<p>I decided to apply Early Review to Oberlin, as a jazz studies major (drums). My pre-screening DVD needs to be in really soon to confirm the Dec audition date, so I was wondering: how high quality should the prescreening video be? </p>
<p>Do I need to pay $80 to shoot it in a studio, get my drums mastered with the tracks, or can it be a very simple background, no miking?</p>
<p>Any help would be greatly appreciated here!</p>
<p>I think your $80 figure is way low for a studio shoot. Fortunately, the acoustics for drums is not as stringent as it would be for something like a violin. I'd say if one of you friends/family has a decent digital video camera, shoot it yourself and make the DVD on a computer, especially if you have access to a decent microphone that you can plug into the camera.</p>
<p>Do a search, this has been debated frequently here, but never posed by a percussionist...</p>
<p>Drum kits are notoriously hard to mic, and pros use a bare minimum of three to more than a dozen microphones (at least one of which is a specialized mic for kick drums) to get the sound right. There is a good article on micing drums at
<a href="http://www.musiciansbuy.com/mmMBCOM/html/akg/miking_the_drums.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.musiciansbuy.com/mmMBCOM/html/akg/miking_the_drums.pdf</a> and the very first sentence is "In the modern studio there is no more complex job for the engineer than micing the drum set."</p>
<p>If you have a competent studio quoting you $80 to do the job, take them up on the offer. I agree with Zep that it would be a real bargain at that price and would expect it to cost more than twice that. I would not recommend trying to mic an entire kit with the microphone that comes built into a consumer grade camcorder, and most certainly one that will not allow you to turn compression off. Even a setup with a single very good external mic and no compression is not really going to do the job right.</p>
<p>You may want to check with others who have auditioned at Oberlin for Early Review on Jazz. I have heard people say that the Jazz department in particular likes to defer the decision in nearly all Early Review cases because they want to hear everyone play before making any but the most obvious decisions.</p>
<p>Good luck. I have heard Billy Hart play and have also heard that he is an excellent teacher. Add to that the new Jazz building that should be opening up in Fall 2009 and it looks like it will be a really exciting place to study.</p>
<p>Bgirls, remember Oberlin doesn't require a DVD for the prescreen--they state that you can submit a prescreen CD or DVD. That might help in the quality--if you only have to worry about the sound quality, vs, the sound and video quality.</p>
<p>My son has used four or five microphones to mic the drumset; including two overheads. There is a whole format, fairly standard I think, which individual musicians tweak as they like, but we have seen others do it similarly. The sound quality was very good, but the main issue with mic-ing drums is to make sure you get the levels right so that the drummer doesn't overtake the rest of the players (even if it is your pre-audition CD, they want to hear how you keep time, solo, etc., with the rest of the group, so you can't drown them all out!).</p>
<p>$80 sounds like a total steal! Good luck!</p>