Yamaha Rydeen in not sucking shocker!

[finnhiggins]

Hey folks,

I've been meaning to post this for a while just to prove my point about the Rydeen not having to sound utterly horrible.

This is a bunch of stuff I recorded in a hall a few weeks ago for a short film soundtrack. We knew we were going to need a bunch of avant-garde sounding noise, so we recorded a whole bunch of stuff with a variety of different instruments, including some drums on their own - so this is probably as close to a solo as you're ever going to get from me!

It's a structureless mess and way over-long, but hopefully this might sell some people on the idea that crappy gear can actually be great fun to play - at least on the drums front, anyway. And I did cheat - that's not the Rydeen snare.

Here's the full rig:

Drums:
10" Yamaha Rydeen tom
13" Yamaha Rydeen floor tom
18" Yamaha Rydeen bass drum
14" Ayotte Keplinger woodhoop snare (costs more than the entire Rydeen kit!)

Cymbals:
13" Zildjian A New Beat hi-hats
20" Zildjian K Custom Dark Ride
21" Istanbul Agop Signature Ride
17" Istanbul Trash Hit

Recorded with an assorted pile of SM57's, SM58s, a couple of Sennheiser condensers we managed to bum and a Rode NT1-A as a room mike. There's no reverb on there, it's all room sound...

[Stu_Strib]

Hey, how come your Rydeen toms sound better than my Beech Custom Absolutes? hehe

Nice room accoustics I guess? Well at least your kick drum doesn't stand a chance against my maple custom absolute ;-)

I love that Agop ride too.

I'm still waiting for the part of the song where you turn the snares on so I can hear how great that snare probably is.

Yeah, and it is fairly obvious you are a Danny Carey fan.

[finnhiggins]

Hey, how come your Rydeen toms sound better than my Beech Custom Absolutes? hehe

Nice room accoustics I guess? Well at least your kick drum doesn't stand a chance against my maple custom absolute ;-)


The Rydeen toms do actually sound pretty good. And the kick is alright, it's actually better than my Recording Custom - but miking it with an SM58 isn't exactly going to do it justice.


I love that Agop ride too.


It's mine. I saw it first...


I'm still waiting for the part of the song where you turn the snares on so I can hear how great that snare probably is.


Somewhere around the last thirty seconds just for violence, I think.


Yeah, and it is fairly obvious you are a Danny Carey fan.

Really? Dang! I was trying to rip off Joey Baron and Tony Williams instead....

[Drummer Karl]

Hey, how come your Rydeen toms sound better than my Beech Custom Absolutes? hehe

Stu, I find this very strange...mhhhh, seem to be very good drums for the money. They sound very nice, fat...clear, I like the sound.your playing is GREAT! awesome job man, I love this calmer playing...pretty Dennis Chambers like, or?

Awesome, outstanding!

Karl

[TopCat]

Wow, i can't believe that's a rydeen. We need video evidence. Fantastic playing!

[Bernhard]

Hmm, sound like a DW. Are you sure it's a Yammi Riceburner?

Rude Bernhard

[2d-chris]

hehe this just proves its about how you setup a kit not how expensive it is ;) nice recording also. Kewl stuff

[Mediocrefunkybeat]

Good old Yamaha. Always with the surprises. I bet half the time somebody says 'my beginner kit sucks' it's because their tuning and head selection is way off. Those toms sound pretty much great. The bass drum is pretty good, it would sound better obviously with a proper mike, but you've got a good set of drums there.

Not sucking shocker indeed.

Nice playing of course too Finn.

[Chip]

Those toms sound like I imagine mine to sound with emperors on it. At the moment they have pins, and sound decent. My snare is better though. No, that's not cool, Chip. My snare is shite, especialy compared to that Ayotte.

[averypoordrummer]

wow it sounds so good i might get a rydeen instead of a mapex pro m (not :P).

amazing playing too

[jazzgregg]

Finn,
Now you know I only opened this thread because you authored it, right?
I'm very glad I did, for, although the drums sound ok, your playing sounded great. I know this is a thread about Rydeens (and they're tuned pretty rock-y sounding, which is fine) so I don't want to thread jack, but you sir, are an extemely creative and witty drummer. That groove at around 3:10 knocked me out especially. I loved it, man.
And your cymbals sound great too (yeah, 'sepcially that Agop)!

Carry on with the Rydeen business.
G
edit:
Hmm, sound like a DW. Are you sure it's a Yammi Riceburner?

