Old 02-06-2018, 12:49 PM   #1
Achilleas M.
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Default Cajon based drum kit

Hi everyone!

First post here (well, second if you count the "introduce yourself" one but you know what I mean) and if I'm posting on the wrong board please feel free to move this to the correct one.
Here is my situation: I recently revived my project studio and started doing some recordings. The room I am using is an attic, it's got surprisingly good acoustics in terms of reflections etc. but in terms of sound proofing it is nothing to go crazy over. I've mitigated the problem of the outside getting in by being careful regarding the mic choices and placement but the problem is that even if I did have the space for a drum kit the neighbours would be coming at me with pitchforks in no time.
I was considering the possibility of getting an electronic kit and triggering samples but after consulting with some friends of mine that do play drums (I don't, I do play some percussion but that's about it) it seems that one would lose way to much in terms of playability and feeling.
My next thought was a cocktail kit but that is out of my price range at the moment (about 1000 euros, which I consider way too much for an instrument I can not even play at this point).
Which brings to the mighty cajon. I already have one (I can play some basic stuff on it) and I was thinking about getting a pedal for it along with a small (so as to put out the same volume levels as the cajon) snare drum, a hi-hat and a crash/ride.
First of all, do you think that this set up would get me close to a drum kit at reasonable volumes without breaking the bank? Secondly, any suggestions regarding the actual drums, cymbals and hardware?
Sorry for the long post and thank you in advance for your help!

Cheers,
Achilleas
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Old 02-07-2018, 02:30 AM   #2
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The guy who plays drums for me most of the time (live) uses a skeleton bass drum - about 18" diameter but only about 3" deep. Tiny snare drum about 8" in diameter & a hihat.
Now he IS a great drummer but even so we can play the smallest quietest venuse with this kit but also some surprisingly large places if he chooses to lay into it a little more. And CHEAP as you want it to be. Me? I have an older but decent Roland E-kit in my studio and a ton of great drum romplers!
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Old 02-07-2018, 03:00 AM   #3
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thatīs an Arbiter Flats kit, or something alike. You can eventually get one of these for cheap, they are quite rare though.

Reasonable volume: yes, definitely. Sounds okay as well, a drummer friend of mine got one. Depending on your living situation it could still be too loud for neighbors, itīs just physically impossible to bring drums much lower in volume than this one does. The player is still the key: you canīt bring a heavy-hitter into your living room with any drumkit. He has to control the volume by himself.

Get small diameter cymbals, "thin" to "paperthin". They open up their sound very early and cannot reach high volumes. I still have my olī trusty 13" and 14" Istanbul Paperthin crash/splashes, they can even be played by hand, without sticks.
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Old 02-07-2018, 04:33 AM   #4
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Hi,

Thanks for the great replies!

Quote:
Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
The guy who plays drums for me most of the time (live) uses a skeleton bass drum - about 18" diameter but only about 3" deep. Tiny snare drum about 8" in diameter & a hihat.
Now he IS a great drummer but even so we can play the smallest quietest venuse with this kit but also some surprisingly large places if he chooses to lay into it a little more. And CHEAP as you want it to be. Me? I have an older but decent Roland E-kit in my studio and a ton of great drum romplers!
That's the thing with drummers, most of them are pretty average (like most instrumentalists, really) so when you come across someone who can play you are left staring like an idiot!
Thought about the E-kit solution but it won't work for most drummers passing through plus the rubber surfaced ones make a very annoying sound!
I'm going to have to look around for something like what you are describing!

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Originally Posted by MrBongo View Post
Reasonable volume: yes, definitely. Sounds okay as well, a drummer friend of mine got one. Depending on your living situation it could still be too loud for neighbors, itīs just physically impossible to bring drums much lower in volume than this one does. The player is still the key: you canīt bring a heavy-hitter into your living room with any drumkit. He has to control the volume by himself.

Get small diameter cymbals, "thin" to "paperthin". They open up their sound very early and cannot reach high volumes. I still have my olī trusty 13" and 14" Istanbul Paperthin crash/splashes, they can even be played by hand, without sticks.
I have a couple of guys who like to bang on their drums as hard as they can (I was actually in a band with one of them a few years back, his drumming and my 60 Watt half-stack are the reason my right ear can't hear much above a certain frequency), then there is that girl who, being smaller framed, tends to be a bit softer, but the softest and, dare I say, the most skilled of the lot is a guy who does mostly jazz, I've seen him playing a large kit (the bass drum was either a 26" or a 28") and we were having a conversation at the same time.
I live in a detached house, the main issue is not the distance, it is the relative quiet of the general area (living in a village has both advantages and shortcomings!).
I love the idea of thin cymbals and I suspect they might, also, record easier than larger ones.


