Changing it up…

I’ve modified setup for the church drum kit a bit…
switched out the 13″ Tama for my personal 10″ Grestch (Tom)
Switched out the 13″ piccolo snare for the 14″ Tama with fat cat strands…. Let me say for the record that I LOVE what these new snare strands have done to my sound. It really makes the snare pop.
Cymbal setup it pretty much the same, but I added a clasped in place hi-hat, it makes it easier for me to hit a couple grooves when I don’t have to worry about the l/r cross factor… and it’s easier (I know cheap cop-out) than me trying to learn how to play open handed (which is on my list to do!)
I’ll have to post a picture when I get a chance to take one again.

Minor changes, Major results…

It’s amazing what a huge effect you can get from a small change… well on second thought perhaps not so amazing, after all a slight shift of one or two millimeters can put your aim off by a huge amount 100 yards downrange…

Let’s try this again, it’s amazing what tweaking the way you do things can have a profound effect on the end result… bugger this just isn’t working out right, let me jump to my point.

I play both traditional and match grip when I drum, as I had loaned out my copy of secret weapons for the modern drummer I’d been working on rudiments, my only problem is my left hand (the one in the traditional grip) wasn’t working right, (well it’s the left hand, so I guess it shouldn’t be working right, but I digress) now I got it back and started watching and there I see what I’m doing wrong, I turn my hand somewhere between 5 and 11 degrees and bam, problem solved. I can now play just as fast (Arguably faster) with trad than match.

So why all the drumming posts? (As I’ve got two more I’m working on), well the drum-off is coming up and I’m debating entering.

Here’s the thing I’m not a technician, and I’ve never had much experience playing without a band, (IE solo work), on the other hand… it’s a chance to gain some experience and more importantly, from what I understand, contestants get special discounts…

Sorry getting of track here, this principle expands beyond the realm of drumming, what little adjustments can be made in your life to have a major affect on the way you live? I’ve been slacking a bit these last two weeks, but when I take my quiet time in the morning before I start my day, I always seem to be better equipped for the challenges (And accompanying stress).

So what minor change can you make for a major result in your life?

The GH fanmode strikes again….

Okay so as a drummer there are certain other drummers that I really love to hear play, Neil Peart (Rush), Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater), Jojo Mayer (Nerve), Buddy Rich, Max Roach, Stevie Wonder (Believe it or not, but he did a lot of the drumming on his albums) but when I logged into my itunes to see what the new podcasts were, turn on fan-boy mode because Gavin Harrison was up for the drumset video. (Winner of the Modern Drummer Prog drummer 2008 award, and drummer for Porcupine Tree) Random a bit, yes, but it’s a drummer thing (hmmm I’m blogging that… oh wait I just did).

One of his signatures? Is a custom 5 cymbal “Chime” thing (Watch the video you can’t miss it) I SO want one of those…

Drummers go Crash Boom Bang

Reid just posted this article over on North Point’s music blog, regarding my favorite subject as a drummer, cymbals.

Which of course got me thinking about my own cymbals, (Because I’m ALWAYS looking for new/new old cymbals). Lifepoint’s standard cymbals (which are, in all honesty needing to be replaced at some point, but it’s not a big priority), include a set of Sabian Hats (And I honestly don’t remember what series) a B8 crash (16″) a B8pro crash (Again 16″) and an 20″ XS series Ride.

My current set of cymbals are as follows: 1 10″ Sabian HHX Splash, 1 12″ AAX Sabian Splash, 1 12″ A Custom Zildjian splash, 1 16″ A Zildjian crash, 1 18″ A Custom Zildjian Crash, 1 20″ K Custom (My Baby!) Zildjian Ride, 1 mix pair (K custom bottom, K top) Zildjian hats (I really got a good deal on those, like half of what they’re worth). I also had (until two weeks ago) a Cobalt River 14″ crash. This was a cheap (very cheap) cymbal but had a very nice trashy crash sound, I need to replace it soon, and as it was a 15? 20? dollar cymbal, replacing it is nowhere as difficult as replacing one of the other cymbals in my collection.

When will I have enough cymbals? I’m not sure. They’re not a huge priority for me budget wise, but they are something I’m always looking at/for. I’d love to get some meinl’s to try but no one carries them locally, and while I’ve gotten a couple of my collection via ebay, I do prefer to test out a cymbal before I buy it.

