 Welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart van der Zee and today I'm honored to be joined by Dan Bailey. Dan, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me Bart. Yeah, so I should mention you're the drummer for the great father John Misty. You are the creator of the really cool Bailey method series. You got one and two, number three is coming out soon, which we can talk about later on. But so the topic today is using vintage drums in the studio. A lot of people do it, but there's some pros. I'm sure there's some cons, obviously. So yeah, you're a big vintage guy. So why don't we just jump in? I figured we'd kick off with maybe like, what are the benefits of recording with vintage drums versus using just, you know, go out and buy a Yamaha recording custom kit or something like that. Sure. Well, I mean, and, you know, depending on the application, the recording custom might completely rule, you know, or not might it will, because those drums are awesome. But I think when I'm picking drums, because I have a, you know, a handful of I got an old Gratch and old camco and some old Ludwig stuff. And then I've got, you know, some modern DW drums, I got some modern Q drums, and I've got a Yamaha kit in storage somewhere. Like, yeah, I mean, it's just for application. It's like, you know, if you're if you're playing on a tune and they go like, yeah, man, we really want like the 1968 Ringo thing, or like, oh, it's we were really going for plastic ono band, which in my case, you know, with my band, that's always what we're aiming for. That doesn't come out of a DW collectors, you know, that like that sound that sound is a is a three ply shell from the 60s. So and you can get it with Rogers or Gratch or Ludwig or you know, whatever, but that is the vibe. And there's something about how those instruments age, that just gets you, you know, not only the construction, because obviously in 1968, that was a new drum kit. But yeah, it gets you closer to that thing, which then in turn inspires you to play in the way that's appropriate. You know, it's like, if you have a new DW collectors with clear ambassadors, and the thing is, oh, we're doing, we're doing Ringo, it's like, Ringo isn't going to come out of your playing, because the sounds are not inspiring that performance, you know. No, no. So I mean, that's a great point of like, it's beyond the like, Oh, it's what it does for you. Yeah. It's about, yeah. And like, and I know there's a big thing too of like, hey, your symbol that you buy today is going to sound different in 50 years. Yeah. So that's really cool. It's kind of mental. Oh, totally. For me, it's like, I'm always selecting gear by trying to be inspired to do a certain thing. In the same way, if I'm doing, if I get a call and the references are all like, man, we really like the first a perfect circle record. You know, I'm not, it's like, that's a very bright, shiny, modern drum sound. That is where the DW collectors is going to crush, like that's going to do that amazing. So yeah, it's just about the same way it'd be unfair to take a round badge, Gretsch kit and go like, man, I really needed to fit on this nine inch nails track. You know, just that's not, you're asking to do something doesn't do, you know. No, exactly. Now how would you say that I guess it would be trial and error, but there's sure it's not even a question, but it's more of a thought like, it's easy to take for granted, like, well, you would just use this for this and that for that where sometimes, and I think it equates to drumheads too, where people say, well, you don't want to, you want to use a clear here and a coded here. It costs money to try these things out. So what would be a good rule of thumb of like, is Ludwig better for one thing is Gretsch better for another thing? Like if you're playing, let's say a jazz, you have a jazz gig, is a certain brand that you like better for that versus an old Beatles kind of rock gig? I mean, yeah, I would, I always think of especially old drums, but I guess this is kind of old drums too, is you kind of either you're either like bright and articulate or you're warm and tubby. That's the two lanes. And so I think of like, even in the, say, you know, just talking about 60s drums is like a round badge kit sounds nothing like a Ludwig kit. They don't sound anything the same if you put, you know, coded ambassadors on both sides and just hear what that does. It's the, it's the straight shell. It's the die cast hoop. Those drums like to get tuned high. They don't necessarily like to go low. So if you're want the like 60s, you know, rock and roll thing, you're going to go more the Ludwig Rogers, you know, that kind of that school of thing. Whereas if you if you're getting a call for something that's more jazz, I just assume that that means higher tunings and Gretsch drums really excel at that. Now modern drums like modern Gretsch drums, like from the 70s on, do rock tunings. Incredible. That's just not always the case with the 60s ones for whatever reason. But yeah, I just, I think of it like, I mean, really, it comes down to too. It's like, oh, man, we have this, you know, we want you to play on this jazz trio record, which not the kind of calls I get, but that just screams, you know, 2012, 14 Gretsch to me. But that's just because that's Elvin Jones and Papa Joe Jones. And yeah, just all those dudes play those kind of drums. And so our ears are trained to hear that, you know. Well, you bring up a good point there of sizes. So 2012, 14 is pretty much a standard just that old. I mean, that's that's kind of I have that feeling of that like those are the classic sizes there. Is that your go to that that configuration for most sessions? Sure. I use 22, 13, 16, maybe, okay, maybe 75% of the time. And I could honestly probably use it 100% of the time if I really wanted to push and try to make it fit. To me, it's really like there's, you know, there's 22, 13, 16, or maybe a 24. If you have a rock gig, I don't have a heavy enough foot to make a 24 sound good. So I just stick to 22s. And then there's the 2012, 14, or obviously the 18, 12, 14, there's like, if you had, you know, when people ask me about, you know, what they should get and stuff, I always think you should have one modern kit and one vintage kit. If you're going to have, if you're going to pursue this as at least a hobby, if not a profession, you only need two drum kits and you need, and you probably if you're playing like with me, you know, I do a lot of singer songwriter, a lot of like pop sessions, a lot of rock stuff or indie, you know, whatever, between a good 2012, 14 and a good 2012, 13, 16, you could play anything I'd ever get called for. And if you had like, maybe the 2012, 13, 16 is a modern kit and the 2012, 14 is an old something or other, you know, it's just to get the maximum spread from a couple drum kits. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, for me, it's, it's no matter what I ever get a floor time to do, I just always wish it was a 16. Anytime I have a 14, it's like, I wish this was a 16. And that's just however the way I hit a drum really responds well to a 16 and not so much to a 14. Well, that's a good point too, because if people play differently, you can obviously your head selection is important. You can dampen things, you can do the old, you know, the tea towel kind of thing. Yeah, but there's, I feel like there's no definitive answer. But maybe we now, I'd love to maybe go, I don't want to say drum by drum because toms are a little bit, we can, we can go toms too. But a lot of times I think people, a lot of your character comes from your kick and your snare. So what would be a good, maybe some options, maybe not, what should we do, Dan? But what are some options to get some different, some different bass drum sounds? Different head, head on, giant hole in the front, no hole in the front. What are some of your tricks? I mean, the three I use most times are, you know, a full front head or no front head, or, I mean, it's really the three kind of options there are, or a head with a port in kind of a modern setup. There's something about, again, this is application. So it's, there's something about you have to make the bass drum fit the track you're going to use it on. So if it's, if it's a singer-songwriter thing, and I'm maybe, you know, it's maybe 70 BPM, and I'm playing brushes, like that's one where maybe a long, you know, a full front head bass drum would really shine because it, I can't imagine the bass drum notes are going to be too close together. So it's like, oh, we can really have a drum that's going to set some foundational low end for this track and it's going to sound cool. It's going to be interesting because it has the space to work. Whereas like, if you're doing something that's either, either, you know, very in a, in a disco way, dead drums, or if you're going to be stacking samples on something or there's programming and you're fitting drums into them, then something like a no front head, because it gives you that immediate attack and low end and then kind of no sustain, that's going to sit pretty with that kind of production. So it's definitely, yeah, it's, it's really just having like a selection of tools and then applying them correctly to the, the situation. Yeah. And people love it or hate it. People replace the drums sounds a lot or, or, and I shouldn't say replace, you'll use like reinforce