Hybrid Drums: The Best of Both Worlds

Interview: ‘Hybrid drums can make you more of a musician’

If you want to pack out your drumming with more creativity, then building a hybrid kit is probably the next step. By adding all of those drum pads and modules, you can transform yourself into a true instrumentalist and not only pull every flavour of beat out of your setup, but virtually any sound. For Belgian drummer Davy Deckmijn, the hybrid method opened up a whole new universe: “The value for drummers really is immeasurable.”

The Potential

Say you’re drumming for a seventies and eighties covers band and want to be able to recreate the original drum sounds from the original recordings and get the sound as perfect as possible. How’s it done? Or maybe your band has just released your best album yet and you want to be able to recreate that big sound and all those studio tricks on tour. Is that even possible? Maybe your three-piece wants to broaden the scope and get more creative. What’s the best way to put it all together on stage? The answer to all of these questions is a hybrid drum kit – it can give drummers an entirely fresh and different palette of sounds, beats and new options.

A hybrid drum kit is nothing more than an acoustic kit that’s been expanded with a few electronic gadgets, or the drumheads have been swapped out for mesh-heads that serve as electronic triggers. Roland and DDrum produce a lot of kits based on the first version, while companies like Pearl have dedicated themselves to developing electronic TruTrac drumheads that are compatible with acoustic drums, so you get the electronic expansion and have the same playing experience and response as normal drumheads at the same time. Building a hybrid kit is fairly simple and the mountain of sounds you gain in return is well worth the time, money and effort.

Belgian drummer Davy Deckmijn from the outfit Zornik, made exactly this discovery about hybrid drumming, and was even asked to test out all of Roland’s hybrid drumming equipment before giving hybrid drum workshops in Belgium and the Netherlands. “You really are getting the best of both worlds,” Davy insists. “ A lot of drummers might think that hybrid drumming is way out of their purview, but it allows you to do so much more with your creativity. The hybrid kit I play is built out of an acoustic Ludwig kit with electronic bits from Roland, like acoustic drum triggers, pads, sample pads and a sound module. The set up allows me to play acoustically and to use all of the options that come with electronic instruments at the same time. You just clip the drum triggers onto your acoustic drums; hook those up to a sound module; connect your pads, cymbal pads and pedals to the same sound module and you’re sorted.”

Beats & Acoustic Drums

It’s no accident that Roland asked Davy to lead their workshops. For a long time already, Davy was interested in the potential of electronic instruments and had already used various bits of kit in the years before. “I saw the Belgian electro-band Soulwax play a show where they combined electronic beats and live acoustic drums. It was epic. You would hear these complex electronic beats, and then the acoustic drums would take over again to create this really powerful effect. When I joined the band Zornik, I got my first experience of playing with loops which can be a really interesting addition to the sound of a band that’s made up of just three people. We used an eight-output Fostex Hard Disk Recorder so our sound engineers could balance, EQ and mix the drum loops, strings or other noises separately. The setup also gave us an extra output for sending the click track to the band and, using a control panel, I could trigger and start the backing tracks. The system was far from perfect and took a lot of time to set up. Also, if any of us came in too late, there was no turning back. So there was no room for any mistakes and you didn’t have any freedom to really respond to the audience, since the structure was so fixed. This meant you had less creative space on stage and over time, playing every song along to a click track stopped being fun simply because it removed any flexibility.”

Freedom to Play

The next step was to add the Roland SPD-SX sample pads. “I had to step in for Micheal Schack and play a show for Kate Ryan one time. Micheal had cut everything up into intro loops, bridges, little in-between details, outros and so on. This was so that he could, for example, let the intro loop for as long as was needed and keep timing without needing a click. It was a bit of a revelation and I immediately started chopping everything up as well to start giving myself more playing freedom. Late last year, I was asked to play an arena show with the comedian Els de Schepper in Antwerp and the opener was this pop/electro number that had been fully produced in the studio. My acoustic kit really would not be able to bring the sound, feel and overall vibe of the song so it was suggested that the cast sing live over a backing track. However, since it was an arena, that was likely to fall a bit flat compared to the power of a full live band. So, as a compromise, I connected some external triggers up to my SPD-SX and also added a KD-7 kick trigger and PD 8 snare pad to the setup. It was actually a really simple way to get that electronic, studio sound on stage.”

