Posted by: travlin'easy
Lay Down Sally... - 06/26/16 12:18 PM
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
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
