Kenny Aronoff!

He beats the **** out of a snare and it still sounds great. It would appear from how high he raises the stick that he's way out of balance, but he knows wtf he's doing.

Watch the and listen to the greats.

Poor poor Slippy.

He's been stuck in his torturous dungeon full of emo/screamo/hardcore bands for so long, he's forgotten what drummers above the age of 20 sound like.

FYI, I don't cut low midrange on kik drums. I sample replace the suckers. LOL.

I seem to be portrayed as some kind of control freak here and I must take some exception. I do use Pro Tools and I do edit the hell out of sub par performances but I do hire some of the best drummers in the business too. And I leave their timing alone.

My theories are not based on some sort of day dreaming. They are based on working with drummers and learning from them. No dictating how they "should" play.

I first try to see what they bring to the table before imposing my will.

I am today, 10X the drummer I was before I became a producer. And I haven't practiced in 17 years.

I watched, listened and learned. Which is wayy more important than playing the drums.

I have learned a lot more than I have imparted back on my profession and it was based on working under the best and with the best.

Peace.

I watched and learnt too.....
I saw it didn't matter if someone dented a head or broke a stick, it's how they played and sounded that mattered.

Your right. It doesn't matter.....

And.......

It doesn't matter if you are a Track Star and smoke two packs a day and eat only McDonalds, but evidence shows that most athletes don't.

.....and evidence shows that breaking sticks doesn't preclude you from being a top notch great sounding drummer in rock music.



Fleaman

Great, a pissing match about who has acquired the most knowledge on great-drummers-breaking-sticks-in-rock-music-vs.-how great-they-really-are.

Gotta love this place heh .

Greetings,
Dirk

Absolutely.

And neither does having only one arm. (Def Leppard)

Go get my chain saw!!!!!!!



Where are you going?

It will only hurt a little.....

Really?

So are you changing your absolutism on the breaking sticks part or just being sarcastic?

Fleaman

Hoooooooooooooly crap...

I have revised my initial post above. Revisions in RED.

I'd like to thank you all for showing me how little I really know.

I feel it is best to stay humble and I thank you for showing me that I am not only imperfect.

But I am also wrong!!!!!!!!

WRONG!!!! WRONG!!!! WRONG!!!!WRONG!!!! WRONG!!!! WRONG!!!!

A guy can either play or not.

And has to be right for the music.

I wouldn't have John Bonham drumming for Karen Carpenter.

It only matters if it sounds good or not!
If the guy tears up his drum kit that is his problem!
If it slows down the session then it might be a problem.

Live a guy is going mostly for visuals, so he's going to need to be more animated to "mak show" (Beatles Hamburg reference.)
Visuals matter more in a live setting because people are there to SEE the band.
A good but bad example is seeing that band that recorded "That's What I Like About You"... uh... The Romantics. The drummer sang the lead vocals and was hunched over behind the kit. There were two GTR players an bass player rocking away in a very boring way to hold your attention... no wonder they never went past that hit! Good song though... made someone some money! Most BORING rock act I'ver seen!

In the studio you want the guy to play loud enough (if the music requires it) to make the drums speak. It is possible to play too hard and choke the drums off. I always said that drummers (or any player) need to learn to "play for tape." I should now say "play for the recording" but my point was that they needed to adjust their kit and technique to sound good at playback.

Examples:

I once recorded and mixed Metallica (Dallas, TX 1989) and getting Lar's drums to sound good was VERY difficult! It ranks as one of the more problematic drum situations I have ever dealt with. He doesn't play very hard at all... in fact... weak would be an under-statement. Sorry Lars and fans. I'm sure it was great concert in the arena. They make/made a lot of money. There was no way to make the drums truely powerfull sounding. My mix was released in Europe on a live CD. I'm not proud of that drums sound either. I'm not credited either (another story.)

