Journal
Ramblings from the road and the studio
Drums & Bass at Overdub Lane
22 Sep 2005
With 30 minutes left before Sean had to leave the studio to catch a plane back to sunny San Diego we recorded the final take of our version of the Depeche Mode song Everything Counts. And as quick as you can click the mouse on your computer the bass and drums were recorded for Brother Sean's sophomore album Window Seat (formerly Don't Look Back).
At first it seemed fairly straightforward. Sean will fly into Durham, NC on Friday night, meet Chris Garges and then Saturday morning we will all drive over to Overdub Lane, and begin recording. Sunday afternoon Sean will fly home and in between we'll record some great drum and bass tracks. Come 2pm on Saturday when all we had gotten completed was setting up drums it didn't seem so simple. There were timing issues with parts of the drum loop in When I Wake Up and it was throwing everything off. After about an hour of stretching, chopping and all sorts of other Pro Tools magic tricks we decided to use the only good part of the loop we could find. We would worry about fixing the remaining drum loop parts in mix down. Its funny the song you think is going to be a snap is always the one that kicks you in the ass.
Luckily from that point on the two day session went smooth. One by one we recorded the drums and bass for the remaining six songs. As a singer and guitarist its a pretty low stress session. My main job is to provide energy for Sean and Chris to feed off, but my performance isn't going under the microscope. In studio speak I'm just laying down scratch tracks which will be replaced with the actual vocal and guitar tracks in the future.
My personal highlight for the weekend was when Chris decided it would sound cool to record a few overdubs of snare fills for Someday. Cool was an understatement. On playback engineer John Plymale mixed the 13 tracks of the initial drum take with the room mic tracks of the snare overdubs, giving the song's outro this hellish feel. Your just going to have to wait to hear this one on the record.
Category: Studio Journal