Rude Bernhard
lol-Now THAT was funny....

[samthebeat]

Man that was cool, I felt like I i was in war zone or something, im really spun out after listeing that. Great playing, those toms did sound pretty dam good. I wish I could get mine sounding like that.

What skins you use?

[0neyellowdrum]

I have always believed a good drummer can make any drumset sound good. Nicely done, Finn.

[Mediocrefunkybeat]

I'm working on the assumption that you didn't go through with the bearing edge adjustment? They sounded great Finn. Good, good playing of course too.

[Garvin]

Nice tom sound!!! I definately hear the Joey Baron, and actually was thinking that while listening. Nice playing.....

[theduke86]

Hey Finn,
I love it- amazing what those drums sound like tuned up and with a good player on them! I'm a huge fan of the saying "It's not the arrows, it's the Indian" and this proves it true. You can hear the Joey Baron influence for sure.
You know, I always thought you played drums the way you seem as a guy- I bet you have a killing sense of humor and are a good hang. There's a certain humor to the way you play too, and that's what makes your playing different than anything else I've heard on here. Maybe that's part of the reason I think Joey Baron plays so differently- he's a funnyman as well and very witty on a drumset.
Great job, mate. Great job.

[mind_drummer]

I must admit you did a great tuning job on them and I always said with good head & good tuning, good drummer can achieve good sound of cheap kit. I'm sure you could make sound CB kit just as good as this Rydeen... Actually phil. mahogany isn't that bad, huh !

Good drummin' job, keep rollin' !

[finnhiggins]

Hey all,

Whoo, lots of stuff. First up, thanks everybody on the playing compliments - much appreciated!

Now, techie talk first just so that poor old Gregg has to read it all if he comes back...

Heads - Stock heads on the bass drum (a Powerstroke-alike plus a generic no-hole Yamaha front head), Remo Fiberskyn3 FA heads on the tom batters, stock heads on the reso. Snare has a rather aging Evans G1 on it and a Remo Ambassador Snare on the bottom.

Tuning wise I actually have a bit of trouble getting the toms out of the whole round-and-thumpy range, at least with these heads - the somewhat fluffy cheap bearing edges seem to make any head sound a bit more round and warm than they otherwise would, so I'm guessing if I want high-pitched jazzy tunings I may even have to drop down to a Fiberskyn Diplomat weight or a clear Ambassador or similar. These toms are certainly tuned a lot tighter than you'd think - with lighter heads they'd be way up into the jazzy range, but as it is they don't go much up from where they are now without choking quite badly.

MFB - no bearing edge adjustments, just because I don't think the wood will take it - it's too grainy and fluffy, if I sanded that I'm pretty sure I'd just end up with big holes in my bearing edges rather than anything smooth. Also, as described above it's pretty happy with round warm sounds anyway - doesn't really do much else.

Back on the playing front - Gregg, I'm glad you enjoyed the hands stuff, it's something I've been working on for a while on and off and I'm starting to enjoy it quite a lot. While I was at Drumtech I was a shamefully poor student of Bosco D'Olivera, who teaches their Latin Percussion classes. He's an awesome percussionist, and seeing what he could do with just a couple of drums totally blew me away. So I've been working on the hands/open/closed stuff for a few years just as a little casual thing, used it on a song or two here and there (check out http://www.drummerworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4782 if you haven't heard it already) and so on. I'd really like to make some more out of it, but it's just such hard vocabulary to build because there's so much unexplored territory. That's obviously a good thing, but it does make working on stuff a bit harder. It doesn't help that I can't program stuff first to see if it sounds any good, either...

Oh, and Duke - if you think I was having fun while recording that... try this! The solo drums were recorded while my bassist was off picking up the guitarist and his gear from home... so... yes. This is what we did when he got back. Try to guess the genre we were soundtracking at this point :D

[AvengedDrummer]

you my friend, are an awesome drummer. Great stuff you got there.

[Mediocrefunkybeat]

Porn music! Oh yeah! So funky, but so obviously porn music. Good playing though.

[Chip]

That IS porn music! Hahaha, nice playing though.

[Stu_Strib]

moooohhahahahha, Finn accused of playing his most hated porn/fusion music?

I actually liked it alot, and it is far from fusion and more towards funk. Still don't like the bass drum though, but, hey...great cheapie kit!