My studio once had a perfectly maintained kit of Sonor Phonic Series drums. EVERY player I recorded sounded on it completely differentplaying that kit! Same kit, same room position, same mics, same console, etc...
My partner in the studio was good rock drummer and he made the comment that you could look at how the drummer set his kit up and tell how good of a player he was.

In the last ten years I have recorded only three drummers...
Dan Wojchieowski (Olivia Newton John, Andy Timmons) 300 plus cuts
Kieth Carlock (presently Sting's drummer) 8 cuts
Mitch Marine (Smashmouth...) 8 cuts

In each case I knew how good they were going to be when I watched them set up their kit. I didn't need to quiz them. These were mostly jingle dates and I had to complete EIGHT cuts in FOUR HOUS! The tracks were almost all stellar and we usually finished in under that time period. I'm not sure about Mitch, but these guys can SMOKE at any style required while reading charts. Oh yeah... in three takes at most! I saw only a few broke sticks in all of those years and not one broke cymbal!

If a guy dents heads and breaks cymbals regularly he is playing with bad technique. Ask any good drummer. A drummer I played with broke $4k worth of cymbals in about six years. He kept them all. His mommy bought him new ones. He also had to have surgery on his wrist because he played with bad technique. He WAS a good live drummer and VERY fun to play with! He learned to play correctly (soundwise) when he became a studio engineer. It taught him a lot recording lot's of other guys.

Danny Brown

A few of my thoughts on the subject :

• Drum heads and drum sticks are expendables, get over it. A pair of sticks can give good service for almost a life time or . . .not even last one song. Depends on a lot of factors. Type of wood, type of music, type of instruments used on, etc, etc
• It's nice if cymbals last forever but sometimes they crack. Edge/radial cracks are probably more from abuse than not but circular cracks, along the lathe grooves, are more likely just due to lots of heavy use and manufacturing defects/inconsistancies, not abuse. Aquarian Cymbal Springs 'can' help in both instances.
• drum heads tuned tighter choke easier when played hard, loosely tuned heads don't sound so good played softly. Both loosely and tightly tuned heads can sound great when played with optimal force, but they are different sounds. decide what sound you want and tune / strike accordingly.
• If you are breaking a lot of things but getting the sound you want, and there isn't an alternative technique that doesn't compromize the sound, then you ARE using the proper technique

My earlier comments, were not supposed to be taken too seriously and I aknowledge there are great attitude players in rock music whom by getting even one of the best session players in you will lose the "attitude" with which it is played.

This doesn't mean that every player who destroys his gear is good, it also doesn't mean you have to destroy your gear to be good. Finally it doesn't detract from the fact that you may be good and destroy your gear.

That great musicianship requires a full range of facilities and understanding of tone and colour also suggests that in order to be great you need to understand dynamics, few kit destroyers do. Usually these guys are famous players in one or maybe two outfits, not normally session playing.

Attitude playing has its place in music as does Britney and the Backstreet Boys, however usually its shelf life is poor.

Regards to Slippy and all

Roland

Hey Steve,

Thanks for your post. And totally, nothing personal. And as I said and you've said we agree more than not.

I agree with all the above, except that sometimes great records get made without a great producer/engineer, just a great artist. I guess I would hate anyone reading our discussion (if anyone is) and think that in order to make a great record you must have a great producer/engineer. And in saying that a great producer/engineer would immediately recognize a great tone/talent is giving the producer/engineer the same objectivity you say it's impossible for the musician to posess. Producers/engineers are just as fallible as anyone else in this business. And I know just as many stories of asshole producers/engineers as I do asshole musicians and artists.


Agreed. There still has to be a talent there to begin with. AC/DC had released five(!!!) albums before "Black in Black". So where do you start - wait until you're at the "Back in Black" stage before making an album (and incurring the cost of a big-shot producer, engineer, assistant, studio, etc) or just go and make an album with the resources you have and the talent and skills you possess at the time? "High Voltage" pales slightly in comparison to "Back in Black" (for me, at least), but it's still a great album. And without "High Voltage" there would never have been a "Back in Black".[/QUOTE]

Agreed. And you should never let the fact that you don't have the resources to access the above from going and making an album. You've got to start somewhere, even if it is in Australia in 1976 with Harry Vanda and George Young.

