Anderton

If you're getting started in desktop mastering, these five tips will serve you well by Craig Anderton Mastering is a specialized skill; but if you want to be able to master your own material, the only way you’ll get good at it is to do it as much as possible. While we’d need a book to truly cover desktop mastering (I like Steve Turnidge’s Desktop Mastering book so much I endorsed it), these five essential tips will make your life a lot easier, regardless of your level of expertise. Save all of a song’s plug-in processor settings as presets.After listening to the mastered version for a while, if you decide to make “just one more” slight tweak—and the odds are you will—it will be a lot easier if you can return to where you left off. (For analog processors, take a photo of the panel knob positions.) Saving successive presets makes it easy to return to earlier version. With loudness maximizers, never set the “ceiling” (maximum level) to 0dB. Some CD pressing plants will reject CDs if they consistently hit 0dB for more than a certain number of consecutive samples, as it’s assumed that indicates clipping. Furthermore, any additional editing—even just crossfading the song with another during the assembly process—could increase the level above 0. Don’t go above -0.1dB; -0.3dB is safer. Setting an output ceiling (i.e., maximum output level) below 0dB will ensure that a CD duplicator doesn't think you've created a master with distortion. Typical values are 0.1dB to 0.5dB. Halve that change. Even small changes can have a major impact—add one dB of boost to a stereo mix, and you’ve effectively added one dB of boost to every single track in that mix. If you’re fairly new to mastering, after making a change that sounds right, cut it in half. For example, if you boost 3dB at 5kHz, change it to 1.5dB. Live with the setting for a while to determine if you actually need more—you probably don’t. Bass management for the vinyl revival. With vinyl, low frequencies must be centered and mono. iZotope Ozone has a multiband image widener, but pulling the bass range width fully negative collapses it to mono. Another option is to use a crossover to split off the bass range, convert it to mono, then mix it back with the other split. Narrowing the bass frequencies can make a more "vinyl-friendly" recording. Here, the bass region (Band 1) has been narrowed to mono with a setting of -100.0\\\%. The “magic” EQ frequencies. While there are no rules, problems involving the following frequencies crop up fairly regularly. Below 25Hz: Cut it—subsonics live there, and virtually no consumer playback system can reproduce those frequencies anyway. 300-500Hz: So many instruments have energy in this range that there can be a build-up; a slight, broad cut helps reduce potential “muddiness.” 3-5kHz: A subtle lift increases definition and intelligibility. Be sparing, as the ear is very sensitive in this range. 15-18kHz: A steep cut above these frequencies can impart a warmer, less “brittle” sound to digital recordings. Craig Anderton is Editor Emeritus of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.

So is this a crazy or brilliant idea? Better read the entire review before making up your mind $999.99 MSRP, $499.99 street www.peavey.com www.autotuneforguitar.com by Craig Anderton When Gibson introduced their Robot self-tuning technology, I took a lot of flak on forums for defending the idea. A typical comment was “I already know how to tune a guitar, that’s a really stupid idea” to which my response was “yes, but can you tune all six strings perfectly in under 15 seconds?” In my world, time is money. Sure, I can tune a guitar. But when I was recording sample and loop libraries with guitar, I’d spend 30-40\% of my time tuning, not playing, because libraries have to be perfectly in tune. To pick up a guitar, pull up a knob, strum, and get back to work was a revelation. And as a side benefit, being able to do alternate tunings live in the blink of an eye, and get back to perfect tuning without making the audience wait, were powerful recommendations for automatic tuning. Which brings us to the AT-200. It’s based on an entirely different approach and technology compared to Robot tuning, but accomplishes many of the same goals—and has its own unique attributes that are made possible only by clever application of DSP. Robot tuning works by using electronics to monitor the string pitch, and servo motors to tune the strings physically by turning the machine heads. The AT-200 is based on Antares’ Auto-Tune—yes, the same vilified/praised technology used on vocalists to do everything from turn their voices into machine-like gimmicky to touching a vocal line so transparently and subtly you don’t even know it’s being used. Sure, Auto-Tune is used to make lousy singers sound bearable. But it’s also a savior for great singers who nail the vocal performance of a lifetime except for that one flat note at the end of a phrase. With the AT-200, Auto-Tune uses DSP-based pitch transposition to correct each string’s audio output so it sounds in tune (Fig. 1). As a result, the physical string itself can be out of tune, but it doesn’t matter; what you hear coming out of the amp is in tune. This leads to a disconnect for some people, because the physically vibrating string may not match what comes out of your amp (this also happens with the Line 6 Variax when you do alternate tunings; Robot technology doesn’t do this, because it’s adjusting the actual string pitch). Fig. 1: The board that serves as the AT-200’s pet brain. This is a little bizarre at first, but it simply means turning up the amp to where it’s louder than the strings (not too hard, given that the AT-200 is a solid-body guitar). In the studio, if you’re using headphones while laying down a part, you won’t hear the strings anyway. As a result there can be times when your brain is saying “it’s not in tune” while your ears are telling you “it’s in tune.” Believe your ears! If you tune close enough to begin with, Auto-Tune doesn’t have to work too hard and the most you’ll hear is a chorusing effect if the strings are slightly off-pitch. There’s a sonic difference between the Auto-Tuned sound and that of the straight pickups; the level is lower, and the sound lacks some of the treble “snap” of the magnetic pickups (I really like the pickups, by the way). However, what you don’t hear are the artifacts typically associated with pitch-shifting. When recording, I simply increased the input level on the interface and added some high-frequency shelving to compensate. More importantly, the “native” Auto-Tuned needs to be fairly neutral to allow for the upcoming guitar emulations; if there’s too much “character” that’s weighted toward a specific guitar, then you have to “undo” that before you can start emulating other guitar sounds. BUT IF YOU THINK THAT’S ALL THERE IS TO IT . . . This might seem like a good time to stop reading if you have other things to do—okay, there are signal processors that tune each string, great, I get it. But keep reading. One of the side benefits is there’s perfect intonation (what Antares calls “Solid-Tune™”) as you play. You know those chords with really difficult fingerings where you end up pushing a string slightly sharp? No more, as long as you strum the chord after fretting (if the pitch changes after strumming, if the note remains within a small pitch window, the AT-200 will correct it; otherwise it will think you’re bending, and not correct it). It’s freakish to play a guitar where no matter how difficult the fingerings or where you are on the neck, the intonation is perfect. Not only is this aesthetically pleasing, but there’s a “domino effect” with distortion: You hear the same kind of “focused” distortion normally associated with simply playing tonics and fifths. Note that it’s not doing Just Intonation; everything still relates to the western 12-tone scale (but I’d love to see an add-on for different intonations). If you think this would cause problems with bends or vibrato, Antares has figured that out. If a pitch is static, Auto-Tune will correct it. But as soon as the pitch starts to move outside of a small pitch window because you’re bending a note or adding vibrato, the correction “unlocks” automatically for that string. You simply don’t run into situations where Auto-Tune tries to correct something you don’t want corrected. The system also allows for alternate tunings, as long as the tuning involves shifting down (future add-ones are slated to address alternate tunings where pitches are shifted up from standard). Auto-Tune works based on the pitch at the nut, but you can fool it into thinking the nut is somewhere else. For example, suppose you want a dropped D tuning. Fret the second fret on the sixth string (F#), strum the strings, and initiate tuning. Auto-Tune will “think” the F# is the open E, and tune F# to E. So now when you play the E open string, you’ll hear a D as the string is transposed down two steps. It gets better. Want that heavy metal drop tuning? Barre on, for example, the fourth fret while tuning, and now whatever you play will be transposed down four semitones. Being a wise guy, I tried this on the 12th fret and—yes, I was now playing bass. What’s more, it actually sounds like a bass. Say what? Or try this: fret the 12th fret on only the 5th and 6th strings. Now when you play chords, you’ll have one helluva bottom end. The manual gives suggested fingering to create various alternate tunings—open G, baritone, DADGAD, open tunings, and the like. The only caution with alternate tunings is that you need to press lightly on the string when engaging the Auto-Tune process. If you press too hard and the string goes slightly sharp, Auto-Tune will obligingly tune those fretted strings slightly flat to compensate. WHAT ABOUT THE GUITAR? Of course, all the technology in the world doesn’t matter if the guitar is sketchy. It seems Peavey wanted to avoid the criticisms the original Variax endured (“great electronics, but what’s with the funky guitar?”). Obviously Line 6 did course corrections fairly quickly with subsequent models, and the recent James Tyler Variax is a honey of a guitar by any standards. But Peavey needed to walk the fine line between a guitar you’d want to play, and a price you’d want to pay. They choose the basic Predator ST “chassis,” which is pretty much Peavey’s poster child for cost-effectiveness. Read the reviews from owners online; I’ve seen several where someone brought a Predator as a replacement or second guitar, but ended up using it as their main axe. The general consensus—which includes me—is that the Predator is a highly playable, fine-sounding guitar whose quality belies its price, with solid action and out-of-the-box setup. Not surprisingly, so is the AT-200. Spec-wise, it has a bolt-on, North American rock maple neck with a 25.5" scale, 24 frets, 15.75" radius, and rosewood fingerboard (Fig. 2). Fig. 2: The AT-200 features a bolt-on neck. The body is solid bassword, with a quilted maple cap; available finishes are black and candy apple red. The pickups are humbuckers with alnico 5 magnets (Fig. 3), and one of the highly welcome AT-200 features it that you can use it like a regular guitar—if the batteries die during the gig, just pull up on the tone knob and the pickups go straight to the audio output. Fig. 3: Pickups and the complement of controls. Other features are a three-way pickup selector, and string-through-body construction for maximum sustain (Fig. 4). Fig. 4: Detail of the bridge pickup and bridge; note the string-through-body construction. The tuners are decent. They’re diecast types with a 15:1 gear ratio, mounted on a functional but plain headstock (Fig. 5). The guitar doesn’t come with a case, so factor that into the price; also figure you’ll want the breakout box, described later. Fig. 5: AT-200 headstock and tuners. EASE OF USE The guitar ships with a removable “quick start” overlay and frankly, it could double as the manual (Fig. 6). Fig. 6: This pretty much tells you everything you need to know to get up and running. You make sure four AA cells are inserted (see Fig. 7; alkalines last about nine hours); plugging in the guitar turns on the electronics. Push down on the Tone control to activate the Auto-Tune technology, strum all six strings, and push down on the volume knob ot initiate tuning. Done. Yes, it’s that simple. If you want Auto-Tune out of the picture, pull up on the Tone knob. Fig. 7: The battery compartment is closed, and to the right of the exposed cavity with the electronics. THE FUTURE I never advise buying a product for what it “might” do, only for what it does, because you never know what the future will bring. That said, though, it’s clear Peavey and Antares have plans. There’s a clear division of labor here: Peavey provides the platform, while Antares provides the software. In addition to the standard 1/4" audio output, the AT-200 has a 8-pin connector + ground that connects to an upcoming breakout box. This is expected early in 1Q 2013, and is slated to sell for under $100. It will provide power to the guitar so you don’t need batteries, as well as an audio output. There will also be MIDI for use with external MIDI footswitches for tasks like preset selection, as well as doing updates. If you want to do updates but don’t want the breakout box, a “MIDI update cable” with the 8-pin connector on one end and MIDI on the other will cost $13 and allow doing updates from your computer. At the Antares end of things, this is a software-based platform so there are quite a few options. They’ve already announced an upcoming editor for live performance that runs on iOS devices; it lets you specify pickup sounds, alternate tunings, pitch shifting, “virtual capo” settings, and the like. I saw this software in prototype form at a press event that introduced the technology, so I would imagine it’s coming very soon. Antares has also announced AT-200 Software Feature Packs that add optional-at-extra-cost capabilities in three versions—Essential, Pro, and Complete. For example, the Essential includes processing for three different guitar sounds, Pro has six, and Complete has nine unique guitar voicings as well as bass. They also include doubling options (including 12 string), various tunings, and the like. These are all described on the www.autotuneforguitar.com web site. ROBOT OR AUTO-TUNE? This review wouldn’t be complete without a comparison. Both work and both are effective, but they’re fundamentally different. The biggest difference is that with the Robot system, because it works directly on tuning physical strings, “what you hear is what you get.” With alternate tunings, the guitar is actually tuned to those tunings. Also, the audio output is the sound of the string; there’s no processing. As a result, there’s zero difference between the sound made by the guitar and the sound coming out of the amp. Robot tuning is for those who prioritize tonal purity, and are willing to pay for the privilege. Auto-Tune trades off the physical string/resulting sound disconnect for more flexibility. You’ll never be able to tune physical strings up or down an octave, but you can do that with virtual strings—and the tuning process is close to instant. Although the audio is processed, the impact on the sound is minimal at best but still, there’s a layer of electronics between the string and you. On that other hand, that’s also what allows for emulating different characteristic guitar sounds. What’s surprising, though, is that there’s no discernible latency. (Well, there has to be some; laws of physics, and all that. But it’s not noticeable, and I’m very sensitive to timing.) Furthermore, the fact that this processing doesn’t add artifacts to the guitar’s tone is, to me, an even more impressive technical accomplishment than changing pitch. BELIEVE IT With apologies to Peavey and Antares, there’s something about this concept that makes you want to dismiss it. C’mon . . . Auto-Tune on a guitar? Taking out-of-tune strings and fixing them? Perfect intonation no matter where you play? Add-on software packs? What the heck does this have to do with my PRS or Les Paul or Strat? Now, those are real guitars! Except for one thing: the AT-200 is a real guitar (Fig. 8). Unless you notice the 8-pin connector, you’d never know there was anything different about this guitar. Play it, and it plays like a guitar . . . and it feels and looks like a guitar. All the magic is “under the hood,” and you don’t know it’s there until you start playing. The ease of use is off the hook. If it takes you more than a minute or two to be up and running, you might want to consider a different career. Fig. 8: The AT-200 doesn’t exactly look like a high-tech marvel . . .which is one of its strengths. Yes, it’s priced so that those getting serious about guitar can afford an AT-200, and derive the benefits of not having to hassle with tuning or worry about intonation. But I suspect a lot of veterans will add this to their guitar collection as well. After I got used to Robot tuning, it was always strange to go back to guitars where I just couldn’t push a button and be in tune. After getting used to the AT-200, it’s disorienting to go back to guitars that don’t have perfect intonation. Nor is it like vocals, where using Auto-Tune arbitrarily to create perfect pitch takes the humanity out of the performance; with guitar chords, out-of-tune notes just sound . . . well, wrong, and well worth fixing. And if you want to bend and slide, go ahead—the correction will wait in the wings until you want it again. Overall, this is a surprising, intelligent, and novel application of technology with extraordinarily practical consequences. After seeing prototypes, I expected to think the AT-200 was clever; I didn’t expect to think it was brilliant . . . but it is. Craig Anderton is Editor in Chief of Harmony Central and Executive Editor of Electronic Musician magazine. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.

Check out this collection of tips and techniques from one of today’s most prolific UK Garage producers by Jeremy Sylvester Garage has been around since the 1990s, but it continues to influence other EDM genres as well as retain its own following. Whether you’re interested in creating “pure” Garage music using UK Garage loops or want to incorporate some its elements in other forms of music, the following tips should help get you off to a good start. THE GROOVE Drums are the backbone of any Garage production, and a solid drum groove is the most essential element in any UK Garage track. Before getting into choosing your sounds, remember that timing is everything. Shuffling, swung beats give UK Garage its unique stamp—so when building your drum pattern, it’s important to set your quantize/swing groove to between 50-56\% (Fig. 1). This will set the tone for the rest of the elements added later on. Fig. 1: Setting a little swing for MIDI grooves or quantized audio grooves gives more of a Garage “feel.” This screen shot shows the Swing parameter in Logic Pro's Ultrabeat virtual drum machine. BUILDING THE DRUM KIT Creating good drum patterns requires a good drum kit, so let’s start with the kick drum. Spend time searching for good sounds; for 4x4 Garage tracks, a strong, punchy kick drum that’s naturally not too bass heavy, and with a some midrange frequency presence, is the perfect starting point for any groove. This will leave some headroom for when you start to look for bass sounds to create bass line patterns later on; you don’t want the kick to take over the low end completely. Once you’ve decided on a kick (of course, with DAWs you can always change this later on), search for a nice crispy clap. If it has too much sustain, try to take some release off it and shorten its length. You want it to sound quite short and sharp, but not too short as you still want to hear its natural sound. Next, begin to add all of the other elements for your pattern. It’s very important to keep the groove simple, with enough space in the groove to add all your other sounds later on. Lots of people make the mistake (myself included!) of over-complicating the drum—as they say, less is more. The key is to make sure every element of your pattern has a distinct role, so that every drum element is there for a reason. When programming drums, imagine you are a “drummer” and concentrate on how a drummer plays to help you construct patterns. Another good tip is to make several patterns, all slightly different, to give your overall groove some variety. Also, keep your hi-hats neat and tidy; you don’t want them to sound undefined and “soupy.” PLACEMENT AND EFFECTS Keep the kick drum and other bass parts in mono, with other drum elements (such as hi-hats) in stereo to give the groove a nice spread. Maintaining bass frequencies in mono is particularly important if you ever expect a track to appear on vinyl. Resist temptation, and keep effects on the drums to a bare minimum. Too much FX (such as reverb) can drown out the groove and make it too wet, which sacrifices the energy of the drums. This will be very noticeable over a club sound system, more so than in the studio. Additionally, try playing around with the pitch of the sounds (Fig. 2). De-tuning kick drums or percussive elements of your groove will bring another dimension to your pattern and completely change the overall vibe. Fig. 2: Most samplers and drum modules (this screen shot shows Native Instruments' Battery) provide the option to vary pitch for the drum sounds. CHORDS, STABS, AND MELODIES As well as the groove drum pattern, another important element of UK Garage is the melodic structure. If like many people you don’t play keyboard, then you can always use one-shots/hits to help you. One-shots can be in the form or short chord keyboard hits, bass notes, percussive sounds, or synth stabs. When adding melodic elements to create a pattern, listen to the drum groove you have and work with it, not against it. The rhythmic pattern of your melody must complement the groove; in other words, the drum pattern and melody line must “talk to each other” and the melody must become part of the groove. Try using lowpass filters automated by an envelope, as well as effects, to manipulate and create movement with the sound; then add reverb for depth and warmth. Use parameter controls over velocity maps, for example, to control cutoff and decay and add variations. This will create shape, and adding some compression will really bring out some new life in your sound. If you are going for a rhythmic UK garage 4x4 style, space is important. When I mentioned above about “less is more,” it really means something here. Picture a melody in your head and imagine how people will be “dancing” to it. This will determine the way you create your melodic groove pattern. UKG melodic patterns tend to be “off beat” grooves, not straight line groove patterns. This is what gives Garage its unique style and vibe. When choosing sounds, try to look for rich harmonic sounds; some good options are obscure jazzy chords, deep house chord stabs, or even sounds sampled from classic keyboard synths (such as Korg’s M1 keyboard for those classic organ and house piano patches). ARRANGEMENT When arranging your song, always keep the DJ in mind and imagine how he/she will be mixing your track within their DJ set. The intro is very important for DJ’s as this allows them enough room to mix your track into another. Make your arrangement progress in 16 bar sections, so the DJ and the clubber know when to expect changes within the song. Within each of these sections, some elements of the groove may consist of 1, 2, 4 or 8-bar repeating patterns. These elements tend to move around by adding, removing, or altering every four or eight bars. Breakdowns tend to be in the middle of the track, so if you have a track that is six minutes long, you can drop the breakdown around the three-minute mark. There is no hard and fast rule to this, so use your imagination; this is intended only as a guide. You could also have a mini-breakdown on either side of this, for instance, right after the intro and just before the first major section of the song when everything is in. Be imaginative, and experiment with different arrangement ideas. You could start with drums, then lead into some intro vocals and then the mini drop, or you could start with a non-percussive intro that builds up into a percussive drum section and then goes into the song’s main section; it’s totally up to you and depends on the elements you have within your song. It’s also a good idea to finish the final section of your sing with drums. This is something a DJ really likes, as it allows once again for them to start mixing in another track within their DJ set. VOCALS AND VOCAL CHOPS Garage is known for its very percussive vocal chops; this is an essential part of the genre, especially when you are doing “dub” versions. You can use various kinds of MIDI-based samplers and software instruments to do this. Back in the day, Akai samplers were very popular—you would chop up and edit sounds within the device, map it across a keyboard, and play it manually. Nowadays there are many different ways of doing this, with instruments uch as Ableton Live’s Simpler or Logic’s EXS24 being the most popular. Another option is to slice a file (e.g., like the REX format; see Fig. 3), then map the individual slices to particular notes. Fig. 3: Slicing a file and mapping the slices to MIDI notes makes it easy to re-arrange and play vocal snippets on the fly, or drop them into a production. Furthermore, you can often re-arrange slices within the host program. In this screen shot from Reason, the original REX file mapping is on the right; the slice assignments have been moved around in the version on the left. Play around with vocals by chopping up samples every syllable. You could have a short vocal phrase of 5-6 words, but once chopped up and edited you can create double or even triple the amount of samples; this allows you possibilities to manipulate the phrase in any way you want, even completely disguising the original vocal hook. Map out these vocals across a keyboard or matrix editor, and have fun coming up with interesting groove vocal patterns over your instrumental groove pattern. Also try adding effects and filters, and play around with the sound envelopes in much the same way you would with the one shot chord sounds (as explained earlie)r. Treat the vocals as a percussive element of the track, but listening to the melody and lyrical content so it still makes sense to what the track is about. It’s a good idea to program 4-5 variations from which you can choose. I hope you find these tips useful; now go make some great music! This article is provided courtesy of Producer Pack, who produce a wide variety of sample and loop libraries. This includes the Back to 95 Volume 3 library from the article's author, Jeremy Sylvester.

