Its around nine-o-clock on Saturday (sounds like a cheezy Billy Joel song, huh?) and I'm beginning to plan the day.
First allow me to slip a few tidbits your way as to what we actually have
slated for
bloGGd drumSTYLE:
Rock Drum Kit Instructional Series.
VOLUME: 1
SEGMENT: 1
SEGMENT TITLE:
How your memory plays a key role in becoming a great rock drummer- Yesterday afternoon I tapped into the gear resources at
Sh|tBRICKHOUSE Soundlabs (my recording facility) and set-about tracking a drum part alongside a Queensyche Track from the late eighties titled, "Revolution Calling" off the Mindcrime LP.
I chose this tune because the inro has a cadence that is controlled quite well and requires a drummer to really listen to the song in order to nail it like it
has to be nailed in order for the drummer not to sound like a schlprock.
I was without overhead condensers, as my partner Don Holmes (a programmer for refiHOUSE.net
telemarketed mortgage lead services) desired that I give them back to him (they are his) so he could laterally move them over to my other buddy Robbie Duron (lead guitar player for
Crankin' Gravy and the
Roby Duron Band) for some studio work he is doing in Hollywood.
So what I did was punch my high-pressure
Audix through my
Behringer MX1804X Mixer and send that signal out hard-left/hard-right to my
Korg D-16 digital multi-track recording module.
Then (are you ready for this?) it came down to exactly what I could use to fatten-up the sound. After beating my head against the wall I finally decided to pull out a couple of Hi-Z/unbalanced, cheap-A$$
Karaoke Microphones.
Necessity is the mother of invention, friends. Persistence
does prevail over resistance, leaving us alone with none-other than the
crappiest possible solution that must be tested in times of desperation.
That being said, I rigged-up a seperate Hi-Hat line-in to the KORG, bypassing the whole route through the mixer. I figured that I may as well isolate the Hi-Hat on its own channel if I had to try to get
some counter-balance to the whole $h|tty microphone thing.
And beleive me... The first mic out of the box of crapola was
so $h|tty I cant even begin to tell you... (
Okay... I'll tell you):
The mic I was forced to use for the Hi-Hat direct-in most assuredly didn't cost a cent more than 10 bucks when it was brand new 15 years ago (at least) and I couldn't find so much as a
Tandy label on it. It was that bad. I didn't dare plug it into the hard-feed coming into the Behringer. Henceforth, the biggest reason I ran a seperate mic for the Hi-Hat direct to its own isolated
CHANNEL 7.
Moving right along, I was forced into the same desperate patheticism (if that even
is a real word) and used another
TWO unbelievably $h|tty mics (of equal or lesser value than the other one I mentioned if you can believe that).
I made the best with what I had and placed those two mics behind me so they pointed over my shoulder toward the drummers-right hand side of the kit to catch the cymbals and some rumble from the 16" and 18" Floor-Toms. Figured it was worth a shot.
By the way: I'm certain that the three
Karaoke Mics I used were uni-directional/cheap. I assumed from jump-street that all three would, by nature, have sorry frequency response and a very short range of pickup to boot. That is typical of $10 mics, just so you know.
I aimed a trusty
Sennheiser e-835 Vocal Mic from behind my left shoulder toward the middle of the kit. This
may have caused some sonic issues as a result of the microphones pointing toward the middle of the drum kit from either side / "crossing-paths", thus knocking the audio signal out of "phase". I won't know until I bouce the final down and send a scratch copy to CD. More on this later today probably.
MORE TO COME LATER-ON... (I must go eat and then punch-the digital audio out of the box and mix it with digital video taken during the cutting of the drumtrack.)
Cheers. ~Matt
and cut a track a play it back
![[Valid Atom]](valid-atom.gif "Validate my Atom feed"){kind=small}
It's 2:11 pm in Los Angeles and I put a minuscule mix on the drum tracks for "Revolution Calling" and bounced them down with a limiter and just a hair of smooth hall effect to give it some headroom. Then I punched the 2-track mix out to CD (16-bit) and listened. You can really hear the fact that I used 3 of the crappiest mics on the planet. However, it will work for the sake of this lesson plan.
I will be posting drum lessons, licks and ideas for rock drummers in this blog. Most lessons will be in digital video format (either WMV or MPEG).
