My cajon-based mini drum kit is now complete with the addition of a 10″ Gretsch Blackhawk Mighty Mini snare. Here it is:

10″ Gretsch Blackhawk Mighty Mini Snare

Today, I went out to Craig’s to try out the new kit. We recorded a bunch of stuff. I will say up front that these tracks are mostly first or second takes, and sometimes I didn’t know what song we were going to play when Craig counted it off. Most of this was recorded with one mic, my sE X1A condenser, which turned out to be a very musical mic, excellent for vocals, and it was picking up the whole room. I think that the snare sounded better in the room than it sounds in these recordings because of all the room reflections. To reduce volume, I was playing with Tala Wands, Cool Rods, Blasticks, and finally, Vic Firth Aj6s. I know that on “Little Sister,” I was using my Wuhan hi-hats. At some point I switched to Zildjian 14″ Armands, and then later to some 2010 13″ New Beats, that I have never really liked, but apparently record well.

This was the first time I played this kit with another musician and the first time I have played a drum kit in about five years. I hear lots of things I need to work on. Here are the tracks. We had a lot of fun.

“Little Sister,” an early Elvis song.

“In My Life,” a Beatles song. Ringo has a really cool part, but I only remembered part of it. I am pretty sure I used the Armands on this.

Give Me One Reason,” a Tracy Chapman song.

“Soulshine” a Warren Hayes song.

“One Headlight,” a Wallflowers song. I used to play this with Craig, but not on drums. I have no idea what the original drum part sounded like, and I didn’t know what we were playing when we started. Somehow I fell into something Deep Purple does in “Smoke on the Water.”

And finally, “Running on Empty” by Jackson Browne. This is probably the roughest of all. I am sure I was playing the New Beats by this time.

Craig is amazing throughout (though he did forget lyrics on occasion). On some tracks he added a second guitar after I left.