iZotope goes beyond the standard DAW “channel strip” $199 download (trial version available) www.izotope.com by Craig Anderton iZotope’s Ozone has been a mainstay for “in the box” mastering engineers since the very first version appeared. But as computers became more powerful, some adventurous types started using Ozone as a plug-in for individual tracks. While that certainly had its merits, due to its appetite for CPU cycles Ozone wasn’t really optimized for multiple insertions on multiple tracks; perhaps even more importantly, its functionality was optimized specifically for mastering, not mixing. So, iZotope put Ozone on a diet, changed the focus to mixing, and created Alloy—sort of an “Ozone’s Greatest Hits,” but created specifically for multitrack mixing applications. However, since Alloy’s introduction, many DAWs now include channel strips or plug-ins that are on a par with other third-party plug-ins. Not to be left behind, iZotope has released Alloy 2—so let’s see if the concept is still relevant. OVERVIEW Alloy 2 has seven main modules: Equalizer, Transient Shaper, Exciter, two identical Dynamics processors, De-Esser, and Limiter. A signal flow graph lets you arrange these serially in any order (although dynamics can also go in parallel; more on this later), which underscores why two dynamics processors were included—you can compress signals going into the chain, and also compress at the end to smooth out dynamics changes caused by any other processing. This also allows one of my favorite techniques, which is putting two dynamics processors in series, set for very light compression; the sound is often more transparent than trying to “do it all” with one compressor. Alloy 2 also comes with lots of presets, both for individual modules and overall setups. Although I usually build presets from scratch—every recording or mixing situation is different—the presets are helpful points of departure for those who find programming their own effects daunting. Now let’s see what each module brings to the party. EQ This has eight bands, with a rich selection of responses for each band: Two “Bell” (peak/notch), three responses each for low shelf and high shelf, four lowpass and highpass types, and traditional Baxandall high and low shelving responses. This EQ definitely offers more than the typical EQ bundled in a DAW (Fig. 1). Fig. 1: The main EQ features are eight bands, and the option to choose multiple responses for each one. Note the real-time spectrum display in the background. TRANSIENT In single-band mode, this has two controls (Fig. 2). Positive Attack values sharpen attack transients, while negative values soften them. A sustain control lengthens or tightens the decay; the audible results are somewhat like compression or expansion respectively, but with a somewhat different character. Fig. 2: The Transient module is good for emphasizing percussive instruments, but can also soften attacks so they sit more in the background. This shows the single-band mode. More importantly, there’s a multiband mode with up to three bands so you can shape transients in different frequency ranges differently. EXCITER This combines an Exciter function, which is basically saturation, and stereo widening effects in your choice of single-band or multiband modes (Fig. 3). Each of up to three bands can select a blend of four different types of saturation, the amount of drive going into the saturation, and the mix of the saturated and dry sounds. The Width control sets the stereo widening effect, and of course, you can select the frequency ranges of each band. There’s also a separate high shelf so you can both increase sparkle in the lower part of the highs, but reduce the topmost part. Fig. 3: The Exciter provides controller amounts of distortion and stereo width enhancement. With Ozone, the Exciter has been my “secret mastering weapon” for quite a few cuts, but only when used in minute amounts—think of it as the audio equivalent of a homeopathic remedy. It can add definition to the mids and sparkle to the top, and even increase low-end growl a bit if your favorite Scandinavian death metal band needs it. Also note that the Width control, when set to negative values, can be a “narrow” control which is great for centering the bass in mono. Once you learn how to apply it, this is an exceptionally useful module. DYNAMICS Here’s another “goes the extra mile” module. Like the Exciter, it can be single- or multiband (again, up to three bands), and these bands can be different for the two modules. It has all the expected controls—ratio, threshold, hard/soft knee, attack, release, auto gain makeup, etc. so let’s just consider what it does differently (Fig. 4). Fig. 4: The two dynamics modules are extremely versatile. There are two characters, digital and vintage. The difference isn’t huge, although the vintage mode’s action seems a bit less “tight” as the release is non-linear and program-dependent. Individual gain and mix settings can be per-band or global; mix is particularly handy for me, as I’m a fan of parallel dry/wet compression. An extremely cool and highly unusual feature is that sidechaining is available for the entire compressor, or each individual band. These can choose individually from an external source, or from any other band—for example, the sidechain source for the high band could be the mid band. Still not enough? The overall detection circuitry has resonant highpass and lowpass filters that allow shaping the high- and low-frequency responses for the sidechain. What’s more, you can place both dynamics processors in parallel within two constraints: they both have to be either single-band or multiband, and if multiband, they need to have the same frequency bands. DE-ESSER This is pretty straightforward (Fig. 5), although it offers the options for broadband or multiband mode (as more commonly needed for de-essing). Multiband lets you define the band limits within which de-essing occurs, and there are also attack and release controls. A nice touch is that the meter can optionally show a histogram instead of just the amount of reduction happening in the “reduction band.” Fig. 5: The De-Esser is one of the more straightforward modules. LIMITER Yes, you can “sausage” your waveform if you want. The limiter has threshold and margin (the amount in dB between the limiter output and the maximum available headroom), as well as a “speed” control, which seems to set the slewing of the limiting action (e.g., primarily the release action). Like the de-esser, the meter can show a histogram. The coolest feature here, though, is the appropriation of the Ozone waveform display which shows at any instant how much reduction is being applied, and to which peaks (Fig. 6). This is an extremely helpful reality check and while it’s generally not a good idea to listen with your eyes, this puts you “in the ballpark” a lot faster than relying solely on your ears. Fig. 6: Note the display along the top that graphically shows how much peaks are being reduced. A more unusual feature, the “phase rotate” option, is intended primarily for voice and narration. It alters a waveform’s phase to reduce waveform asymmetry; this lets you get a little more level, as you don’t have the positive or negative waveform peak defining the maximum available level because these are evened out more. THE EXTRAS There are a ton of little extras in Alloy 2; really, too many to mention here—so download the trial version, and see if you can find them all. For example, a History button makes it easy to retreat through your editing moves if you went too far, and the innocent-looking Options button brings up various Cool Stuff for each of the modules, as well as for the meters and spectrum display. For example, with the meters you can choose the metering response and scale, hold time, and the like; there are also a lot of general setup features. In the multiband processors, you can choose whether to have 1, 2, or 3 bands (although why you’d choose 1 baffles me, given that you can just choose single-band mode). So it’s time to answer the original question of whether Alloy 2 brings processing options sufficiently different from whatever your DAW includes to merit the expense. As far as I’m concerned, the answer is yes. While many programs have many of these modules, Alloy 2’s strength is its depth—like the EQ offering eight bands with multiple responses instead of the usual four-band parametric you’d expect to find, and the multiband operation for the exciter, dynamics, and transient shaper. In essence, iZotope has produced a “mastering suite” for individual tracks that offers both flexibility and detail. It will likely take quite awhile before the average DAW’s bundled effects catch up with what Alloy 2 can do—but by then, we’ll probably be reviewing Alloy 3. Craig Anderton is Editor Emeritus of Harmony Central and Executive Editor of Electronic Musician magazine. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.

Loops are great—but they're even better when you can blend in some "real" instruments by Craig Anderton If you base your act around Ableton Live, then you have one of the easiest ways ever to record your gig: Click on the record button, and your various moves (clips and scenes you’ve triggered, effects tweaks, and the like) will be recorded in the Arrangement view. But what if you also do vocals, or have other instrumentalists in the band? Or want to record your MIDI keyboard controller’s output? You can feed those into Live as well, and record them as linear hard disk tracks or MIDI tracks, respectively―here’s how. The screen shot (Fig. 1) shows tracks 16 and 17 being fed with guitar and vocals, respectively. Fig. 1: Ableton Live set up for a live performance situation (the effects used for guitar are along the bottom: Compressor, Native Instruments' Guitar Rig 5, and PingPong Delay). The following describes how to set up those external tracks for recording. 1. Under Audio From, set the Input Type to the audio interface being used by the instrument. 2. Below that field, choose the appropriate audio interface input channel for the various instruments. 3. Set monitor to In so that the input is always being monitored. 4. Audio To will usually go to the master output (unless you want to choose sends only for some reason). 5. Make sure the Track Activator that shows the track number is activated if you want to hear the track. But note that sometimes you’ll want to mute a track (e.g., an instrument that’s not being used at a particular time), in which case it’s handy to deactivate this function. 6. Moves made with clips and faders are recorded automatically, but you’ll need to record-enable the audio tracks. Ctrl-click on the record enable buttons to enable multiple tracks. Recording a MIDI track is almost identical: Set up the inputs to listen to the correct MIDI input, set Monitor to In, and assuming a soft synth is assigned to the track, just enable record. If you’re using MIDI to drive an external sound module, choose the desired interface output under MIDI To (but even if you select No Output, MIDI data will still be recorded to the track if it’s record-enabled). Craig Anderton is Editor Emeritus of Harmony Central and Executive Editor of Electronic Musician magazine. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.

New to the POD series of processors and want to make your own sounds? Here’s how to get off to a good start by Neal Vanderhoof [Note: This article says written by Craig Anderton due to the way this software decides who's an author, but it was indeed written by Neal Vanderhoof, who wanted to contribute what he'd learned to POD HC owners] This guide is aimed at newbies to the POD HD experience—as well as those who have dismissed, given negative reviews, or returned one of the POD HD line of products because of the higher-than-average learning curve for such not-so-simple computer based gear. Out of the box, I’d say the HD500 is not “gig-ready.” Of course it functions, unless UPS decided to drop it off a building on the way to its final destination. I’m referring to the fact that no set of presets designed by another guitarist who’s probably using different strings, a different pick, different playing style, and listening to different types of music is probably not going to design presets that fit your needs. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the HD line of effects are highly editable, and the sounds you want are in there—somewhere! But you need to understand how to make the HD do your bidding, and the following is what I recommend doing as you take as your first steps to get to know this product properly . . . LESS IS MORE Forget about all your other gear except the guitar (or guitars) you plan to use with this unit. Get a great pair of headphones; do not use an amp at low volumes at this stage of the process. This will perhaps seem strange to you, but as you’ll see, there are very good reasons why I recommend this approach. POWER SUPPLY SECURITY Fig. 1: The power connector is toward the right. Be very careful with the power supply and how you plug it in, where it sits in your studio or on stage, and be as gentle as possible with the power connection point (Fig. 1) as it can break fairly easily if you’re not careful. A replacement power supply is about $50, but it’s more costly if the jack inside the unit breaks or “falls in.” Sure it’s all covered by a warranty, but who wants to wait weeks for something as simple as a power supply problem? EXERCISE YOUR PRINTER Take the time to find and either print (or simply save) the expanded HD500 Users Guide online. The manual with the unit is really just a getting started guide, and you want to do more than just get started. UPDATE YOUR RIG AND YOUR EDITOR While reading through the expanded manual, use the most recent version of the free Line 6 Monkey utility program to upgrade your unit to the full 22 amps/cabs (as well as added features like bias adjustment). Connect the HD to your computer’s USB port, make sure you have a working internet connection, boot up Monkey, the follow the updating procedures (Fig. 2). Fig. 2: The Line 6 Monkey analyzes your system, and lets you know if any elements need updating. Note that when doing any updates with any gear via USB (not just Line 6 gear), don’t use a USB hub—plug directly into a computer’s USB port. Also while you're connected, download the POD HD500 Edit software! GET STARTED WITH TWEAKING I strongly suggest not bothering with any of the preset banks in the POD HD Edit software, at least for now, but do start your explorations with the editing software—it makes many “hidden” inner workings and signal paths of the unit much clearer.Also, the advantage of copy and paste for some sections of repeated programming is useful (Fig. 3). Fig. 3: The POD HD Edit software unlocks the programmability of your POD. After completing your updates, go to an empty User Bank and start there with a blank slate. Any patches from any of the presets can be simply dragged in and dropped into any slot you choose and modified if needed, but it’s important to know the basic amp sounds and default settings. The amp and cabinet are the foundations of any preset, so the better you know the various amp qualities, the easier it is to choose one that’s closest to what you need. Each amp has two versions, Pre and Full. Pre is just that—the Preamp section of whatever amp you’re using, and any effects you may want to add in the signal chain. However, if you’re not following the unit with a guitar amp, you should choose Full as it will then model whatever cabinets and microphones you want. Using the headphones automatically puts each amp into this mode (I told you there was a good reason!); this mode is also adjustable, as described in the advanced manual. Without turning the volume up too loud (remember, take care of your hearing), plug your guitar into the 1/4" input jack, put on the headphones, then sit with your HD500 connected to your computer with POD HD500 Edit running. As you change amps you’ll hear each through the headphones, which gives you a very detailed impression of the amp sound. Also, please don’t let the name alone fool you. Just because it’s a Vox or Fender doesn’t mean it can’t be used for heavy metal, or a Bogner or Mesa can’t be used for warm, clean sounds—much depends on the combination of your guitar’s volume knob setting and each amp’s input gain. Spend some quality time checking out all the amp sounds in full mode, as this will serve you well in the future. Another advantage of listening through headphones is that you can hear what the amp should sound like when turned up to a volume that’s representative of running the amp at optimum levels. Truly good headphones will cost about $150 - $300; they’re worth the expense if you’re serious about getting the most from this unit. Finally, remember that you can have two separate paths, each with their own amps and effects. This can make great stereo effects, but even when summed in mono, you can get a huge variety of sounds. LEARN—TRY—ADJUST—TWEAK—REPEAT This should go on for quite a while, until you get to know all the nuances of each amp model. Then simply run the HD500 into your DAW via USB (or by patching the audio outs to an audio interface), or with a guitar amp by patching directly into the the power amp input or an effects loop return, choosing the Full or Pre sound as appropriate. Although being able to make your own sounds is ideal, don’t overlook the tons of worthwhile presets at www.customtone.com (Fig. 5). Better yet, now you’ll know how to modify them as needed. Fig. 5: It's great to be able to roll your own, but check out what other POD HD users have created as well. And here’s one last tip before playing out: Turn your amp up to your performance stage volume you usually use, then make any final tweaks or adjustments to the HD500. Acknowledgment: Thanks to Craig Anderton for editing and additional content. He also contributed the following video to this article, which shows how a couple simple tweaks can augment a basic dual amp sound.

