Day: June 2, 2026

Gear, Monitoring

Stems get real (time)

When JBL told me about the launch of the BandBox, I wasn’t expecting a practical, out-of-the-box e-drum amplification system. What piqued my curiosity was the “AI-powered real-time vocal and instrument separation” which the electronics giant was pitching as part of its smart practice amp. For the record, I have spent the best part of a decade researching drumless tracks for e-drummers. This pursuit has led to clashes with unscrupulous operators who muted the drum stems on commercial products and then sold the output as their own work, flagrantly violating someone else’s copyright. Then there were DAW plug-ins which required a degree in advanced engineering to operate — and even then produced questionable results. Now we have a flood of online […]

Gear, Industry

What if Apple designed your next drum kit?

It’s a thought experiment that started as a throwaway idea, but the more I explored it, the more compelling it became. What if a team of ex-Apple engineers and designers — veterans of the iPhone, the Apple Watch, the M-series chip — turned their attention to electronic drums? What would they build? The exercise is more than idle fantasy. Apple has elegantly solved many of the problems that have plagued electronic drumming for decades: latency, interface complexity, ecosystem fragmentation, haptic feedback and AI-assisted learning. The technology exists — it just hasn’t been pointed at a drum kit yet. So, let’s point it. Start with the unboxing Apple understands, better than almost any technology company, that the experience begins before you […]