the slate triggers. Yeah, which, yeah. I mean, from being, you know, the drummer on a session and also being the engineer on sessions, it really does help to just like on, you know, small speakers or whatever when you're checking, it does help to have that like, just you're not changed, you're not totally replacing it. You're just like you said, reinforcing it. Sure. So for people who, who obviously maybe don't know that it's obviously it's being triggered by your bass drum and it adds in a sample that you can typically choose like DW 22 by 18. And it's like, I mean, it's a punch in the gut, perfect quote unquote, perfect bass drum sound or a black beauty snare. They're really are helpful. Yeah, totally. So for me, I always like to, I like to think, you know, obviously this has a lot to do with again, the application and the knowing, you know, how the production style of the tune is going to go and all that. But you know, I never want to go in thinking about what's going to happen to the drums later. Like I always want to turn in something that you could use as is, you don't have to, I don't mind samples as a production choice. Samples as a fix is a bummer. Like that's something to be avoided. But if it's, there is no shame in like, yeah, on the chorus, they added this, you know, sample, this bottom snare sample under my snare and it like lifted it into the chorus. Like, well, that's incredible. That's great. That was appropriate to the situation. Yeah, I think that, I mean, we're just, this is kind of a fun just throw everything out there episode. I think one thing that I didn't realize before I got more into the world of recording is that like, people will use one snare sound for the verse, then they'll use another snare sound for the chorus and same with the bass drum and a different reverb for every single thing. And that is really impactful. And that's where recording and everything can go and writing the faders up at the chorus. That's how things get time consuming and really make it next level recording, as you know, obviously. So everyone knows that there's all these different options you can do with your recordings. Yeah, it's, it's, you can pretty much endlessly manipulate like the amount of pop records that the, I mean, for instance, and this isn't a shade on Patrick from Black Keys at all, but you can tell from those records that like, it's a lot of those tunes is like four bars looped, but that's the vibe. Again, that's the production style they're going for. That's not to say he can't play because obviously they tour and he sounds great. So, but to make the appropriate production style, they treated the drum tracking as if it's a, they pulled a sample off an old record. So you can hear that a lot of them have like the exact same hi-hat accent that happens over and over and over, you know, every other bar. It's like, it's not, he's not playing it that way. They've looped those two bars and, but that's, man, the end result, it's all, you know, does the, does the thing you make sound good? It's cool. I mean, the recipe turned out well, then however you got there is cool, man. It's all good. Exactly. I think it's very cool. Now, so with the bass drum, obviously there's a bunch of different brands. There's different woods. There's reinforcement rings. There's not what that's all a bunch of different styles, which I think you've kind of explained that it's good, you know, whatever you can pick and choose what you like and you have to experiment to find it. But what about like gear? Like, what about, is there a certain, do you use vintage pedals? No. No, no, no. I'm a little more retentive than most about that stuff. I like, I switch out hardware every year at the end of a year's touring, even though it's, I mean, it's, it's DW, you know, 5,000 pedals and 7,000 cymbal stands. Like those things probably outlive me. But yeah, there's just the mental fatigue of like, cool, we're playing in front of 35,000 people. I don't want to have in the back of my head that, oh, when's the last time I checked that the bass drum pedal is okay. You know, like, because, you know, we all have those things, you'll be playing a gig and one bass drum hit will feel weird. And it may have just been that your foot slipped off a little bit or you didn't hit it the same way. But if you haven't been taken care of your stuff, you go like, oh no, is my pedal breaking? And that can totally take you out of what's going on. So I think that, I mean, vintage hardware, as far as, you know, if you say you found like a 1945 wood hoop, you know, WFL or Radio King or something, and it has all the original hardware, that's super cool, but I wouldn't ever use it for it. It's just too noisy. The chance of it stripping out or collapsing is too, you're going to break it. It just, hardware is done, hardware did not get good until, you know, the mid 80s. Yeah, the most part. No, I mean, some of the stuff, I mean, that's 80 years old. I mean, you wouldn't expect a 1945 car to just fire up in the morning and drive it daily driver. You know, you can't expect that of a, you know, a speed king either. No, unless it's completely unless it's a rebuild. Yeah, of course. Yeah, which it's that's a different story all together. But okay, that's a good point. Man, you're so right about that because I know that I'm the same way where I do some gigs where I use these little portable recorders. And if I go down one little battery bar from four bars to three, I change the batteries. And it's like, it seems crazy, but it's like, I'm not going to worry about Oh, totally. thing in the lane. So okay, now snare drums. Obviously, we're drummers. We love snares. It's sort of the spice of life. Yeah, snares is my that's my I don't, I'm not that gear specific about symbols or drums snare drums is the only thing like I'll take a drum kit on a tour and use it for two years and not think of one second about switching it, but I'll switch snare drums every third show, you know, we'll have three or four on the road and we'll just rotate them just because you get bored. Like that's snare drums are my are my poison kits and symbols. I'm pretty like I'm more or less play the same symbols I got from Agop in like 2009. Still, I just have my ones I love and they sound great. And so I don't switch symbols out much. It's but snare drums. Yeah, we that's where things get interesting for sure. So well, I agree completely mean symbols symbols are different because they they're not I mean that you can break them obviously but if you play correctly, and they shouldn't be breaking so they can last forever. But all right, so what what are your what are your maybe we go what are your top five snares let's say for the studio and then maybe if it's if it's live is different, you can say that too. But what do you like? Man, I would so I would say the five that I use the most that I find myself using the most is a I have a fifties Ludwig 400, which is that you know, the Chrome over brass pre superphonic with the with the Chrome over brass hoops. Really, if you can find old Ludwigs, if you can find them with the brass hoops, that's a whole game changer, like specifically look for you know, take your magnet if you're at the thrift store. And if it looks like it might be like a 61 62 if it's got the brass hoops, it's going to sound better than all the other ones. Just got you looking for that. But yeah, that the Chrome over brass, you know, superphonic thing. I have a six lug Rogers Luxor that I got for like 100 bucks at revival that is one of the best sounding drums I've ever heard my life. Wow, that's cool. Man, I use I use a cue. They're gentlemen's copper for anything that's kind of high fi or modern is such an outrageously it's it's what you think of modern black beauty is no, no, again, no shade to Ludwig, they make incredible drums. But yeah, there's just a little bit. You know, it's it's got a little more horsepower, it's a little thicker shell, it's got a little deeper bead, it just feels like it when you hit it like the harder you hit it, the more it responds. So I've really loved that drum for for anything that's kind of high octane vibe. Yeah, that man, I went down the rabbit hole of watching, I think it was a video with Elon Ruben, my goodness, man. Oh my God, and I was looking, I was like, he is a monster is getting to see him play drums in the same, just, you know, like at at NAM or at the Q office. Like, if you get to see him play in person, it's just you kind of can't believe it's coming out of a person. You're like, I just assume this comes out because it's at a, you know, a big PA at a show or a record. And then you just hear him play in the room, you're like, oh, that just that's what happens when he sits down at a drum kit, like, okay. Yeah, but other instruments too. It's like, oh, he's he's ridiculous. Yeah, sort of a prodigy. It's not fair. Yeah, it's it's it's dumb. He shouldn't be professional level at like every instrument. No. Okay. So what else do you like? Man, I always think it's good to have some kind of option for I have a eight lug, like a Ludwig, I want to say it's an auditorium. I'm showing how much I don't actually know about the history of drum companies by not knowing the model names off the top of my head. But an eight lug 14 by six and a half, three ply Ludwig, you know, it's I think it's like a 66 or something like that with with a calfskin head on it, because that that absolutely