Buy Me A Coffee, A New Drum Cover, & Other News

Blog, Drum Cover Releases, Site News
I’ve been going back and forth with this decision for a while and I finally decided to make it happen.  All my file downloads are now subscription based through buymeacoffee.com.  I know many of you don’t want to pay a monthly subscription to get files, but you can cancel and rejoin at anytime. So grab what you want, then cancel. Unlike before, you will now have access to “drums only” .wav files for songs within select memberships.  Additionally, you can submit a request for individual “drums only” .wav files and upgrade that request for a few dollars more to a 7-track stem of the drums track!   So check out the Buy Me A Coffee page and see if something looks good for you.
 

Next, a new drum cover was released today.  I was challenged by a friend to not play the song perfectly but instead do my own thing.  It’s an interesting challenge and I settled on the song “Got You (Where I Want You)” by The Flys.  I know of this song but I didn’t know it by heart which would be a great fit for this challenge.

 

I start off playing the song as close to the original as possible because there was no need to go bananas on it early on.  However, when the 2nd half kicks in, I did my own thing.  I even left the little mistakes and timing issues in there.  And then the closing video at the end….yea.  Paying a little homage to the movie this song was featured in.  Can you guess the movie?

In other news, I have been revamping my recording space in our home and this cover will be the last one I do for the year.  I could probably squeeze another one in there but I am not going to try and rush it.  We’ll see what happens.  I also am working on reworking by drumkit which you will see on my next drum cover release, whenever that may be.  I’ve been posting a few pictures here & there on my Instagram.  So give that a follow if you get bored.  I have been working on another video project for the month of November, hopefully I can release it in time.  It’s a neat concept I got going but could be kind of dorky as well.  Hahahaha.  That’s it for now.

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Sony Music Entertainment Has No Clue!

Blog, Drum Cover Releases
If you are here, you’re maybe looking for my drum cover that was blocked worldwide on YouTube because of a copyright violation.  Well a good, probably 60% of stuff on YouTube, is copyrighted and uploaders like myself do not benefit one bit from people watching our videos.  Who does benefit?  The music companies & artists who claim the copyright on every video I upload.  Like the 40,000 views on my Ghost – Rats video…that record company got all the money.  I don’t see anything.  So why block videos?  It’s an additional revenue stream for you and you do nothing.  It angers me.  I just want to showcase what I can do. We’ll see how long I can keep this video online on my website before I am notified to remove it.

And here is my video description as posted on YouTube…

Let me start off by saying that this is not a difficult drum cover at all…almost boring in fact; the 2nd month in a row! I am a HUGE fan of Silverchair, have been since I first heard them in 1995. I love @BenGillies888 drumming on every song and he even said about this track, “Straight Lines is a complex song, with simple parts, executed well.” I love the song, love the band, and I wanted to cover it; even if it’s simple! So with that, I needed to make up for it in other ways. I focused on the video editing and creating a great sounding audio.

I grabbed another drumless backing track of this song from Marcos over at the @DrumLess Youtube channel and went to work on creating a similar sounding kit that Ben used. I think it turned out way better than I expected! Let me know what you think.
Oh did you notice I have a new china cymbal on the kit? Yup, I picked up a Lemon 15″ china, it’s pretty sweet! …and if you watched all the way to the end (and read down this far in the description) you saw I will be taking a few months off from making drum covers while I complete some other projects. Sorry.

This video was made on May 30, 2023 and by the time it is released in September, I should be well on my way with setting up and configuring the eDRUMin modules. My fingers are crossed that my long term project works out. Subscribe to my Instagram as I will be (or have been -thinking in the future here…) posting progress on how my acoustic to electronic drum conversion should be going. Link is further down…

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An Iconic 80’s Song Lives Again On RGM YouTube Channel

Blog, Drum Cover Releases
About 1 year ago, I was watching Pascal over at the The Art of Drumming YouTube channel do a drum cover of the Bon Jovi song You Give Love A Bad Name and I thought to myself, “If I could find a clean drumless backing track, I could make a killer drum kit for this song!” I added it to my to do list for later.  Time went by and I was scrolling through the list and I stopped on this one.  I searched for a drumless backing track and sure enough, I found a great drumless backing track and I went to work!


