Messing with the EAD 10

I got a Yamaha EAD 10 recently— a popular interface/recording device for making drum cover videos. It's suddenly clear why there has been such a proliferation of those videos— there's infrastructure for it now. You can really do it with just the EAD 10, a phone and phone app, and a drum set.  

It's pretty cool, getting a reasonably decent recorded sound from the drums with just a little unit that clips on to the bass drum hoop. It has a lot of audio effects and triggering capability, which aren't of much interest to me. I'll do a more detailed post on it soon.   

I may as well share some videos I've made while figuring out the device, and my set up— like this one, playing along with a loop sampled from the intro of Herbie Hancock's Watermelon Man, from Headhunters:

The first part is drums and loop, at 4:50 you hear it again with the drums soloed. 

Here's another one of me playing with a longer sampled section of Tunji, from the John Coltrane album Coltrane. Drums are soloed after 5:18.  

I'm not trying to make good music or a good accompaniment to the recording, I'm practicing being at ease playing my stuff while being really self conscious about how my timing is going to sound with the recording. I had a lot to say about that, but it's not forming itself well into writing right now, so that'll have to wait for another post... 

Steve Albini on recording drums

Happy 2018. To soothe your possibly-aching head, here are 90 minutes of recording engineer Steve Albini talking about recording drums for pop music, and about production in general. Let the endless technical detail wash over you like a balm. Do pay attention to the explanation of the difference between the recording engineer and the producer. Sorry the guy drumming in the first video is so painful to look at.



(h/t to Kamak at Drummerworld)

Jump to 5:00 to get past the annoying host:

An Internet thing I like

OK, this is actually useful: I like this new YouTube thing of isolating drum tracks from famous pop/rock recordings. Recording can be a horrible exercise in self-scrutiny, and is often a question of how much inaccuracy you can stand to let remain on the track vs. the amount of time/budget you have available to you. It's a little less that way now that, with sophisticated editing technology, much more can be fixed in the mix. But these videos give you a very clear picture of the tolerances for executing a classic, great drum track.

They also help me be clear on what I really like and don't like about some famous performances— in general I don't approaching music like a critic, but playing pop music is a very craft-intensive thing, you have to approach doing it more like a composer or designer, and know critically what works and doesn't work for you. For understanding what's being played, the videos are, for me, better than seeing a written transcription. I've never been a huge Neil Peart follower, but listening to his isolated drum track from Tom Sawyer, I now understand that I like the way he handles the tom toms, but am not real excited about the way he plays time— you feel there's a total lack of R&B exposure with him:




Dave Grohl is another one who is that way, though he's coming from a different place. Rock needs R&B as a direct influence, or it just becomes a march, played loud. Smells Like Teen Spirit is a great song, but this is not groove music:




Compare those performances with John Bonham on Ramble On— here a switch has gone off, and we're actually grooving:




More after the break:

LA session wrap-up

That's me, Geoff Keezer, Kirk Ross, and Larry Steen.

Last week's LA recording session was interesting, fun, and unusual. The artist was my old friend, band mate, room mate, and compatriot, the songwriter Kirk Ross. The other musicians were Geoffrey Keezer, a very famous, world-class pianist who attended Berklee with Kirk, and Larry Steen, a working LA bassist. The engineer was Dave Bianco, who has done a ton of big stuff, including Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, AC/DC.

We had one long rehearsal with just Kirk, bass, and drums, on a Monday— imitating studio conditions, with drums isolated, with click, and everyone monitoring through headphones— and then recorded on Tuesday. In a fairly whirlwind session, we recorded the eight tunes for his new album in about six hours, including lunch. Kirk is also a drummer, and had my drum parts completely written out, fills and everything, and I mostly ended up just playing the ink. He was specific about not wanting more than was on the page— though a couple of times I got the feeling he did want more; with another day of rehearsing or recording, I could've sussed that out that fine line a little better. As expected, we used a click track so he could mix and match takes later, if necessary.

All in all, it was a very artificial way for me to record. With such great players in the room, I would've preferred to just play the tracks live, like good session musicians, just listening to each other and creating our own parts. But pop music is not really made out of natural ensemble performances any more, I guess. I think ideally, for this session, Kirk should've had his scratch vocals and guitar pre-recorded, which would have freed him up to just produce the session, and we could've done some partial takes punching in things that could've worked better, or played a few sections in more open ways, to give him some extra options in post-production. As it was, we were able to at least semi-blindly track the written parts, and get two usable takes of each song. We did get to do a little blowing at the end of a couple of the tunes— there's little chance of those parts making it onto the finished album, but it was fun to get to play a little bit.

Perspectives on cymbals: part two

A recording engineer cries out:

[...] I've been giving some thought to the one thing that pisses me off the most when recording rock bands: drummers who incessantly bash the cymbals so they're the loudest thing in the room.