is like a sound. And if there's, you know, it's like you listen to a, oh, what's anything J. Bellarose does, right? It's just, that's the sound of calfskin heads, you know, it's like that's, and sometimes that's what you that organic, like kind of super wide, not not super, there's kind of almost no attack on it, just this warm pillowy thing. That's just what calfskin, you know, calfskin heads do just from the from the jump. So it's always, I don't ever miss them on toms and bass drum that much, but having a snare set up that way is definitely use, you know, some I use a lot. And then man, kind of, I would say that other, you know, so I got the the six Lud Rogers, I got the Cromer brass Supra, I've got the Q copper and the in the the eight Lud Ludwig, everything else is kind of, man, I would say maybe my 15 inch, I have a 15 by four 20s Ludwig, Nickel over brass that is just unreal that I got from my buddy Mario Caleri, who for some reason has always had like, he always has 10 of those drums at any given point, and he'll just kind of cycle through them. And so I've snagged a couple as he's let them go. But that drum is just unreal. And it just just sounds fake. Just a rim shot on that drum sounds like you're you're messing with it when it's you're just playing it's crazy. God, that's so cool. I mean, it's and you said 1920s. I mean, that's like 100 years old. And it's these I just that's another thing that I love about the drums is like they're not, we have this history that goes back so far. I mean, obviously way, way, way, way further back than the 20s. But yeah, they're still so usable. And the technology hasn't changed that much throw offs. Yeah, you're probably gonna want to maybe, you know, snares update. But that's just so cool. I mean, the beautiful part about see that the problem with hardware, obviously, is that it just wasn't built. You know, hardware is is a is a it's like putting tires on a car, they're built to wear out. Like hardware, your simple stand is going to break it is going to strip out and you are going to have to replace it. They're not built for an instrument is different, you know, an instrument should be a generational thing you can pass down if it's built well, all that stuff you take care of it. I think what people like either indie drums or a couple other people who are making aftermarket parts that fit old whole spacing, I think is unreal because now you're able to take like, I mean, that that 60s Ludwig drum I have with a Capscan head has an indie throw off on it. Because, you know, the P80 I put my 10th P85 on it and just got tired of swapping them because they would strip out. And so just like, Oh, a guy makes a modern throw off where I don't have to ruin the value of this drum by drilling holes in it. Like that's exactly being able. I mean, that's what makes, you know, drum shells will always as long as they don't get damaged, always be functional. It's just a matter. Can the hardware keep up? So, I mean, kudos to Ludwig and Gretch for never changing their whole spacing. Like if you get a new Ludwig, new classic lug or super classic lug, it fits on it fits on a 60s kit, you know, that's and that's fantastic. That's really smart. Yeah, I think it's true with so many things just in life, but like when when brands change when they go, it's like the new Coke kind of thing. It's like, we're going to change everything now. It's like, well, don't change what got you there. Yeah, why? Why do that? Why? Why be like, now? Now we're doing X when we've done Y for 110 years. Right. So cool. Okay. So then and then Tom's, do you do you mix match and do like a Ludwig Tom and a Gretch bass drum? Or are you pretty much I'm going to use the kit snares different? Obviously, you can use as many different snares, but are you pretty much keeping true to like, you know, or are you totally blending? Oh, no, you just you just go what's there's totally a thing where like, man, I love the thick Ludwig bass drum, but I wish this had the like, attacky or brighter Gretch Tom's, you know, like you, you'll totally, yeah. I mean, I mix and match all the time. I don't consider myself with that too much. Now, do you try and keep the same heads across the board? Are you going, okay, I like maybe a, you know, a certain, you know, two ply head on this Tom, and then I'm going to put something different on here, or is that getting too, too crazy? So I use either like a two ply coated over one ply clear. That's like my modern or rock setup, you know, whatever you would call that. Or I use, you know, one ply coated on both sides. And I don't really stray from those two things because those are kind of the two ends of the spectrum for me. You got the big, you know, a little deader, attackier, boomy or modern thing with the emperor, you know, the two ply. And you have the, you know, the kind of spongy or you can tune it up high, you know, kind of thing with the one flies on both sides. Now, the coated on both sides is that's an interesting, you know, you always think that like, like for me, I'm like, and I've said this before on an episode with Jeff Davenport about the history of drum heads, where I was like, he'd say in a great way, he'd say, oh, try this one, try this one, try this one. And I'm thinking, dude, I don't have that much money to spend on drum heads. But, you know, maybe it's worth experimenting because I always go, OK, I need like a two ply ambassador top and a one ply clear bottom. That's it. That's going to last me six months because I'm not changing these freaking things and buying it again. But if you can experiment, I love the I've had kits where I've bought them and they've had coated top and bottom. And I go, oh, my God, I love that. Or and I loved on a bass drum. I had a Yamaha kit that I got and sold but coated, you know, batter head and coated front head. And I loved that sound because I'm always like, OK, super kick to sure. And then, you know, super mic friendly. Yeah, exactly. They're good universal, but it's really cool to have that coated on the bottom. That's a great point. It just, you know, it controls the drum, maybe like two or three percent. It's basically doing the job of you having like the tiniest strip of gaff tape on the bottom head without you having to do it. And I find that like, that's really useful when most times anything I'm putting one ply coated heads on both sides, I'm going to tune kind of high because it's kind of the vintage thing. And so it like, it helps take away some of those pingy basketbally frequencies that can happen, especially on old drums that have who knows what edge is going on. You know, it helps calm down some of its like internal little problems, I find. Yeah, absolutely. It's that everyone knows this for the most part. Maybe everyone doesn't, but things sound different in the room than they do when they're actually being required. Yeah, absolutely. So what comes through the control room or, you know, if you're sometimes if you're a drummer, like I know I have like a studio space where I set it up with literally just the desk is I spin my throne around and there's my laptop. Yep. Same here. So that it's different when you're you're not, you know, monitoring it differently, which we should talk about your your home rig here in a little bit. But okay. So and then symbols just for your setup. So you said you like you use agop. So I've been a civil agop artist since she's 2000. Yeah, I think 2009. And I pretty much just play their traditional series. I have, you know, I had you're with somebody long enough, you end up collecting this giant collection of symbols, but I find the stuff I go to all the time. I'm just looking for things that sound like great fifties, a zilchins, which agop makes the closest to that. And I don't think that's I think that's an objective fact. I think you can even, I have, you know, a bunch of fifties and sixties a's. And you look, you even like take a 22 inch traditional medium ride, right? Or something, you know, from agop. And you, you look at it next to a 22 inch fifties a that I have. And you're like, oh, that hammering and, and lathing sir, sure looks pretty similar. Like it's, it's, they've, they've been the ones weirdly enough that took zilchins legacy, at least sonically and like ran with it. Like, yeah, to me, I have a ton of friends that play zilchins and there's they make, of course, everybody makes great gear. So this is just picking nits, you know. But to me, zilchins doesn't sound like they don't open up anymore. Like they all kind of sound, I mean, I remember like, I loved 90s a customs because they were so glassy and kind of would penetrate and then get out of the way. And I find that a lot of them just, they've made them heavier so that they don't break, rather than teach people that they should be using the appropriate symbol for their gig. Like if you're in a bash rock band, a custom is not your friend. That's not what you should be playing. You know, you should be playing playing a heavier a or something like that. It's, I think that and I think that that's happened a lot with with drum companies in general is they've, they've kind of taken the the wheel from the drummer and changed their product to where they think people should be, whether they should be there or not. But yeah, it's simple symbols wise. Yeah, I just find out I'm always just looking for I just want symbols that sound like symbols. I don't want symbols that