Flea Circus Band Blog Santa Barbara Band

Drummer’s Corner – Genesis

What a great story. On my annual college golf trip in June of 2009, I reconnected with an old friend who is the sound engineer and producer for a Santa Barbara-based band called Flea Circus. It turns out that by chance, we were paired-up as roommates for this trip. Over a beer and in response to a flood of questions from me, he went on to describe the band and it’s need for a drummer. I asked how they recorded their material. Sure enough – PC-based, direct-to- disk technology was the answer. Since both of us are in the I T (computer) business, the conversation quickly revolved around the notion of using the Internet to pass material back and forth between studios – the band’s studio in Santa Barbara, California and mine in Farmingdale, New York. Hence, the origin of the coast-to-coast collaboration.

My friend is known as Cutmaster J, but I’ll just call him J. A while back, J sent me a stereo track of a tune with the drums (emulated with a drum machine) on a separate stereo track. My mission was to play to this tune, record it, and send it back via the Internet. J would do his magic mixing the tune and determining what pieces worked, what didn’t and then supply me with the appropriate feedback. After a few structure changes and iterations, we had something that had both personality and flow. I liked it. J then asked for a final take in which I used 8 tracks (microphones) for the drums. I recorded 7 takes in this configuration and sent the 3 best for review. From my perspective, the audio portion of this project was done.

During the course of the recordings, J mentioned that we would be making a video of this tune and would need some video and still shots. Under his direction, the material was produced and sent. The raw video files were gigabytes – thank goodness for high-speed Internet and FTP services.

After some time of tweaking and syncing on the West coast, the first draft of the video was uploaded to the FTP site for my review. I can’t describe how great it was to see results. The team had produced something, and it is good. As I write this, J and the video team are putting the final tweaks on the video and it should be publicly available on YouTube very soon. Stay tuned.

Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank J and the Flea Circus band members (who I have yet to meet or even speak with) for including me in this project. Special thanks to Larry Kohn, my first college roommate, drum tech, audio engineer and video cameraman for his time and energy. Also, thanks to Denise McGlauflin for producing those still shots of me in a do rag. And saving the best for last, my number one groupie and wife, Laurie (she digs the do rag, but she'll never admit it).

Mikey

Drummer’s Corner – Next Three Tunes

May 25, 2010

I recently received drafts of 3 new songs. The songs are quite different from each other and require very different drum parts. So far, I have written out the structures of all the tunes and put together some basic beats and fills for each. I plan to continue to build the "toolbox" of items to select from for these tunes and set up the studio for recording.

Since we are in "draft" mode at this time, I plan to use 4 microphones (tracks) - 2 overhead, 1 in the kick and the Bayer ambient which is positioned one bass drum length from the kick drum slightly higher than center and tilted slightly back so that it is aimed at the bottom of the toms. This should give a good enough mix for J to give me feedback on my structure, phrasing, dynamics, etc.

June 7, 2010

Here in the studio, the first draft of the next 3 tunes have been completed and uploaded to the FTP site for review.  Two of the three songs were recorded on the first take.  The third tune is quite powerful and I dug a little depper than was probably necessary considering that we are just looking to see what works and what doesn't at this point.

A long night, indeed.  Mission accomplished ... for now.

Coast to Coast

J and Mikey sitting in Mikey's rehearsal space out on Long Island talking about the next album. Mikey will record the drums here and put them up on an FTP and we will down load them to our studio in Santa Barbara and lay tracks over the top. Pretty simple!