In high school, 10th grade to be exact, a friend got a drum set. Pearl. She let me play them, and something just clicked in my head. That first spark you get when you play an instrument for the first time. I knew I was meant to do this. I couldn't do much, but I did do something– I figured I could teach myself to do more.

I begged my dad for drums for a couple of months. We went to H&H Music and a few pawn shops looking at drums. New drums, used drums, cheap drums, expensive drums. In the summer before I started 11th grade, my dad got me a brand new black drum set from Mars Music. He surprised me with them one night. It was a Starion kit. Entry level, but just fine for a beginner. 14×5.5 snare, 22×16 kick, 9×12 rack, 10×13 rack, and a 16×16 floor tom. It came with some hi hats and one cymbal. I was ecstatic.

I told my dad I would play them every day, and that is exactly what I did. My family was okay with me setting them up in my room. Texas gets really hot in the summer, so I got to play in air conditioning. I played all day for the few days of summer vacation I had left before I started 11th grade.

I played those drums to death. I beat those things to the ground. The first song I learned to play all the way through was “Is It a Crime” by Sade. Then I learned “Here It Comes” by Doves. I learned to play by ear after that and started learning songs rapidly. The muscle memory came quickly to me, so I didn't learn fundamentals. I skipped rudiments and didn't read a whole lot about anything technical. I went straight to the music I wanted to play at the time, which was hard rock.

I wanted to record. I always wanted to record. I was fascinated with recording music. I grew up on cassette tapes, so I recorded mix tapes using the radio on an old component system (boom box). I also had a mini cassette player. If you pressed record half way, you could record through the mic over what was already there. So I made my own radio show. Hot 95.7 in Houston had a DJ named Alex Q. “If nobody loves you, Alex Q loves you.” For he longest time I wanted to be a radio DJ. I made cardboard turntables when I was a kid.

Combine that with my obsession with drums, and you've got me experimenting with cheap PC mics recording drums. Thing is I had no money. I was a broke teenager. I had an RCA splitter that I plugged directly into the mic jack of my computer into a free audio program named Audicity. I put one mic taped to a cymbal stand by the snare, and one on the floor under the floor tom. That kept me satisfied for a few months. Sound quality was pretty terrible, but I didn't care. I was having the time of my life actually having files of music I made. I owned them. It was the first step in this music making process that I have come to love so much.

I graduate high school and get a job at Omni Labs, a small geology firm. I loved that job. I preserved geological samples and ran some basic tests on them, cleaned them, and extracted any fluid with a pressurized squeezer and a test tube to collect the fluids. I enjoyed it. I was alone pretty much all the time. I enjoyed the solitude and used the time to listen to music. I had a Creative Zen 30GB MP3 player. I then upgraded to a Microsoft Zune 30GB. My brother bought me a Zune 120GB. Those retro hard drive MP3 players were cool back in the day, just ask Quill. Anyways, I saved my money and went to Guitar Center to buy a recording setup. In Houston, one of the Guitar Centers is in a rough neighborhood and they treat you like a criminal. It's pretty awkward when they're searching through your bags scratching things off the receipt one by one.. like anyone is going to actually try walking away with something. I don't go to that Guitar Center anymore. If you live in Houston, you know which Guitar Center I'm talking about.

At that Guitar Center, that I have not been back to, I bought a Digital Reference 4 piece drum mic kit. It came with 3 dynamic snare/ tom mics, and one for the kick. No condensers. I also picked up a Behringer 2442 mixer, an Audix i5 based on the guys recommendation, some mic stands, and a bunch of XLR cables. Sometime near that I bought two Nady handheld battery operated condenser mics. I put them underneath the cymbals aimed up at the cymbals. That's how my studio started. That was in my bedroom. I eventually move to another house, in which I have a dedicated live room and booth for my recording shenanigans.

I got pretty good with that setup, but did not have the capabilities or understanding to record anything more than just a stereo track. I would record into Audacity, then export to WAV, then use what was then called Fruity Loops for my version of mastering. Yeah, I used FL Studio before it was called FL Studio. I made hundreds of drum jams. I would just record, anything and everything, trying to make it sound as big as possible. I did not have a click, so any time I added guitar over drums, it was a guessing game as to when hits would actually hit.

I was given a guitar and amp as a graduation gift from my best friend. I only wanted to play guitar to record over my drums and sound like a full band. I would record drums in stereo, then record guitar in stereo. I didn't have a bass, so I would record another guitar track with no distortion as a bass track, then heavily increase bass frequencies. I made some terrible sounding songs. Gain staging was all off, lots of white noise, off tempo, and low quality in general. But it was a great learning experience, and fun messing with all the knobs and sliders.

I eventually bought a Tascam US1800, and with it started using Reaper to track. That was what I was missing– an interface. I hooked up 8 mics directly to the Tascam. I could finally record 8 tracks at a time over USB. I spent years practicing and adjusting signal chains, but never really got comfortable with it. A few years later, I got another Tascam US1800. I used one for drums, and one for guitar.