sound like they have like tar on them. They have holes in them. I just want to crash that's kind of like blend nice with the track and a ride that's going to have some nice like character or definition, you know, I'm not not looking to rewrite, you know, how Sonics work with my symbols. That's that like studio thing versus the live thing where again, if you're buying symbols, you might just want like a good like series of symbols that are just really good for the track and they're not like I imagine with the kind of music you're doing, you're not doing too many crazy stacks and all sorts of things that are like doing that. So, right. And Agop people can can listen to the Istanbul Agop episode to hear about where oh my god, Tomajuk, I might not forget his first name, but the founder split off from Zildjian. And so that's where I mean, it's straight up is that right. I mean, that's what I tell, you know, I tell people they go like, Oh, right, you know, when I switched because I was a Pishti artist and they also make incredible symbols. And yeah, I mean, if I was on a rock gig, I would play Pishti because they just crush at that thing. But there's just a thing of like, they just sound like symbols. They don't sound like they're trying to be anything. They're not. It just when I in, you know, my my mental picture of what a 22 inch ride sounds like, that's a 22 inch traditional dark. It just like, it was the thing I was, you know, we're all looking for something and you don't really know till you found it. And then one day, you know, just like I had, you know, some friends that are that are artists and I like sat down at one of the kids and played is like, Oh, that's the thing. That's what I've been trying to find, you know. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, and obviously people can find symbols. I mean, everyone knows this, but I think you can, there's no, you can buy them. You can go out and find them and buy them. But but you might find them on Craigslist. I think that's a cool thing to talk about with all this is, Oh, yeah, yeah. The fun is the hunt. These vintage hunt where you can find, like you said, in a thrift store and you see a super phonic, that is real. That is so real. People find that stuff. I found some crazy deals and you, you also get heartbroken because they go, Oh, dude, I just sold this 20 minutes ago. Right. Or like, Oh, yeah, there's this acrylate. That's cool. Oh, it came in with a, you know, a 62 club date. That's museum quality that I just sold for 700 bucks. And you're like, Oh, yeah, I mean, yeah, I'll take the snare, but you're killing me with tell me about the kid. Yeah, don't tell me about that. That's awesome. All right. All of this being said, I think our target audience today is maybe someone who has like a little bit of a home studio. Let's assume that, I mean, it's crazy to do that, but let's assume that money's no object. And maybe we, maybe we talk about a budget option later and I can chime in with some, you know, cheaper stuff too. But like on your rig, I'm assuming, you know, vintage mics are great, but there's, you could have new mics that work well with vintage drums is kind of right where I'm thinking, what is your miking rig? What is your setup on your studio? Yeah, I mean, everything I use normally came out of the box. Like I'm the first owner, so I don't use any, any vintage. For me, it's, it's, if you're a commercial studio and you, man, I have this RCA ribbon mic from the forties that I got from NBCLA when they moved. And it's, you know, I paid 3800 bucks. I got a real deal, but it's in the shop every five years to get re-ribboned for a thousand dollars a time. It's like, and you lose that piece of gear when it's in the shop. I just, it's, it's not that there's a factory mentality to what I do, but it is like, if I'm working on an EP for somebody and I cut three tracks one day, the next day I'm going to go in and finish up and my preamp that my bass drum kick in goes through won't turn on. I'm now at a standstill, you know, like let alone just the same way that cymbal stands fatigue and stuff like, man, cabling goes bad, internal wiring goes bad, like old preamps are noisy as heck. There's just a, there's a standard of recording quality that vintage gear sometimes cannot get to unless it's very serviced. If, yeah, if you're going to go to, you know, a studio and they go, yeah, we have a 70s Quad 8 console, but we have it, you know, worked on every nine months. It's going to sound incredible of course, but they're also paying a tech, you know, six or $7,000 a year to maintain it. And so like that's not in the, in the cards for any of us normal folks that don't run a commercial studio. So for me, it's just about dependability. So I mean, and, and just things, if we're talking no budget, you know, just the same way that a Ludwig kit from the 60s is such a ubiquitous, it's just everywhere. Like they were super popular. They sound great. They've been used on every record. Everybody wants one. They look great. It just, every studio is going to have an old Ludwig because they're just a dime a dozen. They're, they're easy to find. They sound great, all that. By the same way, it's like, if you, if you walk into a studio and they're plugging their kick in mic into a Neve 1073, you know, you're in good shape because we know what a 1073 is. It's time tested. It's been the industry standard since, you know, the 70s. And it's just, that's how I've looked at it is like, what, what do I know works? Like I know camco drum sound great. I know Neve preamps sound great. Exactly. And it's, it's the audio guy equivalent of an old Ludwig kit, you know, except that this, this obviously would be the equivalent of like, for instance, I particularly like Brent Avril preamps because he takes the original circuit and he does what basically Q did with that copper snare, which is kind of tweak and modify and modernize. He's like, oh, you know what it needs? It needs a, it needs a transformer that's quieter and draws less power is more consistent. And it we need, you know, to solder better than we used to, you know, it's just all the little things that make it functional are better. So that's kind of how I like to stick to most my stuff is either like Brit Avril, Neves or APIs, just because those are, you know, on every record ever. So I figured, you know, like, that's what I, that's what I grew up when I was just playing drums and I wasn't engineering on sessions. That's what you see in the studio. There's a lot of, there's a lot of things out there that are new fangled and such, but when you go into a place that a room that works all the time, you see the same things over and over and over. And so I just kind of let that be my, my guide, you know. So I mean, and that's the thing of like, it is cool to experiment, but it's the same thing as like on a much more expensive level of like, I'm going to experiment with a clear snare drum head as opposed to a coated, but it's like, it's different when it's like, I'm going to experiment with an API preamp versus a Neve. We're talking thousands and thousands of times. So it's a little bit of a difference. Unfortunately, yeah, you're not talking about a $22 drum head. You're talking about, you know, $1500 mic preamp or something. Yeah. Or SSL or any of the brands. So any of those. Yeah. Why don't you, can we hear which mics you use around the kit start, you know, maybe your input, maybe like in the order you do your input, because I find that interesting too. Sometimes people do high hat in the middle or they do high hat after the overheads. So, yeah, what's, what's your order? So, so what I, yeah, what I do normally is, is usually 12, 12 tracks. And so we'll go, you know, kick in as channel one. And that is I most often use a AKG, the new D, D12 VR, which I really dig because I love a D12, but again, it's from the sixties and it's super fatigued and there are great ones and there are dogs, you know, they're, they're just tired. And, and then if you change the capsule, you've, it's a new microphone. So what's the point, you know, so. Yeah, just buy a new one. Yeah, for me, it's like, and again, it's like, I just want it to work every day. So it's just like, of the modern mics, I prefer that one. But I mean, everybody makes great stuff. But yeah, the D, D12 VR, that goes into a, a Bryn Avril 1073 channel two is, what am I doing? Say, kick out. And I'll either use a reverse wired speaker. I honestly don't remember the brand. To me, they're all basically the same. The moon mic, sub kick, yeah, the EQ or whichever one is all over reverb all the time. It's just a reverse wired speaker. If you have an old standalone studio monitor, you can just reverse wire that out the back of it. It's going to be exactly the same. It's just the like low end reinforcement thing. I'll sometimes use a large diaphragm either a FET 47 clone I have or a Vanguard V 13. If we're doing like the big open kick, where I'm going to be trying to get like tonality out of the second kick mic, most times for modern stuff, the second kick mic is just to give you low end reinforcement. Exactly. So I use that. So I use the sub kick type thing on most times. Channel three, I do snare top. And I run a buyer dynamics M 201, which is something my buddy Trevor who engineered the Father John Misty pure comedy record used on snare. And I kind of can't unhear that now. It's my favorite snare mic by a