So gifts for me can include itune giftcards and cymbals. I like Zildjian A Custom, and K Custom series, Sabian Paragon, Vault, or any series that ends in an “X”, Meinl Byzance and Soundcaster Series, Paiste Signature and 2002 series. Yeah Guitarists have it cheap. They get a few guitars, and sure the cost several grand… drummers collect cymbals, at anywhere from 100-700 a pop, and some drummers (Say like John “Bermuda” Schwartz best known for his work with “Weird” Al Ynkovic) Has collections spanning hundreds (over 400 in his case).

And yes this was a rather Random Post

Basics….

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that they best of homes always begins with a strong foundation. And even when we know that it occasionally takes a reminder that even a foundation needs to be maintained.

Case in point, myself.

My reminder came from an article I was reading about Bassist John Myung (Of Dream Theater) where some of his bandmates mentioned that he was one of the only person they knew who warmed DOWN after a show.

Which brought my back to my drum corp days were we both warmed up and warmed down after practices, (but not always after performances) which then took me to the fall I worked as an Drum adviser for a marching band. I came in about halfway through the season on a request from a friend to give them a hand, the kids (I thought of them as kids even then, and I was only a couple years out of high school myself, at the time) were decent, but had no drum instructor to build their foundation and thus were floundering.

Instead of jumping on the music (which is why I was asked to come in the first place, to help them learn their parts better) I jumped on their fundamentals (Discipline! Rudiments! and Warm-ups!) It wasn’t that they didn’t know their part, quite the opposite actually, it’s that they had problems on the performance aspect of it.

Now a part of me wishes I could say after a few weeks with me they turned into a whole new drumline that went on to win a bunch of awards at competitions, sadly that is not the case.

However I did come to find out that my time spent working on their fundamentals wasn’t wasted as that helped them And I quote this from someone who had seen their early shows) “They looked and sounded like a real drumline”

So why did I just say all this? Well my point is I know about basics and fundamentals, but like so many of us, after playing set for a while I’ve slacked off on most (Nearly all) of said basics. So yesterday I began a regiment for getting this drummer’s fundamentals back up to par.

So what does that entail?
1) Ear training, (this is the one part of my fundamentals that I can honestly say that I haven’t stopped doing ever.
2) Arm strength/power/endurance, Jojo Mayer covers this one on his dvd but this is a delicate balance, because of the nature of the human body, build up more power, and you won’t be able to access higher speeds.
3) Foot training, for those funky syncopated kick patterns (not something you normally run into in worship music, but you never know!)
4) Coordination/limb interdependence, the abilty to play different beats with different limbs (arms, legs, etc) at the same time. Sounds easy? here’s a simple warm-up. Try tapping triplets with your left hand, eighth notes with your right foot, quarters with your left foot, and sixteenths with your right hand. (Try it slow, if you manage that, try speeding it up).
5) Warm-up/Cool-down routine, if I had professional drum instructions I’d probably have a slew of fancy exercises, (well maybe, shrug, it’s not something I’ve had the luxury of having), I do have my rudimental listings and a handful of exercises for that, having played quads in drumline I’m used to adapting said exercises, of course my favorite exercise? (This sounds odd, I know) is eight on a hand, (plus the adaptations 1-xx on a hand, countdown on a hand etc).

So that’s it, getting back to basics all around, remember that the house you live in is only as strong as it’s foundations, (Read Matthew Chapter 7).

The Current Kit…

I’ve often told people I like my drum kits to be either very basic or very complex. The translation is I like 4 piece kits (Kick, Snare, Tom, Floor Tom) and 7+ kits (Kick, Snare, 3 toms, 2 floor toms, etc…) I guess I really don’t like what’s considered the “Standard” drum kit, (Kick, 14″ Snare, 12″ Tom, 13″ Tom, 15″ Floor Tom) I’ve got a ton of optional/swap out drums for Lifepoint’s kit, but here’s a picture of my kit.

Yes I have a cymbal addiction, I make no apologies for it either.
The Drums are as follows:
Kick: Tama 23″
Snare: Pacific 13.5# piccolo
Tom: Tama 13″
Floor Tom: Mapex 15″

The Cymbals (as shown, yes, I have more) are as follows:
HiHat: Zildjian K Custom Dark (Bottom) K (top)
Splash(es): Sabian HHX 12″, Zildjian A Custom 12#
Crash(es): Sabian B8 Pro 16″, Zildjian A 16″, Zildjain A Custom 18#
Ride: Zildjian K Custom 20″

Hardware: Roc-N-Soc Hydraulic throne (love it!), Gibraltor double kick (don’t snort it was on sale), Pacific Hi-Hat/Cymbal stands.

