Electronic drums are great pieces of technology to practice in all manner of places. The only drawback with an electronic drum kit is that the sound appears fake and robotic.
Recently, I have been toying around a lot with my electronic drum set up to meet that acoustic feel in my music. Gladly, I was able to fine-tune the setup enough to kick the fakeness out of my beats.
If you are also struggling to give your electronic drum kit that realism, this article is for you. Follow this guide to learn how to set up an electronic drum to sound like a real drum.
5 Ways to Set Up an Electronic Drum to Sound Like a Real Drum
5 quick changes to your electronic drum kit and your beats will come across super real to your listeners. If you could manage to do everything suggested in this guide, your kit will sound like an acoustic one. Here you are:
1. Change Drum Tension
Your first step should be to relax the tension in the drums. With a high-tension comes a fast rebound. This results in a sound too abrupt to feel real. With a slowed-down rebounding, your end beat will become super acoustic. Moreover, it will not spoil the overall mood of the music.
2. Use Mesh Head Snare Drum
Change your regular Snare drum with one that has a mesh batter head. The advantage with mesh snare heads is that it sounds super real, almost like an acoustic one.
You can hammer your strokes on the mesh snare drum the regular way. A mesh head does not require you to change the way you stroke. It requires you to shell out some money though. You can consider this affordable option if you are tight on budget
3. Space Out the Drums
If you do not live in a small space I would recommend you allocate a bit more space to your electronic drum kit. Place the drums of the kit at a good distance from each other without losing the reach. This will make your strokes a bit less accurate. The target area on the drum will become a bit smaller making the end beat sound more human.
4. Use a Drum Software
If you are comfortable leveraging technology, use drummer software for editing. The software will allow you to connect the drum module to your laptop or pc using the MIDI inputs. Then via the software interface, you can edit the music the way you like. Ezdrummer is a good software to consider.
5. Use Noise Cancelling Headphones
This may sound like an outlier but a set of noise-canceling headphones are a must for every drummer.
From the time you hit your drums to editing the beats, make sure you have the headphones on. This will help you weed out the sounds like the tapping plastic and make your music more realistic.
What’s Next
Congrats! You are now well equipped with the knowledge of how to set up an electronic drum to sound like a real drum. Setting up the kit the way suggested in this guide is a one-time task. Once your kit is well set up, your beats will sound super real to your listeners. Thanks!
