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Pacific Northwest AES Section Blog

Past Event: Drums, Life, and Everything in Between:
Understanding the Drum Kit on a fundamental Level

Co-Presented by the PNW AES Section and the Robert Lang Academy Student AES Section

November 29, 2016 at 7:30 pm

Location: Robert Lang Studios, Shoreline WA

Moderated by: Dan Mortensen

Speaker(s): Dave Delozier, Studio Instrument Rentals; Don Gunn, Independent Engineer; Steve Smith, Seattle Drum School; Seth Tomlinson, The Greenbusch Group

Join us as we make a study of the elements of a typical drum set, with a focus on performance techniques, drum materials and physics, mic placement and applications. We'll hear from professionals in various aspects of drumming, drum teching, acoustical engineering, and recording engineering who have had many decades of experience, good and bad, with the subject.

We'll be looking at and listening to different drums, heads, sticks, tuning methods, microphone and playing techniques, as well as the results of changing any of those parameters.

NOTE: Because of very limited seating capacity (under 50 seats), this meeting will be open to AES Members (student, associate, and full member) only, with a sign up list.
There are no spaces available at this time (11/27).

Presenters

Dave Delozier, rental manager and drum tech for Studio Instrument Rentals (S.I.R.) Seattle

Don Gunn

Don Gunn has been holed up in studios since 1990, first engineering, then producing and remixing for everyone from Death Cab for Cutie, Soundgarden, Peter Frampton, Matt Cameron, Stone Gossard and many other Northwest musical luminaries. When he's not trapped behind a console he still likes to remember that what got him into this in the first place was drumming, which he continues to do on sessions as well as with his band, Gaillion, and the Aaron English Band.

Steve Smith

Steve Smith is the owner of the Seattle Drum School of Music, founded in 1986. He has taught drum lessons for 45 years and has helped hundreds of drummers prepare for recording sessions addressing issues with getting both great drum sounds and quality performances. He has engineered and played on dozens of records in his private studio since 1996. He has also recorded and mixed hundreds of live performances in the Seattle Drum School's performance venue, The L.A.B.

Bob Smith

Bob has a BSEE from the University of Washington and has worked in the Biomedical industry for over 30 years. The last 20 years he has spent developing acoustic research and audio engineering disciplines for Medtronic / Physio Control to improve speech intelligibility for medical device voice prompting and voice recording systems in noisy environments. He is responsible for voice prompting in 30+ languages. The department now handles acoustic measurements of components such as drivers, microphone capsules and system measurements including Thiele-Small parameters, polar plots, waterfalls, frequency response, impulse response, several speech intelligibility methods, etc. When he's not playing acoustic/audio monkey for his corporate master, he runs an acoustic lab, soundSmith Labs. From time to time, he can also be found recording local musical talents. Currently he is working on automotive interior noise assessments and their effect on speech intelligibility.

Seth Tomlinson, acoustician, The Greenbusch Group Inc.

Seth has contributed to multiple projects involving sewage treatment facilities, education facilities, hospitals, and multi-family dwellings in design, data acquisition (according to appropriate standards), and data analysis. He was involved with research on active noise control of axial fans and completed a capstone project on cochlear modeling, which was presented at the 153rd ASA conference in 2007. He also assists with audio/video system design. Seth graduated in 2007 from Brigham Young University with a BS in Applied Physics with an emphasis on acoustics and a minor in Mathematics. He is affiliated with the Institute of Noise Control Engineers (INCE)