So my cymbals outnumber my drums 2 to 1.

The Current Kit…

I’ve often told people I like my drum kits to be either very basic or very complex. The translation is I like 4 piece kits (Kick, Snare, Tom, Floor Tom) and 7+ kits (Kick, Snare, 3 toms, 2 floor toms, etc…) I guess I really don’t like what’s considered the “Standard” drum kit, (Kick, 14″ Snare, 12″ Tom, 13″ Tom, 15″ Floor Tom) I’ve got a ton of optional/swap out drums for Lifepoint’s kit, but here’s a picture of my kit.

Yes I have a cymbal addiction, I make no apologies for it either.
The Drums are as follows:
Kick: Tama 23″
Snare: Pacific 13.5# piccolo
Tom: Tama 13″
Floor Tom: Mapex 15″

The Cymbals (as shown, yes, I have more) are as follows:
HiHat: Zildjian K Custom Dark (Bottom) K (top)
Splash(es): Sabian HHX 12″, Zildjian A Custom 12#
Crash(es): Sabian B8 Pro 16″, Zildjian A 16″, Zildjain A Custom 18#
Ride: Zildjian K Custom 20″

Hardware: Roc-N-Soc Hydraulic throne (love it!), Gibraltor double kick (don’t snort it was on sale), Pacific Hi-Hat/Cymbal stands.

So my cymbals outnumber my drums 2 to 1.

Amazed….

We used to do a worship song, “Lord I’m amazed by you” and I think that song really sums up this weekend. I’m sure by now all three pastors, (Pastor Daniel, Josh, and Pick) have all blogged about the weekend, but I wanted to add my 2 cents.

So let’s start with Saturday, If you read Josh’s Blog you know we’ve been tracking the weather all week. Since Monday all the weather stations were calling for rain. Our prayer was for a warm sunny day. As always God 1, weatherman 0. (More on this later)

Setup ran really smooth and the volunteers. We had over a hundred (near 150, from an earlier account) Lifepoint volunteers show up to help get the event rolling. Boy did it roll. I’m sure either Josh (who was the lucky person designated to be the event coordinator, or Pastor will be getting a call from the city. Last year we had 2500 people and stopped traffic for 2 miles around the school where we meet. No problem, we figured around 4-5 thousand people would show up this year. Depending on your source, (newspaper, radio, etc) we estimate somewhere between 7 and 12 thousand people showed up, traffic was backed up for MILES in every direction. I heard as far as the mall on Rt. 3 from one side, Lafayette Blvd, from another. We had chick-fil-a as a vendor and they kept running out of food! Oh and did I forget to mention that the police had to shut down our entrances? yeah we had THAT many people showing up. In fact we’re already talking about where to go next year. The problem is finding a venue big enough, and one that can accommodate such a huge surge of traffic. And while I’m on the subject Mad Props to Tom Spellman and the whole Parking team who were swamped and went way above and beyond normal call of duty.

Then the eggs, I had the awesome privilege of doing all the ground level filming. (So if the video sucks when Josh get’s done editing it, then it’s my fault). I had joked all year leading up to this event that it looks like Lord of the Rings when the kids rush in to get the eggs, Well, you’ll get a chance to see it I filmed several opening runs from the “epic” angle, just say a quick prayer that it turns out all right.

Also filmed some of the other events going on, we had a petting zoo, a rock climb, and a couple other vendors showed up as well.

Mad props to our Volunteer army, who put in, by my estimate an approximate 1,050 combined man-hours on Saturday ALONE. no idea HOW many hours were put in during the planning stages all I know is that it’s a lot.

About the weather, next year I’m going to be dangerously specific with my prayer. Mostly clear with long periods of light cloud cover. I think most of us ended with sunburn from the day… here’s an interesting bit of personal trivia in the last two years I’ve had a total of two Sunburns. The most recent was from the Eggdrop, the other was from our Gas buy down.

