AES PNW Meeting Report - Drums, Life, and Everything in Between: Understanding the Drum Kit on a Fundamental Level

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Meeting held Tuesday, November 29th, 2016, 7:30pm, Robert Lang Studios, Shoreline, WA

AES PNW Section Meeting Report Drums, Life, and Everything in Between: Understanding the Drum Kit on a Fundamental Level with Don Gunn - Recording Engineer/drummer Steve Smith - Seattle Drum School Seth Tomlinson - The Greenbusch Group Dave Delozier - Studio Instrument Rentals Made possible by The Robert Lang Academy Student AES Section and The Pacific Northwest Section of the AES

Dave Delozier explains what he is doing as he evaluates skins in the process of tuning a drum.

Drum experts at our November 2016 meeting: Steve Smith, Seth Tomlinson, Don Gunn, and Dave Delozier, with moderator/PNW Chair Dan Mortensen

Steve Smith continues the discussion about recording the drum kit.

Audio recordings of the meeting:

96k mp3	64k mp3
Part 1 (45MB mp3) Part 2 (82.1MB mp3)	Part 1 (30MB mp3) Part 2 (54.7MB mp3)

Photo by Gary Louie

PNW Section's November 2016 meeting was held at Robert Lang Studios in Shoreline, WA, and featured a deep examination of the modern drum kit. Local experts enlisted were Dave Delozier (Assistant Manager/Lead Drum Tech, Studio Instrument Rentals (SIR) Seattle), Don Gunn (recording engineer/drummer), Steve Smith (Seattle Drum School founder, instructor, recording engineer) and Seth Tomlinson (Acoustician, the Greenbusch Group, Seattle). The event was co-produced by the AES PNW and the Robert Lang Academy Student Sections, directed by PNW Chair Dan Mortensen and Committeeperson Marlie Pesek, who is also Director of the Robert Lang Academy. A capacity crowd of 46 people attended the RSVP event, including 13 non-AES members admitted from a standby list after members.

PNW Committeeperson Bob Smith ran a SMAART v7 analysis system projected onto a screen for the audience to see time and spectral domain responses of microphones and drums. As Bob Smith later said, "... you can pick any topic in Audio and Acoustics and find people that will know 10K more about said topic than 99.9% of the populace ever imagined." This is also surely the case with drums, drummer jokes aside.

Among the topics covered were tuning of drums including snare, large and small toms, and bass/kick; drum construction and materials, characteristics of different heads; holes in kick drum heads; characteristics of various cymbals; microphones and miking techniques, and playing techniques. Many questions were posed by the audience. The meeting was longer than usual, and could have easily been a day-long event, but the exceptional acclaim means that additional themed events are planned.

Immediately following the mid-meeting break door prizes were awarded:

Belden CAT cable prep tools (courtesy Steve Lampen) - Jens Quistgaard, Mat Stearns
BlueRay video (courtesy Rick Chinn and Uneeda Audio) - Connor Hoffman
Courtesy Rick Rodriguez and Fluke
- Fluke Voltlight - Isaac Steimle
- Amprobe Meter - Robert Riggs
Earthworks swag-bag (courtesy Gary Louie and AES-LA) - Jon Kasprick
Lavery pen (courtesy Dr. Mike Matesky and AES-LA) - Tyler Pesely
Syn-Aud-Con coffee mug (courtesy Steve Macatee) - Kelly Berry

Reported by Gary Louie, PNW Section Secretary

last update: 01/10/2017, 21:35:00 PST, dtl