by Rob Brown
There’s only one thing you need to remember when tracking drums in the studio. ‘Make the decision to play with precision.’ Remember that. Burn it in your brain. That’s the bottom line. When you’re tracking drums in the studio, it’s not at all about trying to immortalize yourself by laying down the hottest licks you have up your sleeve so you can be remembered on record for generations to come. It’s about one single thing. Precision. Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve spent my share of time listening to all my heroes and trying to lift their licks, many of which became staples of their careers. Some records have even become more famous by the licks, riffs and runs played by the modest working musician that just came in to do their job as a session player. Gadd’s groove on Paul Simon’s ’50 Ways to Leave Your Lover’, Vinnie’s brilliant performance on Sting’s ‘Seven Days’ or Manu Katche’s ridiculously cool groove on Robbie Robertson’s ‘Somewhere Down The Crazy River’. But these guys didn’t go in there looking at it as another opportunity to play all their best licks just so they could be remembered. Although, ironically that’s exactly what happened. It’s only because of their experience and skill level that they not only went in and laid this stuff down while the tape was rolling, but they did it with precision.
The studio environment pretty much separates the pros from the hacks. Sprinting on your double kick pedal at lightning speed might get an audience to scream at you with ‘whooos’ and ‘yeahs’ during your shining moment on the stage. But if you can’t play those 32nd notes consistently to a click in the studio you’re going to have a problem, and an engineer that might not think too highly of your mad skills. When you’re tracking drums in the studio, everything you do is magnified. Every note you play is recorded and can be seen on a grid. What you know about being a complete drummer will come out during a recording session. This can get you more work, or it can get you replaced. In a sense, how you play will be more important than what you play.
Sharpening Your Bow
We have to be marksmen in the studio. That should at least be our approach. When I get in the room and the engineer starts the track, my only concern is to subdivide those bars as tightly and as evenly as I can, while still playing for the music and to a point, bringing a bit of my personality to the track. I get hired for sessions usually because the artist or producer likes the vibe I can bring to the table. So I’m given a bit of room for my Rob’isms here and there, which is cool. But what I don’t want is to leave the engineer with a day or two worth of clean up because my playing wasn’t accurate. Now granted, the technology in ProTools, Logic and Cubase makes it possible to fix problems to a point. But NEVER get stuck in the whole ‘They can just fix it in ProTools’ mentality. If you’re going to execute something, do it like a boss! We should always leave the session feeling that very little editing, if any, would have to be done to our tracks once we’ve left the building. After a previous session I did for this fantastic singer out of Vancouver, I went back to the studio a few days later to pick up my cheque. The producer and engineer were just in the middle of mixing one of the songs when I walked into the control room and the producer said “Dude. We had to nudge three snare hits. That’s it.” It was very rewarding to know that my work made them that happy. When you leave such a good performance behind, it saves them time, and will ultimately get you more work either sooner or later. In this case, I was immediately booked for two more sessions after that day. Editing drums can be a painfully tedious job for an engineer after a poor performance in the studio. But we can take steps towards sharpening our recording chops at home.
So how can we hone this skill? Well first of all, if you have a home studio with a decent spot to record drums, you’re in a great position to work on this. If you have a minimalist setup, it can still be done with just a couple of inexpensive mics. All you have to do is simply record yourself. Practice tracking at home. Making the jump from that to a professional studio is not that big of a leap. More equipment, yes. $1000 mics and a 25 foot long, half million dollar mixing console, perhaps. But at the end of the day, you put headphones on, they start a track with a click, and you play to it. It’s the same thing. But practicing at home gets you used to the experience and allows you to hear and see what you just played. It will give you a visual of just how precise you are or how precise you need to be. Just import any play along track into your DAW and practice doing take after take. Engineers can spend a lot of extra time chopping and replacing parts or lining up snare and kick hits in post production, or you can just nail it from the jump so they don’t have to. You have to remember that everything sounds great while you’re playing. It’s not until you listen back to your performance that your weaknesses are amplified. So record and listen back to yourself often so you can pinpoint and correct your weak areas. Keep your snare hits consistent for volume, your fills rhythmically accurate to the time and your kick hits nice and tight. These are problems that engineers can spend valuable time trying to fix when not played correctly. Look at the transients after you’ve laid down a take and see how you’ve done.