Holy shit this is the most random "small world" coincidence. I've been watching videos on your channel for a week or so now as I've been wanting to get an e-drum set and working out how to incorporate an SPD-SX Pro. I had no idea you were in Sonic Boom Six. I saw your band in some tiny venue in Manchester called Satan's Hollow in about 2005. Subsequently forgot all about it all until this video. Mental. Your channel is great, really helpful and your band were great (I can only imagine have gotten better and better in the last 18 years!!)
Another brilliant video full of real world applications for the gigging drummer using electronics, Luke! QUESTION: I'm assuming whatever electronic module to be used solely for 'kit sounds' is another pair of outputs for FOH? Are you monitoring those in your ears with that single XLR FOH feeds you? Thanks in advance for your response. Cheers from the USA!
Hi Luke, Stefan from Germany here. Thanks a lot for your insightful and comprehensive videos, I learned a lot by watching them. Especially your use of mute groups and a silent audio file are great. I like your monitoring setup. FWIW here‘s my setup. Do you use your SPD-SX as a midi controller at the same time, e.g. for switching e-drum kits or stuff like that?
Hey Stefan. Thank you, I'm glad that the videos have been useful! I have used my SPD-SX as a controller with eDrums in a different band. I ran a full electronic kit (TD-50 module) and used the SPD-SX MIDI Out to TD-50 MIDI In for program changes and a few pads over MIDI. I had a kit on the SX for every song's backing tracks with a corresponding kit on the TD-50, and sometimes I would use some of its pads to trigger percussion or electronic sounds so that I didn't need to set up extra pads for a couple of additional sounds. I was going to include how I used the SX with that band in this video but it became a bit too long!
Great tips! - Also - it is critical the front of house mix coming back to your mixer does not include the drums or backing tracks. They will be delayed compared to the direct mix to your in ears. Happened to me at a gig once. The engineer thought he was doing the right thing. Very, very bad
@@TheeDrumWorkshop I thinks it’s just that stuff is alien to me and as you know your stuff and understand what your doing I found it hard to follow. It’s as if I need a very basic …here is how to add a click and a sampled sound to your drumming ….beginner stuff … it looks like it’s got tons of potential and can change a band but when you have never gone beyond drumming and maybe adding a kick sample pedal it’s a large jump in understanding to the novices of this area of playing.
Completely understood and useful to know! I'll have a think about doing a "backing track basics" video in the future where I can break things down in a more digestible way. It might have been a good idea to do that video first 😂 but it might be easier to come back to this and understand it more then. I'll see what I can do!
Bro, great video! too bad for the SPD-SX limitations, I have not checked out the SPDS Pro maybe it deals with some of them. Anyway, here's a nice simple workaround for the only 1 pad link per kit issue: Link any two pads using midi! Connect a short midi cable to link the unit to itself, input-output, then assign any two (or more) pads to the same channel and note. voila. Do setup the rest appropriate midi settings to make this work correctly.
Great idea! I've used MIDI tricks like that before but for some reason never thought of doing it here. However, yes, the Pro solved this issue as it has a much improved link system.
Thanks for the video! How many tracks can you run off the spd sx? I usually do 2 hour shows with most of the songs being tracks. I know it probably depends on the size of the tracks, but does it have enough storage to run a full show?
Hey! Yeah, there should be room for a 2 hour show on the SPD-SX which has 4GB of memory onboard. 4GB should work out as just over 6 hours worth of stereo audio, so even if you ran 2 linked stereo tracks per song (one click, one backing), you should still get that all on. Running them as mono tracks or as a single stereo track with click/backing panned left/right would give you the full 6 hours, give or take. The very first models of the SPD-SX only had 2GB onboard (I had one of these from 2012), which would fill up a bit too fast unless you were using mono/single stereo, but if it was made in the last 5 years or so I think you should be fine. Might also need to delete the factory sounds to take full advantage of the memory though. The SE version or new Pro version will have way more room than you need.