Again, agreed. But there are cases where it's simply not that cut and dried. Why did the Strokes ditch Nigel Godrich and go back to Gordon Raphael for "Room on Fire"? Maybe, just maybe, the Strokes had a better sense of who they were as a band than Nigel did. I love Nigel's production, but you can't be everything to everyone, and it's as important to realise when you're the problem, not the band, or the amp, or the engineer, or the studio lighting. Again, producers, even great ones, are just as human as all the rest of us.

You're a gentleman and a scholar. And believe me, I desperately want more great music to come out of this industry of ours. Bring on the great collaborations! And let those who have yet to become great learn from their mistakes so that they may aspire to achieve greatness. We often tend to focus on the high points and forget the years of slogging it out in really bad band rooms and crap studios. Remember, everyone has to start somewhere, whether it be in a band called Pen Cap Chew (an early incarnation of Nirvana) or in a bedroom with an MBox. I certainly can't see any other way of achieving it.


Yip. Slippy summed it up for me. What else needs to be said?

Cheers to you Steve,

bdp

Don't take it so personal.
Your only mistake IMO was to list a set of rules.
Generalisations depicted as fact will always get contradicted.
I'm sure there are several gearslutz who have worked with the best studio drummers. Their experience might have differed from yours.
In my case, whether they broke sticks or battered heads had very little to do with the success of the session.

if you can get to the end of the clip on this page you'll see a drummer who has no problem using bigger sticks and keeping control on a kit

http://www.drummerworld.com/wishlist...cky_Neill.html

Drummer played too hard?
And you think it's a problem???
Sounds like bad technique.


Oh...Wait.... Isn't this the engineering haiku thread??? <a href="http://www.smileycentral.com/?partner=ZSzeb008_ZNxmk133DSNO" target="_blank"><img src="http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/10/10_12_9.gif" alt="Embarrassed" border="0"></a>

That's hilarious.

I've still got a pair of those giant ProMarks myself. I used to play AC/DC's "Whole Lotta Rosie" with them in a cover band in the early eighties. It's seriously difficult to do. You gotta choke way up on them to get any speed.... I just love the way he MAINTAINS the 'trad grip'... LMFBO.

Thanks tools.

Made my day.

SM.

AHHAHAHAHHAHAH!!!!!!!!!

i see you have accessed my webcam... well played.

stick around, i may treat you to my best 'soccer mom caught unawares.' oops!tutt


gregoire
del ubik

Did anyone come up with some ideas for the original question?
I'll try ..
Im presuming that you're using PT/Logic and the drums are not on 2".

Manually gate the top snare to a fairly short snappy snare and then add a longer snare sample under it (u need to try a few), use the attack of the original snare and use slow attack settings (envelope or duck the samples snare with the original and use fast attack and slower release) on the sampled snare . When they're starting to get closer use the usual short verbs&plates to glue them, sometimes I even send a small verb from the sampled snare to the main drum buss but leave the sampled snare itself out of the buss.
Hope this helps

mac

I havent bothered to read all of the giant debate above but I just wanted to say that I am a drummer and while I do think that the guy is an idiot for hitting so hard that he breaks so many sticks and heads. He is most definitely an idiot for playing in a manner that chokes his sound to crap.

Any good musician should be aware of their sound, especially if they plan on recording it. If I were recording him I really wouldnt care if he played softer or not as long as it sounded good. So tell him, "it sounds like ****, you f'd up, I recomend you play softer but dont care what you do as long as you fix your sound"

As for fixing it now, good luck dude thats gunna be an annoying job.

that's the money answer right there. do try the speaker-on-the-snare trick, when it works it works really really well. use the solo'd snare track as a trigger with a heavy duty spike from the transient designer.


gregoire
del ubik