Has the day of the electronic drums come and gone?

Electronic drums—do you mean those pads that a musician can hit, and it’ll produce various sounds depending on what the synthesizer is set to? Or do you mean those drum patches, where the synth sets the beat and does all the tricky stuff?

I don’t mind the former so much. I think the latter can be useful, but only if you don’t have a drummer and even then…

I was leading the “band” the other night. We only had two of us, me and the keyboard guy. He wanted to put a drum patch on for one of the improvisations we do, and I was really leery, because a drum patch can really take over and in my particular case, it can keep me from changing things when they need to be changed.

But I let him put it on because he wanted to do that middle eastern thing that we enjoy so much. It worked out ok, but… well, I guess we were lucky.

For most music, I think you need a real live human drum player. Only a human can change to make the music work. I dislike synthesizer drums fairly intensely because once you lock into them, you are in a rut until you turn them off.

It’s probably no surprise that I am not fond of highly produced music that includes lots of artificial sounds. I much prefer live human music, preferably without any electronically aide instruments at all.

I think the reason that you can hear electonic drums on past records and not so much now is that drum machines have got much, much better and are harder to distinguish from the real thing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO7xuDExo5I&feature=related, not that they’re being used any less

I was in a (rubbish, unsuccessful) electronic band in the early 80s and we had both a drum machine and a real life drummer. He loved the drum machine as it freed him from drudgery and allowed him to improvise and experiment.

First off, let me say that nothing “beats” (haha) the sound of a good acoustic set of drums with a human behind them.

Where I come from, drummers are a rarity though. Drumming is an expensive investment and most people who begin learning an instrument drop it within months, weeks or even days. With other instruments, I’m mainly thinking guitar, the initial investment can be relatively cheap as you can pick up a cheap beginner guitar for around $100 and you’re set to begin. With drums, you have to invest in the shells, all the hardware and then on top of that, you have to buy cymbals. It’s easy to spend $300—$400 on a very basic kit. Beat machines can make everything cheaper and easier since you don’t have to spend the time really learning the skill.

A lot of it has to do with the type of music the band or musician is trying to make. The music I listen to and make span many genres. For some, electronic drums/beat machines can get the weird synthetic sound that’s needed.

With all the different genres that are around these days, I don’t see electronic drums going away. They may begin to dwindle but I think they will always be around.

Oh goodness, no.

The new-ish thing out of the UK is called “Dubstep”, which is a descendant of the UK “Garage” (totally different than the 1960s US Garage scene), US “House” and worldwide “Drum and Bass” dance genres. Lots of synth-y drums happening there. But as @meiosis said above, synthesizers are much more advanced today than in the past.

I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if the Amen Break wasn’t programmed into all the new machines!

@aprilsimnel Oh gosh… Dubstep makes my gag reflex kick in. It sounds like something a few 13 year old boys playing electronic garbage with the bass up waaaay too high out of their mom’s busted 1999 mini-van speakers.

I hate drum machines in live music never liked them….well one time at the CES, I got to meet Carmine Apice and watch him demo the Mattel drum machine they were promoting and that was kinda cool! That man can play pots and pans and make it sound good.

I use a drum machine to jam along too when practicing or writing new songs when my monster drummer 11 yr old son is unavailable or off playing X-Box.