At some point, Amazon listed a Behringer 3282 for $180, a major pricing error. I managed to get one before they corrected the error. That is my primary analog mixer to this day.

Fast forward a few more years. I buy a Zoom R24 USB interface for its portability thinking I would record songs in my car since I spent so much time in it at work. That didn't pan out. So I decided to use it in my studio. I hooked up the 8 busses to the 8 inputs on the Zoom R24. That's where I was at gear wise for many years. Now I run 6 mics for drums, and keep two XLR inputs open for whatever I need, which can be mics, or a stereo bus from the analog 3282. I've added some outboard gear, tube preamps, compressors, various sonic enhancers. The 3282 has been reliable and consistent through the years. I planned to replace it a few years ago, but it still works flawlessly. There is a consistent white noise with all of the Behringer analog mixers that I've used. So for recording, they are useable, but by no means ideal.

I used the 3282 to record everything, and the Zoom R24 was my chosen interface. That combo worked for me for years. I didn't do any critical recording, so I never noticed the steady white noise underneath other instruments. Now I record directly into the Zoom R24. My plan is to use the 3282 for lo-fi psych type stuff, psych type beats . It's got that natural retro distortion that makes everything sound fat and warm, but that doesn't always work musically, and I've found it's hard to listen to music that rich with analog distortion for longer than a chorus or two— even if it's mine. So others may have a really rough time digesting the music if it stays that rich for extended periods of time.

In 2021, I attempted to record drums for a band, all online. It did not go well due to things on my end. Non-stop technical difficulties. I had never needed to export my music anywhere since I was the only one using it. I recorded multiple tracks, yes, but gating the signals and compression/expansion/normalization was totally beyond my skill level. No matter what I did, I just could not get the stems to sound right. There were phasing issues everywhere. The mics all bled into each other. The tracks were distorted and low-volume. The gain was off, so there was a TON of white noise. Admittedly, these recordings were terrible. After several attempts, I had to call it and tell the producer I couldn't figure out what was wrong. He was super nice and understanding about it, but that was really embarrassing. So then I went on a mission to not have that problem again. It was time to buckle down and setup my studio.

It took a lot of reading and a lot of experimentation. I learned more about Reaper as a DAW in the days surrounding this revelation than I had in the years I had been using it. The Tascam US1800 was definitely a step-up from my Behringer 2442 analog with the tiny RCA interface, but it was not the most intuitive interface, and was a bit hard to master (pun intended). I always had gain problems with it. I would inexplicably get horrible feedback with the US1800 and low volume in general. I started messing around with noise gates and very quickly discovered how much they can clean up drum recordings and prevent mic bleed before post-production. I EQ'd everything to get out of everything else's way so nothing is competing for frequencies. I also set the frequency response of the reverbs to tighten things up. I moved my cymbals further away from the drums, and the overhead mics further away from the cymbals. The results were good, I liked the sound and used this setup for a long time.

I hadn't played music in several months, maybe a year. Work, other hobbies like modding RC cars and making things Unreal Engine, and life in general all got in the way of my music. There was no passion for it anymore. I hadn't jammed with another human being in years, and found it hard to match the synergy of bandmates working solo bouncing tracks. I had reached the point where I was considering selling off some of my studio recording equipment. Nobody was ever going to hire me to make any music for them, and the gear was taking up a lot of valuable space.

Then I'm randomly surfing YouTube, and I come across a live show by System of a Down of “Psycho” at a music festival in Europe in the early 2000s. What? This was insanity. In the best way. I wouldn't say I was a huge SOAD fan before this, but as a fan of the genre, I was familiar with their music after Toxicity. Mezmerize and Hypnotize. I went through a phase of SOAD at 19 and 20, but I was more into Mars Volta and other progressive stuff that. I was ravenous for creative music that didn't sound like anything else. This performance on YouTube though– it shook me to the core. I've watched this thing thousands of times by now. I was mesmerized.

Serj was touching an invisible wall of colors, but still singing like only Serj can. Daron was slapping the ground as hard as he could, his eyes were about to pop out of his head. Shavo, of who I am a massive, massive fan, was doing his thing on bass freaking out with the coolest facial hair known to man. John was being the quiet confident silent type, holding down the drums with class and elegance. The stage was humongous, biggest stage I've ever seen. The trussing looked like it was 100 feet in the air above them. The crowd was going off. I wanted to be there. Not as a fan, but as a drummer. In this moment, I had the strongest desire to make music that I've ever had. It was ferocious. I was ravenous to get back in the studio. I had a million ideas in my head.

I started practicing drums daily again with the goal of sharing some of my rougher “daily” recordings. It didn't take me long to get creative again, or at least what I feel is creative for me. My process starts with solo jam sessions where I'll start with a click on drums, and record anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes. Next up I go to synths and keys, followed by guitars, bass, and lastly vocals.