[drumming diary] Tracking for Lindsie

The pre-production work finally behind us, the Lindsie band finally got to work on this new 5-song demo last week. Due to schedule constraints, this meant yours truly tracking drums starting at 9am on Sunday at Gravity Studios.

Going in, I had sorta let producer Chuck Gladfelter psyche me out. With all the "song doctoring" he and Rob had been doing, I was starting to second-guess way too much of what I was planning to do. I had a CD with a click and a scratch guitar track, to work out to, and realized during the course of doing so that I didn't really need to spend an inordinate amount of time preparing. That said, even just running down the tunes a couple of times in the days before the session helped solidify a couple of transitions and fill-ins here and there.

I had also spooked myself on equipment. Chuck was gung-ho about using the house kit in the studio, but I had a hunch the toms would be tuned pretty low, which isn't conducive to what I tend to do. If I was going in as a hired gun, this wouldn't matter...if you're paying me, I'll do what I'm told. But I was too half-assed about this, and wound up building a weird hybrid of the house kit and my Signias that initially didn't work out. Turns out a Yamaha maple floor tom with a single-ply coated head does sound significantly different from similar Premier toms. My guess is that the slightly undersized shells, in terms of diameter, may have something to do with it.

Once we got set to go, however, we were pretty much off to the races. Working with someone who is outside the band and trying to maintain a critical temperment had me in an odd space once I got done with a take, as I had to wait to see if the control room thought I nailed it, regardless of what I thought. Generally, that only works in one direction. If they like the take, I'll still redo it if I'm not happy, within reason. If I like the take, and they don't, I'll redo it without complaint, mostly because I know I can recreate the good parts with no problem.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with what we got. There's one fill-in in "Mouse" that I'm not fully convinced will work, and in my heart, I think "Infidel" could have been a bit funkier. That said, I came up with a killer fill to start that one out. Now I just sit and wait for everyone else to track their parts, but I'm optimistic that a strong foundation has been laid.