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.