What I recommend doing first is nulling the frequency response by recording then being brushed over cloth, then match eqing that audio to pink noise. Generate an impulse response from that counter-curve and use that in a convolver as the first device in the process chain to get a flat response.
you can also use piezo elements to rig up your own E-kit triggers.. for roland triggers use a stereo jack with reverse polarity and you can get 2 piezos in one trigger (2nd is the rimshot)
Super cool! I'll have to try that sometime. It'd be interesting to have a piezo that could be switched between mic and trigger - although as others have pointed out you could always just use a trigger plugin on the piezo-captured signal. Thanks for watching!
The mixed sound from the shell was probably my favorite sound. It really brings out the “oomph” of the hardware itself, which can get lost in any mix. I’m really not a drummer, and just have an e-kit I mess around with from time to time, so this isn’t particularly useful for me, but maybe some day in the future I’ll have a kit to experiment with lol
The piezo sounds dope on the hi hats, so crunchy, it instantaneously takes you back 60 years. It's a bit hard to see what the drum piezos exactly bring to the mix in your example but I'm pretty sure that blended they right way they can add tons of character !
I’d really love to try this to record Metal and Hardcore drum tracks. I saw a video where someone used a contact mic on a snare and mixed it with the overheads and the contact mic. The snare wound up having a really cool snap to it with the right amount of EQ and a slight bit of clipping on the contact mic to create this kind of crushed effect to blend with the contact mic on the snare. A lot of my favorite recordings in the digital age of recording have always experimented with using clipping from the microphones to add a chaotic, frantic sound in their production, and after seeing this i’d love to apply what i’ve learned about contact mics to help add to their natural sound and bring out every tonal property that every part of the kit has to offer.
Sounds like those old Casio drum machines. I had the UKKO mics back in 2009. They were phantom powered and sounded very good... too bad I cant find some of the old test recordings I did. Unfortunately the product went belly up. Was hoping to get some more for my new Tama drum set. I sold the mics with my old Tama starclassic set. You can find some videos on youtube about Ukko contact mics from B-Band.
The tone from that hi tom was actually really good! I was surprised to be honest! The kick trigger would also be a really useful textural layer for those Eric Valentine-esque drum sounds... Where did you tape it down in the first example? Just on the far edge of the drum head? I used to use piezos as drum triggers almost 10 years ago and convert the audio to MIDI with Massey DRT, then I discovered Slate Trigger and it was way easier to augment a kit with samples. By the end of the session, the mics were ruined, but buying a pack of 5-10 on eBay is really cheap, and you can easily solder a connector to the end of them.
Hey thar, so I'm a teacher, building a studio, plan to do this but with mesh heads on acoustic drums and triggered 'mesh' practice cymbals. I'm needed a source for piezo pick-ups like this, but with longer wires. Or someone who has can make some for my students. We plan to build a box for the jacks and run into a simple Roland drum module. Do you think this will work? thanks
I have tried the same with our cymbals it does not give me the sound we need, but anyway i will try it on to our snare drums and kick as using a uni directional microphone reaching a clip which is not good when recording live music.
I wouldn’t try them on the cymbals anyways since there’s not usually a flat spot, but maybe they’ll stick since cymbals probably don’t vibrate as much as drum heads; I use two condensers for everything but also put Amazon piezos similar to these on the snare shell and the kick above the beater touching the rim which sound great when EQ’d properly so I could see this as a live benefit since it has an internal mic/triggered sound at a fraction of the price.
Hey Cole, one of my recent interests is running acoustic drums and percussion through guitar pedals. Do you have any experience with using contact mics for that purpose? If so, do you have any thoughts or advice about it?
I haven't done so personally, but the benefit would be not having to use a DI box - you should be able to go straight into the pedal. I've seen really cool stuff done with sending mics through pedals - I would just anticipate it being a very effected gnarly sound sound. I wouldn't expect something clean to come out the other end, but if you just want something vibey and cool sounding I'm sure that's exactly what you'll get. Try putting it on the wall and see what that sounds like!
@@ColeParamore Yeah, I have the whole "reamping" thing already going on and have been running through various pedal combination with a fully mic'd drum kit, as well as drum machines and synths. What I haven't tried it with is contact mic'ing, which I especially wanted to try with a cajon snare or other percussive sources, as well as drum set. So point well taken: contact mics put out instrument level, not mic level. One other question that maybe you can answer: Why is the AKG C411pp so expensive? Is there a quality difference between various commercial contact mic models?
