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Aerodrums

aerodrums.com

79 pointsspking30 comments

Good concept, but you should be putting MIDI compatibility front and center instead of burying it halfway into the manual.

Here is a detailed list of the drums, cymbals and percussion that are sampled in the subset of the Natural Drum Kit library that Aerodrums uses:

Nobody cares! Seriously - nobody cares. Actual drummers who would be fussy about particular models of drum are certainly not going to be using your product - they'll either drum with practice pads or with a compact piece of hardware like the Wavedrum or Nord Drum pads.

Non-drummers who care about drum sounds (like myself) will either use a quality software emulation like Spark of Jamstix or some dedicated hardware driven via MIDI. Your expertise is in the video analysis, your sample playback software and sample library is frankly just taking up space on the hard disk and is probably less good than the cheapest VST/AU plugin.

Wannabe drummers/gamers are more likely to use hardware like the toy sets that come with Rock band or Guitar hero software (which make a lot of sense for drums rather than guitar). This class of people simply do not care about which drums sounds, they just want the option to select between a few different kits like rock, pop, jazz, electronic etc.

You would do much better to partner with an existing vendor of drum or music sequencing software that will have a recognizable brand and some marketing muscle to go with it, as well as deal with tech support and so on. My heart sinks as soon as I see 'built in sound library!' because it's invariably crapware. You are charging a pro price - $100 is not a lot of money for the work you've put in but that's the reality of the music market these days. So ditch the sample playback engine which nobody needs and concentrate on delivering low-latency MIDI and OSC output.

Who do you think the target for this stuff is then?

If I'm worried about low-latency MIDI, I'm probably going to be using some other drum trigger, pads, vdrums, etc.

Personally, I think it's a toy and not much else, so I don't see why pushing the MIDI aspect matters.

I think there's a market in both the second and third categories. What I'm saying is that at this price point they need to put interoperability first and not expend any resources on audio playback, where they will be inevitably reinventing the wheel to no good purpose. It's a bit expensive for a toy - for not much more you could get a decent pad controller like http://www.wirerealm.com/reviews/alesis-samplepad-pro-percus...

The advantages here is that you can build a complex virtual kit plus it's totally lightweight. A lot of musicians are interested in using and abusing gestural control for a variety of reasons, from convenience to spectacle, so I do think there's a market - but the musicians most likely to be interested are the least likely to want static sample playback or need another bunch of drum samples. I don't think low-latency output is impossible given the high frame rates the Playstation Eye is able to deliver, I'm just saying they need to concentrate their efforts on the advanced features.

Why assume the samples and audio engine are crap? They're not.

There isn't that much overlap between drummers/drums learners and music tech people. No reason to abandon ones for the others when both can be served.

Did you listen to the examples? The sample library is licensed from a third party, and sounds pretty good IMHO.

Good sounding drum sample libraries are two a penny; I have more high quality drum samples than I know what to do with. What matters more is articulation, the ability to adjust the sound in response to the way it is being played. This is particularly challenging for this product as there's no tactile interface, so you've got to infer a lot from positional variation, player velocity, and note speed. I'm not seeing that with their software, which seems only to offer velocity threshold and curve as modulations to volume.

I don't get all the skepticism here. Just take a look at random people trying this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAprpyGdgYk

given there is no kinesthetic feedback and unavoidable latency, this is purely a novelty- you cant practice for real with this.

Yeah, them saying that it feels as good as a real drumset kind of rings hollow.

You can certainly practice the basics and mental exercises: coordination, limb independence, polyrhythms, tempo, etc.. Those can already be practiced by mock drumming. What drummer doesn't finger-drum on the steering wheel? Obviously you won't be learning or practicing actual hand technique with this.

There is tactile feedback as explained in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF8296Aai9k (also shows rolls). Like with any good electronic drums, the latency is not perceivable.

Drummers get fast notes by bouncing the stick on the drum heads i.e. for one flick of the wrist you can get 2 or 3 notes. It doesn't matter how much tactile feedback you get, you're not going to be able to play like you can on the real thing.

In rudimentary percussion, techniques similar to instructors like Paul Rennick, you actually do move your wrist twice for a double stroke. No matter the tempo. Staying very relaxed and letting rebound bring the stick back up so you can "throw" it back down is very crucial. But also, I can play articulate double strokes at a fast tempo on a pillow, but this requires your wrist to simulate the rebound with muscle, which is not recommend for long periods of playing. Unless you want very bad wrist problems later on. But every proper double stroke, even triple stroke is a wrist movement. The exception is what's called a "huc-a-dic", which is 3 bounces with each bounce being lower than the previous one. But each tap is still 'placed' to a certain extent so when you play on a line with other people, you are all together perfectly.

