Mike Plays On:
Distant Early Warning
Lakeside Park
Limelight
Subdivisions
Different Strings
Tom Sawyer
Bastille Day
A Farewell to Kings
The Spirit of Radio
Didacts & Narpets
2112: Intro to Temples of Syrinx
Style: Progressive Rock
Like myself, a lot of Peart fans that play drums 'think' they can play Rush songs, especially in the air. Fun aside,The Truth is: Sounding exactly like someone else is impossible. Accepting that, this recording was just simply fun.
Fun as it was, the engineer left me alone to press 'record' for a number of hours in private to deal with the overall task. See that here! You'll hear just my raw drums in the room. Video mic's stink. Oh Well! However, you can see how I had to hit different kit parts with different velocities due to all kinds of variables.
This page is set up so that you can see parts of the drum tracks actually being recorded hearing just the drums from the video camera's mic. The associated audio is a short clip from the Subdivisions CD to put the video clip in context.
MEDIA CLIPS
BELOW
The kit was set up in an apex shape. That means the pitch descending toms were arranged from middle out, not left to right. That is my norm (since 1995.) I wanted the challenge. The parts had to be played partially lefty, partially right, a mix of both, and a myriad of velocity adjustments for the studio.
I know this kit looks ALL WRONG for playing Rush songs...never mind the brown <paper bag with notes. Gotta do what you gotta do.
The BD pattern was split between 2 feet in order to also play the 2 step HiHat parts. The Tom run at end using the whole kit had to be executed with paradiddles given the apex kit arrangement.
Audio:
I hit the snare 1 time when I should've hit the BD for that note during solo intro groove. Ratts!
This track was recorded with the Caress of Steel CD track playing in the headphones. This was done in order to match it as closely as possible.
I had to learn new parts/arrangements. I recorded with those scratch tracks in my ears. I sent off the tracks; A couple of years later, I heard the CD.
With this CD, it is Rush's music, so I tried to play Rush like Rush. In the case of different parts, I tried to play those like a cross between myself, and what fits Rush.