Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Cymbal solos

A good friend gave me a little pre-amp last Christmas and I have a couple microphones, and lately I’ve begun using them by plugging them directly into my computer and using a cracked version of Sound Forge with no editing, compressing or equalizing options whatsoever.

Actually, the impetus for recording was a cymbal competition at cymbalholics.com, where the premise was to record an mp3 format solo using only one cymbal with no edits lasting two minutes or less. I recorded a solo that I thought was pretty good using only my 22” Sabian Raw Dry Ride and my bare hands. Although I didn’t win, I did get second place in their sister competition dedicated to hi-hats. My hi-hat solo using 14” K’s, brushes and a bass bow kinda sucked, but I won another set of hi-hats, generously made and donated by a guy named Matt with an avatar of Teethmeister, and recorded a better solo using them and a pair of sticks.

Since I’ve made the recordings, I might as well share them:

Cymbal solo
Original hi-hat solo
Hi-hat solo redux

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like all of 'em! Thanks for posting the tracks.

Olive Bread said...

The first one needs a belly dancer to accompany it.