Gretsch’s Latest Innovation: Hickory Drums By Andy Doerschuk (originally published July 23, 2012) Hickory drumsticks? Sure, every company makes hickory sticks. Hickory drum sets? Well now, that’s an entirely different matter. Hickory has long been the primary choice for stick makers due to its hardness and shock resistance, but while experimenting with the species in its drum shells, Gretsch discovered that the wood’s density leads to a sound with substantial low end, while maintaining a solid, controlled tone with tons of clarity. Before long the new Gretsch Renown Purewood Limited Series In American Hickory was born, and as you can see from the photo, it’s a thing to behold. While the inside of the shells feature a natural finish, its outer shells are treated to a finely applied gloss lacquer to accentuate the distinct grain pattern of the wood. The classy kit comes complete with chrome hardware, die-cast hoops, Evans drumheads, and 30-degree shell bearing edges Want to make your drummer friends jealous? Gretsch Renown Purewood Hickory drum sets are available in a five-piece shell pack (MSRP $3,080.99) and a six-piece shell pack (MSRP $3,999.99). Zildjian 3 Hat Packs Expand Hi-Hat Colors By Andy Doerschuk (originally published August 16, 2012) I had a friend named Andy Florio who was a cymbal freak. He literally had more bronze in his house than you could find in a Turkish bazaar. Andy has since passed on, but if he were alive today I bet he would be all over the new hi-hat box sets coming out of Zildjian these days. Designed to promote mixing and matching of hi-hat pairs, these two new 3 Hat Packs ultimately deliver new sounds for drummers to play with. The 14" 3 Hat Pack (MSRP $969) features the legendary A Zildjian New Beat hi-hat pair. In this standard pairing, a medium weight top cymbal on top of a heavy bottom cymbal provides a powerful balance of bright overtones. The addition of a 14" K Custom Dark top hi-hat cymbal offers the darker K Zildjian colors. In contrast, the 15" 3 Hat Pack (MSRP $1,114) features the 15" K Light hi-hat pair. In this standard light pairing, a medium thin weight top cymbal on top of a medium weight bottom cymbal provides a warm balance of dark overtones. The addition of a 15" A Zildjian New Beat Top provides brighter A Zildjian colors. When using all three cymbals in the pack in every possible combination, drummers are provided with six distinct set up options that range from a lighter dark blend to a bright and full bodied tonal center. The variations also impact stick definition, chick performance, and overall dynamic range. Crescent Cymbals Makes It Debut By Andy Doerschuk (originally published July 5, 2012) You can look forward to an entirely new cymbal brand that will soon grace racks at your local drum shop. The interesting twist is that CymbalMasters, the people behind the new Crescent Cymbals brand, are hardly new faces. In fact, it’s the same team that formerly made up the U.S. distribution arm for Bosphorus brand – Stanton Moore, Jeff Hamilton, Bill Norman, and Michael Vosbein. “When we formed the original company we were determined to bring the highest quality sound to discerning musicians everywhere, but we soon found that our supply could not keep up with our demand,” says Vosbein, President and CEO of CymbalMasters. “All of us (CymbalMasters) are professional drummers so we like to be very hands on with design and development. Now we can create demand and keep up with it. I know that Crescent will be the tone that others are judged by.” Subscribe to DRUM! and get the world's best drumming features, gear insights, and lessons every month in print and digital versions.

This highly cost-effective controller makes an auspicious debut $299.99 MSRP, $199.99 street samsontech.com by Craig Anderton Keyboard controllers are available in all flavors—from “I just want a keybed and a minimal hit on my wallet” to elaborate affairs with enough faders and buttons to look like a mixing console with a keyboard attached. Samson’s Graphite 49 falls between those two extremes—but in terms of capabilities leans more toward the latter, while regarding price, leans more toward the former. It’s compact, slick, cost-effective, and well-suited to a wide variety of applications onstage and in the studio. OVERVIEW There are 49 full-size, semi-weighted keys and in addition to velocity, Graphite 49 supports aftertouch (it’s quite smooth, and definitely not the “afterswitch” found on some keyboards; see Fig. 1). Fig. 1: Applying and releasing what seemed like even pressure to me produced this aftertouch curve. Controllers include nine 30mm faders, eight “endless” rotary encoders, 16 buttons, four drum pads, transport controls, octave and transpose buttons, mod wheel, and pitch bend (Fig. 2). Fig. 2: There are dedicated left-hand controls for octave, transpose, pitch bend, and mod wheel (click to enlarge). Connectors consist of a standard-sized USB connector, 5-pin MIDI out, sustain pedal jack, and jack for a 9V adapter—generally not needed as Graphite 49 is bus-powered, but if you’re using it with something like an iPad and Camera Connection Kit that offers reduced power, an external tone module, or other hardware where you're using the 5-pin MIDI connector instead of USB, you’ll need an AC adapter. One question I always have with attractively-priced products is how they’ll hold up over time. This is of course difficult to test during the limited time of having a product for review, but apparently UPS decided to contribute to this review with some pro-level accelerated life testing. The box containing Graphite 49 looked like it had been used as a weapon by King Kong (against what, I don’t know); it was so bad that the damage extended into the inner, second box that held Graphite 49. Obviously, the box had not only been dropped, but smashed into by something else . . . possibly a tractor, or the Incredible Hulk. But much to my surprise, Graphite worked perfectly as soon as I plugged it in. I did take it apart to make sure all the ribbon connectors were seated (and took a photo while I was it it—see Fig. 3), but they were all in place. Pretty impressive. Fig. 3: Amazingly, Graphite 49 survived UPS’s "accelerated life testing" (click to enlarge). OPERATIONAL MODES Graphite 49 is clearly being positioned as keyboard-meets-control surface, and as such, offers four main modes. Performance mode is optimized for playing virtual synthesizers or hardware tone modules, and gives full access to the various hardware controllers. Zone mode has a master keyboard orientation, with four zones to create splits and layers; the pitch bend, modulation, and pedal controllers are in play, but not the sliders, rotaries, and button controllers. Preset mode revolves around control surface capabilities for several popular programs, and is a very important feature. Setup mode is for creating custom presets or doing particular types of edits. There’s a relationship among these modes; for example, any mode you choose will be based on the current preset. So, if you create a preset with Zone assignments and then go to Performance mode without changing presets, the Performance will adopt Zone 1’s settings. PRESET MODE: DAW CONTROL Although many keyboards now include control surface capabilities, Graphite 49 provides a lot of options at this price in the form of templates for popular programs (Fig. 4). Unfortunately, though, the control surface capabilities are under-documented; the manual doesn’t even mention that Graphite 49 is Mackie Control-compatible. However, it works very well with a variety of DAWs, so I’ve written a companion article (don't miss it!) with step-by-step instructions for using Graphite 49 and smiilar Mackie Control-compatible devices with Apple Logic, Avid Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Cakewalk Sonar, Propellerhead Reason, MOTU Digital Performer, Sony Acid Pro (also Sony Vegas), Steinberg Cubase, and PreSonus Studio One Pro. (I found that Acid Pro and Vegas didn’t recognize Graphite 49 as a Mackie Control device, but they both offer the option to choose an “emulated” Mackie Control device, and that works perfectly.) Fig. 4: Graphite 49 contains templates for multiple DAWs, including Ableton Live (click to enlarge). The faders control level, the rotaries edit pan, and the buttons usual controlling solo and mute, but with some variations based on how the DAW’s manufacturer decided to implement Mackie Control (for example with Logic Pro, the button that would normally choose solo controls record enable). The Bank buttons change the group of 8 channels being controlled (e.g., from 1-8 to 9-16), while the Channel buttons move the group one channel at a time (e.g., from 1-8 to 2-9), and there are also transport controls. (Note that as Pro Tools doesn’t support Mackie Control you need to select HUI mode, which doesn’t support the Bank and Channel shifting.) Reason works somewhat differently, as Graphite 49 will control whichever device has the focus—for example if SubTractor is selected, the controls will vary parameters in SubTractor and if the Mixer 14:2 is selected, then Graphite 49 controls the mixer parameters the same way it controls the mixers in other DAWs. However Reason 6, which integrates the “SSL Console” from Record, treats each channel as its own device; therefore Graphite 49 controls one channel at a time with that one particular mixer. I tested all the programs listed above with Graphite 49, but there are additional presets for Nuendo, Mackie Tracktion, MK Control (I’m not quite sure what that is), Adobe Audition, FL Studio, and Magix Samplitude. There are also 14 user-programmable presets, and a default, general-purpose Graphite preset. This preset provides a good point of departure for creating your own presets (for example, when coming up with control assignments for specific virtual instruments). The user-programmable presets can’t be saved via Sys Ex, but 14 custom presets should be enough for most users. The adoption of the Mackie Control protocol is vastly more reassuring than, for example, M-Audio’s proprietary DirectLink control for their Axiom keyboards, which usually lagged behind current software versions. We’ll see whether these presets can be updated in the future, but it seems that the “DAW-specific preset element” relates mostly to labeling what the controls do, as the Mackie protocol handles the inherent functionality. There’s also a certain level of “future proofing” because you can create your own presets so if some fabulous new DAW comes out in six months, with a little button-pushing you’re covered. CREATING YOUR OWN PRESETS Editing custom assignments follows the usual cost-saving arrangement of entering setup mode, then using the keyboard keys (as well as some of the hardware controls) to enter data. Thankfully, the labels above the keys are highly legible—it seems that in this case, the musicians won out over the graphic designers. The relatively large and informative display (Fig. 5) is also helpful. Fig. 5: When you adjust various parameters, the display gives visual confirmation of the parameter name and its value (click to enlarge). Although I’d love to see Samson develop a software editor, the front-panel programming is pretty transparent. CONTROLS AND EDITS Let’s take a closer look at the various controls, starting with the sliders (Fig. 6). Fig. 6: There are nine 30mm sliders. While 30mm is a relatively short throw, the sliders aren’t hard to manipulate, and their size contributes to Graphite 49’s compact form factor (click to enlarge). One very important Graphite 49 feature is that there are two virtual banks of sliders—essentially doubling the number of physical controls. For example, the sliders could control nine parameters in a soft synth, but then with a bank switch, they could control another nine parameters. Even better, the rotaries and buttons (Fig. 7), as well as the pads, also have two banks to double the effective number of controls. Fig. 7: The rotary controls are endless encoders. Note that there are 16 buttons, and because there are two banks, that’s 32 switched controls per preset. Speaking of pads (Fig. 8), these provide comfortably big targets that not only respond to velocity, but aftertouch. Fig. 8: The pads are very useful for triggering percussion sounds, as well as repeatitive sounds like effects or individual notes. Rather than describe all the possible edits, some of the highlights are choosing one of seven velocity curves as well as three fixed values (individually selectable for the keyboard and pads), reversing the fader direction for use as drawbars with virtual organ instruments, assigning controls to the five virtual MIDI output ports, changing the aftertouch assignment to a controller number, and the like. Don’t overlook the importance of the multiple MIDI output ports. In its most basic form, this allows sending the controller data for your DAW over one port while using another port to send keyboard notes to a soft synth—but it also means that you can control multiple parameter in several instruments or MIDI devices within a single preset. Finally, the bundled software—Native Instruments’ Komplete Elements—is a much-appreciated addition. I’m a huge fan of Komplete, so it was encouraging to see that NI didn’t just cobble together some throwaway instruments and sounds; Elements gives you a representative taste of what makes the full version such a great bundle. A lot of “lite” versions are so “lite” they don’t really give you much incentive to upgrade, but Elements will likely leave you wanting more because what is there is quite compelling. CONCLUSIONS I’ve been quite impressed by Graphite 49, and very much enjoy working with it. The compact form factor and light weight make it very convenient to use in the studio, and UPS (along with the keyboard’s inherent capabilities) proved to my satisfaction that Graphite 49 would hold up very well for live performance. During some instances when my desktop was covered with devices I was testing, I’ve simply put Graphite 49 on my lap. There are few, if any, keyboard controllers that could fit on my lap so easily while offering this level of functionality. My only significant complaint is I feel the documentation could be more in-depth—not necessarily because there’s a problem with the existing documentation, but because I suspect that Graphite 49’s cost-effective pricing will attract a lot of newbies who may not be all that up to speed on MIDI. Veterans who are familiar with MIDI and have used controllers will have no problem using Graphite 49, but it would be shame if newbies didn’t take full advantage of Graphite 49’s considerable talents because they didn’t know how to exploit them. Samson is a new name in controllers; my first experience with their line was Carbon, which I also reviewed for Harmony Central. Its iPad-friendly design and exceptionally low cost got my attention, but Graphite 49 gives a clearer picture of where the company is heading: not just inexpensive controllers, but cost-effective ones that are suitable for prosumer and pro contexts. Graphite 49’s full-size keys, compact footprint, comfortable keybed, control surface capabilities, and pleasing aesthetic design are a big deal—and at this price, you’re also getting serious value. I’d be very surprised if Samson doesn’t have a hit on their hands. Craig Anderton is Editor in Chief of Harmony Central and Executive Editor of Electronic Musician magazine. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.

