Aerodrums Portable Electronic Drum Set, Air Drumsticks, Pedals and Low Latency Camera, Quieter than Practice Pads, more Reliable & Accurate than Electronic Drum Sticks, Play Drums Anytime, Record MIDI

I'll make this a bit longer since it's such a new idea (relatively new, I guess I'm somewhat late to the party). Been playing with this for about a month so I have a good idea of what I like/don't like about it. It is a little bit tricky to start using, but once you get the hang of it, it's very good. The idea behind it is that it tracks height of the drum sticks when it stops falling (i.e., lowest point of the drum stroke) and the horizontal position of the drumstick across the screen to map a 3d drum set onto a 2-d video image. Interesting, and seemingly gimmicky, but it works, and it works pretty darn well. Of course, the biggest selling point is how portable it is. I used to march percussion and know how important it is to practice on-the-go. Some things I don't have a ton of experience with, but can talk about are the accuracy and latency. I can't say I've had the most experience with a real drum set, but I knew very quickly that my time literally air-drumming had caused me to develop some bad habits (i.e., I knew the motions of drumming, but had no accuracy when starting out). This would result in a lot of unintended cross-talk, as well as hitting the wrong drums because I wasn't used to hitting a drum in one spot consistently. This is something I learned fairly quickly, and the program did well to recreate a real, static drum set in this case. I'm a musician and play the bass (rhythm-intensive) so I can feel when something has even the slightest bit of latency. When this program says 2.5ms latency, they mean it. It's amazing. However, in order to reach these levels of latency, you do have to set this program as the only one using the audio output, meaning you can't also playback music from your default music player. Of course, Aerodrums includes a built-in music player (which is a bit clunky, but that may change with a later software update), and I've decided to output my Aerodrums and phone (as the music source) to a mini mixer (Behringer Xenyx 502 is perfect for this). Aerodrums also lets you record audio, both as an inclusive .wav file and as a multi-track output (a .wav file for each drum/instrument). Overall, I'm pleasantly surprised. I was expecting something that would only work half the time and I would probably end up selling or returning due to it being too gimmicky, but once you understand how exactly it works and what you have to do to get the most accurate drumming experience (which doesn't take much, just a bit of patience and willingness to reconfigure the drum layout) it can become a great way to create realistic sounding drum tracks. Looking for maybe an updated UI in later releases, as well as an ability to simulate brushes and cymbal choking (two things I thought I heard the guys behind Aerodrums were hoping to implement in the future).

I for one was pretty exited to get this product, I saw an ad for it online and I was sold. It’s a great idea. As a drummer this was a dream come true, being able to air drum at any time and have sound coming out. Yes please. Despite the big price of $199 plus shipping going to about a total of $210 US i bit the bullet and decided to go ahead and buy it. What I got was so disappointing I might as well chuck em in the trash. For starters, the sounds coming with the software are weak. I wasn’t expecting a pearl masters drum kit sound but what you get is the equivalent of the drum sounds you get in a iPhone garage band app playing with your fingers. Setting it up is a pain, you have to connect a web camera along with a light to your computer. And find a right place for it so it reads you. You have to make sure no other light is around which is already is a pain in itself and then pretty much hope the whole thing aligns Correctly. If you have a laptop like I do, then good luck for all the cables become in your way of your drumming and you feel like your trying to drum in a spider web in a dark room with a bright light in your face with cheap 3D like sunglasses that feel just like a bigger nousance. Once your set up, the latency and the hits are constantly misread and playing alone becomes a chore to make sure you don’t move around to much so the camera reads your hits, or if there is a small light in the background That messes up the camera that reads your hits and now every time you strike your right hand for a ride you hear a top Tom every time. Aside from everytime you want to hit your snare you hear a Tom or a crash sound, the program doesn’t let you play along to any music in your iTunes to play along with, defeating the whole purpose on air drumming along to your favorite songs. So the whole time your hearing crappy drum sounds, drumming with cables around you, feeling boxed in so the camera reads your hits and with a bright light in your face with paper sunglasses that feel so cheap it makes you wonder where those 199$ really went too, You end up just feeling un inspired, un satisfied and with a slight headache to go with all of it. I’m not the type of person to usually write reviews let along a negative one, but I am so pissed off and feel i got jipped out of 210$ that could have gone to anything else that I felt compelled to write this review. I gave it one star for the fast shipping that is more to amazon itself. Then the actual aerodrums. If you have 200$ around to spare and don’t mind a pain staking set up and thin drum sounds go with it sure, go ahead and buy it and knock your self out. But if you are on the border to buy this and are looking for a quality product, stay away and stick to actual air drumming itself that is way cheaper. (Whatever your sticks are worth) and funner. or save for a electronic drum kit. or build a kit out of pillows or pads which will be way more satisfying. It’s a great idea in itself but this product or the technology itself is not there at all. i wish I known this before and would have saved myself 200$.

