TSRB 164 - Automatic Episode Transcript - Please excuse any errors, not reviewed for accuracy

Benedikt: Hello and welcome to the Self Recording Band podcast. I'm your host, Benedictine, and today we're gonna talk about something I think we haven't covered yet. On this episode, we talk about recording electronic drum kits versus like real drum kits and versus like programming mini drums, like actually playing with an electronic kit. There's a couple of reasons for why we wanna co uh, we wanted to cover that because we, you know, recording, um, Acoustic drums, it's pretty hard. And not everybody can do that. It's not an option for everyone. Um, there's many reasons for that and we're gonna go through this. Um, and what you can do if you can't record real drums is you can use mini drums and you can draw them by hand, like program them by drawing mini notes. You can use a small controller or there's different ways to do it, but if you want the feel. Of a real drum kit and you want to actually play it. You could use electronic drum kits. Now that sounds like a simple solution, but there is a couple of like things that you have to watch out for. It's not as easy as it sounds. And so we wanted to make this episode and we brought in our, like Dr. Drums, as I always call him, Thomas, um, onto the episode, uh, Thomas is my partner engineer in the studio. And, uh, he's doing a lot of drum work for, for me or for the bands we work with. And he, I've, I've just mixed a song actually today with like, um, mid drums that he, I think played on electronic drum kit. And those were some of the best sounding and best feeling drums I've mixed in a while. And so naturally I wanted to bring him on to talk about this with us. So, welcome Thomas. Welcome Malcolm. Welcome Malcolm. I've never said that.

Malcom: Oh really?

Benedikt: so I'm not doing this alone. As always, I'm here with my wonderful co-host and friend, Malcolm Own Flat, and of course, Thomas Cotton. Tyler. Hello. Welcome guys.

Thomas: Welcome, Malcolm. Welcome,

Malcom: Yeah.

Thomas: Hey,

Malcom: Welcome Thomas. Man. It's great to have you back on the podcast.

Thomas: Yeah, finally.

Benedikt: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you for taking the time to do this, you guys. Um, I, it's a little different for me to not just talk to Malcolm, but to two people again, but we're gonna get through this. Um, we are gonna make this a cool episode and, uh, I hope that. Yeah, Thomas Kins can share insight from his experience of, of working on so many records with like, all kinds of different drums and also like these media drums that, that have been played on electronic kit now. Um, yeah. So before we do this, let's not skip our banter. I don't know, um, do you wanna guys share anything that is maybe related, maybe not.

Malcom: I mean, I am, uh, getting to test out a new fuzz plugin that is like the best thing ever. So I'm excited about that, but that's really all I can say right now. It's gonna be awesome though. It, it's the final frontier of, of plugins, right? Like that's the only thing that hasn't been like, knocked out of the park, um, by like every brand is fuzz. So it's pretty cool that that's coming out and kicking ass now.

Benedikt: Yeah, to Totally, totally.

Thomas: I started to take guitar lessons and,

Benedikt: Did you? I didn't.

Thomas: yeah, yeah. I, I play guitar for like, um, 10 or 12 years now. I'm just self-taught, but I managed to get a teacher,

Benedikt: Awesome. And, uh, yeah, since, since like for how long have you have you been doing that? Like the lessons.

Thomas: um, two weeks from now.

Benedikt: Okay. Okay, cool. Now, how, like, you're a teacher yourself, right? You're a drum teacher, so, Was it hard for you to find a good teacher that you like the, the teaching style of and all that? Like, do you, it's kind of meta, like, do you kinda analyze how they teach and what works for you and whatnot?

Thomas: So the kitta teacher at the music school where I am, uh, actually said to me that he wants to learn how to play the drums. So I said, you give me gi guitar lessons. You give me, uh, I give you drum lessons.

Benedikt: All right,

Malcom: Awesome. I, I always recommend that people take, like guitarists, take drum lessons because I think guitarists generally have a very poor understanding of rhythm and it's like just taking drum lessons is, uh, such an essential skill for musicianship in general. Uh, but drummers they don't always go the other way around and they're in guitar, so that's kind of,

Benedikt: Yeah.

Malcom: just, uh, out of, uh, desire to be able to play it better or, uh, is it motivated by wanting to, uh, be a better drummer?

Thomas: No, it's actually just cause I want to play better guitar and, you know, I, I can do chords, I can do, um, what are, are they chords, uh, called ball chords?

Malcom: Bar chords. Yeah.

Thomas: Yeah.

Benedikt: yeah, yeah. Parks.

Malcom: Everybody's favorite.

Thomas: yeah, I, I can do all of that, a little bit of pentatonic stuff. Um, some licks, but nothing really fancy. So I, I decided to like level up my,

Malcom: You'll have fun with it. I'm.

Benedikt: Yeah, totally. Always a good thing. Cool. Awesome. Now, before I say something incorrect, Thomas, like the, I just finished the cho the, like the, the Cho Altman, um, song, uh, today, you, you played that on electronic drums, right? Is that correct?

Thomas: Yes.

Benedikt: Yes. Okay. Because I was so fascinated because this, this was like a perfect preparation for this episode today because as I said, those were, were some of the best sounding and also feeling drums I've mixed in a while and like honestly and um, Um, part of it is the, the sampler that you used of course, and like how you put together and layered the samples and all of that. So great work there. That was awesome. But also the playing and, and like how realistic it sounds. It was kind of mind blowing. So I, I hope we can, um, unpack some of that today, how you actually did that and yeah, let, let's start maybe with the, the, the why. Like, why is. Like, why is it a good idea to use, like electronic kit, like an electronic kit versus like a real kit or versus like drawing in mini notes with your hands? Like, let, let's talk about situations where an electronic drum kit is the, the weapon of choice, sort of

Malcom: Real quick before, can I just jump in? I want to clarify that, uh, I think some people might not realize that you can use electronic kits to get Yeah. What you're saying real, like real sounding drums.

Benedikt: Oh

Malcom: So, Um, some people might think, okay, you would use electronic drums to program like eru sounds. Um, but you can use what we're talking about. I mean, we, we can talk about both, but in, in this case, we're talking about as a, as an alternative method of achieving quotation marks, real sounding drums, using an e Kitt just to capture a performance, and then using software to give us the sounds we want. And in this case, like make it sound like a real kit.

Thomas: So imagine you. 80 keyboard and use one of the best, you know, violin samples out there. And nothing else is an electronic drum kit combined with a good virtual instrument for

Malcom: Mm-hmm. Which, which is, uh, fascinating because then in theory you could also record an incredible drum performance using the piano if you were extremely skilled with your fingers.

