so i just walked from the barn to the house. long day but very productive for the first full day. we finished drums on the title track which is a little misleading to say as it is not necessarily the title of the record but does indeed contain it. the drum sounds that were concocted are my favorite we have ever gotten. bwack used the big marching bass drum that i spoke of earlier in the day for the kick and this old crappy snare that his childhood neighbor gave him recently. it was from the first drum set he ever played. he hadn’t seen it in years and then was home visiting his folks in houston recently when the old drum owning neighbor said, “so i hear you play drums still. would you like that set i used to let you borrow?” he said yes of course and i’m glad because this snare is so full of vibe. there was no room for a rack tom because the kick is so monstrous but he kept two big floor toms going. bwack played us a track from one of our favorite bands ever, (quiet, lovely) a local band that recently broke up. he had sampled their kick and snare from this particular song that he played us and i had built the demo for this track around these samples. we wanted to go for a similarly trashy drum sound. the room mics were moved from the center of the room to the sides and back against the wall to get further away and sit where some more of the sound was collecting. loosened the snares on the vibey childhood snare drum until they were just hanging on. this sounded so wet and wonderful. then shane came up the stairs and announced that we needed a wall o’ snares. so bwack and i chipped in and began turning the snares on their sides, facing the top heads toward the drum set and the snare bottoms toward the back of the room which held the room mics. oh my. wall o’ snares. then bwack played with all his might. and now i again reiterate that we have my favorite drum tracks of all time that we’ve recorded! there is so much flippin’ energy! then we moved on to the song “do not move” which more than likely will follow the title track if all goes as planned. we dialed up the sounds, bwack played it once through and then we went to dinner. we got back, bwack changed the kick pedal, tracked a pass. he thought the pedal he uses live would give him a little more control as it’s a little more stiff and offers a bit more resistance. the verses have some really quick attacks in them that were difficult to get in the pocket. he soon swapped back to the pedal he’d been using all day and there it was. he was back in it. shane had, in the meantime, snuck a geek mic into the equation and it sounded like the room was on fire when it would get quiet. a lovely crackle the color orange. we all smiled then moments later had another drum track. he tracked all the way through the song. we have plans to go back and get rid of some of the drums in some spots such as the first half of the first vs replacing them with some lo bit sounds that will be “kit-like” but really nothing but noises similar in shape to the drum track. it should help the pace build steadily. well after such a day bwack was beat and so i kindly requested that mike d crank out the low notes for here is our king. it went smoothly. he has a new amp that i’ll tell you about later and hearing it on tape for the first time we were all very pleased. shane rooted around upstairs for some dirt to stick on the thing and wound up with the dan electro daddy o. we are partial to that pedal as it is what mike d uses live for some of his growl. in the meantime my laptop was freaking out so i busied myself making sure i had everything backed up and running disk repair. i have bad karma with macs or something. i’m sure i’ll be speaking more about this later too as it is a recent trend. for now i must say goodnight as the morning will be here soon. so to recap…we have drums now on 4 tunes and bass on 1. we will get cranking around 9 or 10 tomorrow and will be trying to get through one of the following…”we win”, “wholly yours”, or “our happy home”. we’ll hopefully get drums on those three by days end and move to bass for a bit after that. i hope bwack is feeling the “we win” thing in the morning as it’s going to be another fun one for tone. this is very exciting and i’m really glad i’m able to tell you!!!! sleep well. it will be another busy day.
