Vicky O’Neon: How I Use E-drums

I’m a drummer and percussionist from Finland, based in the UK. Since 2022, I am the touring drummer for the American pop star Anastacia. I also play in the house bands for a variety of different TV shows; the most recent is the American TV show Name That Tune. Other live TV performances include the opening of the Eurovision Song Contest (BBC One), the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee (ITV) and Team GB’s homecoming from the Olympics (BBC) at Wembley. In 2020, I worked closely with Brian May from Queen, releasing two songs, one of which hit no. 13 in the iTunes chart. My first ‘big’ performance opportunity was with Hans Zimmer and friends (including Pharrell Williams and Johnny Marr) in 2014 […]

E-drums in Something remake

A new track which features heavy use of electronic percussion is rocketing up the charts with more than a million views in just two weeks. The remake of the Beatles’ Something by producer Charlie Z (AKA DRMAGDN) with vocals by Michelle Ray from The Voice is topping Spotify playlists and getting heavy play on Soundcloud, Instagram and YouTube. The drummer/DJ/producer tells digitalDrummer that the track was recorded into Ableton using an extensive gear array that includes a Roland SPD-SX LE. “I have a host of plugins I used to create the entire track from the ground up myself on Ableton. No Beatles Samples were used on this since I had to change the key to fit Michelle Ray’s vocal range,” he explains. “After […]

Meet the guru

digitalDrummer continues to showcase the work of the geeks around the world who slave to improve e-drum performance. This month’s e-drum superhero is Tobi Hunke from Göttingen in Germany. What solutions do you offer? I specialise in everything to do with Ableton Live and live performance, Ableton Live and drumming and controlling hardware and software (like e-drums, lights, video synths, etc.). I help people to set up their live performances with Ableton Live and develop (custom) solutions, short cuts and (more accessible) approaches to use Ableton Live. I also develop plugins (Max for Live devices) to make functions available which are not natively supported by Ableton Live. Why did you develop these solutions? It makes me happy to solve problems – that […]