PHOTO : ANDREW HARRIS
PHOTO : ANDREW HARRIS
GUAIANA , ALSO A DRUMMER , DEMONSTRATES THROUGH THE GLASS
CONTROL ROOM AT ROOM 21 SOUND
ROOM 21 LIVE FLOOR
everything is very locked in . But I think the reason it sounds polished is because you ’ ve got the best players on the planet on that record , you know what I mean ? There ’ s no way for it to sound sloppy , because slop doesn ’ t exist with people like that . But to me , that ’ s my version of an organic record . And in the genre , there ’ s nothing that sounds like that record . Metal stuff tends to be very , very shiny , and use samples and all that , and we were like , “ No , let ’ s not do the same thing that everybody else is doing right now in this genre .”
So that was one time where I was really pushed out of the box on everything ; no vocal , no drum samples , very natural sounding , but a very tight record at the end of the day . So , it still fits in my repertoire of work , even though it was approached in a completely different way than any other record .
PS : With a record like that , would you still for the sake of polish go in and time the drums and do other similar editing work , or approach it with more of a mentality of “ Let ’ s just fix things where they absolutely need to be fixed ?”
Guaiana : It was right in the middle . I didn ’ t engineer drums on that record , but I produced pretty much the entire thing from beginning to end . We did drums last ; I do drums last on almost every record I make . It comes back to that production thing I was talking about , where I never feel like a record ’ s finished being produced until even after mixing . In my mind , why commit to the biggest instrument with the most rhythmic [ influence ] in a song right at the beginning ?
That record was interesting because I wanted to engineer the drums , but it just didn ’ t happen to work out that way . We tracked everything to fake drums , so it was already really tight as is . But we had a day with Nathan [ Bulla ], the drummer , and planned out every kick and snare pattern . I told him where he can do fills that will benefit [ the songs ], like “ Here , have fun in this spot , do your own thing .”
When it came to editing , I wasn ’ t there , but the idea behind it was simple – for one , Nathan ’ s unreal on drums so he might as well just be on the click the whole time – but we basically had the idea of “ Don ’ t edit it unless you play it back and it sounds wrong .” You know , if it sounds pushed , then edit it , but if you ’ ve got 16 bars and the drums are perfect there , just leave them as is . And thankfully , like I said , Nathan ’ s tight enough that it might as well have been fully edited . There ’ s definitely drum edits on it , but so much of that record was perfectly played .
PS : The idea of tracking drums last is really neat . So , for the most part you ’ re recording the rest of the instruments to MIDI drums ?
Guaiana : Yeah , just MIDI drums or a rough track of drums that we ’ ll do in pre-production or something like that . It ’ s just because a lot of the times when bands come in , they always leave vocals to last , and I can ’ t make rhythmic decisions in a song if a vocal isn ’ t there . I also track all guitars DI so we can always grab a guitar and punch in and change a part . You can ’ t do that with drums unless you leave a drum kit set up for the entire session .
Past pre-production , if the part changes because the vocal has now dictated that there ’ s a better result , then we know we ’ ll shape the song around that vocal and change the MIDI drums to match . Then when we go to do the real drums , we ’ ve got the reference to be like “ Hey , don ’ t forget that now we ’ re doing this here instead of what the demo did .”
PS : I guess that also allows you to sort of dial in your drum sounds in accordance with the rest of the production .
Guaiana : Yes , it very much does . I ’ m not a big tune drums to the song guy but I am big into things like swapping out a snare to get a bit of a different vibe or faster attack .
PS : Referring to DI guitars , are you primarily re-amping using sims ? If so , which do you prefer ?
40 PROFESSIONAL SOUND