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"The Snare Drum Plays the Zoo", Beginning Snare Drum Method by Brian J. Harris

« Reply #20 on: March 20, 2008, 03:13 PM »

This really isn't a piece of gear but it could be if your a drum instructor. Wink

Through my "trials" of teaching younger kids (under 10), I've been noticing that most kids under the age of 10 don't like to count. I'm not sure what it is...........one of my students indicated that it reminded of her of being in school learning math.

With that, I went searching for beginner books specifically aimed at kids of this age group that had some element of fun included in teaching. I've learned that kids in this age group need to feel that learning an instrument should be fun at first. Then later, they can start worrying about their Moeller strokes, their Push/Pull technique, getting their blast beats up to 180 BPM, etc. Wink

"The Snare Drum Plays the Zoo", by Brian J. Harris has brought the fun aspect of teaching counting to younger students by incorporating animal words as a method of counting.

http://www.brianjharris.com/animals.htm

I know some instructors may disagree with this type of teaching because it doesn't "burn in" the traditional way of counting and may confuse the student. I haven't experienced this yet and it was actually easier to transition the student into counting as he/she got older and more involved in drumming. In fact, I've used some of the animal words with my older students (teenagers and adults) when they had problems with certain rhythms. At first, they felt kind of silly saying them but indicated the words made it easier for them to execute the problem rhythm(s).

Another cool part of this book is that at the end of every lesson (7 exercises - 1 for each of the week), the student can compose his/her own piece using any rhythm, dynamic, repeats, etc.

The book also comes with a CD and from his website, a DVD is also available. I highly recommend this book to any instructor who teaches young kids. It will truly make lessons fun for the student.

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Yamaha DTXTREME lll Electronic drum kit

« Reply #21 on: March 31, 2008, 02:35 PM »

I've been playing the Yamaha DTXTREME ll E-kit since early 2006. Friday March 28th 2008 I picked up a set of the new DTXTREME lll's. While I was very happy with the sounds on the DTX ll kit I could always tell is was an E-kit, that is not the case with the DTX lll's.

Yamaha has improved the kick pad, the Hi-hat controller and the cymbal pads. All have a very realistic feel now. The drum sounds are samples of acoustic kits and let me tell you they are the best I've heard. Before I made this purchase I played the both Roland TD 20 and the DTX lll kits. While I felt the Roland kit was very impressive, the Yamaha sounded much better to my ear, and the Yamaha kit can do so much more.

I've been playing this kit practically non stop since Friday and it has performed flawlessly. With the DTX ll kit I would occasionally get a miss trigger every now and then, especially when I would hit the kick and snare at the same time. No such problem with this kit. Everything triggers perfectly, even very quick hi-hat patterns all trigger nicely.

I've barely scratched the surface as far as programming goes. I have programmed 3 kits so far all using the Oak Custom kit as a starting point. There is quite a bit you can do as far as programming goes, I've only tweaked the snare and kick but I pretty much have any drum sound I want available to me.

I bought the DTXTREME lll standard kit with includes the plastic rack, 1-3 zone snare pad, 3-3 zone tom pads, 2-3 zone cymbal pads, kick pad and hi-hat. It also comes with a hi-hat stand and a snare stand, 3 tom mounts, 2 cymbal arms and of course the DTX lll module.
The price for this kit was $3199.99

The special kit comes with an additional tom and cymbal pad as well as the new Hex Rack system. I originally was going to get this kit until I discovered how much I would have to spend on additional clamps to mount my existing pads on the rack, so I went with the standard kit.

The Special it sells for $3999.99

The DTX lll module has 4 extra inputs so instead of combining my DTX ll module with this one I just added 4 pads from that kit.

So far I give this kit a 5 out of 5. I've logged about 16 hours playing time so far and it has performed flawlessly.

You can check out an on line demo here:
http://www.dtxperience.com/dtxtremeIII.php just click on video clips

Here's a few pic's of my set.


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Nathan

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Re: GEAR REVIEWS (by members)

« Reply #22 on: May 01, 2008, 08:39 AM »

Sonar Home Studio 6

I recently upgraded to Sonar Home Studio 6, a stripped down DAW based on the Sonar 6 engine. I'm liking what I see so far.

Why Sonar? I'm not ready for everything that Pro-tools has to offer, and I'm not set up to run a Pro-tools friendly rig. I'm a PC user, and Cubase seems to cater to the Mac users. Lastly, all my project files are in Sonar's format

.

Install
Install and Registration went very smoothly. I was able to register the program online, and they promptly e-mailed my activation code. Once the install was over, the very first thing the program did was import all of my global options from the old version of Sonar. It was one of those "You had me at Hello" moments. It then scanned my VST plugins folders, and fired itself right up.

Differences
Upon opening one of my project files, I received an error message. It wasn't a big deal, but previous muted sections of the project had been un-muted upon import. It's a little frustrating, because I now have to go through and make those changes again. Other than that, the layout is very similar to the full versions of Sonar. In fact, with some of the features removed, it opens up a lot of screen real estate.

I am now limited to 64 tracks. Horror of horrors. I really don't see that being an issue. Home Studio doesn't have of the fancy software synths that come with a full version of Sonar. I don't need those at this point in time.

What I get
For under 100 dollars, I get a sleek DAW that I know will perform well from past experience. I get the ability to freeze tracks to save on system resources. I can export projects into a flash player that can be posted on a web site or a myspace page (really cool...I think). I get that wonderful Cakewalk midi functionality for my e-drums. I can create loops and groove clips. It has a metronome!

If you want a little bit more, you can go for the XL version. It's about 50 dollars more, and you get an extra sample package, another software synth, a drum sequencer, and a Peak Limiter plugin. I didn't need any of those things, so I went with the normal version.

I'm happy with it. It does exactly what I need, and it didn't break the bank. I'm about to fire it up and record my drum solo Grin

Your friend in the digital age
Nate

edit: My only gripe so far is that they removed the Track Layers feature, which allowed you to edit multiple takes within a single track. Now, I have to bounce each take to a new track, in order to edit them together.