By Andrew Nusca, photos by Robert Downs (originally published in the April 2010 issue of DRUM! Magazine) Book I: Sin There is light. It’s coming through the window, hostile and unforgiving. Stanton Moore rustles awake, turns over, and looks into it. He squints. It must be morning. God, it felt like sleep finally came just a moment ago. He sits up, quickly at first, then slower — a sudden realization that his body is still stiff — exhales deeply, and runs his hand over his face. It’s swollen from the dehydration. His ears are ringing. He grasps at his glasses on the bedside table. He finds them, puts them on, gives his eyes a second to focus. He runs his hand through his hair. Last night’s Galactic show at Tipitina’s was one hell of a blowout. You’d think it would be easier by now — the band has been playing the coveted Lundi Gras gig at Tip’s for more than ten years now. But last night, when the boys ripped into “Hey Na Na” — the lead single off their new record, Carnivale Electricos — and that electric guitar buzzed, and that snare drum cracked, and the cowbell rung like the cows really were coming home, the crowd just lost it. It certainly helped that Living Colour’s Corey Glover was onstage, singing with that liquid caramel voice to the rafters, eyes rolled back and shoulders undulating like he was seeing God. But that was last night. Well, technically this morning — the sun was peeking through the needles of the bald cypress trees as the band played the final, pensive notes of “Quiet Please,” capping a marathon effort that lasted eight hours. No wonder the 39-year-old’s limbs are stiff. No matter. Today, there’s work to be done. This is New Orleans, and it’s Mardi Gras. In many ways, it was only natural that Moore’s band made an album centered on Carnival. Galactic formed 18 years ago as a New Orleans funk outfit that specialized in playing — embodying, really — its hometown’s biggest festival. After seven studio albums and two live recordings, the time felt right to record once again. Carnivale Electricos opens with nothing less than a bang: Big Chief Juan Pardo shouting megaphone orders over the thundering drums and hip-shaking bass line of “Ha Di Ka.” The party continues for another 12 tracks, from the tribal street shuffle of “Magalenha” and accordion march of “Voyage Ton Flag” to the singer-soul groove of “Out In The Street” and dirty-alley slink of “Move Fast.” Through it all, Moore’s wrists uncover new ways to subdivide the beat, bobbing and weaving among brassy horns and gurgling keys to keep the party machine pressing forward. “I’d come up with a bunch of different grooves at different tempos; I’d get to experiment in the studio by myself for a couple days,” Moore says. “Just lay down tons of ideas for the guys to come in and write to. We’d go in every day when we weren’t on the road and chip away at it. It’s a slower process, but the results are good. Being free and experimental, cutting and slicing and stacking and filtering and revamping and rewriting.” The record — which officially goes on sale in stores on Mardi Gras — is an attempt to harness the energy of Galactic’s legendary live shows and combine it with the clarity of a studio recording. “We tried to push ourselves sonically and texturally. We really want to look at it like it’s two different mediums — the studio is a different type of thing . It’s almost like painting and sculpting: both have amazing results, but they’re two different mediums, two different ways of expressing yourself. We try to dig into the possibilities and see what you can come up with.” By the album’s pensive final track, “Ash Wednesday Sunrise,” your ears are ready to surrender from the exhaustion — or do it all over again. Book II: Confession There is shouting. At any other time today, it would be from the man out in front, the tribe member called “Spy Boy” who is tasked with whooping and hollering as he leads the Mardi Gras Indians, triumphantly, down the street. But it is only 10 a.m. now, and members of the Golden Eagles tribe are quietly gathered here at Big Chief Monk Boudreaux’s modest house on Valence and Magnolia Streets to prepare for their resplendent debut. Each corner of the house is an explosion of beads and feathers in whites, blues, purples, and yellows. Tribe members assist each other in mounting elaborate headdresses. It’s not just a nice gesture — at more than 100 lbs., the sumptuous suits are hardly something to simply throw on. There is an excited energy in the air, a low hum of chatter punctuated by laughter. It’s almost showtime. Out in front of the house, Moore is searching for his equipment. He finds what he’s looking for: a black sparkle-finish floor tom, whose woven fabric strap he slings around his neck and over his black leather jacket. Next to him, revelers prepare tambourines, cowbells, and brown-bagged 24-oz. cans of Coors beer. A fellow nearby takes up a bass drum, turns it sideways, and removes a pair of mallets from his jeans pocket, giving a test thump to the head. Ready. Behind the group, Big Chief Boudreaux steps through the door, his feathers barely clearing the moulding. In his left hand is a white plastic tambourine, which he gives a brief trial shake as his shoulders adjust to the suit’s shifting bulk. Shhk. Shhk. The clattering zils offer a reassuring rattle. From the corner of his mouth, a grin escapes. On any other day, the septuagenarian would be sitting at home in a plaid button-down and blue jeans, playing with one of his seven grandchildren. Today, he’s a proud peacock. If Galactic is a New Orleans band, Stanton Moore is most assuredly a New Orleans drummer. Raised in adjacent Metairie, he was immersed from birth in the rich musical history of his hometown. “My Mom started taking me to Mardi Gras when I was eight months old. There are pictures of me as a tiny baby in a clown outfit — I’ve been going since before I could remember.” As his chosen career took off, and Moore developed into a coveted industry veteran, he came to serve as chief diplomat for his hometown and a sound that is loosely described as “New Orleans-style drumming” — a distinctive, groove-based approach that draws as much from early African and Latin traditions as it does from the American jazz, rhythm and blues, and funk that followed it. If Galactic was the vehicle for Moore to blend together those disparate influences, Carnivale Electricos, then, is where he pulls back the curtain to expose their very roots — and discover new ones. “I was trying to dig deeper to come up with stuff I hadn’t before. A guy named Scott Kettner has been blending New Orleans and northern Brazilian stuff — it’s got a lot of similarities — and he reached out to me in 2010 to meet and share some ideas. I just took a lot from him to come up with a bunch of grooves. It was a learning experience. “What I’m going to walk away from is all the stuff I’ve learned and developed and gotten freer to walk in and improvise with alternate setups. What I’m having fun with now is playing these grooves live — it’s got me reworking my kit. I’ve actually got a brand-new kit from Gretsch that I’ll be debuting . It’s exciting, the constant forward motion.” Book III: Contrition There is rumbling. It’s 11 a.m. and the entire city is electric. The Mardi Gras Indians have made it, slowly and with much fanfare, to Second and Dryades Streets in the Faubourg Delassize neighborhood. Centuries ago, the area was a small, quiet settlement on the outskirts of New Orleans. Today, the intersection is bulging with the cavorting members of a dozen tribes of Mardi Gras Indians, some from uptown, some from downtown, all of them magnificent in their vivid plumage. Here, the tribes have historically confronted one another in an aggressive, sometimes violent display of one-upmanship. Today, more than a century after the first meeting, the tribes gather to boast, perform, and unify into a single celebratory mass. The crowd is thick. Among the baseball caps, straw hats, bandanas, and fedoras are the foot-tall feathers of Indians in their suits, all swaying to the clattering beat of the syncopating drummers. A man, missing teeth, nods his head to the beat as he sips a can of Budweiser. A woman with an auburn bob smiles as a videographer captures her gaze. A man with a white fedora shakes a tambourine, toothpick hanging out of the corner of his mouth. Another rocks his head back and forth as he plays a cowbell. As the mass of bodies sways in front of the Sportsman’s Corner bar, there’s Stanton Moore, rapping drum sticks against the head of that sparkle floor tom, tucked away in a tight nucleus of percussionists fitted with bass drums, bongos, and bells. The players are nodding their heads in unison, silently urging the crowd to follow. Despite the density, the beat never wavers, and the onlookers watch as Big Chief Boudreaux extends a hand to a peer from another tribe. The crowd erupts in cheers. Call it a simmering gumbo or merely just great New Orleans’ musical history — it’s what keeps Moore inspired year after year. “New Orleans is so rich, historically and culturally. It has such a deep well of diverse cultural influences. Unfortunately, a lot came through slavery, but with it came all of this culture directly from Africa, and Haiti, and Cuba. Georgia, Charleston — these cities rejected slaves from the Haitian slave revolt, and they came here. New Orleans is one of the only places that embraced those elements.” The annual Carnival season gives Moore a chance to bring that music back to the city from which it came. “There’s the whole Indian thing and the marching thing — I’ve tried to incorporate those two elements into what I do, and with something as deep as that you can never get to the bottom of it. What keeps me in New Orleans is that I’m into a kind of music that is bottomless. Out of that you can get jazz and funk and blues. From metal to polka to country-western, anything you can think of that has a backbeat in it traces back to New Orleans. It’s the ground zero of Western drumming for me. “If you’re going to be groove- or blues-based, there’s no better place than New Orleans. The music and the culture here is alive and in the streets on a daily basis. You’ve got brass bands and Mardi Gras Indians in the streets. Every Sunday there’s a second line in New Orleans somewhere. That brass band? Those people dancing? It’s not just on Mardi Gras. This is something these people do all year long. This is their life.” Book IV: Reconciliation There is chaos. It’s now noon, and throngs of people push into the Vieux Carré, sporting electric pink wigs and black tricorn pirate hats and sequined mustachioed masks and yellow T-shirts and black overcoats and face glitter and white driving caps and purple body paint and what appears to be bee costumes, complete with yellow and black stripes, from Halloween. The horns blare. Scraps of colorful tissue paper fall from the Spanish-style wrought iron balconies, strings of beads swing from the necks of virtually every reveler and a thousand hollered conversations strain to continue. The traffic whistles shriek. A flash of light appears over the crowd as a partygoer tosses a fistful of metallic confetti into the air over her head. The grand bell of a marching tuba peers over feathered headdresses, multicolored umbrellas and raised fleur-de-lis flags. The deafening noise ripples through the canyon of 18th century buildings, filling every crack in the cobblestones underfoot and saturating every passing second of time. It is madness. Behind it all is Stanton Moore, strutting alongside the rest of the Krewe Of Julu, an immense walking parade group that grew out of an Eastern European Jewish folk music troupe, of all things. At some point — it’s unclear when — Moore bid adieu to the Mardi Gras Indians and joined up with this group, which includes his bandmates in Galactic. They’re here, somewhere, lost in the fray. Moore and company pound away on their drums, piercing the noise with bass thumps and snare cracks to give the revelers something to hang onto besides their half-empty beer bottles. On every fourth beat, the wild-eyed crowd shouts in unison with hands raised: “Woo!” It is an assault on the senses. “I enjoy playing different things. Garage Á Trois is a different side of my playing than Galactic, which is different than the trio. It’s different personas that I take on, but all rooted in a groove-based, blues-based thing. “When I’m playing, I try to look at things on a song-by-song basis. In Garage Á Trois, for example, we might do giant tom-toms in 5/4 , and we might do more New Orleans-type stuff. As you learn all these and play them, the elements of your playing get stronger and stronger. In Garage Á Trois, it’s learning how to hit the drums with a lot of impact. I’m playing a big rack in that band; 14, 16, 18, 26 — John Bonham sizes. “Practicing — you’ve just got to make it your life. I try to shed every morning. Today, I practiced for about an hour and a half. Once you open the computer and turn on the phone and people email you — before you know it, the day is over. You have to steal some of that time for yourself. “I like where I’m at right now; I’ve learned how to get what I want out of every day. When I have days that are so busy that I don’t practice — very specific, focused, practice — I just feel unfulfilled. Sometimes I’ll improvise on what I learned the day before. Different transcriptions, different conditioning. Sometime’s it’s just one thing, like spending a couple of weeks learning an Elvin Jones solo. But then it’s yours for life. “I feel like I’m playing even better. It’s an amazing feeling. And I want it. I’ve still got the world in front of me. There’s so much to learn. It’s never ending.” Book V: Absolution There is pounding. It’s not from the drums, mind you, which Moore has been rapping on for the last five hours, but his head, which is throbbing from the yelling, the noise, the acute sense that he didn’t get nearly enough sleep. By now, the Krewe Of Julu has bloated even further as random passersby joined the revelrous procession, a pastiche of painted faces and paradiddles. As he plays on, Moore glances left, then right. No Galactic bandmates in sight. Here’s hoping they aren’t far behind. D.B.A., a popular bar on Frenchmen Street in the Marigny, looms over the horizon as the crowd surges forward. At 3 p.m., The Klezmer All-Stars will take the stage and play their peculiar mix of funk, jazz, and the dramatic, jittery Jewish style for which they are named. Moore was once a member of this band; if he’s feeling up to it, he’ll sit in on their set and play drums for another hour or two under the hot stage lights as people in the crowd whirl around in front of him, a debauched bar mitzvah flying off the rails. If the exhaustion is too great to overcome, he’ll duck into the shadows and join the sun-dazed audience, sitting on a barstool and sipping on a cold beer. This time, someone else can lead the aural assault. “I’m just finishing up a new educational project. Mark Wessels, the Webmaster for Vic Firth, spent five years writing a book called A Fresh Approach To The Drum Set. He went through every beginning-to-intermediate book out there and wanted to write the definitive foundational book, from how to hold the sticks all the way to jazz, Brazilian, and Afro-Cuban stuff. Each lesson has a little bit of technique, a little bit of reading, a little bit of understanding charts. It’s all very focused. “Mark approached me and said he felt like I was the guy to do the video elements that accompany the book. I checked the book out and thought it was really killer; I wish I had something like this when I was coming up. So I said yes. “I knew it would be a huge undertaking. I started going through the book and found that it was highlighting some weaknesses I had; it really put the musical microscope on things. Sure, you can play a samba, but can you do it at 115 bpm and not miss a note and do it on camera for every drummer in the world to judge? By going through all of that stuff again, it really helped reinforce my own foundation. “I’ve done DVDs before, but it was always presenting my thing. This was, ‘How you hold a stick.’ It’s less subjective. It doesn’t matter what you think. It was challenging — I had to get a little bit outside of my comfort zone.” Book VI: Grace There is silence. It’s 9:00 at night and Stanton Moore’s face is buried deep in a pillow. Moore had been on his feet, more or less, for 34 of the last 36 hours. Now, the drum sticks are packed away, the floor tom is set down by the door, and his signature glasses have returned to the nightstand. The reckoning has finally come. At around 7 a.m., just 25 minutes after the sun begins peeking through the cypress trees once again, parishioners will begin to fill the wooden pews at St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter. They will sit, they will stand, they will kneel; they will sing songs of praise, read sacred words, and listen to a priest fortify their beliefs ahead of 40 days of self-denial. At about the moment that the priests dip their thumbs into a bowl of palm ash, just prior to applying it in the shape of a cross to the foreheads of their parishioners, Stanton Moore will rustle awake. He will turn over, look into the light, and squint. He will sit up, exhale, reach for his glasses, and run his hand through his hair. His limbs will once again be stiff. His ears will still be ringing. No matter. Today, there’s work to be done. Groove Analysis Galactic’s new release, Carnivale Electricos, features a slew of guest artists and the feel-good funky riffs the band has become known for. This release captures all the decadent vibe of a Mardi Gras celebration and Stanton Moore’s drumming is as enjoyable as ever. Moore uses quite an assortment of percussion instruments on this recording, and live he commonly uses an auxiliary snare and low-tuned pandeiro to the left of his hi-hat. (For more information on the notation used in these examples, check out the DRUM! Notation Guide.) “Ha Di Ka” (featuring Big Chief Juan Pardo and The Golden Comanche) This one is a strange stew of tribal, Mardi Gras Indian, and techno funk influences. It begins with an odd vocal chant and an accented low tom sixteenth-note groove and doesn’t feature Moore’s typical hint of swing. A funky two-handed groove kicks in next with an electronic-sounding snare. For this pattern there’s a bit of swing happening and Moore splits his hands between his hi-hat and snare, moving his right hand over to play the accented backbeats. This section ends with an agogo bell fill played between a lower pitched bell and a higher pitched bell (triangular note heads). “Hey Na Na” (featuring David Shaw and Maggie Koerner) This may be Galactic’s attempt at a radio hit. It’s an upbeat party song and Moore plays a straightforward two-measure pattern for much of this one. “Move Fast” (featuring Mystikal and Mannie Fresh) This track has a simple groove with swung sixteenth-notes that Moore tastefully embellishes with what sounds like an auxiliary snare with the wires off and the pandeiro he often employs. I’ve notated them with white and black triangular note heads respectively. The second line shows a temporary shift to a sixteenth-note hi-hat pattern but otherwise the groove stays the same. 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USB-powered, 25-key portable keyboard with arpeggiator $110 MSRP, $70 street www.korg.com by Craig Anderton Laptops and iPads have spawned a new product category—compact controllers, designed for music on-the-go, that can fit in a travel bag, small suitcase, or even a laptop bag. However, during the process of reviewing these I’ve also found them very convenient to pop into a USB port when I want to test something without having to even leave my chair. The tiny footprint additionally means that controllers with faders, buttons, etc. (like Korg’s nanoKONTROL 2, reviewed here as part of the nanoSERIES2 controllers) are a fast, efficient way to make tweaks. The microKEY25 has (duh!) micro keys that fit linearly in just under 12", as opposed to the 14" required for 25 full-size keys; the up/down key travel is about 3/8", and there’s just enough resistance to the key motion so they actually have quite a good feel. The USB port is a standard B-type connector, not mini or micro; while the miroKEY25 is class-compliant, a dedicated USB/MIDI driver allows using the Korg KONTROL editor. The keyboard’s velocity is very predictable (i.e., when I hit what a thought was a smooth change from low to high velocity, that’s exactly what showed up in the DAW piano roll), but no aftertouch. The unit's weight is 1.43 lbs., and it draws under 100mA from the USB port. As a result, the microKEY25 can also be iPad-powered and when used with the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit, works with Core MIDI-compatible apps (e.g., Korg’s iMS-20). However, Korg recommends using the keyboar with a powered hub for extended use. The controls shown in Fig. 1 include a joystick (which you can push to obtain a switch control) and four buttons: Arpeggiator, sustain/tap tempo, octave down, and octave up. Fig. 1: The left side of the microKEY25 contains all the controls. The octave buttons use color and flashing to indicate the current octave range—green for one octave offset, orange for two, red for three, and flashing red for four (a total of ±8 octaves). The joystick defaults to providing modulation when moved up, breath control when moved down, and pitch bend in the left and right directions; the button produces a control 67 message. Except for bend, all of these can be re-assigned to different controllers. SOFTWARE The microKEY25 comes with licenses for downloadable free software: Korg M1Le virtual instrument (with $99 upgrade offer to the full Korg Legacy Collection Special Bundle), Applied Acoustics Systems’ instruments (Strum Acoustic Session, Lounge Lizard Session, and Ultra Analog Session), Toontrack’s EzDrummer Lite software drum sound module, and a discount coupon for Ableton Live, Live Suite, and Live LE software. While these are a decent bonus, you can also download the free Korg KONTROL editor (Fig. 2) and companion, cross-platform USB-MIDI driver. With Windows, both are x86 programs but work with 64-bit operating systems. Fig. 2: The KONTROL software adds considerable flexibility to the microKEY25 by letting you re-assign the controllers, choose velocity curves, and determine arpeggiator settings. Speaking of Windows, I initially ran into the dreaded Windows MIDI port limitation problem (not surprising, given how much stuff I review that loads MIDI drivers). This problem manifests itself as software (in this case, the KONTROL software) not being able to recognize a USB device like the microKEY25, even though the driver software shows up as being connected and recognized. The Windows MIDI port limitation was a known issue with Windows XP but I wasn’t aware of the same issue with Windows 7. After some quality time spent with Google, the most common answer is that yes, there is still a port limitation, but now it’s 32 ports . . . maybe. Or maybe not. In any event, despite the lack of a definitive answer I ran a batch process (as described in this article) to show all hidden devices under Sound, Video, and Game controllers, deleted all unused drivers, and the KONTROL software worked perfectly. Cause and effect? Probably. So if the software doesn’t seem to be working, check your ports before you call Korg’s tech support. Anyway, the software gives you quite a few options. You can choose separate controller numbers for the joystick up and down directions, the joystick button, the sustain button, and choose arpeggiator characteristics. The keyboard offers 8 velocity curves or a variable constant velocity value. Note that any changes you make in the editor that you write to the microKEY25 stay in the unit until changed (“what happens in microKEY, stays in microKEY”). This is convenient as you can store custom settings—it doesn’t revert to the factory defaults on power-off. THE ARPEGGIATOR The arpeggiator is a lot of fun. It can accept external clock, run internally, or with the Auto setting, sense external clock and if not present, run internally. You can use the joystick to control direction (up or down, off or triggered) and when running internally, there’s tap tempo using the Sustain button. Note resolution is from 1/32 to whole notes, with a range of up to four octaves—there’s even swing. However, testing the KONTROL software with various programs revealed some DAW-dependent anomalies. With Ableton Live 8, Acoustica Mixcraft 6, and Pro Tools 10, you could have the KONTROL software open, freely make changes, and write them to the microKEY25. With Cakewalk Sonar X2, this wasn’t possible without first disabling the microKEY25 as a MIDI device. This apparently “opened up” the port and allowed for communications; you then needed to re-enable the microKEY25 within Sonar to use the changes you made. Sony Acid Pro was sort of halfway in between—you can write changes to the microKEY25 with Acid open, but have to close the KONTROL software before you can use the microKEY25 with Acid. Concerning accessories, the microKEY25 comes with a short, laptop-friendly 32" cable. FUN WITH TINY The microKEY25 seems like it would hold up well; I tried twisting the case to see if there was any flex, but it was insignificant. The keys feel better than you might expect given the price, and the KONTROL editor adds flexibility in terms of the overall control. Besides, arpeggiators are always fun! I also appreciate the joystick; yes, it’s small, but it’s off to the left of the keyboard, so you can manipulate it without interfering with playing the keys. Korg has the “small” thing down (I use their nanoSERIES2 controllers a lot), and the microKEY25 is no exception. Craig Anderton is Editor Emeritus of Harmony Central and Executive Editor of Electronic Musician magazine. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.