[incubotic]

What a great sound you got out of those drums. That porn music was sweet. I love that thick funkiness. I need to hear some more stuff from you Finn, you are very talented.

[Drum-Head]

Wow the sound is great, this also prooves once more that it's the drummer that makes the sound and not JUST the drums.

I really enjoyed your soundbytes Finnhiggins. Great drumming! Would you take me as your slave? :p

[finnhiggins]

moooohhahahahha, Finn accused of playing his most hated porn/fusion music?


Well, it WAS porn music. So you don't have to accuse me of it, I'm positively overjoyed that we got it right. All of this stuff was done as part of the recording for a friend's film for this thing:

http://www.48hours.co.nz

Tonnes of fun..

[jazzgregg]

First, Finn, I'm not that old! And second, thanks for putting all that tech stuff first...makin me learn stuff...jeez..

I hear you on the hand/fingers stuff. I play frame drums too and have found that alot of that stuff translates pretty well with a few adjustments here and there. Plus, I know you, like me, are a big Joey Baron fan and that comes out in your stuff too (I checked out the other stuff, I'd never heard it before).

Program stuff, what on EARTH are you talking about?

G

[finnhiggins]

Program stuff, what on EARTH are you talking about?


Heh, not exactly right up your alley I'm sure! But for a lot of the music I'm doing at the moment I'm finding MIDI/programming a really useful way to make sure that anything I'm learning is musically valid before I invest all the "Oh, but I practiced it so hard..." value in there.

For example, I'm currently working through a piece in 11/8 based off a Balkan marching snare/bass drum groove. It's a really cool shape, the snare drum is kind of implying a three over the top of a 3+2+2+2+2 phrasing with the last snare hit lining up with the last pair of twos to do a kind of downbeat/backbeat thing. It's hard to explain, but it has a really logical flowing feel - not even remotely "prog like" or whatever, it just feels nice. The problem is that I need to expand all that out into other sections, make it build, change surfaces and so forth. The problem is that even re-orchestrating the groove onto other sounds makes it sound less cool - so coming up with complimentary parts just by playing hasn't worked out very well. It all tends to sound a bit lacking in nuance, a bit obvious. And a lot of the more syncopated "play 5+6" types of phrases that immediately spring to mind come across as sounding very prog, very Dream Theater or Tool or something. Not particularly cool when the original groove is so rounded and flowing.

So I've been programming stuff quite heavily on this - I programmed up maybe fifteen very different grooves that worked over different approaches to the eleven feel, and have then been learning them and improvising around them to get comfortable with adding variation and fills on the fly. So now I'm getting reasonably comfortable phrasing in the right 11/8 feel, and all the big picture shapes that I've learned (accent placement, division of the eleven notes into smaller groupings) work pretty well musically so I can't go too far wrong.

I really find the programming stuff to be nice as musical research - if you want to write out a bunch of exercises to build facility in some respect then it's nice to know if they sound good or not before you learn them. And it's quite nice to work on the drum parts with just your ears, rather than being overly concerned with the mechanical aspects of how you're going to play things. For example, one of my 11/8 parts requires every tom hit to land in unison with a ride cymbal bell hit, while there's a lot of other stuff going on with the snare and ride - it's actually a totally counter-intuitive movement that I'd never have been able to come up with just by stretching out on the feel, but having learned it now it's proving to be quite a nice sound in a whole number of places.

Not very jazz, admittedly - but that's probably why I'm not called JazzFinn!

[jazzgregg]

How utterly complex=)
A Balkan snare thing, you say? The thing in the other thread? I LOVED it. I have a ton of traditional music from all over. IF you ever need some, let me know- I love that stuuf!.

And I do understand where you're coming from, actually. I occasionally use a squencer if I'm composing a large ensemble thing where I need to see how it fits with the ensemble. Never just for drum parts, though of course=) I'd experiment at the drums and if I needed to, I'd write it down. Do you consider it basically 'reverse-transcribing'?

G
(btw-nice porn music, stud...)
edit- yeah, I realized it was the one in the other thread after- like 2 people passing each other repeatdedly.

[finnhiggins]

How utterly complex=)
A Balkan snare thing, you say? Care to share (PM me if you want)? I'm a giant fan of that stuff.


The core groove is borrowed off a Boban Markovic song called Lidijina Ingra, I uploaded it to a thread at one point.. hang on, I'll go dig it up.

http://www.drummerworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8755

2nd post...

