Wanna-be Drummers and the Yamaha DD55

[Ted]

I did an experiment last night with the DD55.

The results were not promising.  I found that the pads sometimes did not sound at all.  Or when hitting the the same pad twice, the second hit would cancel the first hit.

I'm going to play with the sensitivity setting and see if that helps.  Otherwise, it's Back to the bookstore for this unit!

Much better!

There are three sensitivity settings on the DD55: 0, 1, and 2.  The default is 1.  I tried it on 2 and it was much, much better.  Occasionally hitting one pad would cause another pad to trigger, but I can live with that.

I also discovered a really neat feature that didn't quite make sense to me before: Sequential Kit

Here's how the manual explains it:

The Sequential Kit features complete rhythm pattern phrases that you can play simply by hitting a pad on the DD-55.  No need to worry if you hit a pad repeatedly or hit more than one pad — the DD-55 plays the phrase through once and stops, until you hit a pad again.

What this really means, is that I can hit the same pad over and over again, and it steps through the sequence at the rate of my eight notes, but playing all of the drum sounds in the pattern.

So, if I want to add drums or percussion to something that wasn't recorded to a metronome, all I have to do is tap along with the rhythm that I hear on the recorded song, and the DD-55 will play a well-arranged pattern.  It's a lot easier than it is to actually play the drums--for me anyway..

[Davo]

Cool. Were did you ever find "Im fat..." ?

[Ted]

Cool. Were did you ever find "Im fat..." ?

Boing Boing