Studio Drummer – What Do I Bring? … One More Time!

*And I have to say one more time!…THE SONG ALWAYS COMES FIRST… ALWAYS!*

Within the parameters that are laid down by the material and production direction you have to make your mark in a truly musical and artistic fashion. 

And this comes from learning to really and truly listen. 

Learn to listen in a new way, in much more depth to the subtleties of texture and musicality!

This takes time and experience and it also takes a true desire to learn and deepen your musicality.  Start listening to all the greats.  Take something from each player.  If you can’t find something unique about their playing you probably either haven’t listened closely enough or you haven’t listened to enough material.

I also mention Stuart Copeland again in this same fashion.  He’s such a highly distinctive player that he’s immediately recognizable.  One can only imagine the amount of time and attention that went into his hi hat abilities. 

You need to look for and develop the same distinctive uniqueness in aspects of your own playing.

Listen, Listen, Listen!  Make notes of the individually unique features that your ear discerns from different players and work at integrating these qualities into your own playing style.

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Studio Drummer – But Time Goes Deeper Still!

*BUT IT GOES DEEPER!*

At the top echelons of playing you will be required to be so adept at playing with a click track that producers will require you to play  ‘in a certain placement on the click track.’  And this is where the human being can do what a machine can’t do.  This elevates the soul of a drum track in a truly organic human way that can be transcendant.

And between producer and drummer, here is how one of those interactions took place between myself and star producer/engineer Bob Rock.

“Phil I want you to keep your bass drum and hi hat dead on the click or just slightly on top and I want you to lay back your snare behind the click track.  ….Ok? Let’s roll”

He was asking me to place different instruments very consistently in different minute positions on the click.

Have you ever heard the term ‘backbeat’ and wondered what it actually meant?  Well this is what it means and it pertains to most often to the snare drum.  This is advanced fine-tuning, but this is where you want to be skill wise.  It is a good example of how deep the rabbit hole goes.

As I mention in the chapter about technique:

*THE LOPE OF THE GROOVE…*

is the very human ability to intricately adjust the placement and weight of certain instruments.  In 1985, Idle Eyes toured with Toto and at that time, this is how Jeff Porcaro explained it to me:

As an example, the hi hat may be on the beat or slightly on top of the beat.  The kick may be nailing the beat dead on and the snare may be back behind the beat. 

What also affects the lope of the feel is the intentional dynamic changes inside the feel, regarding a given instrument.  For example on a closed hi hat pattern, the 8^th note just prior to the snare on beat 4 may be struck slightly harder with a slight release of tension on the pedal but just slight.  These types of punctuations may also exist in different places throughout the pattern.

Again listen to Jeff Porcaro in this area.  A tune like Jojo by Boz Scaggs is a really good example of Jeff in this area of lope.

So there is work to do in this area but the sooner you embrace and master this skill and the surrounding nuances, the sooner you’re on your way to doing very musically rewarding session work! 

Remember, the term ‘master’ does not mean perfection. It means that the struggle remains but you have now gained the upper hand.

*FINALLY… MAKE THE CLICK TRACK YOUR FRIEND BECAUSE IT CERTAINLY IS MINE!*

I love playing to a click track.  It’s an irrefutable reference point.  No one can say ohh you’re slowing down here or speeding up there, which I might add happens all the time.  All you have to say is ‘let’s put the click up and let’s check out the track against the click track’.

And sure enough you’re dead on the money at which point you say ‘Thank you mister click track!’ 

*IT’S A STUDIO CONSTANT!*

Either you are rushing or dragging or you’re not doing either.  Period!

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Studio Drummer – More Nuances Of Time

*NOW WE’RE GETTING INTO THE NUANCES OF PLAYING WITH A CLICK TRACK!*

The essential key here is to record yourself so you can hear your execution with the click track and study it.  If you’re serious about being a session player then you probably already have some means of being able to do this.  These days it’s a very easy barrier to overcome.  You don’t need great sonics. That doesn’t matter.  You just want to be able to hear and study the beat placement. 

