Let Us Pray

[MasterCylinder]

Well guys...........the night was very interesting.

Just me and the engineer in the entire building. The main control room that houses the board, the hard-drives and all the outboard gear could not be physically further from the drum room. So a good amount of time was spent trying to communicate through drum mikes and headphones.

Troy's song now has more punch -- when acoustic drums are miked, recorded and mixed with the proper EQ, the result is always some nice punch. So, the most notable improvement is simply the nice acoustic drum punch as opposed to the drum loops that were previously used.

My biggest disappointment was that I was not able to put as much "musical percussion flash" into the middle instrumental section as I thought I could. The structure is a bit odd and I was never able to get totally comfortable with the fills without handling the basics so I think I reverted to my training which places priorities on accents and cues while maintaining absolute tempo.

As far as the verses and choruses, I always do my job, which is accompaniment.

The ending was a work of art by the engineer...........while I usually avoid the "big fade-out" on my arrangements, he matched these tracks perfectly to get the desired result.

The intro proved to be the best part............the tracks that Troy sent to me all began at once and had no "count-in" so what we did was this............went to the middle of the first verse and just played a snare "pop" in tempo and recorded eight counts.
Then we did a "cut and paste" and synched the 8-count to the front of the track.
I then utilized the first 4 counts as the "count-in" and took the liberty to create a drum intro with the next four counts. And, I must say, while this intro is not overly complex, it is absolutely nailed.


Overall, that is the way I would summarize the night -- not great but, certainly not bad.

No complaints.........it was a fun project........with these observations:

1) The marriage of man and machine is weird. Obviously, it is just not the same as having the guys in the studio and finding a groove.

2) We had to do the best we could with what was provided....meaning, we were not able seperate the mix and thus, at times, had technical difficulty hearing what needed to be heard. Simply put, we are spoiled and we are used to having more control over arragement, mix and production.

3) I was surprised to find that after sitting behing the kit for a while, I had trouble finding Troy's speed..........I was rushing things as I feel this song at a bit of an increased tempo.
So I had to "pull back on the reins" in order to find the pocket.

So there you have it kids...........Troy's song gets a cool drum intro and some new punch.