Untapped Potential

Davy’s first hybrid kit is the same kit that he drums with today. “I have since expanded things a little bit with the new KT-10 kick pedal, which is easy to just plant next to the standard acoustic drum pedal. I still use my Roland SPD-SX for the loops but I also use it as a module for my triggers, including the BT-1 bar-trigger or kick trigger. The sound engineer is also fine with it, since the pads have four outputs. So, the main outputs and the sub outs.”

“For the Roland Hybrid Tour I used my SPD-SX and the new TM-2 sound or trigger module which can take up to four triggers – acoustic triggers, bar-triggers and kick triggers or a combo of all of them. With the TM-2 I can also layer the sound of the acoustic drums, so I can do stuff like layer a hand-clap on top of the snare sound or layer a dance kick on top of my acoustic kick sound. When I play Latin beats, for example, I can easily layer a cow bell onto the bass drum and a tambourine onto the snare. You can do all of it using the factory samples, but with an SD card, you can also add on another 32 gig of your own sounds. The module also has this feature called ‘Sound Enhancement,’ which you can use to make your acoustic drum sound more powerful. So, if you want to, you can make your kick sound explosive or you can assign a ring tone to go off every time you hit the snare. It’s up to you. Metal drummers often stick a coin on the resonant head of their kick at the point where the beater hits. This gives the kick sound more attack when you’re using a double kick pedal. Essentially, you can do exactly the same thing with the TM-2. The potential really is enormous.”

Great Pub Sound

Another aspect of hybrid drumming that can be pretty convenient is when you come up against venues that have to operate under strict noise level rules. In these places, the loudness level is often limited to a maximum of 100 decibels, which is feasible in big venues and at festivals but is much harder to stick to in a local pub. In some countries, pub owners are obliged to hand out earplugs, spend money on loudness measuring equipment and apply for a permit. This often means that a lot of pubs just don’t book any live bands any more, simply because the drums, even when not miked up, are too loud. “If you don’t want to go fully electronic in those situations and still want acoustic sound, then you could lower the volume by taping up your drumheads. In a pub, the PA system is normally going to be pretty limited and, because the space is also probably a lot smaller than your average stage, it makes no sense to mike up your entire kit – if any of it. By using a TM 2 sound module and clipping an acoustic trigger on your kick, your snare and toms, you can get a good sound out of the module and send a stereo output to the mixing desk. This will mean that there are plenty of mixer channels left over for the vocals and maybe the keyboard. With a sound module, triggers and pads, it’s also really easy to just turn the volume up or down. It basically gives you the best of both worlds.”

More of a Musician

“I’m definitely an acoustic drummer at heart and I love my acoustic kit, but the fact is that, these days, I need more sounds than my acoustic kit can give me on its own. With my current setup, I can play exactly the sounds and beats that I need to and still get the same acoustic sound and feel. It’s really the best. If you make eighties throwback music and really need that classic early drum machine sound on stage, you can easily set up the TM-2 and gain exactly those sounds, live on stage. Going hybrid also means that you learn more and more about sound engineering, and become more and more central to the band. Because hybrid drumming involves more than adding just one thing, a drummer can basically replace the laptop and keyboards with loops, beats and samples. The concept is even bigger than just samples and loops, since it gives drummers way more flexibility and adaptability. You could say that, with a hybrid kit, a drummer can become more of a musician because it can really push your technique and challenge your creativity.”

A Basic Hybrid Drum Kit

You can easily pick up a hybrid Roland drum kit for around £300 to £400 and the TM-2 sound module will only set you back around £200, while you get an acoustic drum trigger for around £60 to £80. All added up, it is a lot to pay out in one go, but what you get in return is a whole world of new sounds and options. According to Davy, Roland is in the lead when it comes to reliable and forward-thinking hybrid drum technology, but if £400 is too much, then you can always look at DDrum’s gear. DDrum produces a range of different triggers, modules and pads for a fraction of the price of Roland gear.

