drumming secrets

The past weekend was someting out of the ordinary for me. In my experience as a sound engineer I have never encoutered so much positive energy and drive in one session. I know Juan as a dear friend, but when I’m behind the mixing desk I try to focus more on being the engineer.

Hanging out with Juan for three days made me see that the combination of friendship and proffesional approach can go hand in hand and produce results that one will surely experience when listening to the music when were finished with this project. It made me understand why the Snowy White band call Juan mr. Personality.

Preparing for this session was fun already, but when it came down to miking Juan’s kit the real fun started. Doing the soundcheck, having a sushi dinner and then running pilot recordings was awesome. This I always try to do to check the overall sound at home where one has the familiar acoustic surroundings. Not finding any real problems in the wonderful sounding kit, I knew the Saturday will be the real thing and we will produce some great tracks. Knowing Juans professional attitude and musical abillities, I wasn’t in doubt for that we would achieve our goal for a second.

Recordings did go as expected and even beyond. Saturday night Juan stayed over at my place as this saves a lot of time for him travelling back and forth to his place. We were home at about 12:30 at night, but watching all the great video’s of some of our favourite drummers made us hit the sack at about 3 in the mmorning. Still at 11:00 we were back at the studio preparing for the third day. Also this day went as well as it could.

Thanks to Juan’s proffesional attitude and friendship, Alex’s support and friendship with the technique and his experience as a buff musician himself and Rebecca, Juans wife and also dear friend, I can think back on a weekend that I could label as a highlight in my life as musician/engineer. I’m  very lucky having good friends...

Rob Rietveld, audio engineer.