Electronic Drum Setups

I’m trying to comment here on some things I have tried recently with my electronic drum setup. I’m experimenting with playing bass notes using pedals. I’m starting with just two notes and it’s harder to play than I anticipated. I’m not sure if it’s just a matter of practice or not but it’s especially difficult to play a bass note on the downbeat along with the kick for some reason. This is kind of counter-intuitive since I can play hi-hat patterns just fine. I think it’s because the bassline isn’t a continuous pattern like the hi-hat figures tend to be.

I also tried out using the feature of the Alesis Strike MultiPad where foot switches can play an alternate sound. This was even more difficult since there’s some tendency to miss the timing for the pedal and hit. The pedal needs to precede the hit by a slight amount so there is a little finesse required to make this work. I’m intrigued by the idea of switching the pad using a footswitch but in practice it’s a little tricky. Maybe this could be useful for switching over to a second set of sounds for a fill or maybe as an alternate snare. So if the pedal is mis-timed nothing too bad happens, you just get the same snare sound again.

Using the alternating mode for pads is interesting. I messed around with putting two different bass notes on one pad and letting them alternate. You can sort of play a bassline just by hitting one pad. It would be way better if the MultiPad had more than two sounds per pad though. Then you could do a bassline with more than two notes.

I’m realizing that a good hi-hat control is essential to my playing style. I do a lot of work on that side of the kit so having a sensitive pad and a continuous controller is very nice for me. I’m struggling with the pad sensitivity on the MultiPad in this regard and the lack of continuous hi-hat control is a little frustrating.