Pearl TruTrac Drumheads

With the E-pro Live drum kit, Pearl has taken a different approach to hybrid drums. This electronic kit has exactly the same makeup, size and look as a normal acoustic kit, but the secret lies in the addition of TruTrac drumheads. Put simply, these are electronic drumheads with true acoustic playability so anyone who wants to be able to easily switch between full acoustic drumming and hybrid drumming can simply swap their drumheads for a set of TruTracs and back again when needed. In fact, you don’t even need to do that, since you can easily download natural acoustic drum sounds for the TruTrac heads and use those. European brand manager for Pearl, Jeroen Breider tells us more: “TruTrac drumheads feature the real sound, the real look and the real feel. You can install them on your own drum kit and, so you don’t have to make any modifications, we’ve developed a special non-drill adapter, so the connection cable can simply be threaded through the air hole of each shell. It also makes swapping back to normal acoustic drumheads really easy. Things are slightly different for the kick drum. Instead, you sort of build the electronic drumhead into your current head so you can retain the feel and rebound that you get with just an acoustic head.”

Because the shell dimensions of the E-pro Live kit and TruTrac drumheads are the same as standard acoustic drumheads, it also makes it much easier for drummers to make the transition. “This has everything to do with your muscle memory,” explains Jeroen. “If you’ve been drumming for a while, your body will have ‘mapped out’ the position of your toms and cymbals over time, to the point where you could probably play your kit with your eyes closed. Any slight change in that setup will throw your muscle memory off.” Unlike standard electronic pads, TruTrac drumheads retain the same dimensions, so your ‘map’ can remain the same.

TruTrac drumheads, just like acoustic drumheads, are available in various sizes. The TruTrac bass drum head is universal and will fit any 18 inch to 24 inch kick drum. For the toms, you can get 10 inch, 12 inch, 13 inch, 14 inch and 16 inch heads, and for the snare, you can get a 14 inch head. For the cymbals, Pearl has developed special E-Classic Series triggers which have been made from brass, giving them the same look and feel as standard cymbals. There are also Pearl EPC-2 cymbal pads available, which are the more standard rubber electronic kit-style cymbals we’re used to. While you are maybe sacrificing the real acoustic sound of your kit that you can get when using a Roland or DDrum system, the Pearl Red Box sound module that can be paired with the TruTrac drumhead system does come with truly realistic drum sounds. “The sounds were all developed in collaboration with Toontrack. A set of standard sounds come included with the Red Box, but you can overwrite them with one really good sounding acoustic kit. These are real samples and you’re not just getting one sample per drum, but more than forty samples for one snare or one tom. And the natural details are all there. So if you play the toms, you can also hear the snare vibrating – just like it would in reality. This means that, whether you’re playing an E-pro Live drum kit or your own kit with a set of TruTrac drumheads, you can still get a really natural drum sound and still look like you’re playing a normal acoustic kit on stage. Even if the stage sound is so loud that you can’t hear your kick drum anymore, you can add the Throne Thumber. This little widget can be secured to your drum throne and, via a speaker, makes sure that you can feel every kick strike as you play.”

The Direct Source Cymbal Pickup

Zildjian had already brought out their Gen 16 electronic cymbal series, which boast a real acoustic sound and feel, but now, drummers can also convert their normal cymbals into electronic cymbals using the ZildjianDirect Source Pickup. This is a professional-grade audio sensor and preamp designed specifically for cymbals and it can be used with both acoustic cymbals and Gen16 cymbals. The DS pickup is a two-part system made up of a sensor and LED module and a preamp section. It can be used in combination with personal monitors and live monitors and, it’s not actually a trigger in the traditional sense. What it does is register all of the subtleties and nuances of the cymbal movement and even the material you’re playing with, whether it’s sticks, beaters, brushes, rods and even violin bow.

Davy Deckmijn

Davy Deckmijn is from Lommel in Belgium and is known for drumming in the band Zornik as well as Tom Helsen and The Assets. He’s also a busy live and studio session musician, has been a drum teacher for more than 20 years and a band coach at PXL Music for more than 10 years.