mile. Awesome. I got to check that out. Yeah, it's just like it's if a 57 went to college. It's just like a little prettier 57. It's incredible. I was going to say you're not using a 57 on top. I mean, it's like, but it's funny. It's a variation kind of that classic. Oh, totally. It's just, yeah, exactly. It's just it has, it has a little better like 100 Hertz response, which in a snare is the whole game plan, you know, and, and has a little bit, you know, that a 57 is great. And I, you know, they sound great on a lot of stuff, but they're, they're definitely narrow. They don't have a lot of top in clarity. They don't have a lot of low end capture. So yeah, having something with it, especially, you know, snare drums, that 10 K crispiness is kind of what makes it stick out in a track. So having a mic that gets a nice portion of that, you know, captures it is great. Sure. Snare bottom, either like a 57 or was it a cad E 100 I have that my buddy Jonathan who also, who produced the pure comedy record got me, we used that a cad E 100 as our kick mic on that record. And it sounded great. So I, you can find those for 100 bucks on reverb 150 bucks. Cat is not the, they're not known. No, no, but they, this particularly mic sounds great. It sounds like a budget for AKG 414, but like in the best way, and they're a hundred bucks. And so I've just kind of fell, fell into using that as a snare bottom. That thing sounds great. Snare bottom and hi hat. I just run into built in preamps on my Apollo. I haven't spent money on because look, if you're like losing sleep over that your bottom snare mic isn't going into an API, like it's, it's a, it's a reinforcement mic. It's not or hi hat. It's like people just want clarity. You're just get a clean signal and you're good. Trying to think channel five, man, I haven't, because of the moving and the broken arm, I haven't been on my rig for like four months. So this is off the top of my head. Pop quiz. I'm trying to envision my, my, it's my snake that I plug into. Yeah. Yeah. Channel five, I use, you know, rack Tom and floor Tom are my channels five and six, and I use a pair of the E V N D six, four 68s, which is a really cool mic for, it's a really good dynamic mic. It rejects a ton, which I find with Tom's, you're always just trying to keep symbols out of them. That's the, the name of the game. Tom's are very easy to manipulate and do stuff with later as long as you can keep your ride symbol from killing you in the Tom. So the four 68s do a really good job of, of rejecting, which I dig. And those go through a pair of Trident T four celebration channel strips. Nice. Just because I didn't, Tom's are something, you know, Tom's are something you don't really want to lose sleep over. So I find that that, you know, with having a channel strip, I find like an EQ setting that I like and a touch of compression, you know, going into the box. And I just literally fire and forget and only change input gain. So because, you know, kick and snare really make a track. Tom's just have to sound like good Tom's. So if you can get a good Tom sound, and then just by changing the drums themselves, you're going to change what you're capturing. You're going to be set for, for whatever you got to do. And I think, I think everyone just so everyone's on the same page. I think everyone knows the series, what we're talking about with mics and preamps. But so a channel strip, so everyone knows is actually like on a piece of like outboard or like like a mixer. If you look down at it, it's your strip where there's typically like a gate, a compressor, there could be compressor, there could be reverb. It's all in one. I use it obviously a lot built in as an insert in Pro Tools, which I'm using. And it's just instead of having four or five different plugins, you're using one thing. Yeah. So that's a channel strip. Yeah, the SSL plugin being the best, the one I see the most that it's one of the the most used plugins I see that that exactly you can you can go from like a raw sound to input gain, EQ, compression, maybe even effects on the same plugin. Yeah, it's great. Which I love the SSL. I use the Metric Halo channel strip three. And I but I again, I do day in and day out a lot of voice stuff, which SSL is unreal for. Yeah. Industry standard. So okay, carrying on. So your toms are the EV468 into the channel strip. And then where do you go from there? So channel seven and eight are my overheads, which I use a pair of Coles 4038s, which are some figure eight ribbon mics, which are, I mean, if to me, you just put a Coles anywhere near a drum kit, and it sounds like a classic record. Like it just it's because Pink Floyd Beatles Stones, if it was recorded in England in the 60s and 70s, it's on a pair of Coles on drums. Like it's just that those were the microphones. They're not the word that, you know, you can you can spend a whole lot more money than those. But to me, that's how an overhead should sound. That's, you know, it's it's a lot of like, is a supraphonic the best sounding snare drum, you know, not that that's an objective thing, but probably not. But yeah, we've been taught that that's what a snare drum sounds like, because it's on every record we've ever heard since we were newborns. Yeah. So in it, so a lot in that same way that like kind of darker, warmer overhead response, like that's that's the Coles thing. Yeah. And those go through a pair of Brent Averill 312s that I got back when he was racking old consoles. So those came out of an old API legacy console, and he racked them. Those those sound unreal, but those those mics and those preamps are probably like 70% of my sound for sure. And that's where it's just kind of funny to note that like most of the mics you've listed so far have not been that expensive. No, like nothing is that crazy. But I think then overheads is typically where that's going to be where and obviously your preamps and stuff is there's some money there. Right. But your overheads are where you you maybe want to put in a little yeah, overheads and rooms because that's what's giving you the total flavor of the kit, you know, for sure. Cool. Yeah. And then a CF seven eight nine and 10 I use are my room mics. And I use a Vanguard V 44s. I want to save the model number, which is a stereo mic based on a 70s Sony model. And that mic in particular has been not only is it only like, I think five or 600 bucks, it's not particularly expensive. But then also, I mean, I've had mine for a bit. I know Aaron Sterling has been running front for a bit. I think Victor and Drizzo has one. Like I'm starting, I know Mario Caleri has one. You're just starting to see everyone get turned on to that mic. That's one that the Vanguard mics in general are pretty incredible. And it's one of those things that it's going to get found out and they're going to be worth way more money or he's going to realize he can charge way more for them. So now's the time to get in. But so I use a V, V 44s through two channels of a or two channels of UA 7 10, which has that thing has like a little built-in compressor. It's also channel strip ish has some EQ settings on it like that. And then just a hi-hat mic, you know, again, direct into the interface. I don't touch a preamp on the way in. And then I run a mono mic that is evenly measured between the overheads. So it's like a, so it's a mono overhead kind of directly over the kick and snare. And that will either, that's the mic I do the most to when, you know, when I'll be working on something and I'll just clip a thing and post it on Instagram, most of my mics don't change in between any of those things. It's usually the mono mic that I'm like either compressing really hard or blowing out a little bit or putting a slap back on it or doing something. And for me, that mic is for me. So that the other, the other 11 are from the client. And the 12th mic is I'm going to try something to keep myself interested. And usually if they've come to you to record, they kind of want your, they're obviously hiring me for my engineering as much as my playing. So it's like, I'm going to take a shot and you know what? You can always mute it. You can always not use it. You don't have to use it. But, you know, it's nice to have some flavor or something a little interesting that maybe you didn't think about as the, as the client or whatever. And that mic, I run a V13 as well, Vanguard V13 through another channel of 710, of UAD 710. That's awesome. That's the flavor mic, the kind of the, I guess it's not really considered a mid-kit mic because it's, it's sort of higher. Like sometimes I'll do it where it's like above the bass drum, kind of closer to the knee. Yeah. I guess you're going higher. So yeah. And you know what? That's great. The knee mic or crotch mic or you know, whatever words, you know, or sometimes they'll put it back behind you by the floor tom, down low. Those mics are really cool because they kind of, a mic in the drum kit can kind of glue the kit together. You kind of get kind of the flavor of the whole thing. And that can be really cool. For me, it can be a real pain in the neck as far as phase goes because it's, it's, it's just never going to quite be in phase with the kick or the snare. So it, which of course, and especially if you're doing something like blowing it out really hard or super compressing it, it's not going to matter as much because you're, you're treating it so heavily, but you know, who really