Öjje Forsberg of the live band RMF has new drums. It´s the mighty Roland TD-50KV. Their bang is impressive! It´s a electric drum kit or synth-drums as some call it. But these have regular drums with mesh skins and the right feel to the playing. The pads your banging on are really picups and the sound is created in the "IT-section" on it´s way out to the speakers. The sound is very real in the standard drum sound mode. Öjje has worked out 5-6 settings with modified sounds so he get´s the sound he really wants apart from the multitude of presets in the kit. I sounds great! With RMF we have been on stage with the drums and since it´s routed only thru the PA system and not have a sound of thier own it much easier to get the right sound on stage with these drums.
But the exiting thing is recording. It´s so difficult, or exepensive if you want it perfect, to pic up the right sound from drums with mick´s. That´s why I often end up with MIDI drums on my recordings. The sound is good but you have to work it to get it feeling ... like real life. It has a kinda dead and mechanical feel to it. But with these Rolands we only plug the cables in to the audio interface an right in to Cubase! Yeah, really easy and with that premium sound quality! Actually we can record from them in MIDI mode to! Endless possibilities.
So I´m looking forward to having Öjje on drums in my recordings. I like his playing style a lot. He is intense when playing and can fit so many bangs into any little place that it is just amazing. He likes an manages very syncopated rhythyms or those with a lot of backbeats too. We have been playing together for almost 10 years now and our playing is almost intuitive on stage. Important for bass and drums. But he can be gentle. Gus songs are slower and more modest than what we do in RMF but it will work fine.
/Gus
