There aren’t many things that get me out of bed early on a Sunday morning. In fact I can’t remember the last time I’ve done so, but with 6+ months of song writing and demoing behind me, I was excited by this particular Sunday morning. I was off to Seaside Lounge Recording Studios in Park Slope, Brooklyn to start my first full length record since 2011.

The goal was simple, but daunting: Record all the drums in one day.

In typical New York fashion we started the day off with some bagels, coffee, and a shit ton of traffic on 278, because driving to Brooklyn is the thing to do on at 9:30am on a Sunday… apparently. We eventually arrived and started out on our 15 hour adventure.

First things first, the set up. This isn’t the most glamorous part of recording, but it does lend itself to a good deal of experimentation.

Final mic list:

• (3) Seinhesser 451 — overheads and snare
• (2) Seinhesser 421 — toms
• (1) Coles 4038 — pointed at the snare about 4 feet in front
• (2) Shure SM57 — snare top and bottom
• (2) Audio Technica 4060 — room mics
• (1) AKG D12 — kick out
• (1) Electro Voice RE20 — kick in

We tried a selection of drums and ended up with a frankenstein kit which included pieces from 3 different vintage Ludwig kits including a 24" kick that was the crowning jewel of our set up.

We used a Slingerland snare which sounded rounder and less snappy then the others we tested. It’s all preference, but this was the winning snare.

Once the kit and mics were situated it was time to set levels and map out the tracks in the control room. Greg handled this like clockwork, letting little more than “fuck, this sounds cool” escape from his mouth in the process. He was right though — it did sound cool.

We did some further mic adjustments to get everything perfect, then started the tracking process. Tracking is always interesting because it usually consists of one person doing a lot of work and a bunch of others laying around.

In this case I sat my ass down on a couch all day, and Greg browsed Reddit while making sure nothing peeked. It was rather nice, really. Friend and electronic musician Josh Bess played the drums — his first session in quite some time. Spirits were high.

We entertained a few visitors as well, Sal Mastrocola of No Nets and Erin Bagwell of Feminist Wednesday stopped by for a brief and rather hungover viewing of our process. It was nice having them by — splitting the monotony of drum tracking was welcomed, but short lived.

Each song was like clock work. Josh played the songs 4-5 times, getting a variety of takes to be edited and blended together later on. He got up from the throne at the end of each one, walked in to the control room, handed me a page of notes he had written, and then went back in.

Being locked up in a studio all day starts to do weird things to your mind — you go stir crazy. It leads to ridiculously stupid ideas and some really great ones…

Greg came in to the room with a box full of toys, dropped it on the floor and said “Well, alright, lets fuck around.” Everything from wood blocks to plastic tubes were represented, but we settled for shakers, cowbells, vibraslap, and slide whistle.

Photo Credit: Lauren Rosenblum