knows. But if you're, if you're going for something really pretty and pristine, it can be such a pain in the neck to get a mic in that position to sound correct. So I, for that reason, I've gone away from using one on most things. But if I was going to do, if somebody said, Hey man, I want Taman polydromes and they're four, I want four channels, then one of my channels would be something like a mid kit mic because you would lean really heavily on it. Yeah. If it's going to be the main thing, then it's totally great. If it's, if the mid kit mic is the foundation for the sound and you're going to bring other stuff around it, that's great. But, you know, the way phase works, if you bring it up and it can take away some of the attack of your kick or the body of your snare and you, you won't quite know what's going on and you can get real in the weeds with a mid kit mic for sure. Well, I always, like you said, squash it. I mean, I always think of it as kind of a parallel compression. For sure. Mic where just to probably, you know, oversimplify it for people who are listening, who are now completely checked out because this is a drum show and we've switched to recording, but you basically take that mic, you kind of in a simplified way, you duplicate it basically and you slam it with compression very hard and then you blend this slammed kind of gritty track with the original and it just, it does some awesome stuff. Yeah. It's what makes, you know, it's, to me, it's the difference of, I'm trying to formulate this thought, which has some danger in it. It's the difference between a dude on Instagram who's just like recording his practice and a dude on Instagram who is actually working on a song and you can absolutely tell the difference when people post stuff because your treatment of drums is like it's not about getting the most spectacular sounding drum sound ever on a record. That's never, your records aren't about the drum sound. It's about the song and how can the drum sound, you know, form a foundation for that song. Whereas like if it's, if something ever sounds like too pretty and pristine and I'm like, oh, it's, and of course, recording your practice is absolutely the way to get better for sure. Definitely. But when you start manipulating for musical reasons is really when I feel like you take the step into the next level of, you're not just capturing, you're now doing something artistic with it. Yes. And that's where like things can quickly get crazy with track count because you might then have a verb for your snare and a slightly different verb for your kick. And I don't take for granted that people may not know that you're, you know, you send to reverbs and you do dynamics on the track. Like a lot of times people will just throw reverbs on every track, which you really want to be doing sends and all this stuff. But that's a different podcast. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's see, luckily I've, I know my limitations as an engineer and I know that I'm, I'm the, I'm gathering the raw materials for someone to make the dish later. I am go, I am the dude going to the store. I'm going to the farmer's market like, oh, dude, cucumbers look really good today. I'm going to get a bunch of those, you know, like I'm, I'm getting them the raw materials to make the dish later. So I don't concern myself with treating stuff too much on my end because who knows what producer or engineer is going to want to manipulate in what way later. And if you do some heavy stuff on your end, like reverbs, I don't know that I own a reverb plugin to be honest, other than built in, you know, software stuff. Just because if you print a reverb and send it to a client and they don't want that there, you've painted them into a corner, you know, so I try not to compress. I try not to, you know, just to leave the door, the doors open so they can manipulate, you know. Yeah, it can be also putting on like a blinder that you don't, that you're like, oh, this sounds great. And you take the verb off and you go, that wasn't actually right. Anything near what you thought it would sound like. Yeah, totally. So just for fun, I'll real quick give you kind of the rundown of again, right now, everyone's the studio I work at is closed, but I'm going to give you real quick my rundown and it's actually pretty similar, but it's almost more like standardized, this is your home studio, this is more, what we use is more like standardized, people come in, they come in, they leave churned out. So what we do is, and I gotta remember, I haven't set it up in like four months now, but kick in is a D112 into a, what is it, a Vintec 473, which is a preamp that's kind of a model off of a Neve 473. Kick out is probably an excessive use of a U87, but it's either a U87 or a sub kick, which the sub kick, our little mount kind of just completely went shot, which was like rubber bands around the claws. Then that also goes into the 473, then snare top is an old 57, has a really cool feel, and God, I forget what the difference, there's the old, one of those like unidine, right? Like it was a unidine 57. Yep, that's also going into the 473. And then the snare bottom is an AKG, an older 414. Then, so this is where engineers and drummers get different is at the studio, I personally used to do it like you, where I put the hi-hat at the end here, and I had to like, yeah, for uniformity, I had to change it. Next is the hi-hat, which is the little pencil Neumann KM84, I was gonna mix it up with the 184, which the rest of the mics, we only had the four outboard, and then we have what are called Metric Halo, UL, and eight preamps, which are super nice, very clean. So five is the Neumann hi-hat mic, then you go to Tom one, Tom, all the Toms are Sennheiser 421s, which we got from a radio station that was closing, and we got them each for 100 bucks. Well, I'm jealous. One of those deals. Then, so you go down to the floor, sometimes on a floor, we can also do the sure KSM 32, I believe. Oh, sure, the large diaphragm thing? The large diaphragm. But then, so overhead left and overhead right are both U87s. Then we'll go insane sometimes, and we'll do under head mics on the symbols of another set of the Neumann, we have three of them, Neumann, the KM84s under the ride and under the crash. And then if we don't do that sometimes, and alternatively, we can do the green AKG tube, old Bonham style mics, overheads, which are really cool. You just got to remember to turn the power supply off because it's separate and like, it can be 20 feet away. And then room mics, we use the Ear Trumpet Lab aduinas, which are the super cool steampunk looking. Yeah, I've seen photos, but I haven't had no experience with those yet, but I've heard more than one person say they're cool. They're awesome, especially for drums, but if you're doing anything, any violin, cello, banjo, I mean, they are the, I'm here in Cincinnati, which is basically, I can see Kentucky from Berlin. So like, this is for bluegrass, they are like the mic. So that's pretty much the rundown of that setup. So it usually ends up being about 14 to 16 mics or something like that, which is just sometimes excessive. Yeah, but it's, you know, if you have the ability to record the options, you can always mute them. Exactly. It sucks to like, man, I wish I had something else. I was trying to, you know, maybe I'm trying to get more definition out of the kit. And it's like, uh, you know, the, it's, it's a tune where you're like hitting the cymbals really hard. It's like, man, I wish I had bottom Tom mics, you know, like, which is a thing you would do on, like, I bet the vast majority of things that say a Josh Freeze plays on is probably has bottom, bottom Tom mics, because that's where you're going to get a lot of the tone in loud situations. But also it gives you a second shot at getting a little more clarity on your toms too. Yeah. And then we'll sometimes throw in, I forgot that, that mid kit mic, which would be sure the KSM 32, which will be right there. But you know, it's just one of those funny things is you need a good, uh, mic stand because you're typically kind of booming it out really far and then halfway through it starts falling. Yes. It's, it's a, it's a time where if you have access to one of those weighted, like big weighted boom stands, it's definitely a time to use one of those for sure. Yeah, totally. Um, okay. So we've completely switched to an engineering and audio podcast, which I think is awesome. But you know, I think there's a lot of people out there. Now, if you were a guy or a girl who really just wanted to get like, they just bought a Ludwig super classic kit, they have acrylate or a supraphonic snare or or grudge or whatever. Sure. What would be your recommendation? Um, you know, affordable, even down to like, you know, everyone loves the UA Apollo stuff. But yeah, like, I mean, it's more tangible to buy like a focus, right? Something more affordable. But what, what's your kind of budget rig to get a good recording of your vintage drums? Sure. I mean, what I, what I would say is there's plenty of, I don't know the specifics or have enough hand on experience with many of the models to, to really tell you exactly what to buy. But it feels like there's a lot going on in that, like an eight channel interface in the like five to six, $700 range that there's a lot going on there that's good now that even five years ago there wasn't. I