The only problem would be finding those shallower shells. I'm also eyeing TAMA's Cocktail Jam Kit which might fit the bill, at least going by the dimensions of the shells but it is a bit pricey unless I can find it used which I don't consider very likely, at least locally.
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Old 02-07-2018, 10:22 AM   #5
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That's exactly the kind of drum kit I have...

My goal was to put together a super quiet kit, not because I didn't want to bother neighbors but because I want to be able to accompany quiet singer-songwriters without them needing to use any amplification. A regular drum kit, even in the hands of the most sensitive and quiet player who swears to god that they will play quietly, is still 3X too loud for that, IMO. :-)

I built my own cajon and it's a little bigger than the small ones you see in traditional use, and, I dare say, sounds a lot better than the crappy ones they sell at guitar center, etc (not sure where you are, but in the US most music-store cajons are pretty awful). I disable the snares in the cajon when I'm using it as a kick. The larger size seems like a more true "kick" sound than the thin little thump that a regular-sized cajon has.

There are cajon kick pedals you can buy, but they are kind of expensive. Instead, I found a cheap/used cable-driven extension pedal that drummers use for a second kick drum, and I bolted a metal plate on to the bottom of the cajon to mount that kick pedal. Works great.

I play with either nylon brushes or extremely thin toothpick-like sticks (literally like 1/8" dowels -- very light/thin). I also have some thin plastic tubes with rubber bumpers on the end, and a set of thin dowels with light wooden drawer knobs glued on the end.

None of this is using the high hat / snare / cymbals the way they were built to be used, of course, and it sounds a bit weird by normal drum kit standards, but after a while of experimenting and learning to play it I like the sound. I bought everything cheap on craigslist... probably spent like $125 for all of it, including the drum throne, stands, etc. :-) Since I'm playing everything so quietly, the quality of the cymbals hardly matters -- it's not like they're really singing in their full range anyway.

IMO, the classic drum kit is one of the most amazing instruments humans have ever created, but it comes from another planet where music volume is 100X louder than it needs to be, and is totally unworkable in an acoustic setting (unless you have a loud band and/or a very loud singer.)

Quote:
That's the thing with drummers, most of them are pretty average (like most instrumentalists, really) so when you come across someone who can play you are left staring like an idiot!
When I was first learning even the average drummers made me stare like an idiot. :-)
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Old 02-07-2018, 10:42 AM   #6
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Hi clepsydrae!

Thanks for your answer! I am based in Greece and we have one Guitar Center kind of music store chain (Nakas is the name), it is exactly the same as your music store chains meaning quantity over quality, making sure people buy stuff they don't need is a policy etc. which is why I hand built my cajon, it was a nice experience too, pretty much the first major woodworking project I ever took up!
I am beginning to think I should start by building a kit around my cajon, one piece at a time and just grab a small/quiet kit at some point (that is when my wallet allows me to, I did get REAPER by saving one Euro every day for 60 days in a piggy bank, after all ) and have the cymbals and cymbal stands pulling double duty in both kits.
At this point my studio is as much about recording as it is about rehearsing material with others so I get what you are saying about playing with singers/songwriters and as my doctor put I can either make sure I protect my hearing and so as not to damage it any further or find another job. Seeing as I happen to like my current job just fine, I'm taking the "protect those ears" route!

Cheers,
Achilleas
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Old 02-08-2018, 02:26 AM   #7
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Didnt make it clear what I actually have, which is an enhanced TD8 kit with all mesh head pads, which make the playing experience for a real drummer very close indeed to the real thing. Including being able to tune the head tension and having multiple triggers for rim and skin. My snare also has positional sensing. And none of it cost a fortune. My whole kit with a bunch of cymbals, proper hihat pad instead of a rubber tom pad & all mesh pads wound up costing me about Ģ500 including a gibraltar rack and a decent kick pedal. You would need a fraction of that for your purposes.

But I have to say if it were me I would be looking at expanding on the Cajon idea. Several local drummers use a cajon with a pedal instead of a kick drum and it works pretty well even in a live full band setting.
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Old 02-08-2018, 07:08 AM   #8
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Old 02-08-2018, 10:29 AM   #9
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I find it very strange that a drummer would complain about drum triggers feeling wrong, but then just be like cool with this weird idea. Like, this won't sound or feel anything like a "real kit" either, but just because it's acoustic, it's cool? That's like a keyboardist who would rather play a toy piano rather than a good MIDI controller just because he can't have a real grand piano. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong in your assessment that these dinguses actually do think that way, and I suppose if you actually want to get work, you have to cater to their stupidity.

But you're going to record this? Like with microphones in your attic room? You could probably get something decent and interesting out of it, but I feel like it can only work in a limited range of styles.