Purchased the Aerodrums last week (along with the camera) to test and reveal it at our show (facebook.com/PMJAMNITES) . At first, when the box arrived I thought its just a software dvd. Its so light and small. Neatly tucked inside are the ingredients (including a quick get-started sorta Owners Manual). The set up of the software was a breeze. I had a professional drummer attach the reflectors on her shoes and played with the software for about 10 minutes, before we were playing Billy Jean and some Rush tunes. I sent an email in the meantime to inventors of Aerodrums who promptly called me from Europe and we discussed the setup and how we could enhance this product. They ere very helpful in their pointers as we were gong to do this at our very popular event (PMJAMNITES) , so the LIVE setup needed a few pointers. They have been open to our feedback and are truly invested in bettering this product. Now for the actual product . Once you start playing with the kit - Its FUN FUN FUN ! You will not want to put down the sticks. The sound is very realistic ! The feel taking getting used to.. BUt in 20 Minutes you will be comfortable playing easily. There is absolutely no latency . The camera positioning and drum kit setup I would say are the only 2 things that need setting up (we placed the camera 29 inches from the floor and 4 feet from the drummer at a 1 O'clock position. this proved to be the best). We are looking to see the future versions of this product as it can only get better, We plan to unveil this product at our show tonite and think its gonna be a huge hit with our community. It solves the problem of practicing drums at home (specially with neighbous) and also with jamming at home with other musicians - without having a kit. Im a bassist, not adrummer - and I think I have had more fun learning drums from this kit than the V-Drums , I have in my studio. - Highly recommend this product !! The price point is incredible and cheap. The joy is invaluable., - PLAYMUSICIAN

It seems a little bit overpriced for its contents. It does not feel like this is a box you would buy for $160; this feels like a box of stuff some college students whipped together for you to test before they try to get an A on their project. Seriously, two drumsticks with duct tape balls on them? Software that looks like it was made in the '90's? They don't even have the decency to provide you with a camera, or even allow you to just use any camera; hopefully you were one of the few PS3 Eye owners or you'll have to buy one quickly before they stop making them. Also, the light thingy they provide you came unglued really quickly, and I had to glue it back myself. This is the most finicky program in the world. I followed every direction to the letter, turned off all the lights in one of the darkest rooms in the house, and even after perfectly adjusting myself to the oddly specific directions (with the camera 7 inches to your left on the exact edge of the table, make one huge step or three tiny steps and place your seat exactly in front of you), I still had trouble hitting the crash cymbals and the rim-shot snare drum on the rock drum kit. The room was completely dark, minus the obnoxious bright camera light and the reflective duct tape balls, so there was absolutely nothing at all that I could conceive of that could be preventing the camera from not detecting the drumsticks only at the edges of the view field. Despite the frustration, the parts of the drum kit it did decide to detect it detected amazingly well. If you want to know what I mean, look at the trailer for the Aerodrums. What you see is not a lie. I think that's all I need to say there. Overall, it's a lot like a Windows computer. It's a lot of fun when it's working correctly, but unfortunately, that's not always the case.

