Studio Drummer – Into the Present

*THAT BRINGS ME TO THE PRESENT*

 

My studio experience has been of great use even in live gigs that I do to this day. 

 

For example:

 

I do the Calgary Stampede Grandstand show otherwise known as ‘the greatest outdoor show on earth’ to 22,000 people a night.  It’s is a very intense show musically and features a live band of 30 or so hand picked musicians.  It is played totally live although the show also runs a pre-record of the same music simultaneously. 

 

We do the recording about 6 months prior to the show. The reason that there is a pre-record is that if the weather suddenly turns, which it can quickly do in Calgary, they have to stop the live aspect of the band in the show since someone can get electrocuted.  To the audience the band still appears to be playing though and the show suddenly goes to pre-recorded tracks seamlessly without the audience knowing it.

 

This is where my studio experience enters because for the entire show I am playing to a click track.  This is how the pre-record and the live show are synchronized together.  In fact aside from the conductor I am the only musician who is being fed the click track.  So in essence I am running the entire show of 30 musicians and literally hundreds of dancers and performers in front of 22,000 people a night! 

 

*SO DO YOU NEED TO BE CONFIDENT AND COMFORTABLE WITH A CLICK TRACK?  YES!*

 

And we will address this issue as well as many others in this book.

 

 

 

*REGARDING YOUR OWN MUSICAL JOURNEY.*

 

You should decide for yourself what your influences, loves and goals are surrounding your music.  I would say that if you don’t really have a spiritual connection to music, for example, if music doesn’t move you by exciting you, making you cry, making you remember nostalgically different events then perhaps you should rethink your ambition.  However if music does do all these things spiritually for you, which I assume it does, and you are deciding to pursue this further then it’s time to move on.

 

*YOU NEED TO LOOK AT WORK ISSUES.* 

 

In the area in which you live in you need to start evaluating where and what the work is and how best to pursue it.  How many live venues are there?  How many recording studios are there?  Where is there a perceived need?