Electronic kits: the one spec that matters at the start

If you live in an apartment, share a wall, or practise after nine at night, an electronic kit is often the honest answer. You put headphones on and the argument about noise mostly disappears.

Electronic kits are sold on feature lists: how many sounds, how many pads, how big the screen is. Almost none of that decides whether you learn to play. One thing does, and it has an ugly name: velocity sensitivity.

The cheap piano test

Brian explains it with a piano, and it is the clearest version of this we have heard.

Brian says: "That's basically like getting a cheap piano that has no responsiveness. If you play the key, it plays max volume, versus a piano that has sensitivity, where, for practicing, it feels more real."

That is the whole test. Hit a pad softly. Hit it hard. If the two sound the same, the kit is not teaching you anything about your own hands, and hands are the entire instrument.

What velocity sensitivity actually is

Every time you strike a pad, the kit measures how hard and plays a matching sound: quieter and darker for a light stroke, louder and brighter for a hard one. A kit that ignores how hard you hit is a doorbell with a drum sound on it.

This matters more for a beginner than for anyone else. Dynamics are the difference between a beat and music, and if the kit answers every stroke at full volume, you will never hear yourself getting it wrong. Plenty of players who learned on unresponsive pads then have to unlearn a heavy, even, thumping touch when they finally sit at an acoustic kit.

Two halves: the pad and the sample

Brian splits the question in two, and it is a useful split when you are reading a spec sheet.

Brian says: "Part of that is the touch of how the electronic response is, and part of it is the sample it plays itself."

The touch is the physical side: what the pad is made of and how it rebounds. Mesh heads feel closest to a real drum and can usually be tensioned; rubber pads are harder and louder in the room; the cheapest pads are hard plastic and punish your wrists.

The sample is what the brain plays back. A good module does not just store one recording per drum, it stores a range and blends between them.

Brian says: "They all have a built-in effects chain, or something like dynamics, so you can hit it and it'll sound very light, or you can hit it and it'll have a loud sound."

A kit that has responsive pads but a one-sample-per-drum brain will still sound flat, because the electronics throw away what your hands just did.

Five minutes in a shop

If you can try before you buy, this is the order:

1. Soft, medium, hard on the snare pad. Three clearly different sounds, or walk away.
2. A slow roll, getting louder. It should swell smoothly, not jump in steps.
3. Rimshot and rim click, if the pad claims to do them. Many claim it and only one edge works.
4. Choke a crash. Grab the cymbal pad after you hit it. It should stop.
5. The hi-hat. Open, half-open, closed, and the foot chick. This is where cheap kits fall apart, and the hi-hat is where most of a beat lives.

Take your own sticks and your own headphones. The demo headphones in a shop flatter everything.

Where the money goes as you move up

Roughly, in this order: mesh heads instead of rubber, a hi-hat that moves on a real stand instead of a pedal switch, more sample layers per drum, a bigger and less fiddly kick pad, and hardware that does not walk across the floor. Screens, sound counts and built-in songs are the last things worth paying for.

An honest limit

An electronic kit is quiet in the room, not silent in the building. The stick hitting the pad still makes a tap, and the kick pedal still puts a thump through the floor into whoever lives below you. A rug, a riser, or a slab of dense foam under the kick helps. Nothing removes it completely, so tell your neighbours what your hours are before they have to ask.

If an acoustic kit is what you have and quiet is what you need, the towels-and-cardboard guide solves the same problem for almost nothing.

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Get the next guide by email. One short email when the next guide is written, and the three ways to make a kit quieter to start you off: send me the tips.

Want the hour that makes it click? Brian teaches beginners in Austin, outdoors, and the first lesson is 45 minutes for $29 - he brings the kit, you bring nothing: book a first lesson.