With a decent set of triggers you can have the sound of actual real drums recorded by people who know what they're doing with nice expensive equipment in a good or even great sounding room. But, you know, ego or whatever....
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Old 02-08-2018, 02:36 PM   #10
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Hi everyone!

ivansc, I think I should find some nice used stuff with a bit of patience

bobobo, pretty impressive although not close enough to a real kit.

ashcat_lt, I know, unfortunately... Number one in my book of stupid things I've heard in the studio as an engineer is the guy who insisted on recording his lute through the piezo pickup and that it would sound better... The look on my face was priceless but he was paying by the hour so...
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Old 02-09-2018, 02:37 AM   #11
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There are whole generations who got used to that klanky trebly piezo sound instead of a well-mic`ed acoustic guitar. So many real isntruments nowadays are so mangled in the recording process that they accustom peoples ideas to that being the real sound of the instrument.
Fair enough, but in the process we seem to have lost sight of what an actual double bass sounds like played pizz in a room, guitars without mountains of effects, etc.
It would be worth looking at the Alesis Trigger I/O as your MIDI source for an electronic kit - I started out ewith one because they were so cheap. A bit fiddly to set up but they do the job and are/were only Ģ99 UK new. That and a couple of 8" trigger pads I scrounged off the manufacturers of arbiter flats got me started for under Ģ150 UK. All new, too.
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Old 02-09-2018, 05:26 AM   #12
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Hi ivansc!

Quote:
Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
There are whole generations who got used to that klanky trebly piezo sound instead of a well-mic`ed acoustic guitar. So many real isntruments nowadays are so mangled in the recording process that they accustom peoples ideas to that being the real sound of the instrument.
Yes indeed and great records have been made that way but the project that guy was doing was purely acoustic, two instruments and a voice. Trebly quack and a voice with no "glue" between them. It even sounded bad on an iphone speaker which has no bass response whatsoever on its own, let alone with that mix.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
It would be worth looking at the Alesis Trigger I/O as your MIDI source for an electronic kit - I started out ewith one because they were so cheap. A bit fiddly to set up but they do the job and are/were only Ģ99 UK new. That and a couple of 8" trigger pads I scrounged off the manufacturers of arbiter flats got me started for under Ģ150 UK. All new, too.
Looks interesting and very versatile so I would be able to use it with multiple kits plus it is an Alesis product and I am a bit of a fanboy of them.

Cheers,
Achilleas
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Old 02-09-2018, 07:03 AM   #13
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I havent checked to see if you can still buy the trigger I/O bit if not there are always the drum brain modules from the cheaper older e-kits that show up for good prices AND have some sounds built in if you are desparate for a quick dirty drum noise!
Even the old Roland TD3 modules are not at all bad and go for very little used in UK.
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Old 02-09-2018, 07:32 AM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
I havent checked to see if you can still buy the trigger I/O bit if not there are always the drum brain modules from the cheaper older e-kits that show up for good prices AND have some sounds built in if you are desparate for a quick dirty drum noise!
Even the old Roland TD3 modules are not at all bad and go for very little used in UK.
Ebay has always treated people on a budget kindly.
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Old 02-09-2018, 10:05 AM   #15
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I stopped using my hardware trigger brain (Alesis D4) a couple years ago because my interface has plenty of inputs. I just plug the triggers themselves in like any other audio source and use the JS drum trigger plugs to convert to MIDI.
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Old 02-09-2018, 12:46 PM   #16
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A module IS more flexible though, isnt it?
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Old 02-09-2018, 01:41 PM   #17
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How so? With the trigger audio in Reaper, you can do whatever you want to it before and after it it's converted to MIDI.
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Old 02-09-2018, 05:02 PM   #18
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Apart from anything involving actually using the triggers away from your computer. Which I and I suspect most other e-drummers would like to have as an option. I have even plugged bits of my e-kit into the module and fed the midi output to a regular GM/GS synth on occasion.
Could get very complicated trying to do that with just triggers and "real" drums....or table tops etc.
Interesting.
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Old 02-09-2018, 05:49 PM   #19
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Sure. In my case, my whole band runs through the computer for amp sims and Superior Drummer is already there anyway, so...
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Old 02-10-2018, 10:13 AM   #20
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Wow! Is that live or just in studio? Doing live that way would be pretty brave...
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Old 02-10-2018, 03:11 PM   #21
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Takes some guts to use a computer live! I'd be so nervous it would show and generally speaking I'm never nervous before shows.
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Old 02-11-2018, 11:46 AM   #22
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I do it all the time. A "hardware" drum brain is a computer, too.
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Old 02-11-2018, 12:45 PM   #23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ashcat_lt View Post
I do it all the time. A "hardware" drum brain is a computer, too.
You are right. I guess it's a psychological thing, one Blue Screen Of Death too many!
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Old 02-12-2018, 02:00 AM   #24
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I am with you on the paraoia - guess I have had too many hiccups with computer systems at crucial moments to ever bring mytself to trust one in a live situation. You younger guys have more faith than I do!
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