Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmritard96 | Hacker News Reader

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com