Kristie Addison

Spent a large part of the weekend recording drums for my album.  Got in Tory Staples, the drummer from my old band Amperzahn.  He’s currently playing for a few other artists including one of my fav NZ bands ‘Battle Circus‘.  I had planned to record drums at our fav recording studio The Rock Factory, but I soon realized we wouldn’t have enough time there as we had done no pre-production and had never even jammed on most of the songs.  So we ended up setting up for a three day recording/learning session in a rehearsal studio.

Starting early and finishing late with short breaks to catch the Santa Parade as it went past and to play an acoustic gig, the weekend went by in a blur.  I will be really interested to see how my drums tracks sound in the mix.  With no engineer on hand I was a little worried at first but everything seemed to go pretty smoothly.  I haven’t loaded all the tracks off the computer there yet.  I’m not used to using a Mac so I got a little frustrated with all the shortcuts being different.  I recorded in Logic which I have used a little before but such a long time ago that it may as well have been not at all.  However by three in the morning on Sunday I was starting to get the hang of it and even remembering to press Apple+S for ‘Save Project’ instead of Ctrl+S for ‘Solo Track’

Also by three in the morning on Sunday; Tory had blisters on his hand and the rehearsal room floor was decorated with a sprinkling of sawdust from hacked away drumsticks.  A china cymbal that had been bit damaged on tour was now completely history, and we had consumed enough caffeine to wake a drowsy elephant.  In my case that was only just enough coffee to combat the few unwise vodkas I had after the acoustic gig.

The acoustic gig on Sunday was interesting,  I was very unprepared (story of my life) having spent most of the week stressing about getting this album finished before Christmas break, and generally running about like a headless chicken (the metaphor not the band).  Played partly solo but mostly as an acoustic duo with  friend of mine Mike Johns.  Had good feed back after the gig so either we played well thanks to our 20 minute practice before the show or all our friends are sweet kind liars

I borrowed a Yamaha DT Xpress 4 for some recording tonight, along with a drummer since drums are not really my forté.  I thought an electric drum kit would be perfect for an evening recording session at home, as it wouldn’t keep the neighbors up like an acoustic kit would.

I wasn’t familiar with the kit before we started, so when it arrived I was actually expecting a USB port for MIDI.  But unfortunatly only the higher models that come USB equipped (so I hear).  The kit does have a MIDI out, but no MIDI in so my cunning trick I was planning was foiled from the beginning.  (This cunning trick would have involved recording the drums on a midi track, quantising and editing to my satisfaction then running the MIDI signal back into the kit and this time recording the audio output.  It’s a very cunning trick that works quite well with keyboards. )

Instead of the cunning trick I just recorded straight from the line out into my USB interface.  I was really impressed with the easiness of the whole process.  Just two leads.  Not ten mics and ten mic leads and ten mic stands and endless soundchecks.  And the whole kit folds down so easily that you can carry it up the stairs in one trip.

Obviously an electric drum kit can not replace a really nice kit in a great studio, but for home recording I think it’s a really great idea.  I loved the samples in the DTXpress, it has some that are cheesy and fun and some that are very usable.  While I probably wouldn’t go out and buy this particular model myself, as I definitly want a USB port (or at least a MIDI-in as well as a MIDI-out) after playing round with it I am definitly keen to try out some of Yamaha’s other electric drum kits to find something that suits my purposes.