Benedikt: Yeah, totally. So I think, you know, um, I think that there are some listeners who have tried using electronic drum kits before and maybe failed because it's not as like, as, as simple as it sounds. So, um, I think that, so, so the why is partly, you know, a real drum kit is not, as I said, not always an option for many people because of the room, because of, um, maybe the lack of a, of a really good drum kit. Maybe you don't have enough mics or bad mics, or not enough, not enough mics or enough channels, input channels, that sort of stuff. Not enough experience with tracking real drums. Um, so there's a lot of reasons for why you can't record acoustic drums, but then when you've decided to do it mid. Um, as I said, maybe some people have tried using an electronic kit but failed and then decided to draw the mini notes in by hand or use a small controller and that doesn't really feel great, you know, they wanna play it. So that, that's the, that's really, uh, why we wanted to do this episode and, and explain how to do it properly, basically. And so what we, just, what you say are the advantages of like, of using an electronic drum kit. Why would you want to use that? The obvious one is like, it feels like a drum kit, but is it, is it faster? Is it easier? Is it, does it sound better? Like, can you, do you know why? Why, when and why would you use it? Because I don't think you've used it on all the, no, no, you don't use it on every single project. You know, so sometimes you just choose to, uh, program it different, differently.

Thomas: So one, it's way quicker than writing every note with a. If you have your recording set up, if it's set, if it's set up, you know. Um, and the other thing is that timing is a big if issue. When you just want to write it with the mouse. You can't do that basically. So that are the two main reasons for me. Feel, feel, and timing and groove, you know? Um, yeah, that are the two reasons why I would use an electronic drum kitt, but, Acoustic drum kits are always better as from, from, from when you think about the field. Acoustic drum kits are always better, you know?

Benedikt: You know how it, you mean how it feels when you're playing? Like, um, how it feels to the. Okay. Yeah. Okay. We're gonna talk about that. There's different ways to make an electronic drum kit feel better, or it depends on the kit I think you use mainly, and then a couple of other things. Maybe then let's just go through how to actually do it properly because Yeah, that, that's, that's what I think is the most important thing here. So there's different ways to record electronic drum kits and we just, I think we have to explain first what that actually is, like, how it works and, and, because I know that so many people do it the, the wrong way or, or don't know what you can actually do with it because you can obvious. You don't mic it. I mean, you know, it's an electronic thing, so you, I mean, it's just, it just sounds like cardboard if you put a microphone on it. Um, but you can record its outputs and there's different ones. You know, you can, you could record one stereo output of the whole kit, which gives you, yeah, stereo recording of a full drum kit. But you have very little control over that in the mix, and you are very limited when it comes to choosing good sounding samples.

Malcom: Just real quick on the stereo output that is there, there's totally a place for that. Like it, it's really great for, for like demos, um, where you. Gu to, you know, make a, a decent sounding capture of the song and, and have drums that don't sound like if you just don't have the ability to record great acoustic drums where you own an E Kitt. Grabbing the stereo out is gonna sound pretty awesome because the sounds are like, pretty pre-mixed usually. Um, so it's a great little quick solution to getting like, quick and dirty, good drums down, but just, you can't mix 'em at all because it. Printed. So there's a, there's a time and a place for it is all I'm saying kind of thing.

But um, but ultimately we're, the, the goal of this episode is to take you way past that.

Benedikt: Yes, exactly. Exactly. And you know, you gotta know how it actually works. First. So, um, those pads, when you look at an electronic drum kit, it consists of pads that are like that, replace the actual drums, uh, and symbols. And those just detect the hits basically. And there's like better ones, cheaper ones, you know. But basically what they do is they detect which drum is being hit and then how hard it is hit, and sometimes where you hit it, like center or off center, depending on the, on the pad you use, um, that sort of stuff. And it translates that into mini information, mini notes, and those mini notes can then, uh, are then sent. If you just practice with it with headphones, for example, those mini notes, this mini information is being sent to a module, or like Malcolm told us, it's called the brain. Over there, you call it the brain of the kit. We always say module, like there's a small computer attached to it, and that one has a sampler, and the mid information that goes into this brain of the kit will then trigger those samples. So when you hit the pad for the SNA drum, The module knows. Now I have to play a snare drum. And you can, in this mo this module, this brain has outputs. So you can, as, as we said, record the stereo out. It's like kind of pre-mixed and you get the whole, um, kit at once. Uh, sometimes they have multiple outputs, so you can record one output per drum or a symbol, which is kind of similar to recording, like a, a drum kit with multiple mics. But then again, you, you'll, um, you can only choose the samples that this sampler, this, this computer gives you that is, And then the third and most flexible way is you can capture the media information and then use whatever sample you have in the computer and use the samples there. And that is what gives you the most flexibility and also the ability to actually edit and adjust your performance. Because not all of these drum kits capture, like, capture it really accurately, you know, get the dynamics right and all of that. So, um, these are basically the three ways I can think of that. Is that about correct Thomas? Like you can capture stereo, multi out audio, or.

Thomas: Right. So stereo output is, um, probably good for just arranging or songwriting. If you want a quick method to record your electronic drum kitt, there are multi outputs, um, and I believe like one of the higher end modules, like the rolling TD 50, and that's in the 2000 plus, uh, box range has. Outputs for kick snare hats. Right. Um, and there are Toms left and right. So you get the Toms on one stereo track and the overheads on left and right. So that's good for life situations, right? If you sent those outputs to the mixer. But for recording, I always would go, always would go with.

Benedikt: What should someone get if they think about, um, using an electronic drum kit or if they have one? How do they know if it's good enough? Like what would you say? What, what is the, how good does it have to be and what does it cost to get a good one?

Thomas: Yes. That's a very interesting question and I think it's very subjective. The track you mentioned before, um, I used a Roland TD one drum module that's. One of the most affordable drum modules out there. It's about 150 or 200 bucks.

Benedikt: But you're talking about the brain, the module.

Thomas: Yeah. The module of the brain, it, it almost has no features and, and no settings, but you can do it with that too. And it's enough, it's really enough when you do a little bit of mini editing. That's, I think that is key to edit the meeting later.

Benedikt: And, and what about the pads though? Because the module is one thing. Um, it's basically the interface to the computer. But what about the, the actual pads? What's the difference there and how expensive do they have to be?

