However, last night was another first for PianoJam on the technical front, when we played at the after-party for the TopSports Gala in the Westergas Fabriek in Amsterdam. Not only was this an opportunity for us to get our name in front of a lot of important people, but we also took the opportunity to use a completely new technology for the first time, and what a difference it makes!
(The Pearl ePro and Gen16 set-up in daylight, with the Roland TD9, the Gen16 processor and the A&H PL10 in-ear mixer controller)
Background
One of the major challenges in using drum kits in live entertainment is managing the mic set-up. Although drum kits make a lot of noise, as the parent of any drum student knows, it's important to place the drum mix in the same ambient as the amplified instruments, such as keyboards and voices. Unless your gig is in a very small room, this normally means mic-ing the drum kit. Normally, the bigger the set-up, the greater the number of drum mics required; with a small set-up for rock music, you can normally get away with 3 mics - kick and two overhead mics. With larger set-ups, you need to mic each drum individually, and use at least one overhead mic to capture cymbal and overall ambience. As anyone who has heard microphones feeding back, it's not a good thing! The chance of feedback increases with every open mic; putting 8 or 9 mics on the drum kit increases the chance of that feedback exponentially, and the lesser problem of mic bleed ('feedback lite' for the uninitiated).
PianoJam decided last year to solve this problem by moving towards digital drums. We had considered this for a while, but the technology underpinning digital drums has been poor in function and especially appearance. Most people think of digital drums as being black pads on a rack; several manufacturers have tried to solve this problem, with varying levels of success over the last few year, the most obvious example being the Roland TD series. Although the Roland TD20 looks better than most digital kits, the experience we had with it was not very positive for the drummers, even though it is ia high quality product with a great sound module.
Then, in late 2009, Pearl Drums announced the advent of the Pearl ePro Live. For us, this was a game-changer; for the first time, a digital drum kit looked like a 'real' drum kit. Even better, the drum head technology used by Pearl in the ePro got the thumbs-up from our drummers, who told me (a non-drummer if ever there was one!) that the feel of the heads was fairly close to those of real drums. The cymbals however were the weak point; although we used the metallic Alesis Surge cymbals, which are better than the usual 'black pads' available from most manuracturers, these are nothing more than drum triggers riveted onto an imitation metallic pan. The hi-hat was still eletronically triggered through a footswitch, and the playing feel for the drummers was very poor, compared with real brass cymbals. We actually replaced Pearl's Red Box module with a Roland TD9, for several reasons; the sound quality was better, and the TD9 allowed better cymbal control, such as choking and multi-zone hi-hat. With some calibration of sensitivity, to stop drum heads being triggered by the bass rumble from the 'front of house' sound system, we felt we had a good workable digital drum solution, that looked and sounded great, and didn't cause feedback.
Gen16 is born!
Suddenly, Zildjian came with a product announcement in 2010 that really looked promising. Zildjian are the world's premier cymbal manufacturer, with a centuries-old corporate history, great products and very high industry credibility. The new wonder product was the 'Gen16', acoustic electric cymbal system. Basically, the idea was to produce real metal cymbals that made very little noise on stage (so very little bleed into vocal mics and to 'front-of-house' and fewer bleeding ears for brass players standing in front of the drums!), but that fed a proper acoustic signal to the sound system for amplification, and all the time allowing the drummer the luxury of playing on real cymbals. It sounded too good to be true! In fairness, I think Zildjian probably have had some production problems, because it has taken well over 18 months for the product to come to a very hungry market, although I have no direct evidence of that. The hybrid technology mix is not 100% new, but uses clever engineering to produce a drilled cymbal that resonates and plays like a normal cymbal, but that produces very little ambient noise. The icing on the cake is the in-built pick-up mic system that feeds the signal into Zildjian's own mic processor module, for mix down to stereo and some preset EQ-ing and reverb.
