As hardware improved those last three years, live triggering of PC-based soft samplers has become a reality for edrums players. I’ve been having fun for a while with my Roland TD8 triggering Toontrack DFHS and EZDrummer, but I have to say that the brand new BFD 2 looks very attractive with what looks like strong support for hi-hat and snare nuances. If you think that electronic drums are just toys because they don’t look like good old acoustics, you’re late by at least half a decade. Yes you can play accented triplets and ghost notes on Es.
By the way I recommend the Vdrums.com forums for people who don’t know much about VSTs and edrums but are interested in finding out.
Too bad record labels don’t understand they should be in the music business. We so don’t care about records anymore, it’s not even funny. What matters is the underlying data and meta data. Music should be published with tracks split by instrument so that you can play on top of it with whatever instrument you’re playing muted in the original song. It is a testament to their utter failure to reinvent their business that there are just a few dozen drumless tracks available from a couple dedicated drummers such as Tommy Igoe, Dave Weckl or David Garibaldi.
Unbundling albums into their individual songs is old news and does little to promote music. What would really matter is to unbundle songs in their constituent tracks. And no, the end game is not just remixes and mash-ups. Learn to play music already! This would promote music playing as it’s much easier to keep your motivation up if you can play over music you like — rudiment training by yourself gets old fast.
Music records should get a clue from the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games (can’t wait to get mine!), or karaoke for that matter, but you can bet they won’t. They’re thinking that everything that’s not a big phat gold album is a tiny niche. Well it is because you make it so, dumbasses. More people playing music means more people buying music, there are strong network effects to be unlocked there. Plus, kids, playing the guitar or drums will get you laid much more than owning the latest Ipod Touch, guaranteed!