Thomas: Yeah. Right. So basically there are three different, um, kind of pads. There are mono pads, stereo pads, and digital pads. So mono pads are the typical black rubber things, and you will get one articulation of that mono padd. If you have stereo pad like a sna drum. Often it has. It's a stereo pad and it has a rim articulation and a head articulation.

Benedikt: You said stereo pad, just. Views people, it's still, it still outputs a mono signal. Let's just called that because it has two different articulations built into one pan. Right? It's not like we're not talking stereo mono in terms of left and right, but it has like two outputs.

Thomas: Right, right. It has two outputs and the cable is actually a stereo cable. Right. So it's not left right? It's just one path that has more than one articulation and therefore is used, um, a stereo cable, right? So you have a, a rim, for example, on a sned drum, a rim articulation, a head articulation, and. A rim shot if you play both at the same time. There also are digital pads that give you way more, um, zones, basically because a digital pad can divide the head into different zones. So you get a center, a off center, a edge, for example, articulation all on the head. Then a rim, a rim shot shot. And there are also some pads that detect when you, when you rest your hand on the, on the mesh. And if you want to play a, a side stick, for example, digital pads are really expensive. Do you really need a digital pad? That's the question here, because most of the times when you, when you play a rock song or something heavy, you just want a hard rim shot. That's all you want most of the time. Right. And there are a few fills in every song where you want a little bit like off center and a rim shots like not so hard or something like that. You can edit that, uh, later in the media. And that's why I chose a, a pretty cheap module because the high end modules are really expensive, you know, and the high end kits are really.

Benedikt: Okay, so you need, if you have like one of those digital pads, you need a different module for that too. Just just so people can follow along like the, the cheap module. Do that, right? If you have a, a pad with like multiple zones and all that stuff that you talked about, um, you, you then also need a better module and that makes it all like expensive. Quick. Quickly. Right.

Thomas: You need a module that has the connectivity for digital pads, and you need a digital

Benedikt: Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. So again, what would you say is like the minimum that people would have to spend? Or like, what, what should they be looking at? I, from what it, from what I heard is like probably at least the stereo pad, so you can have like a rim in the head. Um, but like, that's about all you need for, for the snare drum. Um, you probably want mesh heads and not like the rubber. Hard rubber pads probably. And, and so would you say like an entry level mesh hat kit? Uh, with a, some decent module. Is, is a good place to start?

Thomas: Yeah, of course. So, I built my, my drum kit, my electronic drum kit was, I bought a used rolling TD one module. I bought everything used on eBay, but I bought one stereo snap hat with a mesh head and a few of these old mono rubber black, um, tom pads and of your symbol

Benedikt: Oh, really? You, you. Oh, okay. Cool.

Thomas: because, because why should I spend more money on pads that give me, um, one articulation, right? So I, I don't need more than one articulation on a tom. And if there's a part where, where the, the rim of the tom is, is hit, I can do that later with the mini.

Benedikt: I'm even more impressed now because the Tom fills in this song that I. Sound really natural and, and I always imagined I have no experience, but I've always imagined like those rubber, those hard rubber pads, they just don't feel right. Or maybe the stick bounces weird in a weird way or something. And, and like those films that you played there, they are dynamic. They sound exactly like I would play them on a real kit. And, and uh, so you did all of that with those hard black rubber pads, basically, which is, this is pretty interesting.

Malcom: It seems to me like a, a way to simplify the whole idea is that you can really go as bare bones as, and basic and cheap as you want. Because you're able to fix it in, in the edit, in the mid editing in your dah, which is really cool. Um, so if the more realistic you want your drum performance to be right out of your performance of actually playing it, the more money you need to spend. But Thomas seems to be saying that, Yeah, you can do that if you want, but you can also just keep it a really simple, bare bones affordable kit and then add whatever you want in the humanization, in the dynamics, or even changing articulation sounds in the doll after the fact as well.

Thomas: Exactly.

Benedikt: Cool. And, um, so if someone has never, if someone has never played on an electronic drum kit like that and they built this hybrid affordable kit like you did, is it, does it take a lot of, like getting used to it? Does it feel really bad or is it like, can you immediately go from, from playing your real kit to tracking the same thing on the electronic kit? 

Thomas: Yeah, I think you can immediately go from, uh, your acoustic kid to that, but it will never feel really good. Right. Even, even if you buy one of those higher end things with that full size shells, and there you are in the five, 6,000 range, um, they never feel like a, a real kid because it's, it's different. It's just different. And, you know, I, I thought, why should I spend that crazy amount of money if it never feels like really good?

Benedikt: Okay. Fair enough. So how much overall did you spend for your setup? Just so people know the use setup that you just talked about,

Thomas: Maybe six, 700 bucks

Benedikt: that's.

Thomas: round about that.

Benedikt: Awesome. Really cool. How do you set it up so you can monitor whatever samples you you're choosing in the computer? Like can you actually do that or do you have to listen to the, what the module puts out and if you can monitor through the computer and choose your sample library of choice, how do you set that up so that the library reacts correctly to what you're doing? So that a ghost note is actually a ghost note and a loud hit is a loud hit and an open high is open and. Types of things, like how do you do that? Is that difficult? Can you do something wrong here? Does it work out of the box? Is it like, is it like plug and play? What's that process look like?

Thomas: All right. So if you wanna monitor yourself through your computer, you have to have a computer that can handle that. Uh, you need to have a low enough buffer size so you don't have a great, uh, much of a delay. But if a computer can handle that, just search for a drum library. Virtual instrument that has something like a electronic drum kit preset or some kind of setup. Um, for example, the, the room sound libraries from the company room sound, they have something, something like a, a e drum wizard, I think it's called. It's so easy to set up, to set it up. It's just like the software tells you hit the kick drum pad as hard as you can, and you do it. Then press okay, then go to the next pad. And if you go through that, everything is is mapped and everything is, yeah, good to go. Now, superior drama, for example, has a lot of presets in it. I believe there are 20 different companies, all rolling kits, Pearl Kits, millennium Kits, and all of that. And you just, uh, select a preset and it works. So one thing to mention here, I would never change the meaty, uh, mapping presets inside of the module

Benedikt: Mm-hmm.

Thomas: then these presets won.