World percussion can add a lot to your music—here are the stories about the instruments behind the sounds By Neel Kant Agrawai (originally published in the July 2010 issue of DRUM! Magazine) Percussion instruments are found on every continent and in nearly every society around the world. Percussive traditions have shaped cultures and communities. Many percussion instruments in various countries are related, and therefore, musical evolution can be partially traced back through the instruments themselves and their cultural contexts. Below you’ll find a glossary of essential world percussion instruments from Africa, South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and South America. There are certainly many more percussion instruments than those presented below. Trying to list them all would take up volumes. This glossary is meant to describe a selection of percussion instruments in prominent percussive regions around the world that you’re most likely to encounter in the majority of musical applications. Hopefully the instruments contained in the glossary inspire you to explore your particular interests further, and shed light on some new styles. In addition to the instruments discussed below, consider a variety of other instruments such as the Celtic bodhrán, the Hang drum from Switzerland, Japanese Taiko drums, and the bamboos, metallophones, and kulkuls found in Indonesian gamelans. As music perpetually changes, it is important to not only study the traditions from all around the world, but to incorporate them into your playing in a way that expresses your own voice. The instruments listed below and their respective musical traditions are essential to our understanding of percussion. When we give them their proper respect, they can shape our own expression. As an example, Trilok Gurtu’s unique approach infuses Indian styles with Western and other percussion idioms from around the world. AFRICA Percussion is integral to African dance and spiritual music. A phenomenon of African percussion is the multiple layers of interlocking rhythmic patterns that simultaneously occur in different meters. These polyrhythms are abundant in the West African music of the Yoruba, Ewe, and Ibo people. Most of the instruments in this section are from West Africa. But East Africa, for example, is home to the ngoma drums of Kenya, the large royal kalinga drums of Rwanda, and the Amadinda xylophones of Uganda. Southern Africa has the karimba and mbira (thumb pianos) and the Zimbabwean Shona marimba. It is also important to note that African percussion has profoundly affected popular drumming styles in America, such as jazz and New Orleans second-line music. Axatse: a hollowed-out gourd covered with a woven mesh-and-bead netting traditionally made from shells. It is a hand-held timekeeping instrument in the Ewe drumming ensembles of West Africa. Balaphone: a tonal instrument originating from Guinea containing 17 to 21 rectangular wooden slats arranged from low to high notes constructed from béné wood. Calabashes (gourds) are attached to the wooden frame below the slats to enhance its resonance and projection and are played with mallets. Bougarabou: a cone-shaped West African drum from the Jola people of Senegal and The Gambia. Also known as the the “African conga,” it is traditionally played by a single percussionist with sticks or a combination of one stick and one hand. Brekete: a cylindrical drum with goatskin used in north Ghana among the Dagomba people. It is usually played with a curved stick and one hand. Caxixi: a small woven basket enclosed with a flat bottom filled with seeds. The caxixi, a shaker, is played in West African music and also Brazilian capoeira music. Djembe: a West African goblet drum with ropes for tuning the goatskin head that is played by hand. The shell is made of various types of wood and it commonly has a head diameter of 12" and a height of 24". Djun Djun: West African bass drums that come in three sizes: the kenkeni (highest pitch), sangban (middle pitch), and doundounba (low pitch). They are performed with one person playing with sticks on multiple drums, or a person playing on each drum, with one stick on the drum and one playing an attached bell. Embaire: an eastern Ugandan xylophone played with mallets that earlier typically had 21 slats but now has 25 slats. Ewe Drums: a group of drums that are prevalent throughout West Africa played by sticks and hand. The names of some of the drums are kagan, croboto, atsimevu, and boba. Music in the ensemble is mostly transmitted aurally. Gankogui: a set of two iron bells used in Ewe music as a timekeeper and played by sticks. There are three syllables referring to the different strokes: tin, go, and ka. Gyil: an instrument comprised of about 14 to 18 wooden slats played by sticks, which is used in Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire. Kidi: a medium-sized barrel-shaped drum with goatskin played with sticks in Ewe music. Kpanlogo Drums: a hand-played West African drum traditionally played by the Ga people of Ghana. Usually goatskin or cowhide is stretched over the wooden shell, which is constructed in up to six different sizes. Log or Slit Drum: a drum carved out of a hollowed log, containing slits or “tongues,” played with sticks or mallets, which is used for communication. Sabar Drums: Senegalese drums played by sticks or mallets and used to communicate with neighboring villages. Usually a group of seven sabar drums make up the ensemble. Talking Drum: a West African double-headed hourglass-shaped drum that is struck with a curved stick. The drum is played under one arm, while the rope is squeezed between the underarm and body in order to manipulate the pitch. Udu: a clay pot or vase originally from Nigeria containing two holes, one on the side of the pot and one on top. It produces a unique bass tone when struck by hand on the side of the instrument. SOUTH ASIA Percussion is prominent throughout South Asia. Most South Asian percussion literature focuses on Indian classical genres, such as Hindustani and Carnatic music. These styles employ the advanced rhythmic structure of tala. Many Indian percussion instruments are taught through a system of oral syllables that form a myriad of compositions and grooves. Percussion is central to many more styles around the region, such as in the powerful qawwali music of Pakistan and the bharatanatyam classical dance music of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The lesser-known zerbaghalis and duhuls of Afghanistan, as well as Tibetan gongs and prayer bells are also fascinating instruments to consider. Dafli: a hand-played/hand-held North Indian frame drum containing a skin stretched over a 10"-diameter wooden shell with two rows of jingles. Dhol: a large barrel drum played with mallets and used in bhangra music, a form of folk music of farmers in the northwestern Indian state of Punjab. Dholak: a cylindrical double-sided hand-played drum made from sheesham wood that is primarily played in the folk music of north India, Pakistan, and Nepal. It is also used amongst the Indian diaspora in the Caribbean countries of Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, and Suriname. Ghatam: a South Indian clay pot that is held with its mouth toward the player’s belly and struck with palms and fingers. Ghungroo: an anklet of small metallic bells tied to the feet of classical and folk dancers. Jaltarang: a semicircular group of porcelain cups that are struck with thin bamboo sticks. Each cup is tuned by filling it with various levels of water. Kanjira: a hand-held South Indian frame drum approximately 7" in diameter, mounted with a jingle, and traditionally covered with the skin of an endangered lizard (fortunately, alternatives to the lizard skin are now available). Khartal: a pair of wooden blocks, sheets, or metal finger cymbals used to accompany devotional music. Mrdangam: a double-headed South Indian cylindrical drum made from jackfruit wood (originally made from clay) often played by hand to accompany Carnatic music, and tuned with a wooden block and a stone. It is featured in the “Tani Avartanam,” a solo section of a classical piece of music. Morsing: a jaw harp used in South Indian Carnatic music. Pakhawaj: a double-headed hand-played North Indian cylindrical wooden drum traditionally used for accompanying the dhrupad style of ancient vocal music. Pat Waing: a set of 21 small Burmese drums comprising a musical scale and played by hand. The musician sits in a horseshoe-shaped shell. Tabla: a pair of single-headed hand-played bowl-shaped drums typically found in North India, as well as throughout the northern part of the region, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. The dayan (right-hand drum, 5"–6" diameter) is made of wood and tuned to a specific pitch with a tuning hammer. The bayan (left drum, 9"–9.5" diameter) is made of metal and provides the bass tone that can be modulated. The goatskin heads that are applied to both drums contain concentric black circles. Thammattama: a Sri Lankan set of two drums constructed of kos, kohomba, or milla tree containing heads made from cow or buffalo skin and played with sticks or mallets. LATIN AMERICA AND CARIBBEAN The African diasporic culture has shaped Latin American and Caribbean percussion. For example, the kinka bell patterns in Africa serve similar timekeeping functions to the son and rumba claves of Afro Cuban music. Cuba and Puerto Rico contain an array of musical styles and dances, such as mambo, guajira, son, bomba, plena, and cha-cha. Great band leaders like Tito Puente and Israel “Chachao” Lopez have paved the way for these styles to eventually become integrated into salsa music. The three types of Afro Cuban rumba rhythyms are yambu, guaguanco, and columbia. Additionally, the spiritual Bembe music is played in Cuba by the Lucumi people, descendents of the Yoruba people of Africa. Although much of the focus in this section is on Afro Cuban and Puerto Rican instruments, the region boasts music as diverse as Colombian and Panamanian cumbia, Trinidadian soca and chutney, and Jamaican reggae. Acheré: a single dried gourd with seeds or pebbles inside that is used to keep time and accompany Cuban batá and rumba rhythms. The stem of the gourd functions as the handle. Batá: sacred Afro Cuban hourglass, double-headed drums originating from the Yoruba culture that are played by hand. These three drums, okónkolo, itótele, and iyá, perform specific parts and are used in Santería ceremonies in Cuba. Bomba: a Puerto Rican barrel drum covered with goatskin and played by hand. There are two sizes, the larger buleador and the smaller subidor. Bongos: a joined set of two drums often used in salsa music (diameters: macho: 7", hembra: 8.5"). Traditionally, the instrument is played held between the knees by hand while seated. Catá: a 2'-long, hollowed-out wooden log or bamboo that is played with sticks and used to accompany Afro Cuban rhythms. Cencerro/Campana: a bell commonly used by the bongo player in the chorus of a salsa song. Claves: a pair of short, thick dowels made from rosewood, bamboo, or fiberglass, used to play the repetitive clave pattern that forms the underlying rhythic structure of types of Afro Cuban music. They are played by striking one against the othe Conga: a hand-played barrel drum constructed of staves and played in Afro Cuban, Afro Dominican, and Afro Colombian music. Congas, commonly used for Afro Cuban rumbas, are comprised of the following drums: the lowest, or tumbador (approx. 12.5" head diameter), the segundo (approx. 11.5" head diameter), and the highest drum, the quinto (approx. 11" head diameter). Some makers also offer super tumbas (13"–14" head diameter) and a smaller requinto (9"–10" head diameter). Guataca: a hand-held garden hoe played with a stick or mallet that produces a high-pitched metallic tone used to accompany traditional Afro Cuban rhythms. Güira: A steel tube with fine textured grooves that are scraped with a rod. Used to accompany merengue music of the Dominican Republic. Güiro: an open-ended, hollow gourd containing parallel notches along its side. Scraped with a small stick to produce short and long raspy sounds, this instrument is used in a wide variety of Latin American rhythms, such as cumbia and salsa. Maracas: a pair of shakers with handles, made from rawhide, gourds, coconuts, or wood. They are commonly used in the music of various Latin American and Caribbean countries. Marimba: instruments with slats that are found throughout Latin America and layed with mallets. The marimba de tecomates, containing gourd resonators, is from Guatemala and the marimba de arco is from Nicaragua. Pandereta: single-headed hand-played frame drums, 10", 12", and 14" in diameter, that are used in Puerto Rican plena music. Shékere: a gourd of African origin with beaded netting surrounding its belly tht is played like a shaker. It is widely used in Afro Cuban religious and sacred music. Steel Pan: a chromatically-pitched oil drum from Trinidad & Tobago that is played with sticks with rubber tips. Steel bands comprised of multiple steel pan sizes compete in Trinidad. Tambora: a small double-headed barrel drum used primarily in merengue rhythms of the Dominican Republic. It is worn around the neck and played with a bare hand on the head and a wooden stick or dowel on the shell. Timbales: a pair of Cuban mounted single-headed metal drums made of steel or brass and played with sticks. The drums are usually accessorized with cowbells and/or woodblocks. MIDDLE EAST Traditional Middle Eastern rhythms are played to Mediterranean dance or serve as an accompaniment to Middle Eastern and Mediterranean melodies. Some examples of traditional rhythms include adwar, mizan, iqa, vazn, dawr, and darb. Many rhythms are formed by stressing a combination of three syllables: dum, tek, and ka. Multiple instruments listed in this section are from North Africa. This is because the music traditions of North Africa were more heavily influenced by the Arabic empire rather than by the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Arabic music tradition deeply impacted the music and cultures of Persia, Turkey, and North Africa. Bendir: a hand-played frame drum, 10"–16" in diameter, from Morocco and Tunisia that is fitted with a head containing tightly strung leather or string snares underneath. Daf: a hand-played frame drum from Iran/Kurdistan with the skin pinned to the shell and interlinked rings on the inside of the drum. Darbuka/Dumbek: a goblet drum played in Arabaic music, such as in Egypt and Turkey. It is made from ceramic or thin metal with the head made of fish or goatskin or plastic. This is played in the musician’s lap and held under the non-dominant arm while being played by both hands. The Persian dumbek is also called tonbak, tombak, or zarb. Riq: a hand-played frame drum, 8"–10" in diameter, containing five sets of jingles and played in Arabic music. Tar: a hand-played frame drum, 12"– 16" in diameter, found in Arabic music traditions across North Africa. Zills: a pair of round and slightly bell-shaped metallic finger cymbals commonly used in bellydancing. SOUTH AMERICA Like the music of Latin America and the Caribbean, much South American music is derived from African traditions. The samba music of Brazil originated in the state of Bahia, but due to its popularity, has become a symbol of national identity. Other forms of Brazilian music are baião, maracatu, bossa nova, as well as forro and batucada. Additionally, it is important to be aware of other styles, such as the Argentian tango, the Colombian curullao, and the indigenous music of Bolivia, Chile, Peru, and Ecuador. The wide spectrum of music in South America reflects the Portuguese and European colonial influences upon the African and indigenous people. Agogo: a double or triple cone-shaped bell played with a metal or wooden stick. It is based on Yoruba bells and is played in samba baterias. Atabaque: a tall, wooden, Afro Brazilian drum made from jacaranda wood and played by hand. Ropes with wedges fasten the calfskin head to the shell. It is commonly used in capoeira music and in the Candomblé religion. Berimbau: a hand-played single-string Brazilian instrument made of a bow (verga) and hollow fruit (cabaça) that is played in capoeira music. Bombo: a large processional wooden drum played with sticks in music of the Andean region of Peru. It is hollowed out from the trunk of a tree, and usually covered in sheep or llama hide on one end and cowhide on the other end. Caixa: a double-headed drum containing wire strands on the top head of the drum, aka the Brazilian snare. This drum is suspended by a strap and can be played with both hands at navel level or held with one arm at head height. Cajon: an Afro Peruvian box drum with a striking surface constructed of a thin sheet of plywood. The musician plays sitting on top of the instrument and plays the sides by hand. A hole is cut opposite the striking surface. Cuíca: a single-headed Brazilian friction drum that produces sound by rubbing its short, thin, carved bamboo cane attached to the membrane inside the instrument. The pitch is altered by pressing the thumb against the skin near the node where the cane is tied. Pandeiro: a Brazilian frame drum (approx. 10" head diameter) with pairs of loosely cupped jingles called platinelas that are arranged in pairs around the sides of the instrument. It can be struck by hand or shaken, and is often played in samba and choro music. Reco Reco: a ridged gourd or bamboo cane that is scraped with a piece of wood or metal and used in samba music. Repenique: a Brazilian drum used as the lead in some samba schools, like Portela. The slightly long metallic body has 8" or 10" nylon heads. Repique: a high-pitched Brazilian drum played with sticks and used as the lead in some samba schools, like Vila Isabel. It is played with one stick and a bare hand or two plastic sticks and is made of metal with nylon heads. Surdo: a large double-headed drum that is the heartbeat of the samba bateria. It is played with a large padded beater or baqueta with the dominant hand, while the non-dominant hand muffles the sound and provides a rhythmic guide for the player. Tambourim: a high-pitched drum, 6"–8" in diameter, played in samba baterias. It is held in one hand and played with either a wood stick or a plastic stick called baqueta. Tarol: a 12" piccolo drum played with sticks that is used in some baterias and contains snares on top of the upper drumhead. Timba: usually played with two hands and is designed for parading. lt can also be played by using the low tone to mark double time with one hand on the head and the other playing counterpoint on the shell. It is used mostly in the samba reggae playing bloco people of the northeast. Zabumba: a flat, double-headed bass drum played with a mallet in one hand and a stick in the other hand, each striking the opposite head of the drum. It is a primary instrument of the baião music of the northeast Brazilian state of Pernambuco. Subscribe to DRUM! and get the world's best drumming features, gear insights, and lessons every month in print and digital versions.

Doing background vocals yourself? They don't have to sound like they were all done by one person by Craig Anderton Back in the days of tape machines with varispeed, it was a fairly common technique to reduce the speed somewhat before recording a vocal, then return to standard speed for playback. This added a slight formant change and a little extra brightness that gave a bit more of a “pop” vocal sound. (Sometimes even master recordings were sped up somewhat to make them sound brighter and tighter.) Not all DAWs have the equivalent of varispeed, but almost all have decent-sounding pitch transposition/stretching algorithms if you don’t stray too far from the original pitch (Fig. 1). This makes it easy to add variety to backup vocals (especially if one person is singing several parts) by doing the equivalent of the tape varispeed trick. Fig. 1: Sonar X1 is one of many DAWs that includes pitch transposition as a DSP option. Here's the step-by-step way to implement this technique. 1 Bounce the tracks to create a premix of the entire tune. 2 Transpose this premix down a half-step without altering duration (ino other words, stretch pitch only). 3 Mute the other tracks so you hear only this premix. 4 Sing your vocal while listening to the premix. 5 After you’re done with the vocal, transpose it up a half-step. 6 Delete the premix, and unmute the other tracks. Now your vocal will match the track’s standard pitch, but have a different timbre. It’s even easier to do this technique if you use a fair number of MIDI tracks, as it’s easy to transpose MIDI data. And of course, this technique applies to more than vocals. For a bigger, deeper guitar sound, transpose the premix track up two semitones, play your guitar, then transpose the guitar down two semitones. This technique also works great with doubled guitar parts if you do the pitch-shifting trick with one of the tracks, but not the other. Craig Anderton is Editor Emeritus of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.

