ddmay2011v3qxp_Layout 1 4/04/11 9:58 AM Page 36
an SDX, and I was a huge fan of his music (Spectrum, etc), I switched it on, Billy sat down and stroked the pads gently with sticks and hands, explored the dynamics and the sounds in the factory set-ups. He instantly found the subtle changes in sound across the pad head from centre to rim and the crossfades from piano to forte. Then he played. With such subtlety and grace and never “bottoming out” the dynamic range. He’d instantly adjusted his touch to the dynamic range of the pads. So many drummers would hit everything so hard that everything was maxed out all the time. All the nuances and sonic variation and possibilities built into the hardware and software at such great cost are simply bypassed and irrelevant to a drummer that just hits hard. After a few minutes, he said: “Great, Dave, it sounds like drums. I’ve got a kit that does that. What else can it do?” We then spent 30 minutes sampling anything - mostly Mr Cobham laughing, giggling and grunting. We mapped these samples in different pitches across the pads, used variable sample start to trigger them at different points in the sample, and the filters and envelopes to shape them. No, this sort of thing does not work for the dugga-duggadugga merchants, but when the kit was set up with Mr Cobham’s ‘laughing kit’, and he played it, what was produced was totally unique and totally musical. I was blown away. When Billy Cobham used that Laughing Kit at the show the following week, he brought the house down. I wish I had it on tape.
dD: It's been said that Simmons was ahead of its time - and obviously you paid the price for being leading-edge without a mass market to subsidise it. Was this the main reason for the ultimate collapse of Simmons? DS: Sort of, but it’s more complicated than that. I’ve mentioned earlier that there was something special and almost magical about the first five years or so at Simmons in St Albans. I’m a musician, not an accountant. If I were an accountant, I would have cashed in on Simmons in 1985. We had an amazing track-record, a trade mark recognised worldwide and IP to die for. We had a self-contained R&D and manufacturing facility in a building we owned. I should have sold and retired to Necker Island before Branson could get his hands on it. But I was never interested in the money - that is, until it ran out. The massive hit that was the SDS5 was followed up by taking advantage of the rapid development of electronics to produce similar items with more features for less money: the SDS9, 8, 800, 400, 200. We added MIDI (MIDI wasn’t invented when we first made drums), we started sampling, we added hard drives, TV screens, tracker balls, 64 track sequencing, ZI Pads, chokeable cymbals, Bosendorfer piano sample sets (with a separate set taken with the sustain pedal down - something not seen in digital piano till 15 years later!), amplifiers, MIDI-controlled mixers, FM and sample-based expansion modules. The list goes on and on. But all
PHOTOS: SIMMONSMUSEUM.COM
These guys are rare. Another one is, of course, Bill Bruford, who took the SDSV, MTM, SDE and latterly the SDX further than anyone - again, using the instruments to expand the palette of tones and textures available to him as drummer, percussionist and band leader. Bill had his MTM programmed up
with a mind-boggling array of preset chords and rhythms. So much so that I know the complexity of it all proved to be ultimately unsatisfying and frustrating. I guess, in the final analysis, 98 black and white keys and 10 digits is a far more economical way of creating melody and harmony than two sticks and two feet.
36
www.digitaldrummermag.com