DRUM 01 - Practice //Re: DRUM12: Layers upon layers of polyrhythm!! by matt sokol // Recorder man over-head recording technique

The Excuse!

It's been a long summer, last gig was almost a month ago and I hadn't played for quite some time.
I think it's good to take a pause now and then especially if you're (over) contemplating your playing style and are struggling to get over that plateau that you've been on for a long time (skill wise).

Last week I played a long improv jam with my friends and band-mates from Radost! (my band), and it was refreshing to reflect on my playing after a two-week pause of no playing at all. I was quite happy with some ideas that came out.
I guess it's because my lack of drumming lately, so I tried to compensate it with "mindless" playing where I'm just focusing on the overall groove and my body "dance" during the playing. So some phrases that I played were quite refreshing and polyrhytmic and imaginative.

But, it's really an another thing when you go and practice by yourself, which I haven't been doing for a long time. I'm always playing with other people, which is great for your musicianship, but I noticed that for some time I've been trying to compensate the lack of real practice during my rehearsals and jams. Which is also OK, but I figured that I should definitely start practicing on my own again.

The Rhythm.

Since this was my first time I took some time and tried to practice and analyze my polyrhythmic playing. My attention span was really bad since I didn't have any focused or planned exercise so I decided to try to play a poly groove that was made by @heymattsokol in his post: https://steemit.com/drums/@heymattsokol/drum12-layers-upon-layers-of-polyrhythm

Basically what he did was play a sort of 3 over 4 polyrhythm while comping a quarter-note triplets phrase ( K K K S S ) between his snare and kick, and playing eight-notes with his right hand while holding the hi-hat on upbeats with his foot (jazz-like).

It's an awesome exercise because the 5 note pattern is making things more complicated, and you really have to watch out.
Of course I tried to complicate things a little bit just by adding some jazzy (3 shuffle-y 16th notes) pattern on the ride and periodical ghost-notes on the snare, since the whole hi-hat thing is jazzy in time.

At first I tried to see how it would sound playing the ride between the bell and the rest of the cymbal, and it seemed problematic, but after trying to focus it went in to the groove after some time.
Around 1:10 i started to add the shuffle with my right hand and suddenly the whole feel improved.
It's really interesting how the playing gets better when you stop thinking about the phrase and start to "sing" it.
The whole ride thing really adds a new texture with the bell, and it makes the groove sound more "african" I guess - which I really like.
Around the third minute I tried to add some ghost notes on the snare, but it seems that that is where my plateau in independence playing starts - so i guess that I'll have to work some more on that. But the buzz rolls work out really good on the beginning of the phrase :)

The How? - Recorder man

Recently I changed the position of my drums in my room. It has much more of a powerful tom sound when it's near that wall.
I think that I have to tune my kick drum and maybe change the head (since this is the one with the damper on it).
I'm always trying to learn more about recording and sound so I figured trying to experiment with some recording techniques on drums (since i think that the drums are the most difficult to keep natural in the mix and have the punch and definition at the same time).

This time I figured using The Recorder man overhead technique while recording this one.

note: no EQ or compression or any other FX was added to the tracks

The point is to put one microphone above your snare, and then measure the distance between the kick and the microphone and the snare, and then transpose it behind you so you find the second mic placement... (google it)

It's a great way to capture the natural sound of your drums. It's not good for stereo spreading, you can't pan it into a 100% wideness, but still they really capture the sound closely to the one the player is hearing.
Usually the biggest problem is getting the kick and snare in the middle, but this time I placed them a bit higher so they blended in the middle.
Even tho' I like the natural sound of the drums (didn't play the toms on this one, but you can hear them on the end of the video for a second - they sound like hell-broke-loose deep) and the fact that it depicts the sound as I hear it while I'm on my kit (the ride and the snare are the loudest) - I don't like the "room" sound that I hear. I would like to be able just to get a little more focused drum sound since that is a really good way of capturing the drum sound with just 2 microphones.

Anyways, as you can see in the video, there is a third microphone just in front of my knee, sort of right in the middle between the kick - snare - toms. That's called a Wurst microphone, and it's usually really compressed - but this time I didn't use it in the mix. I'll surely talk about it in the next video :)

Sorry for the long video, and I hope you enjoyed it.

;)