Changing times call for changing recording techniques—especially when it comes to cymbals By Garrett Haines (originally published in the February 2012 issue of DRUM! Magazine) It seems more and more recordings are suffering from brittle-sounding cymbals. Several years ago, I moderated a panel at the Tape Op Conference called “Preparing Your Mixes For Mastering.” We presented a list of the ten most common technical problems. One of the top offenders was “harsh cymbals and ice-pick hi-hats.” From my experiences and in speaking with my colleagues, this problem hasn’t gone away. In fact, the only time I don’t experience this issue is when one of two people are involved on a record: an experienced recording engineer (e.g., a full-time person with more than ten years experience) and/or an experienced drummer (e.g., someone in his or her thirties and up who has gigged more times than you have songs in your iTunes library). So what do these cats know that the rest of the world doesn’t? Well, there are several things, and I’m going to spill the beans for DRUM! readers. In fact, many recording engineers are in the dark on some of these techniques, so get ready. CHANGING HISTORICAL PRECEDENT The best way to understand the source of this problem is to appreciate how we got here. Not to start a story with “uphill and in the snow both ways,” but the truth is there used to be much less selection in terms of cymbals. What Zildjian currently calls its “A” series was pretty much representative of the market: traditional finish, visible lathe marks, all in medium to medium-light weights. Whether you played in a rock band or a jazz trio, there was a good chance that some of the same cymbals were used. At the same time, recording engineers were tracking to analog tape, a format that was more forgiving at higher frequencies. Cymbals sound smoother for two reasons: one is that there is an inherent compression in tape recording; the second is due to a phenomenon called “self-erasure.” Mike Spitz of ATR Magnetics explains, “All tape oxide formulas are subject to a small amount of sell-erasure soon after recording. How many times did you hear a respected recording engineer say, ‘That tape sounded awesome when we laid the tracks, but when we played it back the next day, the top end sounded darker.’ Well, that’s right, and it can be expected to occur.” Savvy technicians overcame this by purposefully over-saturating the top end during recording, but many did not. Either way, drums and cymbals generally sound more pleasant when recorded to tape. To parallel the cymbal market, recording engineers faced a similar selection when it came to microphones. With only so many brands to choose from, and certain models proving to be better overheads than others, recording engineers got lazy. Again, whether you played in a rock band or a jazz trio, there was a good chance that some of the same mics were used to record the same cymbals. While this may be painting an entire industry in broad strokes, it’s not far from how things were (Fig. 1). Fig. 1: Vintage cymbals and vintage microphones, when teamed with tape, produced a relatively flat response. THE TIMES THEY WERE A 'CHANGIN' So, how did we come to harsh-sounding cymbals? Simply put, everything changed. Drummers wanted to “cut through the mix” at shows and in practice. Cymbal makers started offering heavier, brighter, louder cymbals. (To be fair, entire product lines expanded, including effect-types, limited-quantity artisan, and jazz lines). On the recording side, digital recording became more affordable. Unlike tape, which imparts a character to everything it records, digital is a machine: What you put in, it gives back. And how were engineers feeding the machine? They were using the flood of cheaper Chinese-made microphones. (When a stereo pair of import small-diaphragm condensers costs under $300, how many engineers can afford to shell out $3,000 for a hand-matched European set?) But there are some limitations to cheaper mics. First, they're often voiced to boost high frequencies. In standalone tests, these mics sound more present, crisper, and sexier than a traditional “flat-response” mic. Second, the electronics in economy mics do not have the headroom found in pro models. Complex sources like cymbals can go from silent to explosion in a millisecond. Lesser electronics distort in these situations, or at minimum clip the output, feeding the digital recorder a nasty square-wave representation. Nearly any cymbal recorded in this situation is going to sound overly crisp. Add one of the new “cut through the mix” models and the results become the topic of engineering conventions and magazine articles. The solution to shrill cymbals can come from both drummers and recording engineers. Depending on your job, here are some suggested approaches. WHAT CAN BE DONE AS THE DRUMMER? Ultimately, the representation of the instrument starts with you. Approach the studio like any gig, and prepare accordingly. First, realize that there are “live” cymbals and “recording” cymbals. David Throckmorton, a session player and Sabian endorser, says, “I bring at least ten different ride cymbals to a gig, because I never know what the client is going to need.” Of course, few of us have that kind of cymbal budget, Throckmorton continues, “most guys should realize they need a set of cymbals for shows, or situations where the PA might not be there — you’re responsible for being loud enough — and a second set of thinner cymbals for practice or acoustic gigs. You’ll end up using the thinner ones in the studio, so you get three uses out of two sets.” Regardless of your gear, playing style will have a major influence on your sound. Micah Dunn engineers the recorded sessions for Covenant Church of Pittsburgh. In that capacity, he has his pick of players and gear. “I look for a candidate that knows how to play his cymbals. We have a guy now, even though he uses what I would term brighter-than-optimal rock crashes, because he plays with finesse — he strikes with glancing and softer blows — that’s why he has the gig.” Throckmorton adds, “Drummers starting out need to learn how to mix themselves. They have to control the volume of the cymbals in relation to the drums. That’s your job. Don’t rely on the sound engineer.” Returning to gear, some low-cost solutions include playing wood instead of nylon tips at a session. Nylon tends to emphasize attack, and can be louder on hats and rides when played on the tip. Another concern is the choice to clean your cymbals or not. This is especially true for lathed cymbals, as dirt, grime, and finger oils tend to settle in the grooves. Some traditionalists never polish their gear, while others are fastidious about it. ...AND HOW ABOUT THE ENGINEER? Approaching cymbals as the recording engineer, you have several options. First, you can purchase cymbals you trust will record well. At Treelady Studios, we have about two dozen assorted rides, crashes, and hats. Dave Hidek, our senior engineer, puts it best: “We simply have no idea what people will bring in terms of equipment, and our name goes on every recording. We have to be prepared.” For the most part, we work with newer artists, but the problem isn’t contained to independent bands. Even the big labels deal with this. Todd Burke, who has mixed and engineered for Foo Fighters, Aimee Mann, Ben Harper, and many others, has the same experiences. These days, Burke won’t show up for a session without his personal collection of (Bosphorus) cymbals. He explains, “If the drummer has thrown up the usual assortment of machine-stamped tin, I’ll do what I can to get things together in the control room and record a little bit so we can all listen. We’ll scratch our heads, talk it over, and make some adjustments. Somewhere along the line, I’ll suggest we swap out the crashes for a couple things I’ve got and see how that’d be. Every single time, shock and awe. Seriously. It’s far from subtle. Suddenly the kit is 200 times more listenable. You want to turn up the speakers, probably because it doesn’t hurt anymore. Suddenly I can wheel a bit more snap into the snare and toms as the whole top end of the kit isn’t overpowered by harsh sizzle-y noise — same story, every time.” If you have a bashing drummer with bright cymbals, the next line of defense is altering your mic technique. Moving the mic is always preferable to re-tweaking equalization. Here are several possible solutions. For overhead placement, most engineers spend all their time on the left-right axis. They forget there are two other axes: height and front-to-back location of the mics. If the cymbals are too bright, consider moving the pair higher. Next, move the mics toward the back of the room (bringing them toward the front of the kick usually accentuates cymbals). If you end up over the drummer’s head, it can become an acoustic shadow, and mess up XY-placement — so test recordings will be needed. If you have a pair of ribbon mics, give them a try. They could be a better choice than brighter condensers. If moving the overheads doesn't help, it’s time to move to alternate techniques. A rarely used option is to mic the space above the cymbals. It looks weird but can be the right approach sometimes. Set up a spaced pair of large-diaphragm condensers in front of the kit. Make sure each mic is equidistant from the snare/kick. With the diaphragms about 8' off the ground, point the mics as if the kit were actually floating 2' higher than it is. The mics will still pick up bounce from the floor and ceiling, but the center of their pickup will be aimed at the air above the cymbals. Depending on your room, this can be your new secret mic technique or just a pair of room mics . . . but it’s worth a try. Another technique uses a boundary microphone (sometimes called a pressure zone or “PZM” mic). In this example, we tape the mic to a piece of Plexiglas and suspend it from the ceiling (Fig. 2). Fig. 2: Mounting a PZM mic. Any hard surface will work. I prefer wood or Plexiglas, as they seem to give “rounder”-sounding results. Feel free to experiment. Other than the mic, this rig costs under $30 at your local hardware store. Since this mic is a mono setup, at mixdown the stereo image will come from panning of the close drum mics, artificial reverb, or adding room mics. If the real recording is still not quite pleasing, there are still options. Grammy-nominated engineer Trent Bell has gone as far as recording the drums separately from the cymbals. “On the Starlight Mints’ CD Drowaton, Allan Vest wanted the ability to compress the drums independent from the cymbals, so we had Andy Nunez play two separate takes, one for cymbals and one for drums. For the drum takes we taped over his hi-hats with big carwash sponges or towels, just so he wouldn’t make noise.” A final option deals with replacing the recorded cymbals. This technique has been used on drums for decades, but now it’s becoming more convincing on cymbals. There are now ways to replace the recorded cymbals with those from prerecorded collections. Sure, even though there have been cymbal samples for a long time, most of those sounded like afterthoughts. But some newer libraries were recorded by drummer/engineer John Emrich (instead of a robot, or Joe the intern). Additionally, consideration has been given to specific cymbals in the collections. One of the first pro-level libraries was the Stanton Moore Bosphorus pack for the BFD line. Recently, Zildjian launched the Gen 16 Digital Vault (Fig. 3), which gives you access to top-selling Zildjian models as well as prototype and never-before-heard models from its exclusive master vault. (See DRUM! November 2011 for a full review.) Fig. 3: Zildjian's Digital Vault samples are recorded with astounding accuracy and sound quality (click to enlarge). Although my preference is to record the performance, these applications simply replace the cymbal hit by your artist with the same intensity hit using top-of-the-line cymbals. If that serves the song and the artist, then it’s the right call. CONCLUSIONS Drummers and recording engineers have more choices (at better prices) than any time in history. Yet, it could be argued that the quality of our recordings has declined. With this bounty comes responsibility. The unflinching honesty of digital recording means every choice we make affects the end result. Knowing which cymbals to use for a specific application, the best technique for striking those cymbals, and how to record them impacts our product. Keeping this information in mind can help improve the quality of our musicianship, engineering, and hopefully sell more music! Subscribe to DRUM! and get the world's best drumming features, gear insights, and lessons every month in print and digital versions.

iPad- and budget-friendly keyboard controller $124.99 MSRP, $89.99 street www.samsontech.com by Craig Anderton So really, how much keyboard controller can you expect for around $90? Well, before you answer that, Samson’s Carbon 49 comes with Native Instruments’ Komplete Elements, which costs $59—so if you were thinking of buying Komplete Elements anyway, the controller effectively ends up costing $31. And that’s not a stretch; Komplete Elements has over 4GB of content—it’s not just some cheesy bundled software you’ll forget you installed. So if you’re into Komplete Elements, now the question becomes “how much keyboard controller can you expect for $31?” Let’s find out. OVERVIEW The USB-powered Carbon 49 has (duh!) 49 keys, and includes a USB cable. The keybed is a synth action, semi-weighted type. Keyboard aficionados shouldn’t expect the keybed of a $2,000 workstation, but it has a far better feel than the price would indicate. There are three velocity curves and a fixed velocity setting; there’s no aftertouch—hardly a surprise at this price point—but the velocity is consistent and predictable. The left-hand controls (Fig. 1) include pitch bend and modulation wheels, as well as octave up/down and transpose up/down buttons. Fig. 1: The left side of the keyboard handles real-time control. I liked the wheels’ action; they both have the right amount of resistance, and the spring return on the bend wheel hits the sweet spot of not too tight and not too “soggy.” I also like that the wheels are to the left of the keyboard, and not above the keyboard to save space. The rear panel (Fig. 2) has a standard-sized USB connection and other connectors. Fig. 2: The rear panel’s complement of connections. Despite being bus-powered (no AC adapter required), there’s an on-off switch—convenient if you don’t want to have to plug and unplug the cable constantly. Although designed for MIDI-over-USB, there’s also a physical 5-pin DIN connector (thank you), and a 1/4” jack for a sustain switch. Carbon detects the footswitch polarity automatically, but you can reverse the switch’s “sense” by holding it down while you power-up the keyboard. There’s also a secret feature that’s not mentioned in the manual: flip the keyboard over, and there’s a compartment that I thought might indicate battery power—but that’s not the purpose. It’s big enough to hold a USB cable or, not coincidentally, an iPad Camera Connection Kit. Speaking of which . . . THE iPAD CONNECTION An obvious Carbon application is providing MIDI input for your iPad. There’s a groove along Carbon’s top for holding the iPad, with rubber “bumpers” to secure it in place (Fig. 3). Fig. 3: Note the rubber bumpers at each end of the iPad. With an Apple Camera Connection Kit, the two make a good pair: the Carbon’s low cost makes it easy to justify owning one if you do the mobile-musician-with-iPad thing, as the result is a cost-effective “music station” with full-size keys that can nonetheless fit in tight quarters (size is about 31" x 8.5" x 3", with weight a little over 6lbs.). The iPad can even power the Carbon 49, which is another reason the on/off switch is convenient. CONTROLS AND EDITING Carbon includes a volume fader and data knob (Fig. 4), which along with the mod wheel, can be assigned to any of the 128 MIDI continuous controllers, as well as 19 RPN/NRPN messages and two sysex messages (master volume and master balance). Fig. 4: The display, volume fader, data wheel, and edit button are toward the top. Furthermore, the transpose buttons can send MIDI channel or program change data, and the footswitch jack can have various assignments as well. The only controls that serve a single purpose are the pitch bend wheel and octave buttons. There’s also an intriguing feature I haven’t seen before, but would love to see on all controllers: a “snapshot” function that sends out the status of all the keyboard parameters, which you can then inspect in something like a sequencer’s Event List. You also have the usual expected functions, like All Notes Off. Editing is done through the 3-digit LED display, and follows a protocol similar to M-Audio’s controllers—buttons do multiple duties, and the keyboard keys themselves provide data entry. Labels above each key (Fig. 5) remind you of their various functions, which simplifies the editing process. If you want to do a lot of editing it can be tedious, but for making a quick controller assignment or two, it’s certainly easy enough. Fig. 5: Labels above the function keys simplify editing—especially because they’re readable. CONCLUSIONS Granted the keyboard is the focal point but it’s worth mentioning that Komplete Elements is also a platform with three “players” (Reaktor, Guitar Rig, and Kontakt) that you can expand with optional-at-extra-cost instruments and processors. While this might not be relevant if you’re into Carbon solely for doing on-the-go music with an iPad, if Carbon is the satellite to your desktop- or laptop-based “mothership,” Komplete Elements is not to be dismissed. As to the keyboard itself, I first saw it at the Frankfurt Musikmesse and thought that although it was being advertised as a budget keyboard, it had a solid vibe and a good feel—so I was surprised when the quoted price was considerably lower than I had assumed. While the case is plastic, it has a no-nonsense attitude and is definitely not flimsy. For portable music (particularly for iPad fans) or as a compact keyboard controller for those on a budget, the Carbon 49 surpasses expectations. Craig Anderton is Editor Emeritus of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.

By Radim McCue (originally published July 9, 2012 by DRUM! Magazine) Students aged 16 - 61 gathered in Thousand Oaks California June 25th - 29th for the first-ever Big Drum Bonanza (BDB) hosted by drummer Thomas Lang. Students from 9 countries including: Sweden, Mexico, Belgium, England, Czech Republic, Canada, Italy as wells as the United States attended the 5-day educational drumming camp. The all-day, hands-on BDB curriculum included boot camp-style instruction as well as clinics, master classes and private lessons in Jazz, Rock, R&B, Pop & Progressive drumming styles from guest instructors Jeff Hamilton, Virgil Donati, Kenny Aronoff, Chris Coleman and Dave Elitch. The Big Drum Bonanza also featured a tour of the DW factory in Oxnard, CA where students were surprised to overhear a Neil Peart practice session as well as special guest appearances from Stanton Moore and guitarist Paul Gilbert. Big Drum Bonanza sponsors included: MUSO Entertainment, DW, Roland, Meinl, Guitar Center, Audix, Vic Firth, Ahead Armor, Hansenfutz and ArtistWorks. For more informatin, check out the Thomas Lang Drumming Boot Camp web site. The Big Drum Bonanza featured a week of instruction with Thomas Lang, Virgil Donati, Jeff Hamilton, Stanton Moore, Kenny Aronoff and others. Simon Moretti (center) won a DW kit. Dave Elitch of the Mars Volta was one of the instructors. Elitch explains the ins and outs of groove in masterclass. Attendees were treated to two days of masterful Jeff Hamilton instruction. Virgil Donati gets down to business with the campers. Kenny Aronoff and Thomas Lang. Play drums and you can look this good, too. Instructor Stanton Moore with student Daniel Rubin. How it's done in New Orleans. Stanton Moore explains. An extreme amount of drumming brainpower--Thomas Lang, Jeff Hamilton, and Stanton Moore at lunch. Meinl, known for their cymbals, was one of Big Drum Bonanza's sponsors. Subscribe to DRUM! and get the world's best drumming features, gear insights, and lessons every month in print and digital versions.

I like things that solve problems . . . $32.99 MSRP, $19.99 street www.planetwaves.com by Craig Anderton Reviewing a guitar strap may seem ridiculous, but this isn’t your normal guitar strap—here’s why. Have you ever had a strap slip off an end pin? I sure have. Fortunately, thanks to quick reflexes developed in my errant youth by playing excessive amounts of pinball, I was usually able to grab the guitar before it went crashing to the floor. Except twice: Once when it happened to a blonde Rickenbacker 360 12-string, which was heartbreaking, and once with a Peavey Milano. (Fortunately, it landed on its end pin and survived unscathed. Then again, this guitar has survived Delta Airlines’ baggage handlers on transcontinental trips, so it’s proven an inherent indestructibility.) Since then, I’ve tried various arcane ways of holding straps to end pins—the kind of strap that’s screwed in between the end pin and guitar, custom straps, and the like. They all worked, but had some kind of limitation—usually that it was hard to remove the strap to use on a different guitar, or before slipping the guitar in its case. IT’S A LOCK Then I got turned on to the Planet Waves Planet Lock Guitar Strap. I don’t know who at the company thinks up these weirdly genius things, but it’s pretty cool. Each end of the strap has an open and closed position. In the open position, a rotating disc exposes an opening (Fig. 1). The large hole fits over the end pin head, then you pull on the strap end so that the end pin’s bevelled section fits in the small hole. Fig. 1: The strap end in the open position. Rotating a clickwheel/thumbwheel rotates the disk around the end pin’s bevelled section (Fig. 2), gripping it firmly. The disc doesn’t have to rotate around it completely in order to be effective. Fig. 2: The strap end in the closed position. The clickwheel has ratchets to hold it in place. If you want to remove the strap end, you simply push a release button; this allows rotating the disc to the open position so you can slide the strap off the end pin. ADDITIONAL OPTIONS There are several variations on the strap I reviewed, including multiple styles (Fig. 3). Fig. 3: Different Planet Lock strap styles. There’s also a slightly more costly polypropylene version, and a Joe Satriani model. Although the strap works with most end pins, it doesn’t work with all of them. If you have incompatible end pins, Planet Waves will send you a set of guaranteed-to-work end pins (black, gold, or silver; see Fig. 4) if you send them a copy of your store receipt and $2.50 shipping/handling. Fig. 4: Universal end pins for the Planet Lock strap. These are also available for sale individually for $7.99 street if you have multiple guitars with incompatible end pins, and want to use the strap with them. However, these end pins weren’t designed specifically for the Planet Lock strap, so they’ll work with other straps as well. INDEED . . . IT’S A LOCK For $20 there’s not much to complain about, except that the strap lacks heavy padding (and also, that it didn’t exist when I bought my Rickenbacker). However, the 2” width distributes weight evenly, and I haven’t found it tiring to wear for hours at a time. But more importantly, I don’t have to worry about the guitar turning into a runaway and crashing to the floor. Craig Anderton is Editor Emeritus of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.

By Radim McCue (originally published June 28, 2012 by DRUM! Magazine) The 17th Annual Drummies! are over. The 9000+ votes from DRUM! Magazine readers have been counted and more than 40 artists, products, books, and web sites have captured Drummies! in their respective categories. So without further ado, here are some highlights. Check out the complete list of all the winners and runners-up in the 17th Annual Drummies, from DRUM! Magazine here; you can also see all the past Drummies! at DRUMmagazine.com/drummies. Mike Portnoy is Mr. Busy. He leaves his old band, starts two new ones, issues various records and DVDs and becomes Drummer Of The Year for the second time in a row. Equally hirsute and just as heavy a hitter as Portnoy, Chris Adler won in the Metal category. Shannon Leto’s 30 Seconds To Mars fans voted to make him Indie Drummer of the Year. Jordan Burns is a perennial vote-getter and this time he’s Punk Drummer of the Year. Steve Jordan has won before. This year he takes home a drummie in Blues. Stanton Moore won in the Funk category for the third year in a row. With her career once again in high gear, Sheila E won Percussionist of the Year, and in the Latin category. Jamey Haddad, ace percussionist for Paul Simon and others, won the World Percussion category. Coming to fame with Jason Mraz, Toca Rivera wins the Rock/Pop/Hip-Hop Drummie. Manuel "Papayo" Corao leaped up as percussionist with Pitbull to win the Rising Star Percussionist category. Street Drum Corps battled its way to a win in the percussion ensemble category. Stefon Harris is an annual vote-getter in the Mallet category. Rootsy '50s inspired styling put the Gretsch Renown 57 at the top of the heap in the drum set category. DW’s Super Solid Edge Collector Series snares scored high with voters in the Snare Drum category. SJC, an indie band favorite, captured the Custom Drum Company category for 2012. Sabian’s Holy China was the most innovative new cymbal of the year, according to readers. Axis' Derek Roddy Signature pedal stomped the competition in the Hardware category. In a year of many great hybrid products, the hi-hat shakere from LP Music excelled in the Percussion Toys & Accessories category. Stanton Moore’s signature pandeiro (LP Music) won a Hand Drum Drummie. Make that three overall wins for Stanton and two for LP. Remo Coated Controlled Sound-X. Drumhead of the year. Vic Firth’s Charlie Benante Signature Stick beat out models by Nisan Stewart (Vater), Joey Jordison (Pro-Mark) and the Ahead Fatbeat 5A. Zildjian’s Gen 16 Cymbal System was a winner in Electronic Percussion. The Alesis I/O Dock Pro captures a Drummie in the Recording Products category.. Ahead’s Armor Cases sealed a win in the Cases Category. Subscribe to DRUM! and get the world's best drumming features, gear insights, and lessons every month in print and digital versions.

