Electronics saved the day for musical theatre drummer Paul Hannah.
I’ve Been Playing electronic drums since 1984. At NEC, Pat Hollenbeck brought in NYC drummer Ron Tierno to demonstrate the then-new LinnDrum. I was so impressed by the demonstration that for my senior recital in 1987, I used a Sequential Circuits drum machine connected via MIDI to a Yamaha Drum Machine to perform the drum set parts of Vic Firth’s Sonata for Timpani, Roto-Toms and Drumset. I used the SC machine as it had dynamics! I could step-program the rhythms AND dynamics and trigger the better-quality Yamaha sounds. It was a huge pain, but it worked a treat!
On my first tour after college, I had a Yamaha DX-7 and an Akai S950 sampler in my percussion set-up for Into The Woods. The sampler had sound cues like the cow swallowing, cow moos and baby cries. The DX-7 was used for the Witches’ Rap section.
In 2003, I toured with Starlight Express and was introduced to Roland V-Drums. I used a TD-10 with an upgrade chip that I had to install myself. I ended up programming all of the drum sounds for the show and still have a backup chip with the programming somewhere in storage.
From 2006 to 2008, I did a tour of Jesus Christ Superstar, again using V-Drums; again, doing all the drum programming.
Almost every tour I did from 2008 to 2013 had a Roland Octapad: Spamalot, Wicked, Bring It On and Addams Family all made extensive use of SPDs.
In 2021, after COVID had shut down the touring industry for 18 months, I was called to do a two-year tour of CATS – going out using electronic drums for the first time. I made a deal whereby I purchased a set of V-Drums and provided them as backline for the tour. I used a TD-27KV set of pads augmented with two extra cymbals. I upgraded to a TD-50X brain as the sound department required dedicated outs for the different drums. The percussion parts were played on a Roland SPD-30 triggering Mach5 on a Mac laptop. One of the issues I ran into with the TD-50X was that Roland hadn’t included any cymbal sounds using mallets, and no suspended cymbal hits or rolls, so we had to program them into the Mac and use the SPD-30 for cymbal rolls and swishes. I’m hoping to have a chance to speak with the folks at Roland and see if they are willing to include cymbals with mallets in a future module. Fingers crossed!
My current tour of Funny Girl is all acoustic. I have a drum set, a pair of timpani, glockenspiel, a five-note xylophone, and a myriad of toys.
While on the road with this show, I carry my set of V-Drums with me to use for creative projects and recordings while on tour. I’ve been experimenting with recording using electronic drums – tracking both the audio and MIDI output. I can then combine, layer or replace the audio with specific samples during post processing. It’s been a blast to discover layering sounds like an orchestrator applying shifting or thickening of drum sounds . On my upcoming release, Chicklets, I tracked two tunes with electronics and have combined Roland’s sounds with other samples and sounds from various libraries. I wanted to have a mix of regular drums, timbales and Latin percussion for the tracks.
As it turned out, just happening to carry the electronics gave me an epic road story. During the sound check for opening night for Funny Girl in Kansas City at the Music Hall, we had a blown module in the rack and couldn’t get the signal from my drum mics into the system and out to the theatre. Yikes! Management was seriously considering cancelling the show when I suggested using my electronic kit to play the show. We came up with the idea to run my stereo outs from the drum brain into a spare keyboard input and thereby get some drums for the performance. We got it up and running and saved the show!
Turns out that the replacement module couldn’t get to KC until Thursday, so we did the show again on Wednesday with the electronics.
Two shows, 5,000 seats, all saved by some quick thinking and my travelling set of electronic drums. The V-Drums saved the show!
Equipment List:
Roland TD-27KV
- PD-140DS snare
- PDX-100 toms (x4)
- -14D hi-hat
- CY-12C-T crash (x3)
- CY-13R
- CY-18DR ride
- KD-10 kick
- MDS-STD2 stand
- Roland TD-50X Module
- Roland SPD-30
- Steven Slate Drums 5.0
- Steven Slate Trigger 2
- Logic Pro