Some drumming

[Merlin5]

Hi guys. I've not posted in the home recording forum before. This is me practising drums at home with my recently acquired Zoom Q8. I'm using the built in XY mics. But also two extra mics for the snare and ride cymbal, plus backing tracks, are going into my small Behringer mixer. From the mixer, I've taken two leads out and into the two XLRs of the Q8. I didn't get around to setting up my bass drum, it was just spontaneous playing with a minimalist drum kit.

Drum practise


And this is on my electric drums, recorded into the line-in of my Zoom Q3 (before I'd bought the Q8).

Time Rift Fusion



Hope you enjoy.

[Jim_Fogle]

Dumb questions from a former drummer if you don't mind. I watched both videos and I'm very impressed with your drumming. On the minimalist kit video, what brand cymbals are you using and do you normally have your ride cymbal chocked so tight on the stand? On the electronic kit video how did you do the double bass kick, is your foot that fast on the pedal?

[Merlin5]

Hi Jim, thank you, much appreciated! To answer your questions, the ride is a 1990s Zildjian 20" K Jazz Ride. Drummers have sought the sound of the vintage and very expensive 'old Ks' and Zildjian have produced several lines of rides to try and reproduce that. I think they got close with this one. The hi-hats are Zildjian 10" and what they call 'S.R 10', which stands for 'Special Recording' hats. Dennis Chambers made them quite popular years ago, though he used 12" S.Rs. The 10" are too small for most situations and quite high pitched, but I thought I'd dust them off and play them again. They seem to work quite nicely for jazz and I'm impressed with the clean foot chick sound.

Actually the ride cymbal is sitting quite loosely, I barely turned the locking nut. I would never choke a cymbal . I'm playing very lightly there so the lack of cymbal movement perhaps makes it look like it's being tightly held.

On the electric kit, I'm playing single pedal, my slave pedal is just visible over to the left of me, it's not connected. My foot is playing every second 1/16th note on the 'e' & the 'a' of each beat. It gives an illusion of continous strokes as though it was double bass drum. Took me a few attempts to get my foot to cooperate and get it reasonably clean!

[dickl]

Pretty cool work

I'm not a drummer but I appreciate the skill and artistry here.

Lots of variation to keep it interesting yet keeping the groove.

Nice to hear something different.

Cheers

Dick

[surfercook]

That is some very impressive playing on Chick Corea's "Spain", which I instantly recognized. love that tune. NOT an easy composition to play on guitar, which is my main instrument. I can't speak for the drums. Woah! What happened at the 01:55 mark?! It abruptly went into a slower swing groove which I also instantly recognized! Wayne Shorter's "Speak No Evil". Maybe try a fade next time. I almost fell outa my chair. I'm listening at a pretty high vol via my Sony xb-20 bluetooth speakers. They pack a pretty solid punch and have a bass boost button which I made sure was enabled. Really helped to hear ur kit. Yikes there's that cliff dive again into the Miles Davis composition "So What"! You def know your way around jazz, Merlin! Me and my trombonist/vocalist would sure love to have you sit in one of our jam/practice sessions. btw, ur ride is coming through nice and clear on this one. But I must say the tempo seems a bit rushed.
The fusion jam on ur electronic kit is smooth and tight for sure. Seems ur RECing chain is spot on. I'm not recognizing this beautiful piece of music though which you've titled "Time Rift Fusion". Def in the style of Robben Ford w/The Yellowjackets. Very crisp and clear RECing you've achieved on this. That double bass pedal drum sound utilizing 1/6 notes is quite impressive. A quick Google search of "Time Rift Fusion" yielded some not so tasty tunes as results. Although I did learn that time rifts, also known as temporal rifts, were weaknesses in space and time through which people or objects could pass from one location and time to another. Very cool.
p.s.- very nice first post but you might wanna try links that open in a new window. If you mouse over the urlx= icon above it will illustrate how it's done. Your copy/paste YouTube links make us have to navigate back to the forum. It's something I learned yrs ago when i first joined zoomforum.us

[Merlin5]

Thanks for your replies Dick and surfercook.

surfercook, I'd love to come and join you on your practise jam session except that it's a long way from London to New Jersey!

Well you certainly know your jazz tunes, you recognised all 3 pieces! Sorry about the sudden changes, lol. I just joined them together with a phone app. Unfortunately the only part it faded was right at the end.

Thanks for the tip about urlx, I've got that covered now and have edited my opening post and corrected those links.

Do you mean my playing felt rushed (it probably does, I'm always working on trying to make everything feel as relaxed as possible, it's an ongoing work in progress for me!) on 'So What' or just that the tempo of the song felt too fast? This is the backing track I played to. It's certainly faster than the original.

So What backing track

And this is the original backing track for Time Rift Fusion that I played to.

Time Rift Fusion backing track
 
I got it from a site called freedrumlesstracks tracks where I get a lot of my backing tracks from.  They compose some great tunes in different genres.

[Jim_Fogle]

Very impressive playing. I'm surprised the hats are 10", the recorded pitch sounded more like 12". I'm not into jazz so I didn't recognize the songs but can easily acknowledge the playing. That's some light cymbal playing for it not to sway or turn.

Short drummer story. Buddy Rich use to visit The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson because he could show off. Both Johnny Carson and Ed Shaughnessy enjoyed needling Buddy. One show Buddy Rich bragged about his practice routine and said he could do a drum roll with one foot pedal. Carson and Shaughnessy said "no way" so Buddy Rich did a one foot drum roll non stop for the rest of the show! That's about 90 minutes!

