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Thread: Studio drummers

  1. #1

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    Default Studio drummers

    Does this happen very often. Some band gets hot and lands their first record contract. Off to the studio they go. Here they find out the recording engineer is going insane beacuse their drummer sounds choppy and his tempo keeps varying. The engineer brings in a veteran studio drummer to lay down the drum tracks. Meanwhile the bands drummer sits in the control room totally humiliated.

  2. #2

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    Default Re: Studio drummers

    I know on drums unlike guitar it's a lot easier to quantize drum beats to the nearest 16th,8th,or quarter note. This is a routine thing that engineers do to people's beats because let's face it nobody is a machine. You can do this to guitar riffs too but it's a dicey procedure.
    It's a just a real pain to fix guitar parts by speeding or slowing down the part. or just remove a whole riff.I'm not talking about just fixing a note now.
    I'm talking removing whole sections and paste in a new section of several seconds long. Hard to get it to sound natural. best to get it right when first tracking a riff. I do my own recordings and I've done this ALOT! I have even built drum tracks out of loops that so called drum engineers cried foul over and made it work too. would of been better with a better recorded tighter track but it can be done.just a lot of work!

    I recall reading about Jimmy Page jumping some guy for quantize'n a drum track on I think it was like a song off the Firm album. He was like PUT IT BACK NOW!

    I'm a big fan of Terry Keaton who does the bonzoleum videos on youtube He's a John Bonham freak and very entertaining to watch him ramble on about his hero. Here's a great video on meter that he did.


    In another video he talks about the Immigrant song and how at one part Bonham speeds up.. Also I recall reading about how Keith Moon for all his fancy chops. I think it was the recording of Who's Next that he had to do a lot of work to improve his metering skills.

    Another example is I was watching this home made documentary that Stewart Copeland made of the early days of the police and they were doing some outdoor show and they kicked off a song and I remember Andy Summers yelling at Stewart "TOO FAST!" lol

    My point is even the greats can have questionable metering and if you were to anaylize just about any of the old hits you will find hickups here and there. just depends how bad a hick up. Music recordings do sound better often times when the tracks are really tight meter wise. And it is a big deal..

    But I know that guys like Slayer's drummer would lay down a whole album and he wasn't playing to a click track. they just would go in an jam the thing out. That's probably the same with the first few Sabbath albums Bill Ward is a monster drummer but they were recorded so fast like in a week or so..I doubt that their drums are just exacto mondo..close tight but not the laser precision of a Neil Peart.
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    That kind of reminds me of that mean teacher from Whiplash.."That's not my time..My meter!" yeah man don't sweat it.. You can over analyze anything.. And wear yourself out trying to get the perfect take..I've heard Ringo didn't do all those beats..just a rumor of course. haha
    Last edited by wired; 03-16-2015 at 01:12 AM.

  3. #3

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    Default Re: Studio drummers

    Ha, I love Terry's videos. He cracks me up.

    During the recording of Pink Floyd's album, The Wall, it is said the great Nick Mason was in the green room while Jeff Pocaro was brought in to record some tracks. Studio cats do a lot of uncredited work. Yeah, it would suck being the guy who was pulled from the job.

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