@@ColeParamore it's the same thing. A coil of wire creating a variable magnetic fields. The diaphragm senses vibrations in the air, same as a ribbon, a piezo senses vibrations directly rather from the air, both work because of vibrations
@@heavymetalnewsdesk I suppose that’s true if we’re generous with the term “sense vibrations”. Mechanically there’s an obvious difference between the vibration of a physical object and pressure waves, and physics treats them differently. Functionally it’s very different using the Piezos and mics for all the reasons in the video. It’s a bit of a semantics argument and not typically how people use “vibration” colloquially but your point is noted.
They should, though your mileage may vary depending on the module. The pads on an E-kit are really just triggers to begin with, so I'd imagine they'd work.
You could go into an edrum module and essentially have it act as a trigger if that's what you're looking for. You might have to fiddle with the settings, I'm not sure what kind of dynamic response you'd get from the module. Going straight to an amp will give you the actual recorded sound of the instrument.
@@BryceKleinhanz21493 It does make a different if your interface is expecting a mic level signal - if you can change it to accept instrument level then you can go straight in. If you're just looking to get a signal to convert, the impedance mismatch probably won't be an issue and you can just compensate with gain after the fact.
So there is no cymbal or bass drum bleed on that snare mic? You know what this means? You can sidechain this to a gate on a main snare mic and have perfect mic bleed control over that snare. Please try this and let me know if this works!
That is correct! It will work for that purpose, though bear in mind you could also do the same thing using a standard trigger module. Thanks for watching!
@@blashuvec I think there may be some confusion somewhere - I’ve never seen a DI box without 1/4” input, and if you look them up right now you’ll be hard pressed to find anything different.
they should NOT be sounding like that, they're not being driven correctly, either plug them direct into the interface or figure out a better driver circuit, there's tons of schematics for them, but yeah you should have SOME low frequencies, it sounds like that DI box didn't do anything to match the impedance, or even made it worse, with a standard line input it should highpass about 200hz, with a microphone input it will highpass at 1khz, which is what this sounds like
My understanding is that these wouldn't be line level outputs, so I'm not sure what the benefit would be of putting them through the interface as such. This was a couple years ago so I'd have to pull up the session again to really remember what was going on, but you can tell from the tom example that we aren't high passed at 1k. That said, I'm certainly not suggesting I've perfectly impedance matched here - I'm sure I'm not. Getting the exact correct converter is a bit overkill for the type of experiment I'm going for here - especially since I'm using the cheapest contact mics I could find. I appreciate the input and thanks for watching!
@@ColeParamore I'm not saying you used a highpass filter, more that its a result of the inherent capacitance and design of the piezo adding with the input impedance to create a highpass, in your case with using the mic input would be 1khz. putting a piezo directly into the interface as a line-level input changes the amount of input impedance, and in that case lowers the frequency of highpassing, ideally you would want instrument ultra-high impedance, the higher the better, this would eliminate any highpassing at all basically, piezos are just very finicky without a driver circuit because circuit-wise they're just a big old capacitor smack in the middle of your microphone, which when paired with resistors makes the low end spotty, I can totally tell what you were going for but more just trying to give info to people who want to try this but might be put off from these results, piezos just REALLY hate microphone inputs ive found after making tons of variations of a plate reverb and trying to amplify it
![NISAMANEE - TADA (ท้าดา) [ OFFICIAL MV ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hcQHEPMmJpU/mqdefault.jpg)
Someone please tell me how to pronounce piezo. 😅
Pee-eh-tzo?
I pronounce it as pee-ay-zo.
pee-ay-zo
Pyay-zo
pee-YAY-zoh
What I recommend doing first is nulling the frequency response by recording then being brushed over cloth, then match eqing that audio to pink noise. Generate an impulse response from that counter-curve and use that in a convolver as the first device in the process chain to get a flat response.
That crash was incredible honestly, turned into an explosion!
This was awesome, I loved all of the sounds on their own as a sort of junky lo-fi intro-to-a-early-00s-pop-song vibe.
you can also use piezo elements to rig up your own E-kit triggers.. for roland triggers use a stereo jack with reverse polarity and you can get 2 piezos in one trigger (2nd is the rimshot)
Super cool! I'll have to try that sometime. It'd be interesting to have a piezo that could be switched between mic and trigger - although as others have pointed out you could always just use a trigger plugin on the piezo-captured signal. Thanks for watching!
The mixed sound from the shell was probably my favorite sound. It really brings out the “oomph” of the hardware itself, which can get lost in any mix.