Here is a link to a Buddy Rich / Ed Shaughnessy "drum battle" you may enjoy. [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QXdi25469U[/url

Rock & Roll!!!!!

[surfercook]

I'd love to come and join you on your practise jam session except that it's a long way from London to New Jersey!
Do you mean my playing felt rushed on 'So What' or just that the tempo of the song felt too fast? This is the backing track I played to. It's certainly faster than the original.

London, England?! That is a bit of a commute to NJ! Maybe we can collab online sometime. I would welcome a drum track from a talent like you.
As I stated in my review I felt the tempo was a bit rushed. Your playing is fine, actually better than fine, it's quite spectacular!

[The Cracks]

Very cool, especially the second one.

[Merlin5]

Sorry for the late reply! Thank you kindly guys.

And Jim, if that's true about a one foot roll for an hour and a half, then wow!
Thank you for that link, I've not seen that one before. Absolutely amazing and Ed really held his own against the great Buddy!

[greenA2]

Hi guys. I've not posted in the home recording forum before. This is me practising drums at home with my recently acquired Zoom Q8. I'm using the built in XY mics. But also two extra mics for the snare and ride cymbal, plus backing tracks, are going into my small Behringer mixer. From the mixer, I've taken two leads out and into the two XLRs of the Q8. I didn't get around to setting up my bass drum, it was just spontaneous playing with a minimalist drum kit.

Drum practise

Nice to hear the result of our discussion on multichannel recording with Q8, glad everything worked. Cool playing by the way! What spot mics are you using, do you find they improve the mix a lot compared to the built in mics?

[Merlin5]

Nice to hear the result of our discussion on multichannel recording with Q8, glad everything worked. Cool playing by the way! What spot mics are you using, do you find they improve the mix a lot compared to the built in mics?

Hey green! Thanks and indeed it was great talking to you on the other forum and you really helped me a lot.

Yep, with the external mics it's a lot better. They produce the punchiness and low end from the snare and bass drum that the built in mics can't capture. The mics you see on the first video are an SM57 on the snare drum and there's an old Shure Unidyne 3 (early SM57) visible over the ride cymbal. The built in mics of the Q8 are also in use on a very low setting acting in much the same way as room mics or overheads, capturing the overall sound of the drums and cymbals.

But I've decided I'm going to probably get rid of the Q8 as I don't like the wide angle fisheye lens, it makes everything look a bit odd. And I'm so limited on mixing. I'm going to buy a Presonus audio interface, a set of tom mics, a pair of condenser mic overheads, and run it all into a PC. I'll go back to using the Zoom Q3 for the video and then sync it all up. I might also use the built in mics of the Q3 just as an ambient room mic in conjunction with the overheads to add sparkle and stereo width to the overall sound. It's all pretty much what you suggested in the first place!

I recently bought a bass drum mic which is quite decent. It's an inexpensive copy of a Beta 52. Here's a new video I just made with the Q8, using the new bass drum mic, snare mic and built in mics. The overall drum sound will be way better once I get all that extra stuff. But this video demonstrates the punchiness that close micing gives. Though the built in Q8 mics are high quality, almost as good as dedicated stereo overheads, it's too difficult to position the camera where I want it and have the built in mics in the right position to pick up the whole kit evenly.

New bass drum mic

[greenA2]

Nice to hear the result of our discussion on multichannel recording with Q8, glad everything worked. Cool playing by the way! What spot mics are you using, do you find they improve the mix a lot compared to the built in mics?

Hey green! Thanks and indeed it was great talking to you on the other forum and you really helped me a lot.

Yep, with the external mics it's a lot better. They produce the punchiness and low end from the snare and bass drum that the built in mics can't capture. The mics you see on the first video are an SM57 on the snare drum and there's an old Shure Unidyne 3 (early SM57) visible over the ride cymbal. The built in mics of the Q8 are also in use on a very low setting acting in much the same way as room mics or overheads, capturing the overall sound of the drums and cymbals.

But I've decided I'm going to probably get rid of the Q8 as I don't like the wide angle fisheye lens, it makes everything look a bit odd. And I'm so limited on mixing. I'm going to buy a Presonus audio interface, a set of tom mics, a pair of condenser mic overheads, and run it all into a PC. I'll go back to using the Zoom Q3 for the video and then sync it all up. I might also use the built in mics of the Q3 just as an ambient room mic in conjunction with the overheads to add sparkle and stereo width to the overall sound. It's all pretty much what you suggested in the first place!

I recently bought a bass drum mic which is quite decent. It's an inexpensive copy of a Beta 52. Here's a new video I just made with the Q8, using the new bass drum mic, snare mic and built in mics. The overall drum sound will be way better once I get all that extra stuff. But this video demonstrates the punchiness that close micing gives. Though the built in Q8 mics are high quality, almost as good as dedicated stereo overheads, it's too difficult to position the camera where I want it and have the built in mics in the right position to pick up the whole kit evenly.

New bass drum mic

Sounds good, cool playing in your last video. I came across these very cheap drum mics in Maplin and bought a couple viewtopic.php?f=4&t=15653&start=68#p204501 , they came useful recording a band with a percussionist and one has become the go-to live banjo mic for a friend! Not ideal but you make do with what you have