know a lot of the focus, right? I know some of the in audio stuff is really good. I know like Mo2 stuff is really good. Yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, eight channels is about right. If you wanted to do something with some options, obviously with a two or four channel, you can record really cool drums, but you just, you lack the options. You have to know it has to be a style in which that production style is going to work. But yeah, with eight channels, I mean, if you can do a kick mic, a snare top, toms, you know, now you're at four pair of overheads, now you're at six and go maybe like a mono room and a hi-hat mic or a mono room and a kick out or a mono room and a snare bottom, whichever your particular situation needs the most reinforcement. But I would say even kick snare, tom, tom overhead, overhead, mono room, and then use that eighth channel, whatever you feel, you know, you get the most benefit from. Yeah. And then, man, it's hard to beat one of those stupid packs of a beta 52 and 357s for like 400 bucks. In my mind. Yeah. I mean, SM57s, well, every studio has a drawer of SM57s, and they're always going to be used. There's nothing wrong with that mic. You can record incredible stuff with it. You could throw it at the wall. It'll still work. Like that's, to me, it's really hard to beat sure stuff when you're talking about, like you can get a used pair of KSM32s for overheads, and those sound great. And you can find them, you know, a pair for 400 bucks, 450 bucks, you know, like that's that the bang for the buck on sheer stuff is kind of out of control. You know, same with EV, you know, I think EV makes a lot of really good stuff, electro voice. Yeah. But yeah, I think, and especially like most things, I mean, looking used is the like, yeah, a new 57 is 100 bucks, but a used one is 52 bucks, you know, like, get the used one. It's not like it's anybody who's ever soldered anything can repair a 57 because there's like three connections in it. So even if it has a problem, it's a 10 minute project and you're done, you know. Yeah, which that's, I mean, I've done a fair amount of soldering and it's very fun. It's easy to forget how to do it. Yeah, I hear that. But it's super fun. I mean, I would agree completely. And the only suggestion I would say for that I've learned is a good, really cool, kind of affordable mic that has a great sound that I used for a lot of doing voiceovers when I was like, you know, kind of in that world a little more. Yeah, the Aventone of or there's a mall, I say Aventone, A-V-A-N-T-O-N-E, CK six and CK seven are kind of there's a there's sort of like the AKG tube mics, but it's a very good kind of you could buy one, you could make that your mono room mic. I used to use that. They're like 200 bucks. They're awesome. I mean, as much as recording budgets for bands and artists have been the death of the big studio, it's just as much of that, if not more, it's that home gear is better than it's ever been. And honestly, like if you have, you know, say you have an Apollo and you have a couple bucks and you've bought a couple preamps, like you're on the level of most places and now it's just about how is what's your sound source as far as the instrument and how does your room sound. But the there is not a gulf between like prosumer and pro gear really anymore. It's kind of all the same. Yeah. And that same goes with the actual DAW or digital audio workstation is is like we were talking before we recorded like, I'm in Pro Tools, Dan's in Logic, you can use, I started on Cubase. Yeah. You can start with anything. You can get a little Zoom H4N. You could get anything and just start recording. So just to tie it all together, you can, this all applies to vintage drums. So no, it makes sense. Yeah. I mean, the one thing I would say as far as like people wanting to get into it and it's the question I do Q&As on my Instagram all the time. And the one I get the most is, hey, what do you think about this preamp? And it never fails that it'll be like a $200 a channel or 160 bucks a channel. Nowadays, interfaces are so good and the built-in preamps are so good that until you're spending maybe north of $600 a channel, you're not going to see much benefit. You're actually maybe degrading your sound to put a $200 preamp in front of that interface. It's a lot of like kind of nowhere to spend your money, don't throw good money after bad. I find that mostly those questions are people asking me permission to go buy the $129 art preamp from Guitar Center. Don't do that. The interface on your, you know, your Mo2 interface has better preamps already. You're just making it worse. Now, if it's like becomes a serious enough thing and you're doing it enough, we're like, man, I wish my kick and snare, you know, had a little more depth and density and, you know, like all the good things that a good preamp will do for you. It's like, when you get to that point and you want to start talking about, I should buy a pair of, you know, API 512s or, you know, DeKine, the four channel DeKine, which is really great. Like once you get to that kind of money, that's really cool. And that's, that's a good investment. And those will always be worth what you paid for them. Like that's, that's the other thing, much like vintage drums. If you buy your recording gear correctly, you're not spending money, you're investing like the 1073s I own will never be less than, worth less than what I paid for them. We've already that happened, you know, around 2000 when everyone got into hard disk recording and decided they were going to sell their, their needs for 500 bucks a channel. And some lucky people got in at the right time. I think now we're seeing that like, yeah, the digital recording thing is here to stay, but putting the analog preamp in front of that digital recording is what makes it sound like a classic record. Or like a URI 1176 or the Universal Audio 1176, anything where that compressor is like, like you said, it's synonymous with like, it's good because everyone likes that sound and it's been used on every single thing. So you can't go wrong with these certain. We've grown up with 1176s, you know, in our ears constantly, whether we know it or not, you know. Yeah, exactly. So, okay, well, Dan, you're a knowledgeable guy on many, many fronts. And I think this is just a cool example of like, and I should just speaking as a guy who, I mean, I guess I've done audio and drumming for a long time. And obviously you have as well, but it's really, you just got to start and don't be scared. And there's the world, there's so many, like I got really into watching the Mix with the Masters series. There's all these different video series where you can learn from these amazing guys. It's the best time in history to get into all this stuff. You know, it's just all the information is out there. And again, everything Dan listed, those mics, until you get to some expensive overheads, but like I said, you can get a very affordable overhead. You can get a, you can get a, like you said CAD, I mean, realistically, if you don't have any gear, get a $150 seven piece CAD drum mic set, and then switch stuff out from there. Like, you know, it's better to have something than nothing. Totally. And even if you're not, you know, because a lot of people now obviously, you know, especially with the pandemic, slow down of, you know, I've been in a physical studio once in the last six months. Now that it's all, I mean, this just pushed us off the cliff. It was already going to be all at home. And now it's really all going to be at home, unless you're doing string or horn sessions or something. So being that, it's like, it's, even if you don't want to pursue it as like, I don't, you know, do, I don't want to do drums for a living or whatnot, who in God's name would, you know, give in 2020. But the, the amount of value there is in just recording yourself to make your playing better, even if it's not about, I want to play on a record or my band's doing a thing or whatever, even just to become a better, have more facility on the instrument and to like self diagnose problems, or like, or to get the confidence of like, Oh, you know what, I do, what I was playing does sound great. Awesome. Like now I have, now I have an extra confidence that I have an impartial record of what I was playing sounds good. You know, I think that it, to me, it's like, it's like, you know, an athlete watching game film, you know, it's like, you, you play drums a bit and go like, Oh, you know, I felt like I was a little draggy, and then I listened back and I'm a little draggy, you know, like, that's confirmation or like, Oh, I thought it was weird. Oh no, but it's great. Awesome. Now you feel more confident. You know, it's, I think that yeah, recording even just as a practice tool is kind of a necessity. I think too, it's a it's super fun. It's incredibly fun to just hear yourself back. Totally. You know, what you just did record your buddies, have someone play guitar, have someone play bass. But also, if you're trying to do anything in this world, you need to have, I mean, really, if you're doing recording and editing audio, then you're already have your foot into editing video, because it's very it's timeline based. And I can speak from personal experience started out doing audio. I had a job for two years with a company doing their video just from like, getting into it from audio. So yeah, it's