Meinl Cymbals - Aric Improta - “Blur-Lights in the Videodrome“

“Blur-Lights in the Videodrome“ by Meinl Cymbals artist Aric Improta On July 01, 2017, Meinl Cymbals hosted our Meinl Drum Festival at our HQ in Gutenstetten, Germany. Meinl Cymbals artist Aric Improta was one of the performing artists at the festival that day and easily turned in one of the most unique and memorable drumming performances to have been given in the history of drum festivals in general. Aric’s performance was over 40 minutes in length and was one piece. Prior to the festival, Aric rehearsed his performance from start to finish 100 times. He said he did this not only to commit it to memory, but just as importantly to be sure that he had accounted for every possible thing that could go wrong so that he was as prepared as he could be. That’s a rough cumulative total of hours that Aric spent preparing for this. That’s a lot of time, and it showed. Like all of our artists that day, Aric really hit a home-run with his performance. Just like all of our artists’ performances at the festival, Aric’s was recorded for posterity, but more importantly for sharing with the rest of the world through our social channels. Unfortunately the recorded audio of Aric’s performance was corrupted in various places throughout. Given how absolutely unique Aric’s performance was and how much time he invested into it, we knew we had to do record it again. And fortunately Aric was eager to do so. So after Aric rehearsed the piece many more times, we brought him to Nashville, set him up in a studio here and had him film the entire piece again. What you see here is one take only. Sure, we recorded multiple takes, but we didn’t stitch any of them together. Aric played through the entire piece while in the studio at least five times, but the one take you see here is the one he chose to share with all of you. There’s no video trickery or mixing trickery. It’s just a good sounding room with good mics, and a really good drummer. I was at the festival in July and watched Aric’s performance from start to finish and I was at the studio and watched this performance from start to finish. What the attendees at the festival witnessed is what you are now about to witness. We uploaded this to YouTube as we usually do, but because of its length, they will insert ads into it and that will break up your viewing experience. So we uploaded the full length to our Vimeo channel as well so that you can witness this in uninterrupted glory. We hope you enjoy this as much as we do. Aric really gave this his all. - Chris Brewer / Meinl Cymbals “Blur-Lights in the Videodrome“ - Co-mixed by Zakk Cervini Aric’s Meinl Cymbals setup from left to right, if sitting behind the kit, is as follows: 14” Byzance Traditional Medium Hihats 10” Byzance Traditional Splash 18” Byzance Traditional China 22” Pure Alloy Medium Ride 20” Classics Custom Dark Crash 12” Classics Custom Brilliant Trash Splash (stack top) 16” Byzance Vintage Trash Crash (stack bottom) 18” Classics Custom Dark China 18” Pure Alloy Medium Crash