GrooveLily

Gene tracking

Ok … truth be told … there was only one blister, which is healing nicely, as are my knuckles and arms. But my weekend in the studio recording drum parts for our upcoming “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” record was a whirlwind for me. We are currently planning on 18 tracks on the record (note: things often change at this stage, so don’t quote me!), 17 of which have drums, so I had my work cut out for me. Happily, we rehearsed a lot, and made sure we were happy with our arrangement and drum part choices, so I was ready. We finished 13 tracks on Saturday, leaving only 4 for Sunday, which left us time to record drums on some other songs (details below).

Saturday: we arrive at 10:30 at Beatstreet Studios, the same place we recorded drums for the Midsummer record, as well as several other projects. Joe Franco, the owner, is a drummer’s drummer, with years of experience in the studio and on the road, and is also author of the well known “Double Bass Drumming” (which, for those of you who have ever heard my incredibly spazzy attempts to play double bass will surely know, I have never read … if you don’t know what double bass drumming is, check out this article). Joe and I have many mutual friends, and always love to kibbitz whenever we see each other.

Our excellent engineer, NickPhoto by Mark Diamond, www.diamondimages.com

Nick, the fabulous engineer, is a total pro, sweetest guy in the world, and a total ace when it comes to getting drum sounds; what takes hours in most studios at the beginning of the session takes Nick 30-45 minutes. We were up and running by 11:30 AM, and from inside the drum booth I have my now familiar view of Nick at the computer, Val and Brendan at the “producer’s desk” listening, taking notes, encouraging me after every take (some day I’ll have to take video of Brendan’s reaction after a particularly good take … you just can’t describe it in words!).

Val, Brendan, and Nick from the drum boothPhoto by Mark Diamond, www.diamondimages.com

The day goes very well, and I’m proud to say that I didn’t require tons of takes on anything. I was very happy with everything except possibly “Bring it On,” which I chose as the first track of the day. I played 2 or 3 takes, which were fine, but didn’t really bust out the way I wanted. We moved on, and I suppose I would have been happy with what we had … but … we ended up doing one more take at the end of the day strictly as a photo op; my cousin, Mark Diamond, is an amazing professional photographer and holographer, was in town and I was thrilled that he could visit the studio. He was willing to take some pictures, and we figured we might as well get some of me playing. So, trying to figure out what to play, we decided to do another take of “Bring it On,” mainly because it’s high-energy and would make for some (hopefully) good photos; I suppose there were some outside hopes of having moments we could cut and paste if needed, but mostly it was for the pictures. As a result, I was really just trying to have fun; not posing, but just relaxing and enjoying the moment because I figured that would look best. Well, as you may have guessed by now, it ended up being the take that we’ll use on the record … it was joyous, relaxed, and had the intensity my slightly tentative earlier takes lacked.

Mark

It’s funny to continually re-learn the same lesson in life … that things happen when you relax and stop trying to make them happen. I’m really happy with the pictures, and the track.

Finally, on Sunday we finished up the Sleeping Beauty tracks in equally quick fashion, and even had some time to add drum tracks to some of the “Hooked on the Bible” songs that Val and Brendan did years ago … those should be available shortly in the “Odds and Ends” section of the web site … pretty fun to make them feel more like GrooveLily songs.

Thanks to Joe and Nick at Beatstreet and big thanks and much love to my cousin Mark for letting us use some of the photos from that day on this page.