drumming secrets

First day:

At this moment my good and dear music friend Rob Rietveld is putting up the microphones for my drumkit; yes we are going to lay some tracks down (finally!!) and I can't wait to start to hit the drums....

Rob has put his energy and equipment into a studio that he runs together with Alex Buurman. Alex is a musician who used to play keyboards for Lori Spee, Magriet Eshuis, Hans de Booij and The Tee Set, all famous bands who hit the charts in The Netherlands back in the 70ies and 80ies.

I can tell that musicians have created this room; a small but very effective live room with a cool analogue mixing desk (Soundcraft) which is located in the controll room. The studio has a great vibe and is located in Delft, a very pittoresk town in Holland (Johannes Vermeer the famous artist painter).

I love the way we work on this record; all done in little steps and recorded on different locations,Real Life Studios (South of France), Noise Factory (my little studio in the house Rijen, NL), Alex Buurman Studio (Delft, NL)......all with good music friends with healthy vibes.....it all is going to help to make a awesome record I am sure!

My friend Rob is an allrounder in the music business; drummer, sound technician, guitar player, photographer, graphic designer and Lord knows what else he can do, ha,ha,ha,......

Anyway, he's now miking up the set with my favorite mikes: Audix, Neumann and Sennheizer. Yeah!!! The room sounds nice, warm and has a great acoustic for ambient miking.

I am so glad I did all the preparations well; I can concentrate on playing the days to come, it's been all worth doing it!

After the soundcheck we are going to have a nice dinner (Sushi) and then it's recording time!

The first tracks we record are just a check if we can make the close-miking set up sound like 'heaven'. At the same time I'll take some rough mixes to my place so I can check it on my own speakers to have a bit of a reference. This means we are going to drive home tonight, but I will stay over tomorrow... This way we know for shure whether we are doing the right thing here...

Next blogs I'll tell you how it all went......right now I have to concentrate to kick ass....

Come again, ok?