This Classic Interview with Phish's Drummer Comes Courtesy of DRUM! Magazine's Vaults By Jon Cohan (Originally published in the September/October 2003 issue of DRUM! Magazine) It’s a late April afternoon in Vermont – one of those beautiful sparkling blue-sky spring days when it’s nearly impossible not to feel an overwhelming sense of renewed optimism about life. The bright sunlight that streams through the windows of Jon Fishman’s drum room bounces off the walls and illuminates the radiant face of the drummer as he describes how, after a two-and-a-half year break, his band Phish, current leaders of the “jam band” revolution, have reunited, recorded what they consider to be one of their best albums, and are enjoying a new Golden Age; reborn, reinvigorated and committed to playing their music together for as long as they possibly can. “I feel like there’s no reason why should not go on indefinitely,” he says ecstatically. “The best decision we ever made was to be a band, but the second best decision was to stop. I feel like the perspective is there now and we’ve built a good foundation and a great fan base and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t keep going.” If Fishman’s buoyant idealism sounds one step removed from a religious conversion, it’s because he has gained a new appreciation for the special magic that happens when he and bandmates Trey Anastasio, Page McConnell, and Mike Gordon get together to make music. He’s also aware of how close the group came to losing that magic back in October of 2000, when Phish shocked its family, friends, and legions of rabid fans with the announcement that, after 17 years of playing music together, they were taking a break from being a band. “We knew we were stopping and we knew we were stopping indefinitely,” recalls Fishman of the spontaneous private conversation that took place in a backstage dressing room after a performance in Mountain View, California. “At that point breaking up was as much a possibility as anything else.” One of the more bewildering aspects of the decision was the timing of the break. When they went on hiatus, Phish was one of the most successful touring bands in the world, grossing over $60 million a year in ticket sales alone, not to mention income from record sales and merchandising. So why stop? “It wasn’t out of animosity or anything like that,” Fishman explains, “it was out of sheer tiredness. We had been going for 17 years straight and everyone had personal things – their own houses to get in order. We were all in various stages of relationships with our wives and girlfriends and ourselves. When you’re on the road for that long all your personal things get back-burnered, and just when you start to figure some things out, you go back on the road again. More than anything though, it was just being tired. We had sustained this focus for quite awhile and everybody was burned out.” Ironically, it was the overwhelming success that Phish had enjoyed that ultimately led to their decision to disband. The Phish machine had grown exponentially through the 1990s to something that was almost unmanageable, despite the band’s most heartfelt efforts. “A lot of the fatigue had come from how big everything had become,” Fishman explains. “Our organization had gotten big and we had a lot to carry. Bigger is not always better. Robert Fripp said a great thing that has always stayed in my mind. He said, to stay successful in this business and maintain your artistic vision and integrity, you have to be a small and flexible unit. A lot of bands get huge, but their artistic output gets watered down because they’ve got these deadlines to meet or these recording contracts to fulfill or they’ve got too many people to pay. What ultimately suffers is the quality of your work. Being in the entertainment business, that is the one thing you can’t afford to have suffer. If the quality of the business suffers, it just costs you money, but if the quality of the music suffers, it costs you your integrity, your fan base, and ultimately, your good name. I think we were good about stopping before we had to and not driving the whole thing into the ground.” At 38 years old, Jon Fishman has spent almost half his life playing drums with Phish and the experience has given him a unique insight into the dynamics of working with the same group of musicians over an extended period of time. He has boundless energy for discussing drums, music, and his role in Phish. Ask him a question and you get intelligent long-form philosophic answers about life and existence. He talks like he plays drums: bobbing and weaving with an idea, supporting the notion with metaphors and analogies, letting his answer branch off into a myriad of directions, not unlike the freeform jams that are Phish’s stock in trade. After they stopped playing together, the different members of Phish took on various projects that allowed each of them to follow their creative muses, the highest profile venture being guitarist/vocalist Anastasio’s supergroup Oysterhead, with Primus phenom Les Claypool on bass, and former Police-man Stewart Copeland on drums. Bassist Gordon and keyboard player McConnell both involved themselves in their own music related undertakings as did the restless Fishman. “I went on The Jazz Mandolin Project tour and there was always the Pork Tornado thing that I wanted to finish up, so we finished the album and went out on a big tour and had a great time. At least we finished what we started. Those were loose ends that I wanted to tie up. The other thing I wanted to do was get in shape and not have any commitments to anything.” Last summer the band members reunited to discuss what chance, if any, they ever had of playing together again as Phish. As a result of that meeting, they decided to get together in October at The Barn, their rehearsal/recording space situated outside of Phish’s adopted hometown of Burlington, Vermont, to work on new material. Fishman says that they went in without preconceptions – they would just jam and play some new songs that had been written and test the waters. But after the first few minutes of playing together, they all felt the familiar creative rush they had felt so many times before. The songs came tumbling out and the tapes the band made of the rehearsals, intended to be demos for a studio album, ended up becoming the album itself – Round Room. The performances on Round Room are somewhat of a departure from Phish’s previous studio work. They are raw, live and unadorned with the trappings of a typical “studio” album. In the past, the band would rehearse new material for a longer period, committing it to tape only after working out the arrangements and performing it live. They had also enlisted producers like Steve Lillywhite to polish the songs into a more conventional sounding release. When asked about the benefits or possible dangers of recording songs so early in the process of learning them, Fishman pauses to reflect on the question. After all, Phish had made a career out of performing without a net. “It depends on how you define ’danger.’ If you define it as overproduction, which is an easy thing to do, especially these days, then that can be a type of hazard. Of course another way is, you can commit to tape as early as possible and with as little editing as possible and do it just like we did . Now, danger can also be not getting the song to tape the way you really hear it in your mind, through the arrangement or knowing your parts – the way you personally interact with the music. If danger is defined as having a rough version on a song, then Round Room is the most dangerous album we’ve done. But in that case, it was really good to take a leap like that. “I think Round Room was just a way for us to get back into the groove, kind of a kick in the ass for us. I love that album. The only thing I don’t like about it is my drumming on ’Pebbles and Marbles,’ the very first song. The way I hear that song, the way I feel I could play it, just has a lot more flow to it.” Historically the band has always used different approaches to working on new material. A song is as likely to find its genesis in a demo recorded at a home studio as it is to spring from a guitar riff played at sound check. As far as drum parts go, Fishman says his input “varies pretty radically. It goes from ’We don’t have a drum part for this at all,’ to ’Play this part beat for beat.’ It runs the whole gamut. Most of the time it’s somewhere in between. There’s a song called ’Twist’ on Farmhouse. Trey had a demo of that beat and the main assets of that were kept, but there were other parts that were kind of sparse and the feel of that whole thing was kind of like a rickety wagon going down the road with a lot of cups and bells hanging from it. There’s really only one song, ’Demand,’ that we never play because I’ve never really mastered the drum part, but I will. It’s the only song where there was a part written out on a drum machine and I had to match it beat for beat, and there’s really nothing that I added or subtracted to it. “But there’s also a bunch of songs that have been written around grooves. It happened more in the past when I lived with Trey. I would be practicing in my room off the kitchen and Trey would come in an hour later and say, ’Hey, play that beat you were playing an hour ago to this part,’ and he’d go upstairs and write a song to some groove that I was playing. But for that to happen now, because we don’t live together, I have to actually record things and bring them up to The Barn and stick them into Pro Tools. I want to get a little storehouse of drumbeats – things that I’ve found and I like and came up with on my own, and make a 20- or 30-second loop. Maybe Trey will be looking for something and he’ll file through what I have. Kind of like when you buy those V-Drums and they have the preprogrammed grooves on there; well, I would have a bunch of my own grooves on there. And we could work on those – extend some or maybe suggest an idea based on one.” Sitting down behind his drums, Fishman is clearly excited as he illustrates the point by playing a groove he’s been working on. The beat includes bouncing and rebounding on the head and rim of a rack tom with one hand while playing a traditional Cuban clave on a woodblock with his other hand. “I’ve been trying to get more parts out of each hand,” he explains over the sound of the drums, “so I’ve been reading about claves and son beats. I’ve been working out ways to incorporate those. If I keep my hand closed on the down stroke I get one sound and then open my fingers on the upstroke I get another sound and the middle note of the triplet is on the drum. The woodblock fills another space and it actually sounds like straight eighth-notes on the rim. I like the fact that when you play it, at no point does the clave get in the way of the tom. I totally stumbled on it by accident. You can kind of make it a more of a second-line thing. That’s an example of something that, once I get more comfortable with it, I can make up a specific melody for it.” It’s obvious that here in his house, on this perfect spring day, surrounded by his family and his drums, Jon Fishman has struck a sort of harmony between the often conflicting worlds of rock and roll fame, and a healthy, balanced personal life. After reuniting with Phish for two short holiday tours last winter, Fishman returned home to Vermont energized by the live shows and committed to getting his mind and body in shape for what he hopes will be the second act of Phish’s long career. He started working out with a personal trainer and has been busy organizing his practice room so he can record ideas at a moment’s notice. He was also excited about the upcoming summer tour and the child he and his girlfriend are expecting in September. “I’m sort of treating this like a semester at school,” he says enthusiastically. “I’m getting my house in order, getting moved in here and setting up a recording situation, and spending time with my family, and getting in shape. I wanted to do that for this tour. I want to go back and clean up some of my rudiments and work on some fundamental drumming things and have time to myself to get my own discipline back together. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, but I always committed to going out on tour with Jazz Mandolin Project or whatever, but in the back of my mind I always wanted to force myself to say no. Now it’s back to the shed. I’ve got my tour kit set up and I’m working out and practicing.” Fishman’s Kit (click to enlarge) Drums: 1. 22" x 14" Gretsch Bass Drum 2. 14" x 6 1/2" Ludwig Black Beauty Snare reissue with cast hoops and tube lugs 3. 6" x 5" Ayotte Tom (no bottom head) 4. 10" x 7" Noble & Cooley CD Maple Tom 5. 12" x 8" Noble & Cooley CD Maple Tom 6. 16" x 14" Noble & Cooley CD Maple Floor Tom Cymbals: A. 8" LP Icebell cymbal B. 6" LP Rancan cymbal C. 14" Zildjian A Custom Dark hi-hat D. 15" Sabian AAX Dark Crash E. 8" Zildjian K Splash F. 16" Zildjian Platinum Medium-Thin Crash G. 21" Sabian AA Dry Ride H. 20" Zildjian Custom Dark Ride I. 20" Zildjian Riveted Flat Ride J. 16" Wuhan China K. 18" Zildjian K Ride Percussion: L. 4", 6", 10", 9" LP wood blocks M. 4" LP Jamblock w/Axis Pedal N. 8" LP Cowbell w/Ridge Rider O. 6" LP cowbell Jon Fishman also uses a Gibraltar rack, Pearl pedals, Purecussion RIMS tom mounts, Regal Tip Rock model drum sticks and Regal Tip Clayton Cameron model brushes. “I do have all these goals that I want to accomplish, I want to get my drumming up to another level, and I realize in order to do that I have to cultivate a home life and have that balance to move forward. Now that I’m 38, it’s easy for me to get out of shape and it takes me a longer time to get back to where I was. We just did this February tour and it was great, but in all honesty, at the end, I felt like I was just ready to really play. You use what you have and I had a great tour, but I’m trying to develop a level of consistency. “Great music comes from having a life. You have to have experiences and enjoy life and that will allow you to be musically inspired. That’s what I’m doing now. Before I would come home and flop and it was band practice that kept me going and kept me from totally bottoming out. I’m not getting too crazy with it. I’m excited and want to do everything at once, but I have good people around me who say ’Yeah, one step at a time’. So hopefully by June I’ll be playing my drums two hours a day, I’ll be in great playing shape by the first gig and do the tour and when I get home I’ll be able to pick up where I left off. I do think at this age, the peaks I can attain can be higher than before. I feel like things have just really begun.” Jumping ahead to July, Fishman calls from his hotel room in Phoenix, where the band has spent the last few days preparing for the opening show of the summer tour, which starts later that evening. He is beside himself with excitement about the music Phish has been playing since we last spoke. “This has been an interesting three months,” he says with glee. “I feel the best physically that I’ve felt in years. My memory for older songs is way better and I’m not sucking wind at all. The band’s playing really well. We only really had two weeks to get together before the tour because everyone was finishing up their own stuff, but we worked on eight new songs and they’re really good.” Fishman says that if they had just a few extra days before the tour, they would have flown in a producer and recorded another album. “We’ve got a great album right now, it’s just not on tape. The one thing about Phish is we’ve never had a shortage of material. Our learning curve is really quick. All the years together have made us able to learn things so much faster than before. I think we’ve gotten control of the burn out factor. We know how much we can do and how much we can’t do. The last three months have given me a great foundation to work with. I found that if I stick with my workout, if I stick with my family life, all that will pay off, because the one thing I have stuck with for a really long time has been the band, and the pay off has been incredible. “I think maybe what we’re going through, instead of a mid-life crisis, it’s a mid-life explosion. If you stick with the program and follow through with things and get through some of the harder parts, you get to this place where some of the things that were relatively easy before become miraculously even easier. You didn’t expect that – you just wanted the hard to go away. And now even the easy is easier and the hard isn’t hard. It’s the benefit of pushing through. The willingness to put the energy into it is back. It seems like we all are really into being in Phish again. It’s so great that we’ve arrived back at this spot. There was no sense of forcing it. When we were back in our rehearsal space it felt like everybody was really glad to be there. It was a feeling that this was one place that the four of us really like to be. It’s somehow therapeutic, it’s a place that’s good for you to be rather than a place you want to stay away from. And that is a really good feeling. “There’s some sort of natural thing. I think any group of people who had went through what we went through and decided to stay together instead of go their separate ways has this kind of payoff. It’s leading to some really amazing places. It’s permeated my whole life. There’s something about going through what we’ve gone through to get to that higher level of teamwork that you can’t learn if you don’t stay together. “I feel like I could just stay in Phish the rest of my life and be totally happy, and any other thing I want to do musically, I can do totally on my own. I could just make four tracks at home. I just love my family and love hanging out at home.” Fishman is on a roll now, preaching the Gospel of Phish, ecstatic and caught up in the sheer joy of the moment, the joy of life and music and the joy of someone who gets to make a living playing drums in a band with his best friends. He catches himself and stops for a moment, worried that he might be perceived as overstating his case, or perhaps he is wondering if this could be as good as life gets. If it is, one gets the feeling that Fishman would be just fine with that. Subscribe to DRUM! and get the world's best drumming features, gear insights, and lessons every month in print and digital versions.

Mono Isn't Just a Relic from the 1950s . . . by Craig Anderton Who mixes in mono any more? Well, virtually no one, and in most cases you don’t want to end up with a final mix in mono. But if you start mixing with all channels panned to center, it’s easier to hear which tracks “step on” each other; you might not notice these problems if the tracks are separated spatially with panning. For example, guitar and piano can occupy similar regions of the frequency spectrum. When panned in stereo, they’ll definitely sound separate but in mono, they might interfere with each other. In this case, EQ can help differentiate them—for example, add some low end to the piano and warm up its midrange a bit, while gently reducing lows on the guitar and adding some extra brightness. (Or, do the reverse if you want the piano to be more prominent, and the guitar more in the background.) If you work with your tracks so that they all sound distinct in mono, when you start panning them and creating stereo placement, the sound will really open up. You’ll hear a sense of spaciousness and clarity that can really benefit the overall mix. So next time you set up a for a mix, try panning to center first . . . you might be surprised at how quickly this identifies “problem areas,” which you can then fix before proceeding further in the mixing process. Craig Anderton is Editor Emeritus of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.

Welcome to part 2... Taye showed some new snares. That's Todd Trent in the background. Who are these guys? They were everywhere at this vintage show. http://www.rockettdrumworks.com And sell them, too. Weird? Or cool? Rock Custom Drums. The Moon Mic is a new aproach to drum miking. The Jenkins & Martin Drum Company has brought back the Blaemire fiberglass drums from the '60s. Very cool looking tubs. Stone Drums offered some great shells. The men of Blaemire Drums. Dave Hughlett of RB Percussion (left) with Dave Clark, and Phil Hood of DRUM! Little kids rock outside the hall. Look, but don't touch. An original set of Trixon drums. Got Copper? These beautiful vintage kits were a hit. Chicago Custom Percussion showed off a towerful of their custom shells. Chicago Custom Percussion's booth was notable for it's $999 made-in-America all-maple kit, and its upscale Infinity Series. MBW showed some of the more original finishes I"ve ever seen. Know your shell supplier. The men of Erie Drum Shells. Ellis drums is a mainstay of the event and always has colorful drums on display. This is a great looking striped snare. MBW custom Throw-off Sure you don't need to buy a vintage snare drums? Want more? No problem! Check out more info and videos of the event. Subscribe to DRUM! and get the world's best drumming features, gear insights, and lessons every month in print and digital versions.

Couldn't Make It to the Chicago Drum Show? Take a Virtual Tour, Courtesy of DRUM! Magazine By Radim McCue (originally published June 27, 2012 by DRUM! Magazine) The Chicago Drum Show 2012 this past May was another wonderful event. Now in its 22nd year, the show keeps getting better. Here are some selected shots from the floor; there's more info as well as videos of the event on DRUM! magazine's web site. Welcome to the Chicago Drum Show. It's held at the Kane County Fairgrounds, near St. Charles Illinois. The exhibit space sold out and the crowds were healthy. These Slingerlands in copper sparkle were sweet! Classic brands like Ludwig were everywhere. Rogers drums in green and blue sparkle. New drums were displayed as well, including this kit from Gretsch. The men of Noble & Cooley displayed their awesome, timeless snares Noble & Cooley snare drum. Colin Hilborne of Prentice Pads and W.F. Ludwig III The Crash Flash is a nifty device that triggers lights as you play. Big Band Drummer Les DeMerle and Mike Clark took time out for a bruising snare drum battle. Les was dishing it out here. Matt Nolan's cymbals come in amazing designs. This is sort of a bat wing. Clinician John Fred Young of Buckcherry. John Fred Young jammed with his Uncle Fred, of Kentucky Headhunters fame. Detroit Custom builds some beautiful drums. Boogie Beat drums makes highly affordable snares plus this wild bass head veneer. DRUM! founder Andy Doerschuk (right) with drummer Billy Thommes. This Amedia cymbal with a bit of silver in the bronze had a great bell-like sound. Dynamicx kit. It's not all collectors and boutique drum makers. Larger companies like Pearl and Zildjian also exhibited. Click over to Part 2 for more pix of the show.