There are things you can't do, like press or buzz rolls, but you can bounce off your palm and drum very fast this way. Take a look at http://youtu.be/iF8296Aai9k?t=2m28s (starts on a roll)

That technique is awful and should never be attempted by anyone. This product looks like a fun gimmicky toy. As a drummer who has played countless shows, both on set, in orchestra, musicals, large sports venues, on top drumelines in marching bands, I would maybe enjoy messing around with it a bit. Past that, it is not really an "applicable" tool. I've done plenty of air drumming...even turning the sticks so the longer part hits the back of your forearm. And yes, I can play flam drags at 140 bpm on a very soft pillow. But nothing will replace rebound. You can't have accurate timing, feel, and sound articulation without it. -- SOURCE: I have been taught over the last 14 years by some of the top instructors, including the top DCI core caption heads.

Drumming isn't all about playing at a zillion bpm. You can play with a band, jam with musicians, play along to your favourite music, exercise your creativity, record song parts, practice your independence, and most other things with Aerodrums. To say that you "can't have accurate timing, feel, and sound articulation" is just plain wrong, especially when you have never even tried it.

If you knew what you were talking about, you would know that drumming is ALL ABOUT the space between the notes. It is more difficult to be accurate at slower tempos. Given your comment, I know you do not have a great knowledge of music, specifically percussion, so good luck to you.

For the record, I have tried very similar things. It's also physics...you know that science that plays an important role..., sorry but you can't break the laws of physics with a stupid toy.

EDIT: I realize you play in a jam band with friends and have fun. I'm talking about professional drumming. Nobody in the crowd of drunk grandmothers watching your jam band gives a damn about your accuracy. In that case, have fun...

This video is much more convincing than the original post

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_Stix

how do you do a roll in the air without something to bounce off of?

For most drum rolls, I find that good drummers will actually enunciate every hit. So you could simulate a drum roll with your stick in the air without too much effort. Buzz rolls and drag rolls (i.e. when your stick is literally just bouncing in high frequency on the drum head) seem to be impossible to simulate without a rebound force. I imagine, though, that the software would pick up on you doing any kind of roll and try to pick a sensible frequency and go with it.

> drummers will actually enunciate every hit. So you could simulate a drum roll with your stick in the air without too much effort.

The first part is true, the second is not. Open rolls use double strokes, where you hit the drum twice with one wrist motion. That's not possible if the stick isn't rebounding.

Playing single strokes at high speed wouldn't be possible here either. You're doing twice as much work if you have to pull the stick back up after each stroke.

I'll agree that it's not possible without _any_ rebound, but you can easily simulate that kind of force. Where you would normally get a rebound from the drumhead, you use your palm for the rebound and fingers for the double hit. It requires more finger control, but as I mention above a truly proficient drummer has much more control over open rolls than just bouncing the stick and dealing with the rebound. Thomas Lang gives a good example of this.

It's not really a common thing to practice, and I only speak from my own experience as a drummer. But after a short while it's trivial to simulate an open roll fairly simply.

Anything high-performance is definitely out, though.

The rebound video shows double strokes

It's very impressive that the dude in the video learned how to play that well on Aerodrums, but as he explains at the very beginning, it's a completely different technique than you use with real drums.

He doesn't say that, he says that you can easily adapt existing techniques. He's just doing a very relaxed and loose German grip that results in the butt of the stick hitting his palm. The moeller and double strokes he shows are standard techniques.

I can't see this being anything more than an unused gift for most people.

Agreed if they're not a drummer or not learning the drums

I once was an intern in a VC funded company where we had a table tennis table in the hall. One of the rockstar programmers was so annoyed by the sound, that he brought his drummkit and declared "noisewar" on the table tennis posse.

The CEO was a 22 year old kid and instead of telling the team to work like normal citizens, he countered the situation by bringing a 200w ghettoblaster. Playing Slayer and Napalm Death while he worked.

Surprisingly, the company survived to this day. But we all would have benefited big time from something like AeroTennis, AeroDrums and AeroBlast at that time.

That... actually sounds really fun for about two days. Then I'd need to go work at a coffeeshop or something.

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