We had the rubber pad and then the mesh head and now Yamaha have released a new playing surface on the DTX-PAD with Textured Cellular Silicone (T.C.S.) technology, which offers musicians an expressive playing experience. With no sound on,  these heads are actualy more quiet  than conventional rubber electronic drums.  The T.C.S. head uses a  process that puts small air bubbles into foamed silicone to provide playability and feel unlike any other pad. Top drummers were consulted as they wanted the feel of the drums to be more like an acoustic kit so these heads were designed to bring out every nuance and detail so that every acoustic drummer will feel right at home with these drums. The toms have a softer feel than the snare and all of them can be quickly and easily tuned by the singular knob on the drum. They are three zone drums and even have a form of suspension so they "give" a bit as you lay into them. The heads have also been coated to feel like a normal head and to be more durable.

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Here is something I would like to see and hear - the new Simmons Digital Multi Pad Electronic Drum Set (The SDMP1). It is an entire Simmons kit and drum machine in one package. Simmons state that this is the perfect addition for practice, performance or recording beats and is able to be integrated with any drum or percussion set up, and can be mounted to a stand or an accessory clamp. It will connect to a PC with a USB port, while the included auxiliary input allows you to play along with a CD or MP3 player. The price seems very reasonable and I wonder how this compares on quality, sound and feel  with Roland's SPD-20 and SPD-S or Yamaha's new DTX-MULTI 12 Electronic Percussion Pad? The features and specifications look very good:-

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This caught my eye today - The new Yamaha DTX-MULTI 12 Electronic Percussion Pad.  I love products like this. This looks a little bit different in that it is split-level. It takes its sounds from the flagship Motif XS synthesizer and the DTXTREME III drum trigger module - 1,249 of them.  I want a go on this - I understand you can use sticks or hands and even your fingers.

I came across this today - Driven Machine Drums at :- http://www.drivenmachinedrums.com/

I know it is software but it had 1,684 sounds in 24bit resolution. This electronic software library has been put together from 14 drum machines and 9 analog devises. Each of the sounds has been edited with some analog processing to get a tight punchy sound. I downloaded their free 100 waves for a listen.  They certainly have a nice Analog warmth about them, the sounds are rich and deep electronic and they have that right amount of buzz that you would feel at volume.

Drum Machines Used:-
Elektron Machine Drum, Symbolic Sound Kyma Capybara, Eventide H8000FW, Korg ER-1, E-mu SP-1200, Oberheim DMX, Emu Mo Phatt, Yamaha DX200, Roland TR909, TR808, TR707, TR606, Vermona DRM-1 MKIII, and Jomox MBase 11

 Processed through the following:-
Thermionic Culture Vulture, Anamod ATS-1, Neve 1073 Preamp, Atlas Pro Juggernaut Twin, A-Design EM-Gold, Source + Plus Tube Amp, Empirical Labs Distressor, Moog MF101, and Mutronics Mutator

Their website shows that the sounds are organized extremely well. The strange thing is only 997 copies will be made available.

Driven Machine Drums is available in two packages:

Driven Machine Drums (26 Guru Kits, 24bit Wav + 24bit Aif) $77
Driven Machine Drums Deluxe (Kontakt, EXS-24, 24bit Wav/Aif) $87<-->

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It can be hard deciding what hardware drum machine to buy. There seems to be such a strange selection that all offer different things but not one covers what you would like to see in one yourself. Obviously from a marketing point of view they wish have the largest possible target audience. Unfortunately this means you end up with many sounds and styles you will never use. Examples of this type of Drum Machine are Roland DR880 or Alesis SR-18. Other drum machines are very specialized or very expensive like the Electron MachineDrum.

The answer is to have an extremely large library of drum sounds. Native Instruments Maschine provides this ( 5 GB of sounds) but this is a dumb hardware drum machine, with software running it and all of the sounds stored on your PC. If this had been a complete hardware product, I would have rushed out and bought it.

One of the main reasons why a novice sounds so bad when he attempts to play an acoustic drum kit is that he hits part of the drum kit that he doesn’t intend to such as the metal rims or he doesn’t hit the drum on the best part of the head to “make” the sound. With Roland electronic drums both of these issues can easily be eliminated.

With V drum pads it is easy to sound very professional by changing the sound of the rim to another drum completely. For example, if you have four Rock Toms, you could also have four Power Toms on the rims instead of the normal rim sound. If a novice then hits the rim by mistake, it does not sound like a mistake, it sounds like he has purposefully hit another drum with a different sound characteristic.

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