We are giving away a Naman Clothing t-shirt, my “Candy Cane” drumsticks (used in the video!), and Naman stickers.

To enter, post a Tweet (Twitter) which include all the following:

1. The video URL: http://youtu.be/oggi-dSgWsM
2. This hashtag: #3drummerboys
3. PhilJ’s Twitter (@philjdrums)
4. Pentatonix’s Twitter handle (@PTXofficial)

Here’s a sample tweet you could use:

The winner will be randomly drawn on Christmas Day (December 25th) and announced on my Twitter Account (@philjdrums)

Thanks for all the support peoples and Merry Christmas to each of you!

<3 Phil J

Sometimes I want to do a drum video cover but i don’t have access to a studio. All I have myself is an Mbox and access to a couple of mics. The Mbox only has 2 inputs so I am limited to micing the whole kit with just 2 mics.

Often I’ll get Phil Ciufo (the singer in my band After The Anthems) to come and record drums for me because he has a full Pro Tools set up with tons of mics. It always sounds killer when he does it for me.

This time I used my Mbox and 2 Beta 87a’s. I tried a bunch of different mic placements and found a couple of places that gave me a good mix. I ended up putting one Beta 87a overhead on the right-hand side of my kit over the Ride Cymbal and Floor Tom and another pointed upwards towards the snare so it would also pick up the hi-hat, rack tom, snare, and left crash.

I feel like the mix ended up pretty good considering it was only 2 mics. I figured that since drums sound like drums when you’re in the room with them that I didn’t need to mic every tom, cymbal, and snare separately. With a couple of room mics it should sound decent.

How do you mic up a drum kit? What has worked and sounded good for you? Let me know in the comments.

I have been using the Istanbul Traditional Cymbals for a while now and just recently I decided to try out the Alchemy Crashes. I got 19″ and 20″ Custom Rock Crash cymbals. And they sound incredible. For someone who hits the drums really hard like myself, to keep from breaking cymbals usually the cymbals have to be made of some iron-man suit-like material – which usually sounds pretty crappy and clangy.

The Alchemy Custom Rock cymbals are not only tough and durable – but the sound is so nice. They aren’t clangy-sounding at all – but still have a huge punch and shimmer when you hit them. The other Istanbul Traditional cymbals I was using were pretty good – but I can’t compare the sound and durability to the Alchemy Custom Rock’s. They are sooo good. MMmmmm.

What kind of cymbals do you have/use/love?

I recently switched my snare skin from the Remo Emperor X to the Evan’s  HD Dry. The Emperor X is multi-layered and is the most durable skin I’ve ever used. The only problem I had with it was getting it tuned up the way I liked it. I always seemed to have a ringing noise out of the snare when I tuned it up super tight.

I like having my snare skin as tight as possible and I just couldn’t seem to get the sound I wanted from the Emperor X. The Evans HD Dry has been sounding really awesome. I can tune it up super tight and it still gives a hard solid punch. The only drawback is that it is less durable than the Emperor X so I’ve had to change it more often as it wears out sooner. Still, for shows and studio stuff it’s worth the extra cost to be changing the skin more often.

What type of snare skin do you use? How do you tune it up? Let me know below!