not going to hurt. You're only going to pick up more, more skills that I'm sure even in your regular line of work will will show themselves at some point. Totally. So Dan, why don't we tell people a little bit about you so people can learn more from you from your Bailey Method series. So why don't you tell us about that a little bit? Sure. So I, you know, be between doing all these, you know, Q&As on Instagram and stuff, I started to realize that I would get the same like, Hey, how do you tune a drum? Or like, you know, specifically, how do I tune a drum? And I realized that there aren't, I just kind of assumed there were better resources out there. And I just don't know that there are. So the original plan for the first one was just to I'm going to tune a drum kit in real time, which I do for the first half of that video, like start from bare shells, all heads off the drums, starting from dead scratch in real time. So say, you know, I have a chapter in the video about tuning my Raktom. The thought is that you can sit on your couch with your Raktom and follow me and go like, Oh, this chapter is 12 minutes long. It took him, you know, it took him 12 minutes to get that Raktom where he wants. And it, because I think so much with, with the things I found about tuning specifically were, it would be like, Hey, you should do this flash cut to it being done. And it's like, Okay, well, did that take 30 seconds? Did it take five minutes? Like, if I'm trying to tune my floor time for 10 minutes, have I like, am I just chasing tails here? Like what's going on? You know, like, so seeing it happen in real time is like, Oh, there's no, there's no little thing that I do all the time that I skipped that I forgot to film that you don't know about, you know, nothing like that. It's just, here's how kind of long it should take. If it's taking you longer, you maybe need more practice. If it took you, if you were way faster, one, you could be way better at tuning drums than me, which that's entirely possible to do that. Like, like, Oh, I missed something. You know, I think that the timeframe stuff takes is absolutely an important part for feeling like you've actually grasped something, you know, that you're trying to learn. So yeah, it just, it started out as me making a here, here's how I set up a drum kit that seems to be a value to people. And then, you know, just went and, you know, the first chapter is tuning the drum kit, and then I have a couple tunes I'm working on, and I take those drums and put them in front of microphones and go like, and here's what that sounds like. And I tell you all the engineering I'm doing and not doing, not hiding anything from anybody. The point is transparency. So you can, yeah. So hopefully, again, it's confidence building. It's all about, like, Oh, my kick in sounds like his kick in. Great. That means I'm on the right path or like, yeah, I actually like what I'm doing a little better than that. Fantastic. That's amazing. Like cooking, like cooking shows where they're like, Oh, now it's done and it doesn't taste like anything like mine, you know, it's the yeah, it's, it's the, the cooking show is the perfect analogy. It's when it's, you know, they put what they've just prepped into the oven and then take the done one out and say, well, what, how many times were you supposed to base that while it was in there? What, you know, what rack, you know, it's just, it doesn't always help to 350, 12 minutes. It's like, well, but what did you do in the, you know, is there anything I'm missing? Anyways, yeah, I think that that's the TV show, a vacation of learning has been bad because you just jumped to the result and you may have skipped over some stuff to get there, you know, definitely. Well, where can people find it? They are through my through either my website, which is drichardbailey.com or through my Instagram account, which is at letter D Richard Bailey. And there's, there's links through there and stuff. It's all on Vimeo. So it streams on, you know, your phone or your TV or your laptop or your studio computer. So you can hear it back on monitors. Yeah, that's cool. It's a, yeah, it's been, it's been a really good platform. And then the second one I get more specific into, hey, these people have brought me these tracks. Here's how I'm going to think about this. And I'm going to set up the drum kit specifically to get a certain sound. And then I take the files I recorded and here's how I'm going to manipulate it before I send it to the client and kind of walk you through what I do when I get hired to play on a track. So yes, the second chapter is definitely more in the weeds. One is just like from, from downbeat, like how do I make a drum kit sound like a drum kit? Sure. Yeah. Now it's, it's super important to watch other people do stuff because a lot of times you feel like you're going to silo or you might be doing it wrong or you might be doing it wrong and not realize you're doing it wrong. Like I mentioned with reverbs and these things just of like engineering wise or tuning wise, you might like, you might be doing something wrong and not realize it. I know I have done so many things wrong where it just takes one person to kind of correct you and then everything gets easier. Totally. Well, and I would hope the takeaway from, I tried to make the first class specifically, the take, I hope the takeaway is, oh, he's doing less than I thought. Like I, there is no magic. It's just like drums want to sound good. Like they're going to try to sound good unless there's something, you know, unless the drum has some really bad ply delamination or like it's been dropped down some stairs. Like unless there's a physical problem with the drum or it's just coming apart because it's too old and it hasn't been taken care of. Like yeah, drums want to sound good for the most part. So it's just kind of like put a head on it and kind of get out of the way and like the less you do, usually the better your results are going to be. Yeah, there's not really many shortcuts where you can, you know, but things do I always say kind of like time slows down a little bit the more you do anything. Totally. The more comfortable you get with it. So awesome. I highly recommend people go out and check that out and follow down on Instagram and, you know, try and catch Father John Misty whenever we get back to the real world of playing shows. So we have, we have holds next year, but I'm a dubious. I know, man. I keep hearing people say it's not going to be till 2022. So and people can follow along with your studio build, which you're posting some cool pictures building a studio in your house and all that stuff, which is a you're doing it. You're doing a real deal, you know, trying to try to find the right. Luckily, I have a good buddy who's a studio contractor who that's what he does. And like, like all things trying to, you know, if you want to set up a space in your house, you have a spare bedroom or attic or a basement or a spare, you know, detached garage, whatever you want to do. It's all a, you know, just like any of this, it's a, it's a, you know, cost benefit analysis. It's like, yeah, you can, you can take a detached garage and put a quarter million dollars in it if you want to. But that is probably so overkill for what you're doing. Yeah. You know, it's really about finding like the appropriate amount of time and energy to put in stuff. But yeah, it's nice to have somebody walking me through that. But yeah, I mean that the plan, I had a commercial studio for the last four years. And that I, you know, rented a, at least property and all that. And it just happened to be, it was already kind of our plan. But then of course, with the pandemic is like, maybe you tighten it up a little bit. Also like, who knows? I mean, at one point, our county and my county in California was like locked down to where you technically weren't supposed to like, nonness, you know, like I technically wasn't supposed to go to the studio. And so it's like, okay, in that case, I need to not make that be a commute that just needs to be at my house just so I can control it just so who knows what goes on. It's like, it's, I'm not at the mercy of a landlord, you know, like it just worked out. But yeah, having, having a space to, you know, be able to put up whether it's your job or a hobby would be, would be great. And it's, it's hopefully I'm not trying, I'm not able to give out, you know, all the details like what the wall construction actually is, stuff like that, because the contractor is obviously how he pays his bills. And he consults and stuff. So, you know, obviously reach out to him, Matt Walker, he's on my Instagram. If you have any needs like that. But yeah, it's, it's been a, it's been a fun project and we're, we're about two weeks out from done or so. So kind of can't wait. Cool. Man. Well, yeah, so people find you there. And I want to give a quick shout out to Peter Lamere or Lamere, Lamere for recommending you to do this episode. I just think it's awesome when people suggest things like this, because I probably never would have thought of it. So thank you to Peter and Dan and I, we talked a little bit before, but just basically on social media. So here we are, you know, we've, we've hopefully brought some knowledge to people. So Dan, I just want to thank you for coming on the show and taking the time to share this knowledge. Yeah, thanks for having me, man.