Obviously, I had to start with the snare sound first.  Coming off the Pantera drum cover, that snare cut right through the mix, and I knew that’s what I needed.  Ironically, this snare was also used on the Psychedelic Furs drum cover as well…so The Rock Foundry SDX was the library of choice.  Once I found the snare, I started playing with the toms, the reverb, and the kick was the last piece to fall into place.  The crash cymbals were easy, but, the ride was kind of tricky.  I couldn’t find the correct bell tone, so I tuned up the closest one in the Rock Foundry library and away we went.  

As I was working on the song, I found this drumless backing track was missing some of the orchestra FX samples.  I was able to create my own sample from another drumless version of the song that worked out perfectly.  NEAT!

Honestly, I think this is probably one of the closest & best sounding kits that I have ever created for a drum cover.  Originally, I was planning to schedule this one to come out in September but since my sister-in-law Jennifer is turning 50, and she is in love with Bon Jovi, I decided to release it today on her birthday.  Hope she enjoys it as much as I had creating/playing this cover!

In other news, you will also see I am using the eDRUMin module for my kit.  Everything is working really well but I still do have some more tweaking to make it perfect; but it certainly is playable!  At the end of the September drum cover, there is some news I talk about, so be sure to watch until the end.  Think that’s all I got for now.  Have a great 4th of July! (for those in the United States)

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Bringing Back Some Ghost To The Channel

Blog, Drum Cover Releases
It’s been a hot minute since I last posted a Ghost drum cover; June 2022 in fact!  I had no plans of doing a Ghost cover any time soon until I heard this song they did of a Genesis classic Jesus He Knows Me. I felt the song had some complexity to it with an upbeat tempo which I have not had to do since the release of the Black Album project.  So win win!  I jumped on the song immediately and first impressions, damn, this might be tougher than I thought.  I knew I wanted to get this song released in time for Ghost’s release of their 5 song cover album, Phantomime which was 4 weeks away!

It took me a almost 2 weeks to build up the stamina in my right foot because of the quick kick patterns through the verses.  Thank god for the Tama Speed Cobra pedals doing some good work!  I then worked on getting the correct sound for the kit.  I basically stole the Volbeat kick drum patch I made and the snare sound from an upcoming drum cover (which has been pushed back like 3 or 4 months now, LOL!).

All in all, great song to play and glad I was able to get this one under the belt in time to coincide with the release of Ghost’s album as well .  In other news, the new drum modules have arrived and my long term project will be starting soon.  I am working on a drum cover for August and that could be my last one for the year because of other projects going on that I previously posted about.

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Place Random Update >> HERE <<

Blog
Just figured I would drop a line and write something.  Work progresses on the drum covers, in fact, I am ahead of schedule by a couple months!  I have two drum covers I am working on simultaneously, but in reality, one of the them is definitely taking precedence.  I then have two drum covers queued up to be released for May & June…but that May drum cover just might get pushed back yet again!  That one has been the red-headed step child of my covers and been pushed back a few times when it originally was supposed to be released in March.   But this drum cover I am working on right now is badass and I want to get it out ASAP!  You guys will love it!

In other news, I have decided I will be remodeling my basement (or Red Gear Studios as someone called it) in early October.  Nothing crazy.  Just a new paint color, new carpet, and an electric fireplace that you probably won’t see on camera.  So I might miss a drum cover around this time unless I hustle and get as many as I can done & ready to go.  My wife and I do plan to move out of this home in hopefully 2-3 years and when that time comes, I will be offline for a good amount of time; that is if I am still doing this project by then.

Other than that, no more news and unfortunately no collaborations to speak of.  I did send drum tracks and video to someone for a collab early last year but nothing ever came about with it.  Bummer.  

You want to know the hardest part of making my drum covers?  Finding something to post at the end of the video.  You do know about the ending easter eggs right?

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