Rattlebrained

Two years ago I was able to set up my drums in the corner of a friend’s music space; which has been great. Amazing how being able to play loud without bothering anyone really changes the game! I practice daily, an activity that could be resumed as playing stuff (rudiments, exercises.. ) with a metronome, and playing along with the songs the bands I play with perform. I used an Art USB Dual Pre computer interface to power some “cheep” overhead mics and a PW-1 Personal Wedge to feed my in-ear headphones. It has a mini jack input which makes it easy to add the signal from either a mp3 player for the songs, or an old 7” tablet with a metronome app, to the headphone mix. However, last fall for an unrelated reason I needed a tablet with a more recent version of android. I settled on a Asus ZenPad 8.0 which could still be bought here and there at a great price since it had been around for a while. A bargain if you ask me as it has ‘USB host’ functionality and a lot of great features!

Using Audio Evolution Mobile Studio on my Asus ZenPad 8.0 tablet.

Still, it is not that powerful a tablet so when I first gave Audio Evolution Mobile Studio a try, I wasn’t expecting to be overwhelmed; and was all the more surprised that it worked as well as it did. Unfortunately it didn’t always; the Art USB Dual Pre is on the list of working audio devices but the ZenPad 8.0 is on the list of Not working Android devices (same link). When I first tried them together it didn’t work, no USB connection, but it did work with the AudioBox 44vsl that I had at home but was reluctant to bring to my drumming space. So I tried again and for reasons unknown, it started to worked with the Dual Pre most of the time, although some days it didn’t; but the next day it did… This was weird and frustrating, but mostly usable; however recent updates seem to have change that for the worse so after trying every trick I could think of to get it to work when it didn’t want to, I ended up exchanging it with the AudioBox.. Which, it must be said works perfectly, as well as adds two mic inputs; not going to complain. I can even plug a mini jack alongside the USB plug to use a different metronome app if desired. So why do I love it? I’ve found it’s a great tool for practicing songs!

• You can easily make a loop on the track and practice repeatedly ad nauseum the parts you might be struggling with.
• It’s easy to play a track from the middle or wherever, just tap it.
• You can easily record yourself alongside the track you are working with and listen to the result.
• Import all the tracks from a set to a project, mute them all and save. Unmute the track you want to work with, all of the above. So much more efficient than with a mp3 player.
• Use the app’s metronome.
• You can mix up and export your ideas to send them to your band mates.
• I’ve been working on my singing a lot and although painful, listening to the recording of yourself singing into a microphone can really help you understand all the better the mechanisms involved.
• And practice aside, you can work from scratch and compose and all that, it has a tremendous amount of features for the price. Too many to list here and well presented on their website; so check that out.

All that with a tablet conveniently placed on your hi-hat stand! The only other issue I had was not realizing at first that the app was caching the tracks I was recording, listening to, and erasing. After doing that 5 or 6 times, the newest recordings started to be out of sync. It turned out that this was because the system was being slowed down by the excess of temporary data. Once I realized that you can “clean up” a project, which lists – and lets you remove – all the tracks that are in the memory, it all worked perfectly again! Whew. For info:

• For USB audio you will also need to make an in-app purchase, or by purchasing USB Audio Recorder PRO. I was hesitant but the app lets you test your USB audio interface/mic by limiting the recording time and assuming it works, I found it well worth it.

• Oh right, I have no connection with the folks who make this app, I bought it after hesitating for a week not sure I really needed it. I’ve used it for three months now and think it’s the most exciting app I use; just wanted to share that.

• There are more than a few variations on the ZenPad 8.0, mine is the Z38M. It has an Asus app called Audio Wizard which doesn’t identify USB audio, which is possibly why the ZenPads have trouble with it. However disabling Audio Wizard (and it’s service) doesn’t seem to make any difference so who knows…

Singing mic setup for drumming

Other Essential Drummer Apps (Android):

• Metronome Beats Pro – I like the fact that you can set it to stop after whatever amount of time you want, great for 1 or 2 min exercises. I especially like the fact that you can create “songs”. This makes it possible to make a metronome click track to play along with in which a growing number of clicks are silenced after a determined amount of bars. For example, you could have 8 bars with all the beats, than 8 bars with 1/2 of the beats silenced, followed by 8 bars with one of every two bars silenced, etc… . However I really regret that you cannot change the tempo of a song.
• Pro Metronome – I really like the “voice” setting, working with it has really helped my counting. The Auto Stop feature of the Stage Mode Set List is cool. Both metronomes are great but to me this one is simply easier to work with.
• Live BPM – This app is not perfect but it shows you when the music speeds up or slows down. Very useful and interesting too, listen to your favorite tracks from the past with it on; showing you what preclick track tempos were like. :P