The Cadbury gorilla has ignited a whole country with the question, 'what the bloody hell was that all about?' It is an enigma that will probably never be answered. The most lasting effect of this TV advert is that it makes people wonder what it is about and it has also sparked a great deal of interest and has gone some way toward encouraging more people to learn the drums. Fantastic you may think. Isn't it great that people are taking up new hobbies and enjoying music to its full potential by playing it themselves? Well yes you are right. In that respect it is great.
It is less great however if the person that has a new enthusiasm for the drums is one of your neighbours, or worse still someone that lives in your house. How can you remain enthusiastic about this new hobby of theirs when it is literally hammered into your every day and night of the week? Well fortunately there is an answer. If your young child announces that they want to become a drummer and ask you to get them a drumkit you needn't recoil in fear. There is now a drumkit that can be plugged in and one that will only make a loud noise if you plug it in to some speakers. The result is that someone can hammer away whilst listening to themselves in their personal speakers whilst the rest of the house hears nothing but a few dull thuds - brilliant! Tell me more I hear you say.
Well the next best thing about these new USB drumkits is that they'll only set you back as much money as a cymbal for a conventional drumkit. USB drumkits can cost as little as 100 pounds and they generally cost around 120 pounds. They do of course go up in price to thousands of pounds if you so wish but you can get an adequate kit in the 100 to 150 pound price range. For this reason it is perfect for the aspiring drummer especially if you have just begun and you don't want to be the most hated man on the street.
Drums are the oldest type of musical instrument in the world. Drumming is indeed the oldest form of music in the world. The first drum that has been traced in history dates back to 6000BC. The level of sophistication of these drums has developed greatly since then. Typically a drum has a skin that is stretched over an empty shell or box. Ordinarily the shell is made out of wood and the skin would be taken from animals such as cows and goats. Nowadays synthetic materials are utilised. Metal is often used around the rim of the drum and the drum skin is often synthetic.
Aside from the use of synthetic and metallic materials the most notable development of the drumkit has been the use of computer technology and modern sensors. These two technological developments have been combined to create the electronic drumkit. These work in the same way as traditional drum sets, in that the player strikes the kit with a drumstick, however the stick strikes a pad which then relays the information through a computer which produces a sound. This sound has been programmed into the computer. Each pad is programmed to make a different sound to replicate a traditional drumkit. The added advantages of this are that, firstly you can turn the volume down and secondly numerous different sounds can be programmed in. It can as a result offer the same as if you were to own a number of different drumkits. |
