studio diaries 2 - the perfect storm

Tonight I drove out to my little home-from-home studio and the sky was lit up by a distant electrical storm. Every few seconds another bolt would illuminate the clouds throwing light all around for the briefest moment. It was quite beautiful. I felt like a storm chaser driving headlong into the eye of a tornado or something.

I arrived at my destination and it wasn’t even raining. I opened the place up and switched things on before a light rain started. By the time I had made a coffee and settled into my comfy chair, it was lashing against the windows. I had listened to about four seconds of last nights recording when the room exploded with light and sound before falling into blackness and after the desperate pop of indignant loudspeakers cut off mid sentence, silence.

Well, not the silent kind of silence. More the raging lightning storm versus the drum n bass synth riffing of an errant burglar alarm kind of ear-shreddingly loud and irritating silence.

But the dark was certainly very dark.

I navigated by the light of the frequent lightning strikes to a box of matches and a vanilla candle (I would like it to be known that the reason for the presence of a vanilla candle is not because I believe in the power of aromatherapy to help create a calm, nurturing environment in which to build something beautiful. I took on the lease for this building on a day when the wind was blowing from the south. When the north wind blows, or for that matter, on a still day, the 120 yard proximity of the local refuse and recycling centre becomes distinctly apparent. It doesn’t take a great deal of new age hippyism to conclude that the smell of vanilla is more pleasant than that of several tons of household waste on a hot day.) By candlelight, I waited a few minutes before shutting down the already dead electricals and locked up again.

By the time I got back in the car, it had stopped raining again. The storm had already moved on to inconvenience someone else. The burglar alarm timed out and switched off and just then, the silence became pretty darn quiet.

I ruined it by starting the engine and driving home through fresh puddles.

The thunder is now rolling somewhere out over the English Channel. I guess tomorrow, I’ll go and see if everything still works. I suppose tonight ranks about as close to a near death experience as riding a bicycle or wearing shoes but it felt like a minor adventure for me. And I get a night off. Result.

studio diaries 1 - old friends

Today, I broke with tradition and invited another person into my music making place. It was drums day and recording drums unassisted can be very difficult, especially where I work as the drums are on a different floor to the control room. This means making adjustments to the settings on one floor, hitting record, running downstairs, playing a minute of drums, running back upstairs, listening back and making further adjustments. This can take all day and has resulted in a loathing for drum recording and also in unbelievably powerful thighs.

So my friend and occasional touring sidekick, The G Man came by to help out. As a handy studio recordist and drummer, he was the perfect man for the job.

Before touching any microphones comes possibly an even more frustrating process than the stairmaster workout: drum tuning. As a guitar player, I cannot comprehend a world without the digital tuner. Tuning drums though is not such an exact science, it’s like a zen art. Every tiny movement changes the sound of something else. There isn’t a single, exact “in tune” but I have learned there are a great many “out of tune” sounds that can be achieved through blind fumbling with a drum key.

There are a few choices of drum at my disposal. I bought a new Premier kit when I first started touring with a band, got a new Ludwig snare drum when I was the stand-in drummer for my friends’ band. I also have some bits from the collection of Joey Love, my drummer of choice.

Before that, I was using a kit which was given to me by the old manager of my old old band from the mid nineties. He was moving house and told me there was a really nice vintage drum kit in his barn which he had no room for at the new place.

So I drove out and discovered something vaguely drum-shaped under a lot of straw and barn mess. I cleaned chicken shit off those drums for hours to reveal a kit which was one small step up the ladder from the fisher price my first drum set and the drummer in my band could not even look at it.

The other drum I have, I now realise is the one musical instrument I have had longer than any other. A guy called Gareth from my school left this snare drum in my friend’s garage 15 years ago and it ended up with me. It looks like crap, old and rusty, tarnished and a little bent. It utilises cable ties, gaffer tape and garden twine in order to fulfil its basic function.

After hours of tuning and listening and hitting things, the newer and more expensive gear was sat in the corner and we were left with the rust bucket snare and the chicken shit kit.

The last time this setup was used was in the recording of my first album when this embarrassing collection of percussion was all I had.

I find myself comforted by the realisation that sometimes all you have is all you need.