Benedikt: Ah, okay. You gotta leave the module like it is and then Okay. Okay. So that it matches the presets except for, um, having like a, an Iran wizard like that, then you can, it detects whatever you you're hitting right now. Which is great. I mean, I love room sound for various reasons since this is just one more. Um, they, they did a good job with that. I don't think the older libraries have it, though. I might be wrong, but I think they implemented this in the new Kal Blue, um, library and maybe the old one got, the old one's got an update, but I don't remember them having this, this, so, but yeah, the new one definitely has. Do you have a, do do a lot of adjustments later? So let's say you did the setup or you chose a preset in superior drummer or wherever, do you then have to. Like adjust things of like how, how far, you know, the high hat opens or, I don't know. I, I'm just thinking about things that could possibly go wrong. Do you have to adjust things later and fine tune until it feels right.

Thomas: If the sampler give you these options, can definitely do that. Like superior drama gives you the option to, um, very detailed options there. Um, I think the hi hat controller pedal setup is also in this, uh, IRA Wizard of the Kalou Library, I think. Yeah. But, but hi hats in general are, in general are a bit difficult on, on electronic drum kits because real hi hats are so detailed. They have so much nuances and so many different sounds. Out of, of this metal plate. Right. Digital pads are way better, but they're also expensive. Right. I know the Roland Digital Hyatt pad is about 800 bucks and that's crazy. But they're good. Right?

Benedikt: Do you have to worry about like the, the size of the pants or how you set it up so that it feels like what you used to from drums? Because I remembered the few times that I played on electronic drum kit. One of the thing things that was always weird for me was the small. Pads and like where they are positioned and it always felt like a little, yeah, very narrow. And, and I was like focusing, concentrating on actually hitting the pads. Like maybe that's just a mental thing and not really an issue because you should hit a real drum close to the center anyways. But it always felt like I had to concentrate on actually not missing them or, or setting them up so that, that the distance didn't seem correct. Like is there something, the way you mounted or whatever, is there something to, to pay attention to?

Thomas: At least for me, that's a big issue. And that's probably the main reason why I got this stereo pad a snare because it had, uh, 12 inches, I think. And I, I, I rarely use the rim articulation, but. It had the right size. It was 12 inches, and that's enough. Not, not 14, but um, it's better than a seven inch rubber pad.

Benedikt: Malcolm, do you have any experience with playing on, on weekends like,

Malcom: I, I, I have so little experience playing on both real drums and. I just like don't have a lot of drumming experience. I wish I had more. Um, honestly, if I had one more room in the place I live, I would own a drum kit without a doubt. But there is no room. Um, but it, it seems from what Thomas is saying, that the more famili familiar you are with playing drums and like the, you know, Thomas, you're probably be very used to your acoustic kit, the more it kind of matters, the making sure that what you're playing on, like your e Kitt. Feels natural. So finding the right size for your snare, for example. Um, but I'm sure there's also other people out there that have started with e Kitts and like the little sizes are exactly what they're used to, which is kind of fascinating to think. Um, it does make me think, this is a little off topic so we won't get too into it, but I've had drummers come into the studio that rehearse on Ekis, and then they come into the studio to play. Like real acoustic kits without getting used to that again. And it's kind of a, a little bit of a, a learning curve for them cuz it's, I think the feels different enough that it's, uh, it, it affects your plane. Do you agree with that, Thomas?

Thomas: Yep. Yep. And the other way around too.

Malcom: Mm, of course.

Thomas: a bit challenging because when you, when you sit on an electronic drum kit, you have to think of things like, how high do I have to raise my hand to have an like tip articulation on the hats? And actually that's. Stuff I don't want to think about when I'm recording, so that's a bit annoying, but it's practical to do.

Benedikt: okay. Got it. So, so one thing that I noticed a couple of times when, uh, when I was touring with my band back then, there was like in the two, like late two thousands we were playing. And like early 2010 stuff we, like, we, we play, we were playing with a lot of metal core bands and some of these had either triggers on their real kits live or they had a mesh kick drum or something with them live and used to kick trigger, kick drum in the rest of acoustic, for example. And what, what I noticed with some of those drummers was they were using either one shots or very. Like not very dynamic samples. And I noticed they were playing, not all of them, but some of them had pretty sloppy playing and they just didn't hit really hard just because the sample always sounded, you know, sounded killer and like a, like a heavy hit. But actually they didn't really hit very hard. And I always, I always thought, what happens when those people have to play a real kick drum? Like this would sound terrible. They don't really, you know, it's just super soft and like very sloppy. But it works because the samples were. Like, yeah, just one shot search just out of the box. Great. So what, what do you think, Thomas, is it possible to set up a kit that it's, it's, it's like an electronic kit that it is about S dynamic as a real kit. So you can get the really quiet ghost notes and you really have to hit hard if you want a hard sound, or is it always kind of cheating because you have limited dynamic range and you can, you know, play a little slop here and still get a good.

Thomas: So that's the, um, I'll answer your question, but that's the main reason why I, I'm not recommending people to learn. Playing the drums on electronic drum kits because you simply can just turn up or down the volume if you want to. Um, now even like the cheap role in module has good dynamics. You can, you can set that up inside of the module. And I found myself just, um, limiting myself a little bit in the dynamics because I wanted, uh, a more consistent recording.

Benedikt: Hmm. You can use it to your advantage.

Thomas: yeah, of course you can have all the dynamics, right? Even, even in the cheaper models.

Benedikt: Uh, I was, uh, impressed by the ghost notes on the snare, for example, on that song that I mixed today because those were really natural, real dynamic, also not the same every single time. So they just sounded like a real snare wood. And, and hearing that you were recording this on, on a, like a cheap kit like that, uh, is actually pretty cool. Because that, that's one of those things that makes a drum kit sound real, right? Those, those types of dynamics. But you can also, as you said, use it to your advantage and limit the dynamics in a way to get a, a more consistent performance right out of the box, sort of, and like is a good starting point, which is great because you would, like, you're likely to do that anyway when you edit the mid and you want get the, the final sort of performance, right? So you can cheat a little bit, but as long as you know how to, how to play dynamically if you want to. I have so many questions, but, but Malcolm, feel free to ask some too. Uh, I just have so many questions at the top, uh, from the top of my head. Uh, one more thing that comes to mind. Is it actually loud in the room to play a kid like that? Especially the rubber pad? Because one reason why people get a kid like that is that they, they wanna annoy their neighbors or they just can't record a real drum kit in there. But I always had the impression that some of those kits, like just the sound of hitting those pads, It's still like pretty loud and you can't really do that in some, in some flats or like under certain circumstances. Do you agree with that, Thomas, or is there a way to make it quieter? Beheads probably are quiet, but I always found it's pretty loud still.