You obviously have a computer or you wouldn’t be reading this so get what you need.  You can get free recording programs on the net that are very user friendly and very decent USB microphones that are quite inexpensive.  Now you’re set.  You can work out with a click track and listen back and study your areas of weakness.  You’ll then start on your own journey of the sorting out and working out of different areas that personally give you problems.  That is something that is an ongoing process that truly never ends.

I don’t want to go too far into all the permutations and situations that arise in this area but I do want to mention this often reoccurring situation because you’ll eventually run into it and it will test you to the limits of your abilities, I guarantee it.

I was doing a big budget label record and I mention this only because it can happen as much on big budget projects as smaller ones.  This songwriter was a truly great songwriter, a great singer and yet a medium to good guitar player.  We all got to the session and as usually the case we hadn’t heard the music or the artist before.  We’re at the point of tracking the songs and sure enough all the scratch tracks are way out of time with the click.  Painfully out of time.

Singer songwriter guitar players tend to rush.  When they’re recording scratch guitars just meant to be references for the rhythm section to play to they often rush even more because these tracks are not meant to be kept. 

SO…

We, the rhythm section, are now required to play our butts off with the utmost of artistic expression and pocket groove playing to scratch tracks that are rushing like crazy.  The guitar and the click are literally landing in different places.

(In case you think this is a freak situation this happens constantly.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been confronted with this. It’s practically the norm.)

You might ask, what do you do in this situation?   You go deep and draw from your experience and your skills.  Obviously the producer and the artist want you to be bang on the click track.  And yet the scratch tracks are also essential in the recording process.

As it went down we were required to perform with great feel and accuracy to the click track all the while being distracted and pulled by out of time scratch tracks. This was the case for the entire record.  I’m happy to say though the outcome resulted in one of the best records I’ve ever been on.

The issue we were dealing with constantly is invisible in the final product.  It’s invisible because we know our individual crafts and how to recover and save situations yet still retain the artistry.

This gives you an example of how adept you’ll be required to be with handling click tracks and all the many variables that can arise.

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Studio Drummer – Nuances Of Time

*THIS IS GOLD!  BUY YOURSELF A CHEAP TAPE RECORDER AND JUST RUN IT DURING SETS WHEN PLAYING LIVE.  EVENTUALLY SOMEONE IS GOING TO COME BACK TO YOU AND SAY THAT YOU WERE RUSHING OR DRAGGING.  VERY  OFTEN IT IS THEM!  BUT NOW YOU HAVE A REFERENCE!*

I played with Roger Hodgson of Supertramp on a very large outdoor gig in front of 16,000 people.  Due to some monitoring issues a few members of the band, as great of a band as it was were really pushing ahead on the beat.  I could feel it and was really well acquainted with Supertramp’s music.  (It goes back to that love of music thing again.)

*THE BASS PLAYER AND I HAD TO CONTROL THE TEMPO AT THIS POINT AND PULL THE BAND BACK JUST ENOUGH SO THAT IT WAS SITTING PROPERLY*

It ended up being a smoking gig!

Back to click tracks;

Once you stop wandering around on a click track and can comfortably play with it then introduce fills.

The drum fill and the human being combined with a click tend to be like oil and water.  The universal human tendency when even approaching a fill, let alone playing it, is to speed up.  This is one of the great disciplines of being a session drummer.  If you are playing something that demands great energy and emotion you have to control an aspect of that emotion in order to execute a passage or many passages in perfect time, yet still retain the power and artistry.

It is not easy.  It’s one of the most difficult skills that requires the most time and commitment to develop.  But it’s the lynch pin.

*YOU’LL NEVER MAKE THE MAJOR LEAGUES IN BASEBALL IF YOU CAN’T HIT A CURVEBALL AS THEY SAY AND THE SAME RULE APPLIES HERE.*

So commit hard to this skill. 

Work every feel, every groove at every tempo.  Inside of all these grooves work every fill combination that is a part of your drum vocabulary. Work different length fills.  Very spacious fills as well as very busy ones.  Play an extremely slow blues shuffle to a click but …still make it swing hard.  Ooh that’s a tough one!

Study very carefully your subdividing.  Where do you have all 4 wheels in the ditch so to speak?  But hear me on this!  Where are you slightly pushing or pulling the click?  In other words where are you ever so slightly ahead or behind the click?

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