Thanks to Fat Pat for posting the following video from the Friday Gussow/Turner gig at the Shak BBQ at this year's Hill Country Harmonica.
Speaking as the singer/percussionst/harmonicist, this video gives me a lot of useful information. It tells me that although the percussion rig is louder here than the vocals, harp, and guitar, the overall balance of the percussion rig is pretty good. The double-faced kickdrum is notably more solid on the low end than the single-faced drum I was using until recently; the tambo pedal--which I'm operating with the heel of my right foot--is adding a nice metallic wash that fills in the sound; and the snare, also pedal-operated, isn't as overpowering as I'd worried it was, thanks to a thick piece of cloth that I've dangled over the snare-side.
The harp is low in the mix because I'm using two very small amps: a Masco MU-5 on the side closest to the camera, a Kay 703 on the side closer to Shine. And neither amp is miked. Clearly one or both of them needed to be. The tone is fine, though; it's the tone that lets me do what I like to do, and if either or both amps had been miked through the PA, it would have been a much bigger sound. Shine's guitar should also be a little louder. Although Shine and I have worked this restaurant half a dozen times, we'd never played nearly as loud as we did here, and I've never had occasion to turn even these small amps up this loud, much less mic them. So the judgment call that I made--not to mic--was sound under the circumstances.
But the shuffle groove is solid. I was thinking about replacing the felt beater on the snare with something softer, like a brush, but now I'm not so sure.
This is only the second gig at which I'm playing the new percussion rig.
[EDITED TO ADD] All my comments above are based on listening to the video on a pair of HQ headphones. I notice, though, that when I listen through the built-in speakers on my Mac, the snare sounds too loud. You can't win!
Last Edited by on Jun 05, 2012 3:43 AM
Hi Adam: I listened on my headphones. I spend a lot of time listening on them and can agree that the drums are much louder than than everything else. I know you are a high energy player. The drawback with percusion stuff, especially as it gets bigger in size, is it gets louder. If you used a cymbal(s) you would really be deep in volume issues. I have given up the bass drum for my studio because it dominates everything else. I tap my snare and cymbals when I play and that is just the right volume. When I was starting out I mashed them but over the years, like a real drummer of sorts, I have learned to get a good sound playing lightly. I didn't have the luxury of decent sounding recording equipment till about 10 years ago but by then I had gotten lighter on the feet without sacraficing the energy feel. It has taken a lot of time to get to this place and it just naturally has evolved over the past 35 years or so. You can speed this up with the recordings to listen to and contemplate on.
I use the smallest size drum sticks available for the snare, and a chopstick for the cymbal. I cut them short as possible to make the weight minimal for lowest impact and make the travel time to hitting the head/cymbal as short as possible again for lower volume. I remember seeing one of your videos and I remember the beater pedal traveling pretty far before it hit the head. Mine sits a few inches at rest from the heads/cymbal. I use a ride cymbal for its small size. I have a complete early 60's ludwig kit with 4 cymbals. the ride cymbals are so loud I can't use them live or with recording. Even at my light tapping volume the drums bleed into my vocal mic when recording despite having isolation barriers up around them.
Drums are just plain loud and tamborines are aslo. They are just a bunch of mini cymbals. Like with real cymbals, you can place strips of masking tape on them to mute as much as you like. I have brushes for all my stuff and it does quiet it down but you also get brush characteristics. You could try putting various thickinesses of cloth/towels/etc over your drum heads and different size sticks and putting different materials on them. try turning a light stick to a beater with some felt on it. The smaller mass hitting the head and a shorter travel time will take away a lot of the volume. Will you like the feel and sound? No telling till you try it. The towels will mute them but also take the crisp edge away. I am not sure how your pedals are built, but if they are like are real drum beater pedal you can wedge thick foam under them to cushion the impact and you can still hit them hard with your feet. You can open up the drum and stuff some foam/pillows in them to quiet things.
All these mods may be hard to do and be reliable with that rig you have. I have shyed away from the ready made drum rigs like yours because I have found customizing my own stuff makes it a better fit for the sounds, volume, and recording/live gig issues I have run into. Walter
---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
I don't have my nearfields or studio cans handy, so just some general thoughts.
Don't get too caught up in the mix via this recording. I am not sure what you used to record the show, but it is totally possible the quality of the mic(s) is coloring the mix.