Thomas: Yep. It's, there's definitely, definitely a difference between mesh heads and rubber pads. Of course, you have a surface that gives you rebound, it gives you better rebound, and it's still loud. Of course. Um, my neighbors will hear when I play, so, so we live, we live, uh, next to each other in a, in a big house. But they of course, will hear, imagine you, you take a wooden. And hit some kind of material like that.

Benedikt: Yeah, yeah.

Thomas: Yeah, you're gonna hear that. And it's probably not quieter as a, um, converted acoustic kit. So if, if you take mesh heads and apply it to your, um, normal acoustic kit, it's probably not louder to that. 

Benedikt: Okay. Now let's, let's talk about that in a second. Like the whole converting. An actual kit into like a hybrid setup or something, because that is interesting too, in like alternative ways to do it. But before we do that, um, what do you, just real quick, and we don't get into this too much in depth because we have a, a different episode on like mini drums in general, but, um, what do you do after you've like, set it up all correctly? You played it, you captured the midi, uh, d does it? Do you end up getting one stereo midi track on your computer, or do you get one midi track for every single, um, shell or symbol or what does that look like and what do you do with that then? Uh, do you just treat it like any programmed MIDI kit and, and you know, um, yeah, edit the performance and juice samples and stuff.

Like what, what does that look like? Is there any extra step you have to do after you've captured.

Thomas: Okay. I have one mini file where everything is in, so there's the kick drum, the sna drum, every Tom, and it's a good idea to label that. So the tra the, the mini note where your Toms are, are actually named Tom one, Tom two, Tom three, and so on. And then I would do some, uh, timing adjustment, quantizing stuff, then some velocity adjusting if you want a snare to be like, um, super, um, dynamic. If you can leave it like it is or you can adjust that if you want it to be, um, pretty hard all the time, you can adjust the velocities like that. You can of course, like, um, um, adjust, uh, articulations. You can add a Tom for example, or add a crash symbol. If your sample has more crashes, like, uh, you have in, um, on your electronic drum kit. You can do that. And yeah, that's basically it, I think. And of course you can copy paste parts. Like that. Yeah.

Benedikt: Okay. And from there it's basically like treating any other midi um, drum kit in, uh, in the, in the computer. Cool. Is one. One thing that I, I'm still keep thinking about is like when you, one thing that I wanted to ask is, some people told me, and I haven't had this experience myself, but some people told me that some of those kids are kind of unreliable and it comes to picking up wrong, quote unquote wrong hits. So, uh, that you might want to hit the first Tom. But it triggers the second one also, if they're close to each other or, uh, the whole wreck or whatever mount you have is kind of rattling and it triggers all kinds of things at the same time and they can't really get rid of that, is that an issue only with like cheaper kits or is there a way to adjust that or work around that? Because I've heard a couple people complain about that. My brother, for example, took him a long time to get his drum kit set up so that he could accurately play Tom fills without all kinds of drums being triggered at the same.

Thomas: Yeah, I can think of two solutions here. One would be to have a stand for every pad. So a snare stand. So, so get rid of that typical black like rack where every tom and every symbol is mounted on the same rack. That's one way. Of course, another way would be to have a module that is capable of some, uh, crosstalk settings. So you can, yeah, basically set a threshold where the vibration of, of the hit you've, of the, another pad you've just hit. Is, you know, below that threshold. And so the pat won't react, then other

Malcom: It's like a sensitivity threshold.

Thomas: vibrations. Yeah. Something like that.

Benedikt: Okay. Interest. Interesting. Mm-hmm.

Thomas: But, but it's always a good idea to have the pats on separate stance. So the module I have, for example, the TD one, um, has no, um, features like that. No crosstalk. So I have a SNA stand, I have a simple stand and right, a high head.

Benedikt: Okay. That's a good idea. Malcolm, do you have any questions about the whole setup thing and the actual recording part of it? Becau, before we dive into like alternatives or like hybrid setups and all that type of thing?

Malcom: I, I guess maybe this is rewinding a little bit, but we, we talked about monitoring your, your drum sounds, and I

Benedikt: Oh yeah.

Malcom: you probably do have to have a pretty great computer to, to monitor like a VST in your computer in real time while recording it, I would think because like, like superior drummers pretty CPU heavy as an example. So is there an easy way for, for people to just monitor their eki. While recording, um, like off off the module brain of their drums while recording in, but with the goal of using different sounds later.

Thomas: Yeah, of course you can monitor yourself through the brain, through the module. Um, you just have to make sure that you also hear the playback you want to play with. So maybe your module has a a in where you can use your phone to listen to the music you wanna play to. Um, one thing you have to make sure is that the grid and the tempo in the d w you're recording to, um, is the same like the song you're playing too. That's very important. Especially in the case of superior drama, there are two tricks you can do if you wanna have life monitoring. It has a switch from 24 bit samples to 16 bit samples, and you can disable all the bleed, so that makes life monitoring a bit easier. And after you've recorded, you can switch on for 24 bit samples again.

Benedikt: Ah, that's good. Yeah, I was thinking about that too, because it would be kind of hard to not monitor through the computer for me at least. I, I would love to hear the, the click coming from the session and then the scratch tracks and all of that. And so, but yeah, if there is like a low latency mode where you can like turn, turn off certain features while you're recording, that would probably fix it. And that, that's a good, that's a good point here. Uh, because yeah, the bleed settings in those VST drums are what, like use a lot of CPU and also ram because so many samples are layered on top of each other at the same time to make sure that this happens. So if you can turn that off, that's definitely helping. Or, or is there a way, Thomas to just. Monitor through the do with the click and the backing tracks and all of that, and also plug in the physical outputs of the, the module into the interface to just, you know, um, monitor that through the computer or the interface two, and then also capture the midi. So in case the VST doesn't work, you could still go through the doll, um, and, and monitor the analog outputs of the, uh, the kit through the interface. That, that's maybe a solution that could work.

Thomas: I just thought about that workaround.

Malcom: Um, I want to double. On what Thomas said about, uh, making sure that you have the tempo and, uh, and meter selected in your doll before you start recording, because like that is, at least in pro tools, that would be a disaster if you forgot to do that. Like if you just had a. Make a default session is at one 20 and you track the song to that and you're like, oh wait, it's meant to be one 50. And then you're like, it might not go to plan when you speed it all up. Um, or if worse yet, if you're using like an offline click, uh, in the module or something. It, yeah, there's, there's potential for disaster there. So have that all determined and figured out in advance. Save you some headache.

