Over the years I've often heard disparaging remarks about Yamaha's drums, to which I asked myself "How hot do they REALLY need to be in order to satisfy the audiences?"

When I performed with a live band, many years ago, the drummer insisted on having his drums mic'd, which to me made absolutely no sense. The band, a 5-piece country band, was booked on average about twice a month, mostly at VFWs and American Legion halls for dances, and after the first hour, someone began cranking up the mixer's main volume to near ear bleed levels, often to the point where I had difficulty hearing myself play. It was insane. Unfortunately, the drummer was usually the guy running the mixing board, which meant he would often crank the drum volume up instead of the master. There were times I thought about using ear plugs because the drum volume was way over the top.

When I finally went out on my own, I got to thinking about those days and spent more time analyzing the audiences to determine what worked and what didn't. As it turned out, at least for me, each song required varying degrees of drum level, while many songs, required no drums at all, just a good, solid bass sound.

Here's a song I recently recorded and posted on another forum, one that I feel provides a great drum sound and level in the variations selected. And, if you crank the volume up to ear bleed level, which I have done a time or two, any audience would be hard pressed to tell if they were live drums or drums from an arranger keyboard style, IMO.

What's your take on this? Lay Down Sally.

Gary

It's not about the volume, it's about not sounding too repetitious, sounding spontaneous, having that "live" feel. I think this is one of the better Yammy styles.
Yamaha has certainly improved the drum kits on the last couple of updates, but I could have figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't a live drummer.
Good song though, but watch the phrasing if you want to sound like Eric or Don Williams.

I don't want to sound like them. I would rather sound like me, instead.

All the best,

Gary

Nice style, I'd slow it down for dancing,......
little heavy on the voc reverb for my taste,....
good job, thanx for sharing. Glad to hear you after retirementjust sayin'...

all the best

Donny, I recorded that song before I retired. Since then I reset my reverb to zero, but there is always some residual reverb for some strange reason.

Gary

Nice Job , Gary I like that style what one did you use ?

It's the Skiffle style on the PSR-S950.

Gary

Understood.... The tweaking never ends lol