Luke I need some advice thanks. I have a TD 17 kit for practice and an acoustic kit with triggers for hybrid with the 17. I want to minimise the practise and hybrid set up so was thinking triggers and pads withe either the spd sx or tm 6 pro for practice and hybrid. I want ease of click and main track for practice and live. Please advise. Long time listener first time commentator. Your channel rocks cheers
Hi Paul! The SPD-SX and TM-6 Pro are quite different devices. If you want to set things up as close to a "full kit" as possible, the TM-6 Pro would probably fit your needs better. It's got a song player on board that you can link a click track to and will give you things like hi-hat controller support which the SPD-SX doesn't have. You'll also get more dynamic variation out of some of the built-in instruments with the TM-6 Pro because it has some "V-Drums" sounds in there which have a few layers whereas the SPD-SX only supports one-shot samples (so the same sample no matter the velocity of the hit). One advantage for the SPD-SX is the built-in pads, but the TM-6 Pro can support up to 12 pads total if you split them into single zone pads, so that's still a fair amount for a small kit setup. Hope that helps!
Very interesting way of doing things, and your band sounds like it's a party alright! Defo a notch up from a lot of bands on the circuit, so kudos to you (I assume it's your making) for applying these steps. My band also uses tracks. Mostly its keyboards only as we're a 4 pce band, 3 of us have decent lead vocal voices while I only have a voice thats suited for harmonising, yeah I am not putting anyone through that, but underneath 3 decent singer. it works. Other times I'll have rhythm guitars over solo sections, or guitar harmony line. Bvs sometimes are there, but we double them... depending on the song. Sometimes the tracks is just a piano and organ. Song depending. My method in many ways more complicated but less functional. I use Logic, track goes into stereo from Mac into main pa via USB, click also routed to USB to another channel but is muted to FOH, but sent to my ears, which comes down a pair of auxes into the aux in of the Mimic. Tracks are made in Logic, either by me, or stems from from Karaoke versions (to save time) If the former, once the programming and all that is done, I bounce all VST instruments into WAV files. Then I open a blank Template which already has "click" sent to USB 3, everything else is sent out to default USB 1/2. The benefit of this, is that I can mix, mute, the track on the gig if needed, even apply automaton. Rather than having to remix it and re import it if I have figured a mix a bit wrong. If a bassist can't make a gig, I'll record him and import that into a bass channel on any of these logic songs. The pain, I have to open/close each song as we go. I used to open them all in a set list backwards to forward, so I would only have to close and the next song in the set would be there. I am always being told, "use Abelton" but I am so far down into this method, that setting up and learning a new platform for 150 or so songs, would just seem like going backward to get to where I am now. Oh, I did try MainStage original, but after a 17 song set... I hit a stumbling block and went Logic route as a quick fix just before a gig, and just never moved from it. I tried varied iPad versions at the time too, but that also was clunky... Logic, like I say, was a quick fix to get me out of the shit, but I just kept with it and 5 years on, just works.
Thanks dude! This is the "originals" band - I actually joined in 2015, the band has been going since the early 2000's. They were already running tracks, I just retrofitted their old laptop method to work with my SPD-SX as I preferred it and found it more reliable. I might do a video about the full eDrum setup I used for BoomBox (the covers/party band). I actually left BoomBox though due to the channel and store taking off, didn't have time to disappear every weekend anymore. We used the Karaoke Version tracks for BoomBox too, super handy haha! Definitely sounds like you've got a robust setup. I'd considered something similar to allow us to mix all of the stems live with BoomBox but I just hate running full on laptops live - I've had bad experiences before. Being able to mute the track without losing the click etc is definitely handy though, for sure. The project loading thing per song sounds like a bit of a hassle though, I wonder if you could optimise that somehow? I know what you mean about swapping everything over to a new method though, not easy when you rely on it week in, week out.
@@TheeDrumWorkshop Yeah, if Apple produce a "live" mode for Logic, where you can have a set list, have follow on/segue-ways between songs, loop current marker until cued etc... it would be perfect, unless of course it required a migration over to a "live" mode. But, it's a little bit of a chore, but as the singer likes to call songs, pre-written set lists wouldn't work unless we adapted that mode and applied some thought as to what we're starting and playing next... but like I say, it very robust. Never had a crash/freeze issue to date. Back when an older Mac was on HDD, yeah that could be a nightmare with audio drops, but since SSD have come into play, safe as houses.
There might be something about their website's SSL certificate that your browser has decided it doesn't like? I'm not sure to be honest, might be worth sending them an email if you can!