I’m really not a drummer, and just have an e-kit I mess around with from time to time, so this isn’t particularly useful for me, but maybe some day in the future I’ll have a kit to experiment with lol
The piezo sounds dope on the hi hats, so crunchy, it instantaneously takes you back 60 years.
It's a bit hard to see what the drum piezos exactly bring to the mix in your example but I'm pretty sure that blended they right way they can add tons of character !
I’d really love to try this to record Metal and Hardcore drum tracks.
I saw a video where someone used a contact mic on a snare and mixed it with the overheads and the contact mic. The snare wound up having a really cool snap to it with the right amount of EQ and a slight bit of clipping on the contact mic to create this kind of crushed effect to blend with the contact mic on the snare. A lot of my favorite recordings in the digital age of recording have always experimented with using clipping from the microphones to add a chaotic, frantic sound in their production, and after seeing this i’d love to apply what i’ve learned about contact mics to help add to their natural sound and bring out every tonal property that every part of the kit has to offer.
Sounds like those old Casio drum machines.
I had the UKKO mics back in 2009. They were phantom powered and sounded very good... too bad I cant find some of the old test recordings I did.
Unfortunately the product went belly up. Was hoping to get some more for my new Tama drum set. I sold the mics with my old Tama starclassic set.
You can find some videos on youtube about Ukko contact mics from B-Band.
Oh very interesting, I've never heard of those actually. I'll have to check those out.
I've ways wanted to try and put those on every shell/cymbal and then use it to retrigger in my DAW
The tone from that hi tom was actually really good! I was surprised to be honest! The kick trigger would also be a really useful textural layer for those Eric Valentine-esque drum sounds... Where did you tape it down in the first example? Just on the far edge of the drum head?
I used to use piezos as drum triggers almost 10 years ago and convert the audio to MIDI with Massey DRT, then I discovered Slate Trigger and it was way easier to augment a kit with samples. By the end of the session, the mics were ruined, but buying a pack of 5-10 on eBay is really cheap, and you can easily solder a connector to the end of them.
Wouldn’t it be a better comparison to just have the overheads as well as the overheads and the piezos and just the piezo so you can compare all three?
Incredible! Thank you for this!
Great demo!!! Sounds excellent!!!
Hey thar, so I'm a teacher, building a studio, plan to do this but with mesh heads on acoustic drums and triggered 'mesh' practice cymbals. I'm needed a source for piezo pick-ups like this, but with longer wires. Or someone who has can make some for my students. We plan to build a box for the jacks and run into a simple Roland drum module. Do you think this will work? thanks
They do pick up the transients quite nicely
Watching this video makes me want to play the drums... I wish I can though. 👏 👏 👏
That’s so dope, just bought a contact mic excited mess around with it
Nice! If you take any video feel free to share!
what if you got a lot of contact mics and put them all over your kit?
Bass response will be better then
I have tried the same with our cymbals it does not give me the sound we need, but anyway i will try it on to our snare drums and kick as using a uni directional microphone reaching a clip which is not good when recording live music.
I wouldn’t try them on the cymbals anyways since there’s not usually a flat spot, but maybe they’ll stick since cymbals probably don’t vibrate as much as drum heads; I use two condensers for everything but also put Amazon piezos similar to these on the snare shell and the kick above the beater touching the rim which sound great when EQ’d properly so I could see this as a live benefit since it has an internal mic/triggered sound at a fraction of the price.
Hey Cole, one of my recent interests is running acoustic drums and percussion through guitar pedals. Do you have any experience with using contact mics for that purpose? If so, do you have any thoughts or advice about it?
I haven't done so personally, but the benefit would be not having to use a DI box - you should be able to go straight into the pedal. I've seen really cool stuff done with sending mics through pedals - I would just anticipate it being a very effected gnarly sound sound. I wouldn't expect something clean to come out the other end, but if you just want something vibey and cool sounding I'm sure that's exactly what you'll get. Try putting it on the wall and see what that sounds like!
@@ColeParamore Yeah, I have the whole "reamping" thing already going on and have been running through various pedal combination with a fully mic'd drum kit, as well as drum machines and synths. What I haven't tried it with is contact mic'ing, which I especially wanted to try with a cajon snare or other percussive sources, as well as drum set. So point well taken: contact mics put out instrument level, not mic level. One other question that maybe you can answer: Why is the AKG C411pp so expensive? Is there a quality difference between various commercial contact mic models?
411: normal microphones also work by sensing vibration and transforming it into a signal
Not quite, a regular mic has a diaphragm that is depressed via pressure waves. Different scenario from the Piezos.
