Drumming: The Ate Of The Start

or The Electronic Frontier version 5.5

Consider, if you will, the electric guitar. Developed in the early 1930's so that the guitar could be a viable instrument in a big band. It simply wasn't loud enough to be heard, with all the other instruments blaring, bleating and banging. Even with a microphone nearby, there was no way to get that full-fledged guitar sound one heard from 5 feet away.

So, after about 30 years and several design changes and modifications and genres of music and innovations in both playing style and electronics, we hit 1962 and the Ventures are using a fuzzbox on their guitar for their "200 Pound Bee" single. From then on, innovations and playing styles (Hendrix, Zepplin, Ozzie etc) skyrocketed until it just seems plain dumb (or inversely innovative) to suggest someone play a Speed Metal Shred Guitar Solo on their Acoustic guitar. Oh, it can be done. But it has limited appeal, in the end.

Consider keyboard instruments. Piano. Organ. Flashback 30 years ago when synthesizers made huge inroads into music. True, the synth was first 'discovered' in 1876, but it certainly wasn't as portable as an Arp Pro Soloist or the MiniMoog. And of course, think about now, where we have computers pretending to be musical instruments in the form of microprocessor-based keyboard instruments digitally reproducing the analog waveforms, or playing back sampled sound in a surreal Mellotron Goes Digital way. It's mind boggling.

So why are drummers, by and large, being so silly? Dead animal hides stretched over wooden frames seems a pretty archaic and primitive way to keep a beat, in light of the aforementioned examples.

The state of the art in electronic drumming is here. And no one seems to care, much. Oh, I see some innovation here and there, but for the most part all I hear is complaints. I don't want to start a flame war, so I'll say here and now that acoustic drums are wonderful and have their traditional place and should still be used just like pianos and Mariachi guitars should still be used.

But lets see some innovation, people!

Here's what I know to be true.

You can drum a heckuva lot faster on an electronic kit. That's not to say you could match that speed on an acoustic set. As a matter of fact, you probably can't. So before you brag about how fast you are, make sure you specify! Yeah, I can almost match Buddy Rich's speed - on my electronic kit. I would have to practice my butt off to do it on the acoustic set Buddy used. And then I'd only be somewhat close. Hydra-stic Drastic Drum Solo 2 of 3

You can be a rock drummer on one song, followed by an orchestral percussion section on song two and do Afro-Cuban-Dub on the third. You can choose from a whole palette of sounds, so your snare can sound like a cheap tin drum, a concert snare, a piccolo snare or a Swiss Army drum.

Since you can make your snare sound like any snare, why not follow this guy's lead and change the sounds of everything: Electronic Drum Solo #2 - Christopher Kobylarz

Or, to a lesser extent, this guy: Alesis.com Show Your Rig Video Competition

I know there are more famous people out there doing this. But even they aren't all that mainstream.

Let's take it to the next level, folks!