Right when COVID hit, I needed an area to setup my drums for virtual music, such as to record for church services. I started with this setup for just audio recording. I purchased this Taye GoKit in February 2020 just weeks before COVID lockdown without any idea of how useful this drum set would be over the next year and a half. Luckily, it arrived in 6 days from the Taye factory in Taiwan before shipping services were severely delayed.

This is the second version of the original setup, where I added black table cloths as a backdrop, extra flooring from our house to clean up the carpet edges, and LED spotlighting to make the studio better for video recording. This is the setup I used for my first home studio music video recording of Buddy Rich's "Love for Sale" and for a pre-recorded Calvary Baptist Church service.

After some tweaking, I was able to cleanup the look of the studio even more. I brought over some of my other drum sets from my parents' house, since I moved just a couple months before everything shut down from COVID, and drum lessons were cancelled from March through June 2020. Here is my Gretsch Catalina Club Jazz set.

In late-June 2020, I resumed lessons virtually and was able to use the audio equipment I purchased a few years prior to its full extent: integrating my recording setup with Zoom to teach lessons from the comfort of home for both myself and the students. Although, sitting in the basement for hours on Zoom resulted in Zoom fatigue after just a few weeks for myself and my students.

Slowly in-person music had it's return in July 2020, first in the form of livestreamed virtual church services where I was able to easily transport my GoKit for socially-distant indoor and outdoor services. We did 9-10am and 10:45-11:45am outdoor services to allow for less people per service, sometimes with a call time of 6:45am, adding up to a 5 hour ordeal. Indoor services at the time were only livestreamed and not attended in-person.

Starting in late-July 2020, I decided to give the option of outdoor in-person lessons since at this time I had two drum sets at the house: the Gretsch setup in the basement and the GoKit that I would setup in the garage. Here's Takuma during a lesson, practicing drum set and reviewing the marching music before band camp his senior year of high school.

I recorded some music videos with a few friends, so I learned quite a bit about audio mixing and video editing over the past year. This shot is from a Hindi version of a popular western Christian song we recorded in separate home studios and video recorded at Kensington MetroPark.

After considering the fact that I'd be teaching more and more students, I decided to come up with ideas for a more professional looking home drum studio. With vaccinations becoming widespread, in-person activities starting up, and COVID restrictions being lifted, I wanted to finish the space to make it more usable for recording, rehearsals, and teaching drum lessons. I gutted the entire studio and had the rod holes sealed, then I did all the electrical work, insulation, flooring, walls, ceiling, door, and everything else with the help of a couple friends. This also included removing an existing internal wall and rebuilding a new wall where the door currently is under the I-beam of the house.

After six long weeks and several sleepless nights, the studio came together beautifully, and I couldn't have asked for much more than this. In-person drum lessons resumed in June 2021 with the new studio. With two drum sets, a recording system, electric and bass guitars and amps, a keyboard, and new printer, mini fridge, TV, and track lighting...everything is now pulled together and ready for full use! What's left for me to do is hang acoustic wall panels for sound treatment which will reduce echoing.