@@ColeParamore it's the same thing. A coil of wire creating a variable magnetic fields. The diaphragm senses vibrations in the air, same as a ribbon, a piezo senses vibrations directly rather from the air, both work because of vibrations
@@heavymetalnewsdesk I suppose that’s true if we’re generous with the term “sense vibrations”. Mechanically there’s an obvious difference between the vibration of a physical object and pressure waves, and physics treats them differently. Functionally it’s very different using the Piezos and mics for all the reasons in the video. It’s a bit of a semantics argument and not typically how people use “vibration” colloquially but your point is noted.
Nice Drumming!
Do you know if the piezo's will trigger sound through a drum module? I'm thinking of throwing one on my kick drum and using a module for the sound.
They should, though your mileage may vary depending on the module. The pads on an E-kit are really just triggers to begin with, so I'd imagine they'd work.
Did it work like regular drum triggers?
can i put it on a cajon or bongo and plug it into edrum module? or should the output go only into amplifier?
You could go into an edrum module and essentially have it act as a trigger if that's what you're looking for. You might have to fiddle with the settings, I'm not sure what kind of dynamic response you'd get from the module. Going straight to an amp will give you the actual recorded sound of the instrument.
Its (Pi-ézo). Also im just wonderingg why you went through a di box. Does it really make a difference from going strait into the interface?
Im asking because im only trying to get a signal. Preferably one with some dynamics then convert audio to midi in logic for drums.
@@BryceKleinhanz21493 It does make a different if your interface is expecting a mic level signal - if you can change it to accept instrument level then you can go straight in. If you're just looking to get a signal to convert, the impedance mismatch probably won't be an issue and you can just compensate with gain after the fact.
So there is no cymbal or bass drum bleed on that snare mic? You know what this means? You can sidechain this to a gate on a main snare mic and have perfect mic bleed control over that snare. Please try this and let me know if this works!
That is correct! It will work for that purpose, though bear in mind you could also do the same thing using a standard trigger module. Thanks for watching!
@@ColeParamore sweet thanks
You could put that on a folder and a pillow and have your self a dirt cheap snare and bass
Yes! I've wanted to do a video in that vein.
Put that piezo inside the drum...stick it on the drum shell...
Hey man! How did you connect it to a DI box?
The pickups are prewired with a 1/4" cable. Thanks for watching!
@@ColeParamore so your DI box has a 1/4" input?
@@blashuvec Yep, that's the basic premise of virtually all DI boxes. 1/4" input with mic level XLR output + 1/4" thru output.
@@ColeParamore it's just that most DI boxes usually don't have 1/4" inputs so I thought you had connected to another cable and then to the Di box
@@blashuvec I think there may be some confusion somewhere - I’ve never seen a DI box without 1/4” input, and if you look them up right now you’ll be hard pressed to find anything different.
cool beats
Thanks!
Just like normal pickups, sound like shit without processing lol
they should NOT be sounding like that, they're not being driven correctly, either plug them direct into the interface or figure out a better driver circuit, there's tons of schematics for them, but yeah you should have SOME low frequencies, it sounds like that DI box didn't do anything to match the impedance, or even made it worse, with a standard line input it should highpass about 200hz, with a microphone input it will highpass at 1khz, which is what this sounds like
My understanding is that these wouldn't be line level outputs, so I'm not sure what the benefit would be of putting them through the interface as such. This was a couple years ago so I'd have to pull up the session again to really remember what was going on, but you can tell from the tom example that we aren't high passed at 1k. That said, I'm certainly not suggesting I've perfectly impedance matched here - I'm sure I'm not. Getting the exact correct converter is a bit overkill for the type of experiment I'm going for here - especially since I'm using the cheapest contact mics I could find. I appreciate the input and thanks for watching!
@@ColeParamore I'm not saying you used a highpass filter, more that its a result of the inherent capacitance and design of the piezo adding with the input impedance to create a highpass, in your case with using the mic input would be 1khz. putting a piezo directly into the interface as a line-level input changes the amount of input impedance, and in that case lowers the frequency of highpassing, ideally you would want instrument ultra-high impedance, the higher the better, this would eliminate any highpassing at all basically, piezos are just very finicky without a driver circuit because circuit-wise they're just a big old capacitor smack in the middle of your microphone, which when paired with resistors makes the low end spotty, I can totally tell what you were going for but more just trying to give info to people who want to try this but might be put off from these results, piezos just REALLY hate microphone inputs ive found after making tons of variations of a plate reverb and trying to amplify it
Just like normal pickups, sound like shit without processing lol