The best indicator for the mix is hearing it live in the room. How did it sound to the audience?
There is a disconnect between taping live shows for the net and mixing audio content for the net. You sorta pick your poison again when choosing to share music on the web.
Meaning, you can either mix for CD-like audio or crappy-computer-speaker audio.
One thing that I notice that frustrates me right away when trying to share vids on the web is the dramatic loss of bass and dynamics through average consumer grade speakers. I mix for my room sound and sound through better quality gear, but no one hardly uses that for playback.
I don't think people realize how much better music is when you have decent speakers or cans! I don't have anything fancy - a couple of used Rokit 6 nearfields that run like $150 each new, and some nice Sennheiser HD380 headphones - or that would be found in "real" studios, but OMG, music is SO much better with fidelity!!!!
We recently got a new car (pretty proud of the deal we got too) that has free Sirrus. While I love it in theory, it sounds like streaming music on my smart phone a lot of times. I've ended up using my iPod in the car 90% of the time.
Sometimes at work, I stream radio and can use things like Spotify. That being said, I usually put on sports radio. The sound is like @$$ for music through my lap top speakers.
I guess my point is, is this really what the audience is hearing, or is it just the nature of the recording/playback gear? Those amps aren't going to have a lot of room filling power compared to a typical volume drum kit.
@Walter: As I noted, the drums in this recording are louder than everything else because I used tiny, un-miked harp amps (the volume in the video is plainly too low), and because Shine's amp is on the far side of the room and isn't quite loud enough. If the non-percussion elements had been turned up a bit, the balance would have been fine--or somewhat better. But your suggestions are all excellent and well-considered; my own thinking has been trending in that direction, especially when I'm trying to get a good sound in small venues.
@HarpNinja: How right you are! Camera phones, most of them, have shit-lousy bass response, and the problem is compounded when camera-phone videos are uploaded to YouTube and played back on tiny PC speakers. Because I've traded in a one-sided kickdrum with strong midrange response, for a two-sided kickdrum with much stronger bottom end response, I've noticed that in some YouTube vids--and especially when I'm using the snare as well--it seems as though I'm getting LESS bass, even though on the bandstand, and in well-recorded (and played-back) videos, I'm clearly getting more bass.
No complaints here. That's just the world we live in. But it teaches me not to judge YT videos for silly things like sound quality and relative balance! Those are almost always going to be subpar. The exceptions to that are refreshing, but rare.
Last Edited by on Jun 05, 2012 7:00 AM
That is excuse enough for me not to share more live clips, lol. Ideally, you'd record with some well placed condenser mics and a feed from the board.
Then you could mix the two for a stereo mix and a YT mix. That is more work than I am up for, lol.
Part of the OMB mystique is being able to show the performance. If you share awesome mp3's, it loses the OMB aspect to an extent. You can't win for losing.
handheld cameras and cheap live recording devices compress everything so bad it is hard to listen to. Time will tell as to how the drum rig will pan out as stock. It seems most everything needs tweaking to ones needs eventually so keep those thing I wrote in mind. I am thankful recording has always intriqued me. With the high quality video quality of cameras it is amazing how little progress the audio quality has come along. I think it is due to the average joe being much more visual than audio driven. I think it wise for musicians to take control of their audio sound as well. I have a program on my computer called windows movie maker. I can mute the audio from the camera and dub in audio from my studio rig. It sounds great but is too time consuming for me to use. I can mix an audio song in a minute or less most times but mixing the video in with the audio takes about 10 minutes per song, another 10 or so for it to load to a final product, and then the youtube upload time. I am driven to make music more than tinkering with an edited product and with songs continually wanting to come out of me, making music wins out most everytime. If you are doing the same songs this approach would be well worth it. Having a good audio/video recording will open a lot more doors than the stock video camera results plus there is nothing more revealing than an acurately captured live performance. Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
FWIW,I was there and I don't recall hearing harp & guitar that far down in the mix. It was more balanced,but the percussion did tend to dominate a bit.
you are welcome Adam. I am sure you will dial it in to fit your needs and if not, as I am sure you know, a failure is nothing more than another key to success! I have had more setups with my 1 man band than I can remember. In fact just today I tweaked some things that came to me. Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