Then there was yesterday. What an amazing day, I didn’t hear a count from the last service, but there was an estimated 30 people who changed their eternal destination from Hell and an eternity apart from God, to Heaven and an eternity with their creator how awesome is that! And that was just from the first two services! We had 674 people attend across three services, it was w00t-able.

Our set list was All Because of Jesus (by Fee) Mighty to Save (Hillsong) Wonderul Cross (Tomlin/Redman) with a performance song Meant to Live (Switchfoot) everything was so on! My whole upper body is killing me now too. I didn’t just play, I didn’t just perform I was in full blown worship mode and I have no regrets. Finally, Jeremy and Tom sang Mighty is the Power of the Cross (Tomlin) during the invitation, (with Ronnie, on guitar, Bill on Bass and Hannah on Cello) we were going for one of the those “Meet with God” moments I can’t speak for anyone else but I know that my eyes were sweating.

And Pastor preached like the building was on fire, if there was ever (there wasn’t for the record) any doubt in my mind about his Passion to reach people who are far from God, yesterday would have blasted those doubts away.

God we give you the glory for this amazing weekend where we celebrated the Resurrection of your son Jesus. Thank you for letting us, for letting me have a part in it.

Amazed….

We used to do a worship song, “Lord I’m amazed by you” and I think that song really sums up this weekend. I’m sure by now all three pastors, (Pastor Daniel, Josh, and Pick) have all blogged about the weekend, but I wanted to add my 2 cents.

So let’s start with Saturday, If you read Josh’s Blog you know we’ve been tracking the weather all week. Since Monday all the weather stations were calling for rain. Our prayer was for a warm sunny day. As always God 1, weatherman 0. (More on this later)

Setup ran really smooth and the volunteers. We had over a hundred (near 150, from an earlier account) Lifepoint volunteers show up to help get the event rolling. Boy did it roll. I’m sure either Josh (who was the lucky person designated to be the event coordinator, or Pastor will be getting a call from the city. Last year we had 2500 people and stopped traffic for 2 miles around the school where we meet. No problem, we figured around 4-5 thousand people would show up this year. Depending on your source, (newspaper, radio, etc) we estimate somewhere between 7 and 12 thousand people showed up, traffic was backed up for MILES in every direction. I heard as far as the mall on Rt. 3 from one side, Lafayette Blvd, from another. We had chick-fil-a as a vendor and they kept running out of food! Oh and did I forget to mention that the police had to shut down our entrances? yeah we had THAT many people showing up. In fact we’re already talking about where to go next year. The problem is finding a venue big enough, and one that can accommodate such a huge surge of traffic. And while I’m on the subject Mad Props to Tom Spellman and the whole Parking team who were swamped and went way above and beyond normal call of duty.

Then the eggs, I had the awesome privilege of doing all the ground level filming. (So if the video sucks when Josh get’s done editing it, then it’s my fault). I had joked all year leading up to this event that it looks like Lord of the Rings when the kids rush in to get the eggs, Well, you’ll get a chance to see it I filmed several opening runs from the “epic” angle, just say a quick prayer that it turns out all right.

Also filmed some of the other events going on, we had a petting zoo, a rock climb, and a couple other vendors showed up as well.

Mad props to our Volunteer army, who put in, by my estimate an approximate 1,050 combined man-hours on Saturday ALONE. no idea HOW many hours were put in during the planning stages all I know is that it’s a lot.

About the weather, next year I’m going to be dangerously specific with my prayer. Mostly clear with long periods of light cloud cover. I think most of us ended with sunburn from the day… here’s an interesting bit of personal trivia in the last two years I’ve had a total of two Sunburns. The most recent was from the Eggdrop, the other was from our Gas buy down.

Then there was yesterday. What an amazing day, I didn’t hear a count from the last service, but there was an estimated 30 people who changed their eternal destination from Hell and an eternity apart from God, to Heaven and an eternity with their creator how awesome is that! And that was just from the first two services! We had 674 people attend across three services, it was w00t-able.

Our set list was All Because of Jesus (by Fee) Mighty to Save (Hillsong) Wonderul Cross (Tomlin/Redman) with a performance song Meant to Live (Switchfoot) everything was so on! My whole upper body is killing me now too. I didn’t just play, I didn’t just perform I was in full blown worship mode and I have no regrets. Finally, Jeremy and Tom sang Mighty is the Power of the Cross (Tomlin) during the invitation, (with Ronnie, on guitar, Bill on Bass and Hannah on Cello) we were going for one of the those “Meet with God” moments I can’t speak for anyone else but I know that my eyes were sweating.

