This is a cover of the song “Esoteric Agenda” from The HAARP Machine’s 2012 album, Disclosure.
A friend recommended that I check this band out about a year ago, but I never got around to it until I stumbled upon Alex Rudinger’s video of his drum recording session recently on YouTube. After watching the video, not only did I immediately love it, I also immediately wanted to give it a try. Rudinger’s drumming is so precise, heavy, and effortlessly fast. I hope that I do the song justice!
As for the mix, I experimented with mic placement a bit on this recording. I won’t pretend that I know what I’m doing – I’m still finding my way with recording and audio editing – instead I simply wanted to see what things would sound like. For reference, I’m using the CAD Touring 7 seven-piece drum mic set with the following set up. One overhead condenser mic was pointed at the top of the snare; the other condenser was pointed between the underside of my right-side floor tom and the batter head end of the bass drum shell from about a foot and a half away. I had the bass drum mic positioned approximately 8″ inside the front end of the bass drum via a port in the resonant head. One of the instrument mics was clipped to the basket of my snare drum stand in order to capture the snares from below. And, the remaining 3 instrument mics were clipped to the rims of my three toms. I wasn’t dissatisfied with the result, but I look forward to further experimentation. Overall, I feel the snare sound in my recording lacks the power and fullness that I was looking for, but on the upside I did find my bass drum and tom sound was nice and beefy – and has been improving with each video.
Please see my transcription for this song on the Transcriptions page.