Benedikt: Oh yeah. Oh, totally, totally. That would be a nightmare. Yeah. All right. Cool. So, Okay. That, that's it for the, for the tracking part, I think. And, and as always, people let, let us know if you have follow up questions on that, and we're happy to, to ask Thomas and, and answer them. And also, by the way, sorry if this, this conversation is not as like, you know, smooth as usual.

We have a brutal delay here on our system and I hope we can like work this

Malcom: Yeah. I'm sorry, Wayne. I'm,

Benedikt: kind of hard to

Malcom: it's gonna be tough. Um,

Benedikt: Yeah. It's gonna be tough, but I'm sure you're gonna make it work some.

Malcom: Thomas, I got a question for you. I'm wondering how much time you spend tracking versus editing, like what the ratio is? Because compared to acoustic recording it, it's so important to play it right. Um, because the editing is kind of limited in what you can fix. But with MIDI you could really, you could, you could do it all by editing. You could do it all with a mouse if you really had to. It's. Very time consuming. So I'm wondering, do you just kind of try and get like a really good take down, like just one good full pass and then you take it from there on the computer? Or do you still work hard to nail the performance and then just do a little bit of editing? Like it, what's, uh, what's the ratio there? Is it, is it different than how you approach acoustic drums?

Thomas: My way of doing that is, so let's say I get a demo from somebody who wants to have recorded drums. Um, I listen to that demo a few days in advance, like three to four times, and then I set up the d w set up my trans drum kit, and then I record part. For part, uh, most of the times, and let's say there's a verse and then there's a break. So I would, I would record the verse like three or four times until it feels right, and then I would immediately go in and edit that performance. Um, because I still know what I play it. I still know what I, uh, want to change and the way I want it, stuff like that. And, After I've done that, I go to the next part and that's basically the way I recorded all of the songs.

Malcom: Cool. So it's a section by section.

Thomas: Yeah, right. Section by section, immediately edited everything. Um, yeah. Till it felt right. Then moved on.

Benedikt: Okay, so, but that is something you can do when you do it on your own for yourself because you can move like back, you can go back and forth between playing and editing and so on. I, I imagine if you were working with an artist or if you are like the producer in your band and you're tracking your drummer, it would probably be kind of a weird flow or like people would have to agree to do that because like, Play a part and then edit everything, and then play the next part and then edit everything. It's kind of a stop and go thing, you know, once they're warmed up, they have to stop again. So I, I think that could be challenging when working with other people, if you're doing it on your own. I can totally see though why it makes sense, because it's like still fresh in your mind and you just, you know, you know exactly what went wrong and edit it and then move on. But is there ever a problem for you when it comes to, in terms of flow to, to do these constant interruptions basically, and always warm up and cool down?

Thomas: No, not, not at all. It's, it's no problem at all.

Benedikt: Okay. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I, I'm just saying, I can imagine working with someone else that not everybody would, would, you know, want to do that that way or it could cause problems, but I can also see why it makes sense. So, um, let's talk about like the alternative Sierra Equip before you wrap it up, because you, that's what something that I think is really interesting. You could in theory, um, set up like real symbols plus pants, right? For.

Thomas: Yep. You could record symbol. With a stereo overhead pair of, or clothes mics and use just, um, pads for the shells. Of course, there are dramas out there who do.

Benedikt: Yeah, would you have to use mesh heads because the rubber attacks maybe sound a little hard and weird and loud.

Malcom: So my experience with this is that, yeah, the rubber pads are super noisy. I know people that have made it work and I, I honestly don't know how they do it, but, uh, I find that like the click click clack of the rubber pads is like told the all over my overheads. Maybe I just crush my overheads more than other people do. But, um, It, uh, I haven't really gotten it to work in a way that I'm happy with. I've done the, uh, replacing the kick drum with a pad before and had success with that. Um, but as far as the ones being hit by sticks, I don't like it.

Benedikt: I think replacing the kick drum is actually a very good idea. You can do so much. Um, you, you have so much flexibility in like editing the kick and, and it's, it's pretty easy to get that out of the surprisingly, works surprisingly well actually, to get that. Out of the overheads. Um, so especially for metal, I think having a mesh kick pad or like a, another mesh, like a, like a meaty kick pad and uh, and the rest of the kit reel, that, that's a good solution actually. And for some of those genres, it's, it's clear from the beginning that you're gonna use samples anyway. Um, so I think, I think that's a good approach for a lot of people.

Malcom: Another approach that I think actually works better is just a little more time consuming and drummers don't like it as much, is recording the whole kit, uh, electronically deleting the symbols, and then setting up the symbols and recording them on their own. Um, because then there's symbols without any bleed at all, and, and you've, you've got the backup symbols of mid information as well. And when I say delete, I mean hi to make an active kind of thing. But yeah, record an entire performance electronically and then mute and rerecord whatever you need acoustically.

Benedikt: Totally. That's a, that's a good approach too. What about the thing you said, um, Thomas, where you would replace the actual drum heads on a real kit with mesh heads, uh, on the acoustic drums?

Thomas: Yeah, right. There are, um, some hardware triggers out. That are often used in life situations, and you can also use them for, um, you know, you can pluck those things onto your, um, acoustic shell and it'll create a mini note that a, like, there are some brains for that too, who just are, uh, have the connectivity for that triggers and they will send me the information to your computer. And I never tried that and. Good. The dynamics are there, but I think there's some, some, uh, modules from De Drum that can do that.

Benedikt: I did that, I did that with the triggers on actual drums before. Um, but what I never did was like, swap out the, the drum heads for mesh heads. Like, why would you do that? Just to get the, the drums quieter so you don't, you can. Um, is, is that the reason for why you wanna do that? Like, you know, low volume kit overall? Basically.

Thomas: That's, that's the main reason if you're in an apartment and one, a low volume kit, and you can also have some, uh, low volume symbols that are the symbols with the, the crazy amount of holes in it just for being quiet.