And Pastor preached like the building was on fire, if there was ever (there wasn’t for the record) any doubt in my mind about his Passion to reach people who are far from God, yesterday would have blasted those doubts away.

God we give you the glory for this amazing weekend where we celebrated the Resurrection of your son Jesus. Thank you for letting us, for letting me have a part in it.

Loops, Why, What and How

Before I begin the meet of this post I want to apologize if it seems a bit… disjointed? (I think that’s the word I want) I’ve been working on this post for around 3 weeks, just adding bits to it here and there as I’ve had time so I blame time lapse for any confusion. (Unlike this post though, I managed to keep all the names straight… at least I think I did).

Also later in this post I describe the method that I use to build loops. I am by no means a professional loop creator, I am at best an amateur, but it works for me and until I can get some official training on the subject here is what I’ve found works for me….

One of the (joys? headaches? frustrations? pleasures?) of being my current position at Lifepoint is working on/with loops.

First why work with loops at all?

Well it helps cement tempo, but is that necessarily a good thing?

I mean every drummer (any decent drummer) plays in time, but I know of very few applications musically where perfect time sounds right….

Drum Corp is one instance that I can think of, but applied to a drumset perfect time comes off as too… stiff? Robotic…

Tommy Igoe did a talk about this at last year’s PASIC and I believe his exact phrasing is perfect time applied to the drumset comes off as “too vanilla”.

So the end result is you play in time, but if that snare is hit somewhere between the last 32nd note of one and the first of two doesn’t mean it’s late,

Before I confuse you further let me move on to my original purpose of this post. (This subject matter is fodder for a whole other post, one I’ll get to… eventually).

Building loops. Back to the original question, why work with loops, it also allows you to add instruments and sound effects in a timed manner that would otherwise require… well insert your sound of choice here, a lot of what we loop can be accomplished with a good keyboardist who knows their way around a keyboard, up until recently though we haven’t had a regular keyboardist, though both our Vocal Director and one of our vocals are excellent pianist they weren’t available every week to play. But occasionally you run into that sound that just doesn’t lend itself to keyboard and requires either a recording session or a pre-recorded sound, Off hand I can’t come up with anything, but I know there are examples out there. I’ve used them at add percussion sound on a Crowder song we did before we got a percussionist, and to add strings on a couple pieces we’ve done. Also there have been a couple instances when when we were going for a fuller sound than one keyboard could provide.

So okay, you’re now convinced that working with loops is a good thing, now what?
Well, you can start by building your own!

I currently do most of the work on our loops with a couple different programs, if I have to program midi I normally use Ableton Live, (A copy of it came with my midi controller), however the need for me to work with midi isn’t too great and so most of my work usually ends up being done with a program caller Reaper and a program called Audacity. Reaper is a fully functional
audio mixing program which is uncripled shareware (after 30 days it starts with a pop up asking you to pay) but all the features remain active, and having used several different full system editors in my time I have to say it’s a really sweet program. Audacity is an open source audio editor, my only issue with Reaper is it doesn’t have it’s own WAV editor (Or if it does I have yet to figure out where/how to work it) so if I have to make any corrections to an individual track I pull it up in audacity make the changes and then send it back. Now quite as simple as working with say Adobe Audition (Which is what I was using) but much MUCH more budget friendly.

Ok back on the work cycle here, the first thing I do when we decided we want to do a song that we need a loop for is buy the song. (I normally Use itunes) then put is on a disc and then an mp3.

Then I plug it into this handy little program that analyzes the beats per minute of the song.

Once I have that I go into reaper and import the song. I then create a click (think metronome) track and channel it to the left, the click track becomes the tempo of the song.

Then going layer by layer I begin adding instrumentation and effects to the song. Normally through the Alesis Keyboard or my own PS350. Though I will hopefully be doing more work with a Phantom X8 in the very near future.

Once that I’m please with the way everything sounds I pan everything (except the click track) to the right, then remove the original song.

From there It’s either imported into my Sampling pad (A Roland SPDS) or, as I’ve used more lately get’s loaded on my ipod.

OR on occasion it’s synced to a video like what we did for Bitter Sweet Symphony, though in this case Josh used the original track for this posting. Oh and I have a cameo in the video, but you only see my back.