaha DTX kit at our church. We are a small (800 members) church and are pretty traditional. We do a mixed bag of hymns and Praise and Worship songs. We have tried acoustic drums and for me personally I really prefer acoustic but I also understand that acoustic drums provide a lot of “noise” on the stage and can be difficult for sound techs to manage. I love playing acoustics because I feel like it “makes” me be a better player because I have to control my dynamics. I’m not really a technical drummer but I do quite a bit of different sticking on the hi hat and electronic drums just don’t offer the response or attack that I like from a crisp set of A. Zildjian New Beat hi hats.