We picked up the first set to arrive in the Netherlands on Monday, thanks to some fantastically good sales support from one of our most important partners: Dennis van Hoorn of Rock Palace logistics. Apart from being a great drummer himself, who has worked both with PianoJam and other top names in Holland, Dennis has advised me on drum technology and attendant advances for the last couple of years. One of the problems with the Alesis Surge pack is the pick-up system, which is not very robust. We had been repairing the cymbals and even replacing them with good old-fashioned black pads when necessary, for several months; the Gen16 had been slated for release for around a year, but the date was put back and put back. Dennis probably got sick of my constant badgering over delivery dates, but he kept his cool and when they finally arrived here in Holland (probably with Zwarte Piet!), he ensured that there was no delay in us getting hold of the very first set from the importers. Dennis was also responsible for us getting one of the first Pearl ePro Live sets ... he's a man that can get things for you! ;-)
Gigging with the Gen16
Firstly, the Gen16 looks GREAT! The promo pictures from Zildjian are made to look good, but the effect of the cymbals themselves onstage, with the distinctive blue lights on the pick-ups, is very positive. Secondly, Zildjian has put a lot of thought into protecting the components of the system, providing specially designed hard cases for packing, for everything but the cymbals themselves, which will fit into a standard cymbal bag.
Thirdly, and most importantly, the cymbal set sounds fantastic. Over-used word? Probably. Applicable here - absolutely. Even before you plug the cymbals into the sound system, you can hear the 'resolution' of the cymbals. The videos on YouTube don't do justice to the actual sound of the cymbals themselves. If you're worried about them sounding 'thin', then don't be. The brilliant drilled cymbal engineering trick that Zildjian uses (and here I know my stuff as a civil engineer) is to reduce the amplitude of the acoustic signal, as well as the EQ profile. The low tones that seem to disappear on the YouTube demos are very much present, but at a much lower volume. One criticism is that although the presets in the Zildjian processor do change the tonal colour of the cymbals, you really need to feed the signal seperately into the sound system, and tweak it quite a lot if you want to get a realistic cymbal / hi-hat sound. Below are two screenshots of the EQ settings that we used yesterday, to get a 'full' sound from the cymbals and hi-hat. These pictures are taken from the Allen & Heath iLive Editor software that we use for our system:
This descends a bit into geekdom, but the EQ settings show that we really had to boost (effectively doubling) the low end of the signal to get the warmth and body that I would expect from 'real' acoustic cymbals, as well as cutting some of the 'sibiliance' of the cymbals, which interfered too much with the sweet-spot of our rock & roll singers. I put in a preliminary high-pass filter, at around 100Hz, although I will adjust that later. In any case, there is no cymbal signal being passed to the sub feed in the iLive, so it probably doesn't matter. I would just have preferred more radical and creative sound manipulation in the module itself: the presets are all quite dull!
The overall sound of the cymbals and hi-hats is almost immeasurably better than the TD9 samples. There is some bleed from the front-of-house sound into the pick up mics under the Gen16s, but it's minimal, and could be controlled by a noise gate in the digital mixer if necessary. The vibrant 'sheen' of real cymbals is back in our sound! And, perhaps just as importantly, Leonard Weijs and Ad Vermeeren, our two drummers, had huge smiles on their faces after the gig last night! Leonard said that playing the Gen16 made him less tired, because the old 'dead' trigger cymbals from Alesis don't respond nicely, so you have to work much harder. I certainly noticed much, much better definition in my in-ear feed, especially in the hi-hats. The drummer really has full range back again, instead of trying to use an on-off pedal to trick the drum module into producing the sound he needs.
Aside from the great visual effect of the cymbals themselves, the 'front of house' sound was both more 'live' and more 'studio-like', without having a sound engineer constantly tweaking EQs, gain and gates. Our goal at PianoJam has been to have the best possible sound quality by working harder at the front end, for example using high-end Apple Mac systems to run large piano and bass guitar samples, and using MADI to keep the signals digital for as long as possible. The Gen16 fits in perfectly here. Although it would be stupid to discount the possibility that someone will manage to make a digital cymbal system that still allows real feel for the drummer, I think it's unlikely for the next few years.
Next Steps
Music technology evolves quickly. We have come a long way at PianoJam in just 4 short years, and we're still evolving. Our next step is to bring the quality of the non-cymbal drum sounds up to the level (and playability) of the Gen16. This involves using much larger and higher definition sample libraries (BFD, Battery, etc.,) and using the TD9 as a trigger module, without the internal sounds, to send MIDI information to the Mac Xserve, and routing digital signals back through MADI into the iLive and sound system. We have experimented with this already, and the difference in definition between the TD9 sounds, and the samples when played over a high-end system like the JBL VRX we use, is quite astonishing, especially in the snare and bass drum departments. We expect to have the next system ready in the New Year. Of course, we will be tweaking the Gen16 set-up as well!
