Rehearsal:

We worked on all the songs for several months prior to pre-production, so the structures were pretty sound. Tim, our singer, is the main songwriter. He would bring in the skeletons of songs and we’d work them up. He would also make working demos for us that he had created in Pro Tools, which is always helpful. So we would just woodshed for hours getting familiar with the material.

Pre-Production:

We went to a studio in Glendale to do all of our pre-production recording. Basically that entailed choosing 12 of the 19 songs we had worked up for this record and recording them with a producer into ProTools. Pre-production is great for fine tuning the smaller things that you may not hear in a big noisy rehearsal room, and you get to listen back to each track to make mental notes of what you like or want to change. I would take the recordings home every night on CD and tear my drum parts apart on the hour-long drive. Then again in the morning on the way there. I really try to play for the song so that is what I focus on. I try not to not step on the vocals with a ridiculous fill that two drummers in the audience flip out over but the rest of the crowd thinks “what the hell just happened there?” Preproduction was super beneficial. We were in for about two weeks.

Recording:

There was some tension towards the end of pre-production. It's usually how it goes. Not everybody gets their ideas realized and since we are all really sensitive little bastards at heart, everyone can be a little moody. So I decided to take down my "pre-production" beard to a sweet mustache. Always a good ice breaker. So day one of recording I showed up with my red Slingerlands, the sweet mustache and a huge coffee. The stache got a lot of laughs and one thumbs-up actually. We were off to the races. The first day of recording drums is always somewhat taxing. Setting up all the mics on the kit and then going through each drum with the engineer and producer sound-wise just seems like an eternity when all you can think about is jumping in and nailing your first track. It is the most important step so it has to be done to make a good sounding record. We chose a big room for the drums to get the big sound. I love the sound of the big rooms. Basically, I played along to all of the stuff we had down on the ProTools. I like it this way the best. They rest of the guys don't need to be around and it is way more focused for me. I finished the drum tracks in four days. We spent a day experimenting with different rooms and alternative sounds, but this time around it just didn't seem to be what we ultimately needed. Always fun to explore the space though. That is pretty much it.

Back to All Slingerland Feature Stories