Springsteen recorded Nebraska at home on a Tascam 4 track cassette. The label had a studio clean up a lot of noise, but it would still be an awesome album even if they didn't.

Now that my midlife crisis is well underway, and as part of that I've decided to become less not-awesome at drums, I'm switching to heal-up like all the YouTube balls-faces-of-drumming-superiority tell me to.

For some reason, I struggle with any of my regular (sophisticated and a la mode, obvs) footware when playing heal-up.

What are the unarguably best shoes for drumming?

I ain't playing barefoot like no ruddy hippy. Or Grant Hart. So there.

Thankyouvereymuch xx

jason from volo wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 8:53 am

uglysound wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 7:50 am I really enjoy making audio collage, but sometimes only have lower resolution material to work with, like 128kbps mp3 quality. Are there any tricks to take some of the gross sheen off of that stuff?

Yikes. Once audio information has been (overly) compressed some of that information is kinda lost forever. You could use a program like Audacity or similar to try to reduce or filter out some of the worst affected frequencies (thinking things like cymbal splashes and the like), but if not done right that could make things even worse.

Is there any way to get the original uncompressed files?

Maybe someone else has better ideas....

< edit > Two more thoughts: depending on the "gross sheen", think of it as a feature and not a bug. Or, layer another audio track over it that masks the offending sheen. < / edit >

There are plugins that could probably do some of this - Izotope RX and Soundtheory Gullfoss come to mind - but: you'll spend a ton of effort to get at best 20% of the result you want.
Jason's edit is better and cheaper advice.

In similar situations, I usually try to find a way to FIUM it (fuck it up more), either to mask or take advantage of the problems in the source.
Example: last week I was working on this thing where I wanted to use a bilingual station ID segment from an Afghan radio station as a background pitched-down spoken word layer, but all I had was a 96kbps MP3. Because it was voice only, I hard band-passed it like it were going through an Auratone Sound Cube (300Hz and 3kHz, roughly?), doubled the track, hard panned the two, and pitched the right channel down by 3 or 4 cents to give it a little bit of distinctiveness, space-wise. Whenever there was a noticeable MP3 artifact, I'd lean into it by timestretching the whole stereo pair a bit.

Adam_I_III wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 9:08 am Now that my midlife crisis is well underway, and as part of that I've decided to become less not-awesome at drums, I'm switching to heal-up like all the YouTube balls-faces-of-drumming-superiority tell me to.

For some reason, I struggle with any of my regular (sophisticated and a la mode, obvs) footware when playing heal-up.

What are the unarguably best shoes for drumming?

I ain't playing barefoot like no ruddy hippy. Or Grant Hart. So there.

Thankyouvereymuch xx

For me, running shoes. They're light, fit snug and have a good grip on the pedals. I've also played wearing Red Wing work boots, so I'm not real picky.

Well I am mostly a barefoot hippie on drums (at home), but when I've left my Allbirds tree runners on they felt pretty good. They're basically extra light running shoes with wide ankle cutouts. I mean, I bought them for working/walking on a large campus but I'm glad they're pretty good for this too.

Thanks for these! I shall release the running shoes. I promised myself I'd be running this week anyway, so two birds etc...

penningtron wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 2:08 pm Well I am mostly a barefoot hippie on drums (at home), but when I've left my Allbirds tree runners on they felt pretty good. They're basically extra light running shoes with wide ankle cutouts. I mean, I bought them for working/walking on a large campus but I'm glad they're pretty good for this too.

As I mentioned, I’m not real picky about footwear, but a month ago I happened to just be playing along to jazz for 30 minutes of so and coincidentally didn’t have shoes on and it felt pretty good! I can see if you’re playing stuff with actual dynamics happening with the kick, you’d have a better feel going barefoot.

Yeah, I learned how to play to fast punk/thrash drumming and needed that lightness (I used to take pride in doing real 16th note double hits and not a slurred version or even worse, subtractive 'cheater' version of that beat..) I don't play that stuff anymore but the playing habit stuck I guess.

I was recently gifted a pretty nice Pearl drum set from the early 80s by my wife's cousin. Normal 5 piece, with a 24" kick. The snare is a little rough, but is fine.
This kit came with no hardware at all and no cymbals.

What would you recommend this the best (most cost effective) way to get low-mid level hardware and cymbals?

This kit will not be touring or moving. I am not a drummer, this kit will live in my basement so my drummer friends have a kit to play for band practices without having to drag a kit to my place. Secondarily, the kit will be used by me to bang out rough demos to show a band new ideas. So I don't need the BEST stuff, I am shooting for OK.

I have seen the new hardware packs on MF and they run about $250...but, looking used (and I am all about used stuff), in Chicago it seems one can buy a used complete drum set for $350ish. Is it dumb to just buy another complete kit and harvest the hardware and cheapo cymbals (and maybe the snare), sell the shells and slowly upgrade the cymbals?

A friend just bought a set of Energy Dream cymbals and I think they sound quite good for mid level-priced cymbals. Durability should be a consideration depending on volume/bash factor. If that's the case I'd get some Sabian B8s and call it a day (they don't sound great, but not awful like some starter packs and they will hold up).

Used is probably key, especially for hardware. Musicgoround is excellent for hardware as it's pretty easy to determine what will be durable enough for your needs in person.