I have had my Tama drum kit for about a year now and have done some videos of it, but recording with a phone is not great. Ideally you should have lots of microphones to record each instrument and cymbal individually as well as capturing the general room sound. I was willing to compromise for a simpler setup.
I had seen lots of people using the Yamaha EAD10, including some top Youtubers. You just clamp the microphone/trigger unit to your bass drum and play. The idea of the trigger part is that it detects when you play the bass drum and it fires off a sample, but with my kit that is not working. Of course I looked online and found that lots of other people had the same issue. There does not seem to be a definitive reason, but it must be that the vibrations from the drum head are not reaching the rim. There could be part of the drum is damping that. Some people just bought a dedicated trigger that senses from the head, but I am not looking to spend that extra money just yet. I am looking at a possible DIY solution that will be pretty cheap and will report on that later.
Even without the trigger the recorded sound is pretty good. In the video I do an introduction before actually playing and I switched to the sound I was getting on my phone for part of that. I have to say it is pretty terrible whilst the EAD10 capture the drums well.
There are lots of settings to play with. You can do some really far-out effects if you want or keep it more natural. I could take the raw sound and process it on the PC too. This device was not cheap, but I think I will get a lot of use from it.
Rock on!
▶️ 3Speak