Drum! Magazine Spotlights Some of the Latest Products for Drummers Istanbul Mehmet Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez Signature Cymbals By Andy Doerschuk The past year has been pretty exhilarating for the artist reps at Istanbul Mehmet Cymbals, who added a host of high-profile endorsers to the roster, including the great jazz drummer Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez. The company allowed Hernandez creative freedom to customize a personal line of Signature Series cymbals, which shares a specially brushed finish and raw bell. It seems that the Turkish cymbalsmiths didn’t restrict his options based on the impressive selection, which includes a 22" Medium Ride, 22" Light Ride, 22" Flat Ride, 19" Crash, 17" Crash, 16" Crash, 15" Crash, 13" Hi-Hat, 12" Hi-Hat, and 9" Splash (with five installed rivets for a cool sizzle effect). Based on Istanbul Mehmet’s description, these are definitely jazzy cymbals, with slightly trashy crashes that have a short sustain, rides that cover a lot of sonic territories, and heavyweight hats that emit a powerful chick and dry stick sound. So would you like to sound like “El Negro?” Then you’d better begin practicing now, but in the meantime, check out his bronze beauties. Published May 7, 2012 Taye Drums Updates The GoKit By Andrew Lentz We love good news that comes in pairs. First, Taye Drums is adding Daytona Sunset finish to its GoKit line for 2012. This irresistible head-turning color offers a timeless visual zing whether you’re playing a retro-hip lounge gig, or surrendering to a spontaneous urge during the commute to stop the car, pull the diminutive kit out of the hatch, and start shedding. Second, the company is now offering an odd-size 14" x 11" floor tom, which will come in handy on those bomba-inflected jazz breakdowns. Comes on super-tall legs so you can reach it in comfort and still get the benefit of a shallow tom. Made from the same birch/basswood shell as the rest of the GoKit line. The kit and add-on drum are also available in Antique Honey and White Pearl in addition to Daytona Sunset. Published May 10, 2012 Grover Roll Ring: Cool Tool For Tambourines By Andy Doerschuk If you’re like me, you’ve never had much success executing thumb rolls on a tambourine. I still can’t figure out whether the trick is in the amount of moisture on your thumb, or the pressure you apply to the head, or is it just dumb luck? Well, the inventive people at Grover Pro Percussion obviously took pity on those of us who never mastered the technique by introducing the Grover Roll Ring. The 1" wide self-adhesive band is specially shaped to conform to the outer circular edge of a headed concert tambourine. It has a special non-permanent adhesive backing that makes it easy to install and remove in seconds. The Roll Ring is reusable and can be applied and stored numerous times. Life’s too short to agonize over trying to discover the secret of the tambourine roll. Just get yourself a Grover Roll Ring and count your blessings. Published April 30, 2012 Rimshot Locs Keep Your Drums In Tune By Andy Doerschuk It’s a fact of life – tension rods gradually loosen as you play a drum over time. The harder you play, the faster they back out of the lugs. Of course, the worst culprit is the snare drum, which is the most frequent target for jarring rimshots. As a consequence, I tweak the tension rods on my snare several times throughout the course of a gig, and at least once or twice on my toms. While I’m used to this necessity, and now do it almost unconsciously, it’s still a nuisance, which is why Rimshot Locs look like a pretty good idea. They’re ingeniously simple devices. Each little chromed brass and stainless steel sheathe threads onto a tension rod so that it fits between the counterhoop and lug. Once the rods are tuned to your preference, Rimshot Locs tighten up like a nut onto a bolt, locking the tension rod in place. And as you can see, they’re virtually invisible to the eye. Rimshot Locs are available in packs of six, eight, and ten. Interested? Go here for more information. Published May 14, 2012 Subscribe to DRUM! and get the world's best drumming features, gear insights, and lessons every month in print and digital versions

By David E. Libman (Originally published in the January 2012 issue of DRUM! Magazine) Until the last decade or so, I always viewed Turkish cymbals as sort of a Holy Grail of jazz cymbals for older professional players or younger jazz nerds. Times, however, are changing. Today, drummers both young and old and from every genre are incorporating Turkish cymbals into their setups, and with good reason. There’s a certain expressiveness and musicality that emanates from a handmade cast plate of B20 bronze that’s hard to deny. Still, modern amplified music often requires drummers to play at a volume level and with a degree of physicality that can overwhelm the dynamic capabilities of the thinner, more delicate jazz cymbals that we used to associate with Turkish manufacturers. Here’s where the TRX Young Turks cymbals enter the mix. TRX has been around for six years or so, with its international headquarters in Studio City, California. TRX cymbals are made at already-existing Turkish cymbal manufacturing facilities that also make cymbals for other brands. TRX differentiates itself by developing specific, unique designs with specifications geared toward younger and/or modern players. As a consumer, this means you get a cymbal made by someone who already knows what he or she is doing, but with a sound that, at least in theory, has a more modern sensibility. The TRX set I received consisted of a smattering of new cymbals TRX has released over the last year: (1) from the ICON series, an 11" splash, a 12" China, a 16" Stacker crash, and a 22" heavy ride; and (2) from the other series, 15" BRT/DRK hi-hats, a 19" LTD China, a 21" MDM crash/ride, and a 22" BRT crash/ride. Although not necessarily designed to go together, I tested these cymbals as a set and found that they blended together exceptionally well — both sonically and visually. Old Soul with a New Face All the TRX cymbal series I received are cast from B20 bronze (80 percent copper/20 percent tin) and completely handmade. From there, manufacturing techniques differ slightly. The ICONs and the MDM crash/ride utilize traditional lathing on top and bottom. The ICONs have a brilliant finish that comes from buffing (no lacquers or other finishes), whereas the MDM has a non-brilliant (i.e., classic, or less shiny) surface. TRX perforates the 16" ICON crash with six large holes for air venting, each approximately 2" in diameter. The surface area of the 19" LTD China receives micro-lathing top and bottom with a raw (unlathed) bell, brilliant edges (from where the cymbal inverts), and a remaining non-brilliant/classic surface area. The BRT 22" crash/ride has an unlathed top and bottom with myriad scattered hammer marks and one of the most gorgeous brilliant finishes I’ve seen on a cymbal. The 15" BRT hi-hat top has the same gorgeous brilliant finish. The 15" DRK hi-hat bottom has an earthy, non-brilliant look that comes from virtually no lathing — except for a series of approximately eight spaced lathed stripes near the cymbal’s edge. All of the TRXs I received have expertly applied black logos with eye-catching, modern bold fonts. The all-caps large “ICON” black logos that adorn the cymbal playing surfaces have some purposefully missing paint on some of the letters — giving them an already-worn jeans look that says, “I may be young, but I’m not inexperienced.” The BRT, MDM, and LTD logos — also in all-caps, in what appears to be a bold Times New Roman font — are a nod to the acronym obsession that seems to pervade everything modern. (Does anyone remember when KFC actually used to be called Kentucky Fried Chicken?) The only aesthetic remnant of old fogy Turkish cymbals that the TRXs retain is their black stamped size indicators. For example, the underside of the 22" ICON heavy ride has a not-very-stylish bold black stamp that says, “22" 55 cm.” I’ve come to expect these stamps on most Turkish handmade cymbals, but I’ve rarely seen this sort of size indicator on a Western or Euro-style major-label brand. Those brands use cool fonts and paint applications for size indicators. TRX should do the same (or otherwise, include no size indications at all). Aside from that small nit, I found all the TRX cymbals to be visually impressive and professional on every level. Roar Of The Young Turks The ICON 11" splash, 12" China, and 16" Stacker crash can obviously be played separately, but they are also designed to stack atop one another. I stacked them, at least initially. As expected, as a stack, these three cymbals produce the sort of shrill, short, glass-shattering sound that everyone seems to love from stacked cymbals — except for me. Honestly, I think the stacked cymbal concept is an acquired taste that has yet to catch my fancy. It’s not that cymbals sound bad stacked, it’s just that they usually sound better by themselves. On its own, the 11" splash explodes instantly with mostly highs, enough supporting undertone to keep the splash sounding full, and a lovely overall pitch that makes this cymbal exceptional. The 12" China has the same quickness and explosiveness, but instead of a splash sound, it barks with an endearing pitchy, quirky kang. This 12" China also has surprising expressiveness for its small size. The 16" crash is relatively thin, which, in combination with its six perforated holes, gives it a trashy, almost instantaneous burst of white noise. The 16" model is a one-note cymbal in the sense that you can’t ride it or get much from it other than the crash sound. The 15" BRT top/DRK bottom hi-hats accomplish a well-matched blending of two TRX lines. The BRT top, with its brilliant finish and lack of lathing, allows these hats to produce crystal-like stick definition. The foot chick from these hats is crisp and pleasant, although I did have some problems with air pockets unless I got the angle just right. Wide-open splash and half-open spizzy sounds from these hats are stellar, making this a versatile hi-hat pair that sounds both modern and nuanced. The 19" LTD China does everything you want from a China cymbal of this size without being overly abrasive or harsh. It has lots of low-end roar, a hint of trashiness, and a nice quality hi-pitched kang at the top end. Beyond that, this China blends well on a dynamic level with the other TRX cymbals I tried, since it is neither too soft nor too loud. With its medium weight, the 21" MDM crash/ride has enough heft to make it an excellent jazzy-sounding ride cymbal that retains stick articulation even at fast tempos. As a crash, this cymbal’s weight requires you to whack it with some force before it fully explodes. The bell cuts through clearly and distinctly while still bringing with it the sound of the rest of the cymbal. This 21" MDM crash/ride would be better named a “ride/crash”; it works well for both applications but slightly better as a ride. On the other hand, TRX named the 22" BRT crash/ride just right. This cymbal has an incredible, large crash sound that opens up with very little effort from the stick. Miraculously, this 22" plate still manages to produce alluring glass-like stick articulation when played as a ride at slow through medium tempos. At faster tempos, the wash from this cymbal starts to overwhelm stick definition. Overall, this 22" crash/ride has a versatility that allows it to cross the line between musical styles in a surprisingly agile way. The 22" ICON heavy ride feels and plays heavy. It has what can be best described as an aggressive and clean rock-oriented sound with a few more overtones than you might expect from your typical rock ride. When played with stick tips, this cymbal cuts through with mostly mids accompanied by a well-balanced second set of highs and lows with some shimmer (but not much). The bell is clear and open, but nothing spectacular. This ride always sounds big and sometimes borders on being indelicate, but it manages to remain musical. At The Gig I played the TRX Young Turks at home (a lot) and on two very different gigs. The first gig was a Vegas-style show with lots of amplification, horns, and a singer. The second gig was an intimate jazz-trio session with no amplification, an acoustic piano, and an acoustic bass in someone’s living room. At my Vegas-style gig, these cymbals blended well with each other, crossed musical styles effortlessly, and were generally fun to play. The same qualities that made me love TRXs on the Vegas-style gig made me nervous to take then to the jazz-trio session. I worried they would be too loud and generally overwhelm the room. To my pleasant surprise, this was not the case at all. In the acoustic setting, I found myself gravitating toward the 22" BRT crash/ride and 21" MDM crash/ride because of their expressiveness and their ability remain delicate. With brushes, hot rods, and even sticks, these cymbals allowed me a sensitivity that was refreshing. They have the shimmer and breathiness that I would expect from Turkish cymbals, but with a brightness and clarity that’s more modern. The selling point here, for me at least, is that I could buy this set of cymbals and use them for most styles of music, regardless of whether it is old-school, new school, amplified or acoustic. Verdict TRX is but one of many companies in an already crowded field of handmade Turkish cymbal makers vying for a highly competitive market share. Yet the TRX cymbals manage to differentiate themselves from some of their competitors by offering a different take on what we generally expect from traditional Turkish handmade cymbal fare. The sound that comes from the Young Turks is bigger, louder, more modern, and brighter than many of the other Turkish cymbals currently available. Are they as nuanced as jazz cymbals? No. Are they as musical? Yes. I would definitely recommend that you give these TRX models a try — especially if you like to play loud. Details Models/Sizes & List Price 11" ICON Splash $240 12" ICON China $300 15" BRT/DRK Hi Hats $575 16" ICON Stacker Crash $375 19" LTD China $450 21" MDM Crash/ride $500 22" BRT Crash/ride $525 22" ICON Heavy Ride $700 Features Cast B20 bronze cymbals handmade in Turkey to specifications designed for younger/more modern applications. ICONs and MDMs are lathed on top and bottom, but ICONs have a brilliant finish whereas MDMs do not. LTDs have micro-lathed tops and bottoms with raw bells, brilliant edges and non-brilliant other surfaces. BRTs have unlathed tops and bottoms with brilliant finishes. Contact TRX Cymbal Co. trxcymbals.com Subscribe to DRUM! and get the world's best drumming features, gear insights, and lessons every month in print and digital versions

By Gregg Juke (originally published in the October 2011 issue of DRUM! Magazine) I really did consider titling this review “Me Want,” but I was pretty sure that wouldn’t pass the editor’s desk. But keep that in mind; these drums are very special, and if you need to summarize this information later for a friend, remember — “me want.” Gon Bops. I remember hearing the name used by percussionists over the years, spoken in hushed and reverential tones, but I never had the chance to play Gon Bops hand drums until the Mariano series congas and bongos arrived on my doorstep. “Now we’ll see what all the big hullabaloo is about,” I said. I had no idea. But before telling you more about Gon Bops’ special new line of congas and bongos, perhaps a little history is in order (cue spotlight and music, please). Gon Bops began in California as a garage workshop experiment in drum building by Mariano Bobadilla and Tom Flores, way back in the early 1950s. And while Gon Bops drums would eventually become some of the most sought-after by all the high-profile players on the West Coast, the slow pace of those early days forced Bobadilla and Flores to part ways. Bobadilla went on to found Gon Bops, one of the oldest and most respected modern manufacturers of Latin percussion instruments in the world, while Flores created a company called Valje, also a well-known and world-renowned name in conga building. Due to changes in the marketplace and the economy, Gon Bops was forced to close its doors in 1998 after an incredible four-plus-decade run. An investor bought the company, but couldn’t make it work, and after a couple of years sold off the pieces. In 2001, Don Lombardi of Drum Workshop bought the Gon Bops name, but the name only. Nothing physical of the company was left, having been sold to someone else. Lombardi rectified this by purchasing Sol Percussion, and its president and drum builder, Akbar Moghaddam. By 2005, Gon Bops was back in the percussion business. This “Gon Bops 2.0,” if you will, never lost site of the company’s storied roots and Bobadilla’s vision. Two years ago, Gon Bops changed hands again, this time to Sabian. And while the backstock, inventory, and paperwork moved to a new headquarters in Massachusetts, the factory remained at DW, in Oxnard, California. Because of that, Gon Bops drums retain a distinctly “California flavor.” Fast-forward to the present, and the Mariano series. These finely crafted instruments are dedicated to, and based on, designs of the original master himself, Mariano Bobadilla. The care and craftsmanship show, and serve as excellent tribute. There are five drums in the new line: four congas (quinto, conga, tumba, and super tumba), and the bongos. And while the drums have much in common with the original Mariano series, some key improvements were added that make these drums particularly special. California Drumming All the drums in the conga set are 30” tall, have two retaining rings with five screws in each, and come with very fetching silver, black, and red Gon Bops badges, each with individual serial numbers. The tuning rings on the congas all have five points of tension (like the originals), while the bongos sport the standard four-point tuning rings. While the counterhoops are of the traditional variety in that they do not apparently have any softened edges or comfort-type curve, this is no problem, as they leave plenty of access to the drumheads for open tones and slaps. The heads use the same real cowhide as the originals, and their playability is superb. The color and finish are what I would call “satin cocoa brown,” and what Gon Bops calls Mahogany Stain. The drums are constructed out of 100 percent sustainable durian hardwood, which takes the place of the original Mariano series’ Philippine mahogany while boasting many similar sonic characteristics. The drums appear to be constructed of between 18 and 20 individual staves. It’s very hard to tell, but this is a good thing. The construction of these congas is almost literally seamless, and the staves are so tight, inside and out, that it is sometimes hard to tell where one ends and the next begins. This seamless construction may be part of the secret to the Mariano series’ sound, which is very open, round, and, for lack of a better term, pure. As a player no less than Alex Acu√±a has pointed out, there are very few overtones produced by these drums; the sound is all fundamental, and all conga. The bongo set matches the color and finish of the congas, and features a 7” playing surface on the macho drum, and 8.5” on the hembra. The sound and look of the bongos is in perfect harmony with the congas, and the bongos sport smaller versions of the same silver, red, and black badges. The congas and bongos all come with their own tuning wrenches and carrying pouches, and the tuning rods each have a threaded rubber end-cap, to save on scratches on the instruments, and on the hands during transport. They do not come with cases or handles, so you’ll want to get a nice padded case for each one of your Mariano series instruments if you plan on taking them out of the house or transporting them to the studio or stage. Testing And Observations The Mariano series drums are one-of-a-kind. These instruments look gorgeous, but they can back-up the look with a sound that is beyond description with mere words — they just sound “right.” Playability is a natural outgrowth of craftsmanship of this caliber. The drums were very easy to tune to specific pitches (Patato Valdes, anyone?). The compass of the available scale fell into a pretty faithful 1, 2, 4, 6 sequence of notes, and once I’d tuned it up I found myself immediately jamming “I’m A Man” with melodic precision. Alex Acu√±a was right, there are really no appreciable overtones to these drums, which makes tuning a breeze. Tuning to specific notes can be very important in traditional Latin playing, but can be a real bonus in the studio as well. Big beefy open tones, crisp slaps, and solid palm sounds were very easy to achieve on the Mariano congas, and the drums all sound like they “belong” together. The bongos were easy to tune and play as well, and finger-pops came through bright and clear with very little effort. The defining “Me Want” moment came after recording the Marianos with two condenser microphones in a simple X-Y stereo pattern. The reason I always heard Gon Bops congas discussed with such reverence was apparent on playback, which came through loud and clear. The sound in the room was exactly what was recorded — pure, pristine, and full. Verdict If you’re ready to move up to a truly classy set of instruments (more conga than you ever dreamed of), then the Mariano series just might be the drums for you. Gon Bops has truly paid the proper respect to its roots with this collection, and that’s no small order. Details Finish Mahogany Stain Construction 9- or 20-stave durian hardwood shells Features Wrenches and pouches included; classic-style counterhoops; original five-point tuning design; real cowhide head Model, Size & List Price Bongos ...7" & 8.5" $249 Quinto ...10.75" x 30" $669 Conga ...11.5" x 30" $699 Tumba ...12.25" x 30" $739 Super Tumba ...13.25" x 30" $799 Contact Gon Bops gonbops.com 800-817-2242 Subscribe to DRUM! and get the world's best drumming features, gear insights, and lessons every month in print and digital versions