Drumming a passion

Drumming is an art and the oldest known instrument and that is why I have a very strong passion for it. Drums where my first instrument to learn how to play. Now I 'm a multi-instrumentalist I play anything with strings on it and piano. But I really can't stay away from my drum set for very long it is like a magnet and I'm a piece of steel. That is where the passionate part comes in and you can include percussion instruments as well. I recently bought the Simmons SD7PK electronic kit but out of necessity I had to turn it into a hybrid kit half real and half electronic. You see when I would record with it you couldn't hear the kick drum no matter where I panned in the mix “big problem”. So I went down to the local pawn shop and bought a used black Pearl 22” kick drum that someone had gotten rid of separately I was in luck. So I removed the bottom bracket in the front on the Simmons rack frame installed the Pearl kick drum with a few new heads problem solved now I could here the kick in the mix. Now this kind of set up requires a few things I had to add a small six channel mixer and some good Audix microphones so I could record the real part to the mix. This is my setup I ran a Audix D6 in front of the kick drum (you can use the D6 for bass cabinet recording as well and it sounds great) an Audix i5 to my cowbell and woodblocks and a Audix i5 to my tambourine all of them ran back to the first three channels of the small mixer. Then I take the outs from the Simmons power module left and right plug them into a stereo channel on the mixer for the electronic toms, snare and cymbals then I ran the main outs on the mixer to my recording setup and that is how you can record an hybrid kit. Pretty easy to do now I know that none of the drummers from past did this but now we have better technology and if you are truly passionate about playing drums like I am this is a good place to start. For more drumming tips or lessons go to www.musicanddjinstructionalmedia.com