Drumeo

My new friend Jared Falk runs a great drum lesson website called Drumeo, which has won Drum! Magazine’s award for “best educational website” two years in a row.

Jared lives in Vancouver, BC… and I happen to be in Canada right now… and the artist I’m with will be performing a couple gigs in Vancouver this weekend… and Jared invited me to do a live webcast lesson with him!

It’ll be this Monday morning, and it’s free if you sign up as a guest. DO IT NOW OK THANKS BYE.

More Sara B Drum Cam

Here’s another tune from the SB gig at The Pageant…

Notes:

– I’ve gotten a lot of grief from the other SB band members about how loud I have the click track. It doesn’t seem that loud to me, but I guess I’m used to it. My mix in a live setting like this is always primarily FUNCTIONAL. Of course I’d rather not have the click this loud, but this kind of mix makes it much easier for me to keep my pocket/click relationship where I want it. I also have the tracks pretty loud.

– The snare is 7×14 walnut stave shell. I sometimes use this drum with a donut muffler on it, but for this tune there are just a few moongels. it’s tuned pretty low and has more ring than I want it to but with that ring comes the right amount of life.

– The SPD has 4 samples that I’m using (the 4 squares toward the rack tom). Clockwise starting top-left they are: verse snare, chorus clap, kick, hats. Interestingly, the chorus clap samples are also programmed, so I’m often hitting the pad sample at the same time that the sample fires in the track. There isn’t a track sample that matches EVERY pad clap that I play, but many of them. This is because my original plan was to use only organic drums during the choruses and bridge, but then as we got into the tour I figured out how to hit the pad as well. At that point I should have muted the snare sample in the track but I never got around to it. An obvious track snare sample (without me doubling on the pad) happens at 4:07 during my fill back into the final chorus. The tones are also slightly different… the track programming is sharper and the pad sample is almost a clap/snare blend, so I like how they stack together.

– Also in the track are some synth pulses (including some busy 32nd notes on the 2nd and final choruses) and some 808 hihat stuff. The hat stuff happens during the choruses and the bridge. I’m doubling a lot of it, but a few hits can be heard by themselves during the bridge. I like the tone of the synthetic hihat but, like the snare samples, I always try to double the rhythms in the track with some sort of visual “real drum set” element. I really like the way my actual hihat and the synthetic hihats blend together during the bridge… the two rhythms aren’t identical and circle around each other in a cool way.

– Check out Chris Morrissey delivering some dope sub bass (2:56 – 3:20). Whew.