Ryan Leigh Patterson wrote on Sat, 10 December 2005 06:01 |
What is the best way to get these drummers to give up their tired old kit, without sounding like a dick and pissing off the drummer
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I think a lot of inexperienced drummers are under the mistaken impression that a good drum sound is entirely in the hands of the engineer and the technology. If you let them know that there's no amount of technological wizardry that can magically transform a shitty sounding drum kit into a good drum sound on tape, they ought to be more cooperative.
If they still resist, start small. Let them do a take with their kit. Then ask them to do another take, only with a different snare. Tell them it's on you if they hate it. Then compare the two takes.
If this doesn't do it, just let them use their shitty kit. Fuck it. It's their record, and this is still a service industry.
I used to worry a lot about what allowing clients to use shitty sounding instruments (and ending up with a shitty sounding record) might do to my reputation. I don't worry so much about that anymore. I figure my job is to record what they put in front of me to the best of my ability. After all, usually I'm not getting paid to produce.
Also, a good third of my business comes from musicians who have recorded at another studio in town and become frustrated with the guy's endless and relentless attempts to: 1.) make them play his instruments, 2.) replace their drums with samples, 3.) make them shorten the second verse, 4.) record vocals one line at a time from the start, etc etc. And he won't back down. He simply won't roll tape until they agree to do it his way.
This guy is the worst example of cookie cutter production I've ever seen. He literally makes every single client sound like the exact same band. He found ONE sound that (almost) works and, rather than go out in search of a new one for each client, he just forces them to conform to that one sound. Invariably, a large number of them end up finishing (or re-recording) their projects with me.
So, I'm all in favor of gently suggesting things to improve a player's sound. But I give up pretty easily when I encounter resistence.
I guess it's the "documentarian" approach versus the "artiste" approach. I very much enjoy being the artiste, but not enough to fight about it, so I usually end up being the documentarian.
Q: What will my drums sound like once they're recorded?
A: If I do a good job, exactly like they do now.
DF