12:52 pm: wow. we have begun. yesterday was supposed to be just a setup day but we got one drum track done. bwack is rolling. we started with “here is our king” so it was something familiar and would ease us into the water. but the wacker dove right in and by the time we left to go eat bbq at 9:30ish we had drums on the first song! we’re freakin making a record. and so we began again this morning and we are on the third song at this point!!!! freaking amazing! we finished drums on “rescue is coming” moments ago. we’ve been doing it live every so often so again it was fairly familiar but this is still a brisk pace none-the-less. they sound great. we’ve cut both of the first two songs in the loft upstairs at the barn. it’s the webcam with the drums obviously. the room sounds huge but it dies quickly. lovely decay. here is our king was pretty straight forward with the micing. took awhile to find the right snare but it landed eventually. it was actually the first one we tried we just cranked it up and it sat wonderfully. it was jeremy’s black beauty copy from risen. a brass shell powder coated black. for rescue he used the snare that matches his live blue sparkle set. it took a bit of time to get the pitch on it as well. it’s a little off which has this tension that i’m just loving. there’s a lot of atonal stuff going on in this one and the snare will sit somewhere in between. real close but not quite! i dig. it was the approach to the kick that was just art happening in front of us. we have a resonator mic on his biggest kick and then stuck another large marching kick in front of it and mic’d it with a lovely blue kiwi mic. it just rings forever and the pitch is spot on with it. so for the verses we’ll mute the inside mic on the big kick and then in the choruses mute the marching kick for a really nice scene change. bwack’s approach to playing on this one was very different as well. much softer touch than he typically has to let the drums ring and ring. he would make sure and let the beater come off the head of the kick in the verses to let things ring more as well and then punch it really hard in the choruses. a fabulous tom breakdown occurs in the out chorus as well that just sounded ridiculously big. so we now move on to the title track… 2:47 am:
so i just walked from the barn to the house. long day but very productive for the first full day. we finished drums on the title track which is a little misleading to say as it is not necessarily the title of the record but does indeed contain it. the drum sounds that were concocted are my favorite we have ever gotten. bwack used the big marching bass drum that i spoke of earlier in the day for the kick and this old crappy snare that his childhood neighbor gave him recently. it was from the first drum set he ever played. he hadn’t seen it in years and then was home visiting his folks in houston recently when the old drum owning neighbor said, “so i hear you play drums still. would you like that set i used to let you borrow?” he said yes of course and i’m glad because this snare is so full of vibe. there was no room for a rack tom because the kick is so monstrous but he kept two big floor toms going. bwack played us a track from one of our favorite bands ever, (quiet, lovely) a local band that recently broke up. he had sampled their kick and snare from this particular song that he played us and i had built the demo for this track around these samples. we wanted to go for a similarly trashy drum sound. the room mics were moved from the center of the room to the sides and back against the wall to get further away and sit where some more of the sound was collecting. loosened the snares on the vibey childhood snare drum until they were just hanging on. this sounded so wet and wonderful. then shane came up the stairs and announced that we needed a wall o’ snares. so bwack and i chipped in and began turning the snares on their sides, facing the top heads toward the drum set and the snare bottoms toward the back of the room which held the room mics. oh my. wall o’ snares. then bwack played with all his might. and now i again reiterate that we have my favorite drum tracks of all time that we’ve recorded! there is so much flippin’ energy! then we moved on to the song “do not move” which more than likely will follow the title track if all goes as planned. we dialed up the sounds, bwack played it once through and then we went to dinner. we got back, bwack changed the kick pedal, tracked a pass. he thought the pedal he uses live would give him a little more control as it’s a little more stiff and offers a bit more resistance. the verses have some really quick attacks in them that were difficult to get in the pocket. he soon swapped back to the pedal he’d been using all day and there it was. he was back in it. shane had, in the meantime, snuck a geek mic into the equation and it sounded like the room was on fire when it would get quiet. a lovely crackle the color orange. we all smiled then moments later had another drum track. he tracked all the way through the song. we have plans to go back and get rid of some of the drums in some spots such as the first half of the first vs replacing them with some lo bit sounds that will be “kit-like” but really nothing but noises similar in shape to the drum track. it should help the pace build steadily. well after such a day bwack was beat and so i kindly requested that mike d crank out the low notes for here is our king. it went smoothly. he has a new amp that i’ll tell you about later and hearing it on tape for the first time we were all very pleased. shane rooted around upstairs for some dirt to stick on the thing and wound up with the dan electro daddy o. we are partial to that pedal as it is what mike d uses live for some of his growl. in the meantime my laptop was freaking out so i busied myself making sure i had everything backed up and running disk repair. i have bad karma with macs or something. i’m sure i’ll be speaking more about this later too as it is a recent trend. for now i must say goodnight as the morning will be here soon. so to recap…we have drums now on 4 tunes and bass on 1. we will get cranking around 9 or 10 tomorrow and will be trying to get through one of the following…”we win”, “wholly yours”, or “our happy home”. we’ll hopefully get drums on those three by days end and move to bass for a bit after that. i hope bwack is feeling the “we win” thing in the morning as it’s going to be another fun one for tone. this is very exciting and i’m really glad i’m able to tell you!!!! sleep well. it will be another busy day. Comments are closed.
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Crowder Blog archiveAn archive of Crowder's blog posts, 2004-present. Posts come from the following blogs:
emprise34.xanga.com (2004-October 2009) davidcrowderblog.com (October 2009-2010) crowdermusic.com/correspondence (2012-2015) Archives
March 2018
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