I'm one of those guys who can't help but play air-drums when a groovy song comes on, and if there are things I can hit nearby, I WILL create a rukus. If you ride in my car, you WILL hear my tapping and slapping the steering wheel and dash. If are in the room with me, you WILL hear me drum my fingers and on the desk and armrest of my chair. I've been a multi-instrumentalist composer/songwriter since around 1991, and play keyboard drums, trap kit, and Zendrum. I have a Clavia Ddrum 4 system (this was before Clavia sold the DDrum name), a Zendrum laptop model, and more virtual drum instruments/sample libraries than I could ever use. So when I saw a video for the Aerodrums, I just had to get it. Setting up is a bit of a pain, because you really have to position the camera and your chair at the perfect placement for the system to work well, and it takes a lot of readjusting to finally get everything to work. You also have to move some things around in your room if you have bright surfaces that would interfere with the camera's readings. You also have to make sure you set up a low enough sample rate in your audio interface so there's as little lag as possible, otherwise it'll feel really unresponsive/sluggish. Once you have all the hardware aspect taken care of, you can start drumming, or you can take a bit more time and set up your own custom drum kit, with the exact kit pieces and positions you want. When everything's all set and ready to go, you can start drumming. At first you will overshoot your movements and you'll feel like a struggling beginner again, but adjusting to the way the camera reads your movement is a relatively short process, and within the first hour, you should be able to get back at least 70% of your overall drumming skill. Once the novelty of, "Holy cow it really works!" wears off, you'll start to assess the Aerodrums more critically, and you'll notice a few things: -The bright light from the camera is really bright and uncomfortable. You really do need to wear a pair of sunglasses (or use the paper one that comes with the Aerodrums) or you'll get a headache from the damn light in your eyes. This is a major negative aspect to the Aerodrum system, and until a more advanced motion tracking system is used, there's nothing you can do about it. -As fun as air-drumming is, you will miss tactile feedback and the visceral excitement of hitting physical surfaces that provides satisfying rebound. I experimented with using practice pads to provide a responsive surface to play on (for the snare), and they do work very well with Aerodrums, but it kind of defeats the purpose of using an air-drum system. -In this day and age, we have very compact, light weight, and portable electronic kits such as the entry level Roland ones. They do cost more, but if you can afford it, they'll be a lot more satisfying to playing on than Aerodrums. There are also other small/portable alternatives like Zendrum (or similar products). Again, they are much more expensive, but they are also very high quality products that are very expressive. In comparison. the Aerodrums lacks the satisfaction you get from having physical surfaces to play on. -Ultimately, I think Aerodrums is both fun and functional, and for some people it can be something they'll play all the time and think of as a serious main instrument. For myself, I think it's more of a novelty that wore off quickly, and I find playing on physical surfaces more satisfying.

I bought the Aerodrums after seeing them appear at NAMM. I'm not a drummer (I'm a musician :), I mainly do electronic music and to date have programmed beats using either an MPC-like pad device or a sequential 909-esque interface. I wanted something that I could capture some more natural sounding patterns with, without the expense, room, and overall environmental noise of a drum kit (I do a lot of production at night when the kids are asleep so even a V-Drum kit residual noise would be too much). The first, and I guess most important question I had before they arrived was 'do they actually work'. I've been stung in the past with new concept products and gadgets that I loved the idea of but they simply did not end up actually functioning as expected. The simple answer is 'yes'. Once you acclimatize to the fact that you are striking drums in mid-air and there's obviously none of the expected rebound you'd get from a physical kit (that spatial awareness and sensation takes a little getting used to) you definitely start to yield results. My workflow to date is I've been recording the audio output directly into a DAW and just bringing the segments I want into Ableton Live as clips but now the guys at Aerodrums have actually implemented Midi capabilities so I'm really looking forward to diving into that soon. In all, this is an amazing product, at the price point it really is a great solution for those wanting to dabble in drumming without the overhead that comes with acquiring and running a kit. The company: One quick word about the guys who develop this solution, I can't speak highly enough of their approach. Before the recent Mac edition was released I was trying to get Aerodrums up and running on an old borrowed PC laptop and the ancient onboard graphics card just couldn't keep up. Throughout the entire process Richard and Yann went above and beyond in helping me out. They have been super responsive with any queries or comments I had and are just the nicest of people to deal with. In the short time I've owned Aerodrums they've already released a Mac version (works flawlessly) and Midi support for triggering virtual instruments so there's constant development in fine tuning the solution and adding major functionality.

Aerodrums is a great idea, but that is it, an idea. First of all the tracking doesn't work because if you have white walls or a white shirt on it will interfere with the light. Second of all it is made very cheaply. The reason I have it 2 stars is because when it does work it's awesome but that rarely ever happens

Playing drums in the air is a neat concept - but there should be lights on the sticks and pedal-pads instead of an extremely bright light in a dark room. And the drum layout should fill the screen and be projected on a huge HDTV or projected on the wall - as the drums shown on the pc screen even sent out through HDMI to my 65-inch HDTV were very difficult to play accurately. (There is no need to show the feet positions when playing a drum kit, only when creating a setup.) I had to return mine for a refund due to the difficulty of playing and enjoying it as executed.