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Master rhythmist Mikey Sorbello has a unique recording set-up in his rehearsal studio. He has implemented some cool tricks that allow him to tailor his sound on the fly.
Mikey Sorbello is no stranger to music production and great production tools. Musician, producer and self taught engineer he arranges, records, mixes and delivers multitrack drums files and rhythm tracks in general, to all his clients around the world. All of this is achieved from his drums rehearsal room in North London. The challenges he has always had to face and deal with range from being able to operate the DAW to moving the microphones quickly himself to adapt to a new sound whilst writing the part, but to also have cohesion and overall glue to his drum sound. Using a single room setup with the DAW and gear designed around his drum kit means that Mike can work on his DAW while playing drums, allowing for immediate punch ins, different playlists, and change of texture by moving the mics around while actually playing the drum.
Just like most musicians and engineers out there Mikey spends countless hours perfecting his craft as well as researching and learning everything he can in order to record his drums properly and with flavour. This led him to acquire some very unique gear and experiment with microphone positioning to find his signature sound. His arsenal of creative tools includes the likes of AKG D19, Sony C47, Sennheiser MD421, Neve, Chandler, CAPI and Focusrite preamps to name a few, however working in a small environment that is mainly set up to dampen sound rather than to explore the propagation of it brings his set of challenges.
First and foremost the drums, percussions or any played instrument can miss the tail and liveness that would develop in a room designed as a recording studio. Secondly, how does one create a “room drum sound” if there is no room to speak of? After months experimenting with moving the microphones around and trying to find the spots where he could have a room microphone constantly plugged in he came across the Periscope and then everything changed.
For Mikey, getting The Periscope meant he no longer needed to spend loads of time moving the kit microphones around, trying to “glue” them all together or being frustrated messing with plugins to try and achieve the sound he had in his head.
The Periscope has given Mikey the ability to quickly craft the drum sound together, have glue, balance all the drum kit microphones together much faster but not only that, the speed at which he can press record has been dramatically reduced, confidently knowing that, from the get go, the whole kit sounds great for delivery to his customers.
“The Periscope is pretty much always set up in the same spot and goes through the same preamp, this way I do not have to mess around and I am always getting an exciting sound. Every time I remove the Periscope from a mix, I feel I am missing something,it’s like going from a WAV file to an MP3. I can’t quite put your finger on it, it’s like magic”.
