Studio Drummer – Rule of Rules!

THE GOLDEN RULE

Here is the golden rule of being a successful studio musician.  You can choose to heed it or you can choose to ignore it.  I’ll tell you this though, if you choose to ignore this rule it won’t really matter how great you are.

*YOU MUST BE A PERSON THAT GETS ALONG WELL WITH OTHERS AND BRINGS POSITIVE ENERGY TO A SESSION AND THE PEOPLE INVOLVED IN A SESSION. YOU MUST BE AN ENABLER!*

I kid you not that all else is secondary.  You can have all the chops and talent in the world but if you’re disruptive, egotistical, arrogant, reactionary and if you generally diminish the flow and the energy in the room then you should start looking for another career!

The best session musicians are a hybrid of talent, tools and great people skills.  A studio setting is most often a tense environment to start with.  You have players who are on edge usually working with new material and unknown elements.  The same is often the case for the artist, producer and engineer.  There’s often a lot of money at stake and time is always of the essence.  The best session players are aware of the dynamic in the room at all times and are consistently working together with the artist, players and production staff to bring the most positive energy to the creative process.  Not only the above but this is also key. 

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Studio Drummer – Be on your toes

*YOU HAVE TO BE FAST AND HAVE THE ABILITY TO SWITCH GEARS AND INTERNALIZE MUSICAL CHANGES TO YOUR PART QUICKLY AND WITH FLUIDITY AND CONIFIDENCE IN YOUR PLAYING.* 

There are several mental tricks that I have used continuously over the years to combat building stress or anxiety.  The first one is this.

*DON’T FIXATE.*

By fixating I mean dwelling on a specific part of your playing or a specific limb. 

As a pilot in my flight training that I’ve done for instrument flying I was taught that one of the most important things to avoid and never do when flying by instruments is that you never fixate on one instrument. 

You should be scanning all the instruments almost in a steady rhythm.  But you never dwell on a single instrument.  This can cause you to lose control of the aircraft.  In our profession this is also true when you’re getting ‘too inside’ a specific part. 

It often happens on a session where you’re playing something very simple part-wise but challenging from an accuracy standpoint.  It can be very easy to over think your part in a case like this.

For example you start to think too much about your bass drum foot or hi hat foot and next thing you know you’re complicating something that is usually easy for you to execute.

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Studio Drummer – Uninhibited!

*STRIVING TO BRING A GREAT PERFORMANCE ON ALL LEVELS, A COMPLETELY UNINHIBITED PERFORMANCE, INTO A WORLD OF UNKNOWNS!*

This is an obvious ideal!  One can’t bring this every time into a situation of unknowns.  It’s an ideal that we all strive for and sometimes we hit the mark and some times we fall short.

There are many variables and many unknowns.  I’ve also found Murphy’s Law at work here in my own experience. 

*THE MORE COMFORTABLE AND RELAXED I AM COMING INTO A SESSION, THE MORE I’M GOING TO GET SLAMMED AND NOT PERFORM TO MY POTENTIAL! *

So I try to never enter a session with this mindset.  In a sense it’s like underestimating an opponent.  When you think about it, it’s very much like the mindset of a professional athlete.

If I don’t personally prepare and be in a sort of pain state, a healthy nervous state, the less likely I am to be properly prepared mentally for a session.  It tends to be a prerequisite to a successful session.

That is generally the life of a session musician. 

A good friend and great session guitarist friend said to me that you have to be careful of this because in a sense the circumstances can seem stacked against you.  One only needs a bad day, slightly off your game and kaboom, you’re off the A list so to speak.  And yet as he said it’s part of the craft and part of the challenge!

Jingle sessions can often embody this strongly.   The first thing to conquer is that you’re playing full on at 9.00 am in the morning.  Perhaps you’ve had too much coffee (although not in my case!) or you’re just trying to wake up in general. 

I remember jingle and movie sessions at 9am that were very challenging, where I was playing material that pushed me right to the edge of my limits and abilities. Another example of this situation was on sessions for Electronic Arts video game productions.   

Different session situations tax different areas. 

I’m paraphrasing here but as an all time great session drummer Jeff Porcaro once said, “Experience, experience, is the real teacher of how to handle the many situations a session drummer is confronted with.”

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Studio Drummer – Pressure situations

DEALING WITH PRESSURE

The environment a session musician exists in is most often unlike that of being in a band or being strictly a ‘live’ musician.  There are different types of pressures that apply to this environment.

Being in a band is a very familiar and most often, a rehearsed situation.  You don’t necessarily need reading ability to be in a band.  And similarly you don’t need the ability (learned tolerance as I would call it) of walking into a pressure-situation without knowing anything about what you’re walking in to. 

*I USE THE TERM “LEARNED TOLERANCE” BECAUSE YOU NEVER REALLY GET USED TO IT OR COMFORTABLE WITH IT, NOR SHOULD YOU.* 

It is something that you can learn to deal with though and in your own way prepare for. 

For example, if I have a session coming up that is causing me anxiety I never have coffee on the day of that session.  If I know the players, I will work emotionally and mentally to diffuse issues of insecurity and tension. 

These types of issues, as in every relationship, tend to crop up.  If you’re not prepared for relational issues and don’t have your game face on so to speak, you can be put in vulnerable positions. 

My intention when I walk into the session is to be prepared on every level, not only playing and reading but emotionally prepared as well.  That’s just one small example and of course everyone is different and handles stress in a different manner.

*THIS KIND OF PERFORMANCE ANXIETY CAN BE PAINFUL AND YET IT’S A HELPFUL PROCESS THAT RAISES YOUR ABILITY TO A HIGHER LEVEL OF FUNCTIONALITY.*

There are times when this can be very intense.  You’ll lose some sleep I guarantee it!  When I played with Ray Charles I definitely lost some sleep as I did with the David Foster Band.  When we backed up Toto I most definitely lost some sleep! 

The standards are very high, about as high as they can get.  But something happens in these situations.  You’re so aware and so on.  It’s a place you can’t get to on your own without this tremendous back pressure.

But back to the studio;

A typical recording session would be this.  You are given the session start time and place.  From here you typically don’t know;

The complexity of what you’re playing…

What particular style you’re playing…

What session players you’re playing with…

How your kit and/or tuning will translate in that particular studio..

If I’m playing a studio’s drum kit, what is the condition, tuning, hardware like etc…

Who’s producing or engineering, what’s the artist/client like…

If you could perhaps sum up the experience of being a session drummer or session musician in a sentence, from my perspective it would be this;

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