Here’s a new track based on a drum loop, and a little story about the process of making it below.
I love sound, I keep exploring it, learning more about it everyday, trying to achieve the best sound quality I possibly can with every project I do. Recently, I’ve been working with drummer Oded Kafri on his music, so I got to see, hear and produce a lot of drums. It has been a great learning experience.
Nowadays, a drum kit would usually be recorded with about 12-16 microphones (from cheap dynamic mics to the high end condensers) in any proper studio, and then, all those signals are combined to create the drum sound. But as Bob Power says on the great producer’s show Pensado’s place (Episode 58, 41 minutes in) :
“A drum kit wasn’t meant to be listened to with one ear right next to the snare, one ear right next to the hi-hat and one ear inside the kick. It was meant to be listened to from 10 feet away, that’s why mixing records is so difficult.”
Bob Power on Pensados Place
And so bearing that in mind, when I got this great drum loop sent to me by Coolooloosh drummer Yogi Shetrit, which he recorded to none other than his trusted iphone 4, I thought, well, maybe I shouldn’t obsess about drum sounds and just go with what sounds good. If an iphone captures a drum kit beautifully in a room and also adds some inherent built-in compression to it, then why not use that sound instead of trying to fit in 15 different drum signals. In any event, that was the attitude for creating this track which I have uploaded today to soundcloud.
It’s not a finished piece, and it was done very quickly, but it’s a perfect example of how easy it could be to create new music, when you let go of all the tech thoughts and just use what you’ve got. It took me about an hour to create this in Ableton live (so simple), so I hope you enjoy it and share too.
Just one last note, I’m not saying I don’t like hi-fi drum sounds..I love it, but I just think it couldn’t hurt to experiment and go with what your ear think is good, rather than what the magazines tell you is good.
