The Love Of Electronic Drums

 

During the mid 1980s when I was designing complicated 16bit digital audio systems, I was fascinated with Simmons style electronic drums, and designed my own analog/eprom based system.

I made a playable kit around a guitar stand,  a kick drum pedal and 4 pads on a sheet of MDF about 35cmx25cm. A pad being:  piezo sensor glued to 15x11cm 3ply with a thin rubber layer on top and 4cm foam on the bottom attaching it to the main MDF.  Kick drum support was aluminum angle.

My design was about minimizing stick noise in a tiny practice kit with a big sound.  Still have the drum sticks, but threw away the rest many years ago. For a time, practicing with this was a lot of fun, and a real eye opener has to how difficult playing drums really is. 

In the 2000s I tried to buy a used Simmons SDS5 to SDS8 on ebay a dozen or so times, but was never successful. They sold for the kind of money I didn't have. 

I have used a few SDS5 drum samples in my tracks since the beginning. But I still surprised myself when I finally bought the VSDS-X vst a few days ago.  Known about that for years.

I just still love that "sheep kicked in the stomach" sound.

The above Music Animation started with me playing the drums on my KORG microKEY32 keyboard. Then adding a FM Bass to that. At first it was just 2 synths, but added 2 guitar tracks later, and that is the version here.

The main image is an AI thing saw on Facebook. Sure I read AI isn't copyrightable, so took that and edited to be the mysterious outcrop here. Just the vibe of the thing. red triangle probe done in MOHO Pro 12.

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