So as a drummer, I spent my entire fledgling music career playing acoustic drums. But over the years of working with other musicians as a collaborator, I was plugging away at my own project, recording keyboard and synth parts in my bedroom, working toward a collection of my own songs. In 2023 it came time to put the thing that most people lay down first, the drum tracks, down. (I recorded everything else to a click track or very simple drum machine loop). Because 2023 coincided with me going through 6 months of chemotherapy, the original plan to bring all my home made tracks into a "proper" studio and record drums there was really not feasible. In terms of budget, I knew that I was really looking at a weekend length stay in a studio...and the idea of me being able to get 11 tracks done in 2 days (something I have done in the past on other people's records) was just not going to be in the cards. There were times, do to exhaustion, that I could maybe play through a song once or twice before needing a break.
So, I went a very different route, fell down a wormhole I had never even glanced into, and invested the "studio" funds into an electronic kit.
This was TOTALLY new territory for me...and it was very interesting to learn how far forward that technology has come. This is a Roland TD27kv2 for those keeping score at home. I did not use any of the onboard sounds in the unit itself, but instead used a program called Superior Drummer, which is a library of really well recorded drum sounds of all different types of kits. So I was able to pick and choose and tune each instrument as I went, which was really cool. It allowed me to even have a couple different types of kits and room tones for songs where I felt like a "bigger" or "smaller, tighter" room would sound good. Recording my tracks that way, in the comfort of my own den, made making a record during cancer treatment possible...which was such a gift.
And a deep dive into some pretty steep learning curve tech. After I released the record in 2024, I decided for the album release to play it as a solo show, as I had played everything on the record myself. It is a very layered, orchestral sounding chamber popish album, with much of the sound made up of Mellotron sounds as well as other vintage synths. So I decided to play the electronic kit on stage (a first!), triggering the sounds from the record and controlling and mixing the other tracks through my lap top. This involved using Ableton Live program, in conjunction with the Roland triggering Superior Drummer...and then both signals going out to the house (along with my vocal) and a feed coming back into in ear monitors, which featured a different mix including some click tracks and prompts. A lot of stuff to learn for a guy who usually just hits things, haha. But for a first go, it went off almost without a hitch!
