DAY 2: In the S t u d i o

DAY 2:

"I don't wanna work, I just wanna bang on the drums all day"...

Today, the devistatingly handsome Tim Cossor banged-it-out (quite literally) on the drums. He is playing with a transparent red acrylic drum set, which sounds and looks quite lovely. and you all know how i love pretty instruments. Kind of like these:

Tim is used to playing much harder rock so whether he will ever admit it, I think he is having fun playing my girly-pop-music.

So a few fun facts:

1. Drums are loud. like really loud when you are in a closed room. Have tylenol handy...
2. You adjust how they sound, how they resonate, tightening the "heads" of them, etc.
3. You mic all of them independantly, as well as room mics to pick up the overall rock n' roll.

We are really using percussion on this album to build each song, really peaking at the bridges, etc. It is amazing how much a little drums in a song makes you just want to stomp your feet or dance around. I kind of really love it.

I really wish i had a video camera ( or that my stinkin' Macbook was working right...) to show you all whats going on here. It's fairly entertaining. We've developed tons of inside jokes...NBD.

So the drum-recording el-processo:

1. It takes hours to set up, thats really the longest part of recording drums. Our goal was to start @ 10 am. ( I was 20 minutes late once the man @ the gas station told me "there was no oil on my dipstick" & i made an emergency Starbucks run) ... It is now 1:29 p.m. and we haven't even started the first song.

2. During the set up: Aside from physically setting up the drum set and stands...the mics are placed then each one is individually tested as they run through ProTools ( the digital recording program on the computer).

3. Tim starts rocking out on the drums, and Justin goes back to listen to how each individual piece sounds isolated through their respective mics... There are 8 mics...4 drums ... 4 cymbals... It's pretty friggen rockin'. Justin likes to make sure that the kick and snare drum are "crisp" not "boxy".

* tim adds these "moon gels" to the snare to
reduce some of the overtones, pretty awesome.

4. Once it's all good - We play a scratch track for Tim. (remember those? See day 1's blog). Tim taps out rhythms on his legs and gets a feel for the overall arch of the song while we chime in with our naiive ideas " Oh wouldn't it be cool if you...."

5. We give it a go. Take a listen. And give it another go. Take another listen. Repeat till perfection is achieved. ( although i think it sounds great every time)


** On average, post set up... We are averaging about one song an hour. Percussion however, at least full drum set ( as opposed to hand) will not be on every track, so we should finish in the intended 10 hour daily time frame.**

After each take, Justin and Tim look to me for approval, because, well, it is my album. But to be honest, I think it sounds good every time and it is so loud, I often can't hear any mistakes. So lesson learned, if you aren't a master of every instrument, have acompianests that you trust- and let them tell you what works and doesn't work.