As for the whole reverse-transcribing thing.. yeah, something like that. For me it's really just another way of trying to separate technical and musical thinking - once I'm convinced of the musical result then getting there is just a bunch of technical challenges, as opposed to playing stuff that's technically easy but maybe not the best musical idea for a song. I'm fairly aware that in the past I've maybe played stuff that was constructed of licks rather than considered musical ideas, so this is one way I've been working around that. Also a lot of the writing my band has been doing of late is done in a sequencer, so it's generally pretty easy to have a project available to play with - we just chuck stuff back and forth via email.

The highlight of the whole porn-music thing was showing up at our competition heat for the short movie only to discover that it also included a bunch of 11-year-old kids who'd made a (hilarious) movie with talking fruit and vegetables. Then they had to sit through our short, which featured a rather lengthy adult movie sequence starring a blow-up doll and the aforementioned funky soundtrack... Oops.

[jazzgregg]

The highlight of the whole porn-music thing was showing up at our competition heat for the short movie only to discover that it also included a bunch of 11-year-old kids who'd made a (hilarious) movie with talking fruit and vegetables. Then they had to sit through our short, which featured a rather lengthy adult movie sequence starring a blow-up doll and the aforementioned funky soundtrack... Oops.

YIKES.
Just so long as the veggies didn't end up in the wrong place.

G

[Bonzo91]

That was great i enjoyed it alot.

[Stu_Strib]

Well, it WAS porn music... one as part of the recording for a friend's film

Your friend is making a Porno???

hehe

[finnhiggins]

Your friend is making a Porno???


Hang on, I'll find the review somebody posted on the forum for the film compo...


Crack (Puppet) by Something Productions
The story, told through talking-head interviews, of former (well, former-ish) porn star Robin Slade, played by inflatable actress Jezebel Ryding. This was one of a growing number of films which temporarily had me convinced their genre was pretentious. But in this case it was only because the film started with clips of Robin’s current role in a pretentious film, directed by a very funny hyperactive South African. When things came back down to earth, it was quite an effective film, if a bit ad-libby in parts. People are gradually starting to learn about the pitfalls of adlibbing in mockumentaries, but it is still a common trap for the unwary.
Script: *** Acting: **** Required Elements: ** Production Values: ***
Overall Grade: B

[Mediocrefunkybeat]

Excellent. Excellent. Finn, you took a part in a genuine B-movie. I feel so sorry for those kids parents', that must've required some explaining afterwards by their respective parents.

[radeq]

incredible sound you get from the drums wooooooooooooow, only thing is the bassdrum I dont like, but everythin else is just WOW

[LinearDrummer]

Wow - very impressive...nice display of sounds with tones and textures....
That was very musical....

Guess I missed the boat on Joey Baron....never heard of him....
Any listening suggestions?

[catchagato]

Do you have pictures of that Rydeen kit?

[toteman2]

Finn,

I have to say I really enjoyed that peice more than anything else you've posted here on this forrum. Dynamics, maturity, emotion, and (dare i say it) even some nice chops in there.
How you got those Rydeen toms to sound so nice, I have no idea. Perhaps I could have you give me some tuning lessons. Now what I would like is for you to tell me all about those Fiberskyn heads.

Again, nice work.

[TitanSound]

Damn! I mean damn! That sucker sounds better than my Export! Yeah....start a tuning guide for low end kits Finn!

[RudimentalDrummer]

Wow.www my bro finn sure can drum eh ! .... and great too.

[finnhiggins]

Well, I've missed a bit since I last checked this thread out!

There's not a lot involved in the tuning - medium tension Fiberskyn FAs on the top, certainly a lot tighter than floppy... try to even out the lugs, not too much control of that being as they're budget drums and don't have many! Bottom heads are factory cheap Yamaha/Remo jobs, again medium tension. I don't have any more to add to the topic than Dave Weckl on his video on the subject, he pretty much nails everything I know about tuning. The only thing I'd suggest is that some of the sound there is probably down to the fact that I'm playing the toms in a range of positions and dynamics quite deliberately for tone, which makes a surprisingly big difference.

As for Joey Baron, go find his thread in the Drummers forum - he's a badass, and there's some cool YouTube stuff posted in there. The album that really sold me on his playing was Naked City's "Grand Guignol", but it's not exactly accessible stuff - be warned!

[killer_deep]

... why can I not see the first page of this post??

S

[Bernhard]

Database seems corrupted - so I close this thread...

Bernhard