Benedikt: Okay. Um, you know what you can also do, and this is something I haven't like, I think it's good that you put it in the outline there, Thomas. You could mic, like if you have a jam space where noise is not the problem, but the problem is that you can't track real drums for other reasons. Maybe you don't have like decent mics or, uh, you just don't have enough experience or it just doesn't sound right and you wanna do it mid for, for other reasons. Then what you could do. Is you could mute your drums as much as possible and or put mesh heads on it as you said. And you could close mic or like you could, uh, just leave the heads on, actually mute it just so you get a lot of attack. And then really close mic those drums, um, and put a pair of overheads for the symbols up. And then, uh, make sure that you really just get the accurate attacks, but not really a tone from the drums. And you make 'em quiet and then you. Convert that audio information from the close miced, um, shells to midi in the computer. And, uh, they mute the, the original audio and then just layer samples there. Like you, you, I mean, you can do that with like properly track drums too, but if you really feel like. The drums aren't helping and you wanna get rid of them and you want like, as, as little of them as possible in the overheads, you could just mute the, the hell out the, of the, the drums basically, and stick the mic as close to it as possible to capture the attacks and then, you know, convert it to midi and then put your samples on it. That's also something you could do. I haven't really done that a lot, but I know. Some people who have, and I could see it work. I, I'd say be careful though, because you could end up having like some really weird sounding drums still in the overheads and I don't, I don't have a lot of experience with that, but I, I, you could do that.

You, that's what I'm saying. Did you ever do something like that, Malcolm?

Malcom: It's something I've done with kick drums, uh, quite a bit. Um, it, it's, it's honestly, I hope nobody listens to this and gets offended, but it's something that when I'm like not feeling very confident about their consistency with their kick or their. Accuracy and timing with their kick. I generally try and, uh, hide the kick as much as I can because I know that I might have to fudge it a little bit to make it sound rock solid. Um, and, and so by removing that from the rooms and the overheads as much as possible, pretty much means that I can use my rooms and overheads still, cuz if it's too loud in that the rooms and overheads almost become useless. If the kick is not doing the job correctly, um, because a soft kick and a loud kick sound very different in the room, uh, just as much as they sound different on the close mic. So if we're gonna fully replace them, we need them to not ruin all the other mics as well. 

Benedikt: Yeah, I mean that, yeah, that, that could, that could definitely work. I don't know how accurate, you know, when, when you mute the hell out of, out of drums like that, I feel like sometimes the stick attack can, can also be a little different and you gotta make sure that you

Malcom: totally can.

Benedikt: uh, capture accurate attacks. You know, that that's the thing you have to worry about that you get all the, the hits right. And especially the ghost notes and stuff like that.

Malcom: It's tricky, and again, it's kind of the only something I've pulled off on, uh, a kick drum, like never, never on a snare or something like that.

Benedikt: That's the thing. Drums is such a complex instrument. Like they, if you stuff, like if you put stuff inside a drum and mute it or put a lot of stuff onto the head to mute it a lot, then the whole thing just reacts differently and, and you might not capture. Prop, the proper dynamics or like the, the hits, the way you wanna capture them. It just changes everything if you do that. But it just know that there's always an option. There's always ways to, to work around not being able to record the actual drums. And, uh, apparently you can get affordable, um, electric drums like Thomas said, or you can convert parts of your actual kit into electric grounds. Just know that it is an option and know that it can sound absolutely phenomenal. Uh, you just have to think about what you wanna get out of it and how you can achieve that. But it is possible and you, if you like, spent the time to get the dynamics right, to get the settings right, to use the proper samples in the dawn and all of that. There should always be a way, and I think whatever you end up doing, it's always more fun, uh, to try and do that versus like, Drawing in the mini notes with a mouse or using a small controller keyboard or something, which can work. I do that all the time, but honestly, if I would have like a, an e Kitt next to me here, that would be fun. I'd love to do that sometimes. So, uh, yeah, and I think it's a, yeah, it's a, it's a good alternative. Now, is there ever a situation, that would be my final question for you guys. Is there ever been a situation in your case where, You felt like using an electric kit led to worse results in a way, or like actually programming it was better, or using a keyboard was better because it just felt terrible. Or some other downside that I haven't thought about. Is there ever a situation where it's not a good idea to do that?

Thomas: No, I think it's always a good idea to use it if it makes, um, more fun and if the, the results while you're tracking are better. And I can't see a reason why they should be worse really. Do you, Malcolm?

Malcom: The only issue I can think of, uh, and this is going back to like me just getting started and recording, is not considering all the variables that you need to consider when you're building a recording chain. So, and we covered some of these today already, so it's like, oh, I've got an e kit. We'll just record to that. And then, Drummer comes over and I'm like, oh wait, how's he gonna hear the drums? We're recording. I gotta figure out how to. Audio back to him, or, uh, we'll swap, we'll just use the kick drum. Oh wait, now he's playing the drums and he can't hear the kick drum because that's like, it's an acoustic kit, but there's one emod in there and I've gotta get him to monitor that. Uh, so like those little things were the only is hiccups I could think of. It's just like, oh, I didn't consider how to problem solve that ahead of time, and now the drummer's just playing without a drum in their headphones. That's, that's weird. Right. Uh, so always trying and make sure. That the drummer feels like they're, they're playing what they're usually playing. They're hearing what they're actually doing. Um, you can't expect them just to like smack pads and hear just a metronome in their, in their headphones.

Benedikt: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. That's, that's a good one actually. Um, yeah, the whole monitoring thing is, I can see that become, like, that's a, that's a challenge in and of itself, I think, in other cases, but yeah, I think a real, there's no, like, if you can do it there, like there's no real downside right. To, to just using the electronic kit.

Thomas: One thing I wanted to add to all of this is that with that audio to me convers, You can actually swap out the whole kit, including symbols. And if you want to do that, it's actually pretty cool, um, because you can record your acoustic drum kit, close miced everything. The kick, the snare, the hats, the right, the crashes, and you can then convert all of this to. You can send this into a drum sampler and it will give you everything like the hats, the right, the crashes. And a good thing to convert that a good program is the tracker that's inside of superior drama because it's actually built for that. So I think the advertise it, like throw a stereo recording of your drums into Tracker and it will give you all the mini notes. And I've tried that. And it actually works pretty, pretty good.

Benedikt: Yeah, I'm always really impressed by that Tracker feature. Um, but just to, to, just to make sure I got this right, you, you're saying you can also like convert symbols easily because I never had success with that. Really. How do you, how does it do that?

Thomas: So the, the way I tried it, I had a mono over. And I recorded, um, a bunch of group groups and I set the tracker to listen to a hat sound and he gave me, um, a lot of mini notes. Um, every time I played the hats. And the only thing I had to do was to change the articulations from shank to tip open the hats, for example. Yeah. That works with track.