[...] I know this is a very common problem, every engineer has to deal with it, and we all have our special tricks. I seldom intervene in a band's musical choices, but this problem is SO obnoxious and SO inexcusable that I'm not going to put up with it any more.

We're going to offer a free pre-production meeting to any client that spends more than X dollars, to identify problems with the sound, performance, or arrangement before they come in to record. Step one: warn the band in advance that we don't put up with cymbal-bashing. Step two: if we hear a problem, ask the drummer to work on his balance for a week or two before they come in. Hit the drums about 3x as hard as the cymbals, use half-open hat sparingly, do not use the crash as a ride, do not hit the crash on the downbeat of every measure. [Emphasis mine— tb] Step three: if the drummer fails to correct his balance, we start muting the cymbals. Tape on the ride, hat clamped in place, and rubber mutes on the crashes. The crashes will be overdubbed separately. The result: a drastic improvement in the sound that cannot be accomplished by technological means, and a significant savings of time and money.

I know that everyone secretly hates these cymbal-bashing clowns but is too polite to say so. They need to be told the truth about their oh-so-unique playing style. I think it's worth the occasional hurt-in-the-ass drummer.

This is the beginning of a discussion among engineers, on an engineering forum, and the link comes from Steve Goold, who gives the very wise advice: Read this article immediately and don’t try to argue with it. Well, at least we'll try to address this person's legitimate perspective apart from the offensive manner in which he deals with his clients. I'll say that a meeting like the one he describes would have me immediately shopping for another studio, while making a note to not, in the future, trust the judgment of the person who recommended the place.

But his suggestions (that's what we'll call his demands), which I bolded, are not unreasonable rules of thumb for recording backbeat-based music— rock, funk, blues, whatever. At least, it's good to be aware of when you're stepping into playing territory that may be problematic for the engineer, and therefore for getting the recording you want with minimal hassle. In the following discussion there seems to be a consensus that, at the very least, however you play the cymbals, you should play the drums louder.


Some engineer's comments, and examples after the break:

Recording session post-mortem

I was in the studio last weekend, recording some very challenging, highly arranged, often counter-intuitive music for a 6-piece quasi-jazz outfit, and had a few random thoughts about it:

• Recording easy music for your own record is harder than recording hard music for someone else's. 
• Preparing by playing easy stuff in the feel and tempo of the pieces you're recording is a great idea. 
• So is clearly segregating the parts of the arrangement where you need to play functionally from those where you need to play creatively. 
• Hey, simple stuff played solidly in time and with authority sounds great. 
• This music involved some difficult reading, with lots of rhythm section stops, which made it prone to dragging. Using a click both removed any second guessing about tempo and insured that it would be possible to borrow sections or parts from various takes if necessary. 
• A little emotion goes a long way. Just play the notes in time with a good sound. 
• And finally: My 22" Paiste 602 Dark Ride does indeed rule. Making a fortissimo crash on the thing makes you feel like McCoy Tyner. Powerful. 

1984 Modern Drummer interview: Andy Newmark

Here are some excerpts from another great Modern Drummer interview from my youth, this time with session drummer Andy Newmark, drummer on Sly Stone's Fresh, John Lennon's Double Fantasy, David Bowie's Young Americans, and much more. Here he discusses studio greats Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon- who he has worked with closely, his time with George Harrison and John Lennon, and the craft of drumming on records:

THE GOODNESS of KELTNER and GORDON: 
It's a feeling that makes other musicians, and producers, feel musically comfortable. They're able to play that real simple stuff with a conviction that makes it work. If you don't see the beauty in playing simple and get off on it, then when you do it, it won't come off like the person who loves to do it. When Russ Kunkel, Gordon or Keltner would just play those real simple beats, they got off on it. They liked that; they were into it, so it gave the notes validity.

Also, I noticed on the playback that all of the takes- not just the final one- sounded like real records. Whereas often, when I'd hear a playback of something I was doing, a lot of little things would make it feel, to me, like a demo. When I heard them play on something, it always seemed to be so smooth. They had a way of making everything settle and be relaxed. The hardest thing to get a studio drummer to do is make the record feel it's in the right place. Tempo has a lot to do with good records. Being slightly too fast or too slow might cause the whole song to miss the point. And I think producers rely on drummers to find that magical place, within a very small range of tempo. It's something that most people might not hear. There isn't a large difference in those tempos, but it's that one magical place that makes it feel like everything's breathing properly. I started picking up on an inner instinct from these guys that they knew where to put the tempo, and believed in it themselves. They weren't looking for direction- they were the direction; they were the core.



 Extended excerpts plus a couple more of Newmark's tracks after the break: