Electronic Drum - Electronic Drums History

Electronic Drums History

It is said that the first electronic drum was created by Graeme Edge, drummer of The Moody Blues, in collaboration with Sussex University Professor Brian Groves. The device was used in the song 'Procession', from the 1971 album 'Every Good Boy Deserves Favor'.

From an interview with Graeme Edge:

Question - "One of the strangest pieces was 'Procession' (Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, 1971) which featured the pioneering work of Graeme Edge's electronic drum kit. How did that come about?"

Graeme - "...I'd got in touch with the professor of electronics at Sussex University, Brian Groves. We worked up an electronic drum kit, a marvelous idea. I had the control panel in front of me, it's old hat now but we were the first to do it. There were pieces of rubber with silver paper on the back with a silver coil that moved up and down inside a magnet that produced a signal, so it was touch sensitive. I had 5 snares across the top and then ten tom-toms and then a whole octave of bass drums underneath my feet and then four lots of 16 sequencers, two on each side. There was a gap—to play a space—a tamborine, ebony stick, snare and three tom-toms. This was pre-chip days, back then you did it all with transistors. So it had something like 500 transistors. The electronic drums inside looked something like spaghetti. When it worked it was superb, but it was before its day, because it was so sensitive..."

The first commercial electronic drum was the Pollard Syndrum, released by the Pollard Industries in 1976. It consisted of a electric sound generator and one or more drum pads. It quickly called the attention of many famous drummers like Carmine Appice and Terry Bozzio. But the Syndrum was a financial failure and lead the company to ruin in a few years.

In 1978, the Simmons company was created in order to produce commercial electronic drums sets. Its most notable product was the SDS-5, released in 1981. With its characteristics hexagon pads, the SDS-5 was first used by Burgess: From the Tea-rooms of Mars ...., Chant No,1 by Spandau Ballet, and Angel Face by Shock. After its debut on the top parades, the instrument called attention of many important rock drummers. The sound of the SDS-5 is often described as 'awful' or sounding like 'trash can lids'. Despite the critics, the distinctive Simmons 'dzzshhh' sound was extensively used during the 1980s by rock groups like Duran Duran and Rush among others.

In the following years, other companies started selling their versions of electronic drums, notably Roland and Yamaha. At that time, the electronic drums were similar to today entry-level kits. They consisted of rubber coated pads mounted on a stand. The pads were velocity sensitive and the sound was generated through single or multi-layer sampling.

In 1997, Roland put into market its TD-10 model, which had two important innovations. First, instead of generating its sound through sampling, the TD-10 used mathematical models to generate its sound. Second, instead of rubber coated pads, it featured mesh-head pads. The mesh-head pads look and feel like a small acoustic drums. Its striking surface is a two-layer taut woven mesh of fibers fitted with several electronic sensors. Roland called its invention as V-Drums, which later became the brand of its electronic drums line. Together, the mathematical modelling and the mesh-head pads greatly increased the sound and feel of electronic drums.