Malcom: Wow. So I guess you're gonna get better results the more you close mic things, right? The, the more information you give it, the easier it a time is gonna have. Identifying what. Is being played, for example, but it's impressive that it can do the job at all with a mono or a stereo track. That's incredible.

Benedikt: My questions have been answered, so thank you, Thomas. I, I know I know a lot more now than I did before. So, Malcolm, what about you?

Malcom: This just reminded me of a video I saw ages ago where some, some fellow on YouTube put together, uh, an e Kitt using like pazo mics on pieces of cardboard. So it was just like a bunch of cardboard arranged, like a kit, but because it was descending. Triggers to, uh, a module or a brain or a midi, uh, it it, he was able to kind of make like an e kitt out of cardboard. Um,

Benedikt: I saw that too. I think it was, what was it? Was it with the slate samples? Can that

Malcom: I can't

Benedikt: something like that too, where they, he, he used the drum stool as a kick drum and then some cardboard, whatever things for the shells or something. I, I

Malcom: Yeah. Yeah. Pretty funny. Um, so really if you've got, uh, the equipment, you can make it out of anything. Um, but which, which is funny.

Thomas: So one thing I wanted to give to people is a YouTube channel I found It's from a guy called Justin, I think, and his YouTube channel is called 65 Drums. And. It's incredible what he does. He has basically a video on everything, on every topic you can think of related to electronic drums, converting, um, acoustic kits to electronic drums, uh, buying a cheap drum kit, buying expensive drum kits, using VST instruments with el, with all kinds of different electronic drum kits. So check this guy out. If you want to know more about all of.

Benedikt: Awesome. Really cool. Like what, what's it, what's it called again? 65.

Thomas: 65 drums on YouTube. That's his.

Malcom: Awesome. Check it

Benedikt: gonna put that in the show notes. Thank you. Thank you. I I wanna also say one thing. If you got your hands on our drum editing course that Thomas made for us, it should be out by the time this episode airs. Um, and, uh, if, if, so, you've probably heard a little introduction to it at the top of this episode. Um, if you got your hands on that and you, you've checked out the course, You'll have noticed that there is, we're not talking about Midy drums, but there's a section on like creating hit points from audio drums and like how to quantize drums. It's a drum editing course. Right. So that's part of it. And those same principles and what Thomas did there is basically apply also when you convert your audio drums into midi or, uh, it's basically also what Tracked does, just in an automatic way. In, in a way. So having an under a basic understanding of. Um, you know, drum transients and how to, how to detect them, how to, um, mark them. Like in Cubase it's called Hit Points in Pro Tools. It's called, I don't know what they call it, but, you know, be detective also like detects the transients or there's a tap to transient feature, but there's a way to like detect those hits. And then once you've done that, you can turn that information into midi. And that's basically what all of these tools do. Like even the, the electronic kits, like they detect the hit when the stick hits the pad. Convert that hit point to AIT note and then feed it to the computer or the module. So if you have a basic understanding of that, it will all make more sense to you, I think. And so I highly recommend, uh, checking that out if you haven't. And if you already have it, uh, check out the portion about like creating hit points and what to do with them, because that is the, the easy way to, to convert your drums into mini drums, even if you don't have a fancy program like the, the tracker, right.

Thomas. So that's, that's something you can.

Thomas: Right.

Benedikt: Cool. Um, alright, so any more things you wanna add to this?

Thomas: One final question,

Benedikt: Yeah,

Thomas: did you, did you see my self recording band screensaver on my tv?

Benedikt: I have the video off. I didn't see it.

Malcom: No, I

Benedikt: Oh, like, let's, lemme turn the video on again. No, I, I just see you, the vertical version of you.

Malcom: Yeah, I

Benedikt: it would have like, like, let me, let me just make, let me just, oh, yeah, yeah. There. I, I see a tv, but I don't see the screensaver, unfortunately because it's blurry. Maybe people on YouTube can see it. I don't know if like, it's making this bigger also affects the recording of the video. If not, um, sorry. You probably just see the vertical version of Thomas here. Do you have a, you made a screensaver. Awesome. Yeah, Thomas is prepared. Thomas is.

Malcom: Describe it for the listeners. What, what is it? Because I can't see it either.

Thomas: Okay. Um, in, in the background there's this ugly TV and I thought it looks ugly. How can I make this funny and cool? And I just made a surf recording band, screensaver. I just downloaded Benny's logo from his website and thrown it into, um, DaVinci. White background that is typical, uh, movement of the, the logo, like on the

Malcom: it bouncing around? That's awesome.

Benedikt: that's funny.

Thomas: a two hour video of your logo. Um, yeah.

Benedikt: That's funny, Thomas. I had no idea. I didn't see it. I just saw the vertical version of you. Now. I had to expand the video and now I see it, but I, I, it's so blurry. I can't actually see it. But maybe Wayne, uh, maybe you can just zoom in and show it to people on YouTube. As always, guys, you can also watch this on YouTube, not just your favorite podcast apps, but on YouTube. YouTube too. And so, yeah, uh, then let's, let's wrap it up. And thank you Thomas, for doing this. Thank you Malcolm, for taking the time too.

Thomas: Of.

Benedikt: Awesome. And if you are new to the show, I hope you got value out of this. Be sure to check out all of our other episodes. It's like 164 at this point, which is kind of crazy.

Um, yeah. Wow. And, and if you are already a listener, then thank you for coming back and for sticking with us for so long. I know there are some people who've listened to. Every single episodes. Your legends if you made it that far.

Malcom: crazy.

Benedikt: Yeah. Thank you so much for sticking with us. Yeah. Be sure to subs, you know, subscribe, make a screenshot of the episode posted on Social Tag Us. We love to see that at Malcolm Own Flood at Benedictine, at the surf recording band. I don't think Thomas is any socials. Right? You're like the undercover. Uh, you know, Dr. Drums in the lab type of guy. Yeah,

Thomas: Right.

Malcom: weapon at the self recording band.

Benedikt: yeah, exactly. Exactly. But be sure to tag us. Uh, we'd love to see that. We'll have to, uh, reply to those two. And if you have any questions about this topic, feel free to, to reach out and let us know, and we'll ask Thomas and, uh, we'll, we're happy to, to answer those for you. All right, thank you guys for listening. Thank you guys for showing up and doing this with me. Uh, and, uh, talk to you next week.

Malcom: See you next week. Thanks again, Thomas.

Thomas: Yep.