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Yes, Roland use physical modelling on their flagship V-Drum modules, but it's a harder problem than you might think. High-quality sensors for electronic drum ki

Yes, Roland use physical modelling on their flagship V-Drum modules, but it's a harder problem than you might think. High-quality sensors for electronic drum kits sense not only impact velocity, but position - a cymbal will sound radically different depending on where you hit it. Every part of a drum kit will sympathetically resonate with every other part. It's all massively complicated to model and it only has to be slightly off to feel wrong to a good drummer. Despite decades of serious technical effort, there's still a big gap between the real deal and digital, particularly for drummers with a delicate style who make use of brushes, rutes or soft mallets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8bihSwnnyc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8bihSwnnyc

davexunit 2y ago
Yeah, electronic cymbals just don't feel right at all. The price to pay for being able to practice somewhat quietly, I suppose.
exprofmaddy 2y ago
Agreed. Drummer and programmer here. I consider electronic drums to be a different instrument from acoustic drums---especially cymbals---with somewhat comparable musical functions. The advantage of e-drums is that the sound guy can turn the volume down to zero no matter how hard I'm hitting, and that's helpful in places like churches or my apartment. The other advantage is that toms (i.e., the tom samples) are always perfectly and consistently tuned. Apart from those advantages, there's far less traditional drum expressiveness in e-drums (for traditional genres like jazz and rock). The flip side is: with e-drums I can hit the cymbal and make a laser noise.
- bluGill 2y ago
  With more effort I expect that eventually we will be able to model physical instruments just as good as the real thing. However it is an open question if that is good. Sometimes along the way we discover how to make something better. Of course sound is subjective and so no everyone will agree it is better.
brcmthrowaway 2y ago
If we can barely model a drumkit, how can we model a brain
- jdietrich 2y ago
  There are two distinct problems - modelling a drum kit, and modelling a drum kit with millisecond latency in a way that is accessible and affordable for non-technical musicians. The latter requires a lot more engineering compromises than the former.

davexunit 2y ago

Yeah, electronic cymbals just don't feel right at all. The price to pay for being able to practice somewhat quietly, I suppose.

exprofmaddy 2y ago

Agreed. Drummer and programmer here. I consider electronic drums to be a different instrument from acoustic drums---especially cymbals---with somewhat comparable musical functions. The advantage of e-drums is that the sound guy can turn the volume down to zero no matter how hard I'm hitting, and that's helpful in places like churches or my apartment. The other advantage is that toms (i.e., the tom samples) are always perfectly and consistently tuned. Apart from those advantages, there's far less traditional drum expressiveness in e-drums (for traditional genres like jazz and rock). The flip side is: with e-drums I can hit the cymbal and make a laser noise.

bluGill 2y ago
With more effort I expect that eventually we will be able to model physical instruments just as good as the real thing. However it is an open question if that is good. Sometimes along the way we discover how to make something better. Of course sound is subjective and so no everyone will agree it is better.

brcmthrowaway 2y ago

If we can barely model a drumkit, how can we model a brain

jdietrich 2y ago
There are two distinct problems - modelling a drum kit, and modelling a drum kit with millisecond latency in a way that is accessible and affordable for non-technical musicians. The latter requires a lot more engineering compromises than the former.