Passing the Test

This week was a very simple week. Because of the choir concert on Sunday night, I could only work during my Saturday hours. Last, week the church drums set needed to be torn down because of a special mid-week concert that was happening. My job was to set it back up and properly mic each piece of the kit. Setting up a drum kit is nothing short of a daunting task - especially to one who is not a drummer himself. It is like fitting a puzzle together. Each piece of hardware has a certain spot where it fits comfortably within the sphere of the drum kit. If you place the high hat too close to the snare or angle it too obtuse from the kick pedal, it just feels silly. The same idea goes for the toms and overhead cymbals. If they aren't place just right, the entire kit just feels uncomfortable. Needless to say, it took me a great amount of time to finally reach a setup that I was somewhat satisfied with. Along with setting up the kit itself, I also had to re-place every mic (snare, hi-hat, kick, toms, and 2 overhead) and plug them into the snake. I also had to place the plexi-glass shield back in front of the drums and position the appropriate sound pads around the bottom of the shield.

This entire experience challenged my memory in correctly setting up and mic-ing a drum set. Last month I had visited a class in which this entire process was explained, so this experience was the perfect "test" to see if I had remembered what I learned. I experienced a lot of troubleshooting and took a lot steps backwards. However, my reward came when we finally started sound checking the kit. All the mics worked and everything sounded right. Thank goodness! Obviously, I still have a lot to learn about mic placement for drum, but for this instance I was satisfied that I got everything to work the way it should. Consider the test passed...