Over the last several months I've set aside drum recording days. Most of them are for an unannounced project. One, however, has been with Those Fucking Snowflakes.

Up until recently, the unannounced project's drums have been recorded at Soundskills [page under construction], the creative charity in the outskirts of Preston that I've been a service user at for nine years now. Unfortunately, the friend helping me at the desk has suffered an injury and I can't record there in the near future, while they recover.

The recent Snowflakes recording happened on Monday 11 November 2024 at Trapdoor Studios in Liverpool. It was my first time there; I was in at 10 in the morning and out seven hours later.

Kit setup

As is practice for a lot of drummers, I tend to use most of the house shells and bring breakables with me – snare, cymbals, bass pedal, sticks. They're called “breakables” because they're the most expensive parts to replace, and also the quickest parts to substitute. It does make for faster setup time than say, if we were to bring an entire kit of our own. However, setup time at Trapdoor wasn't fast. The photo above shows me playing a hodgepodge of different shells, just for the sake of the right timbre. Trapdoor Studios has a good amount of different shells to choose from. Picking the right ones was part of the time taken.

At Soundskills, I typically don't switch out parts, instead preferring to use the kit as-is. But setup time is long there too.

It averages 40 minutes to get everything ready. In both cases, the bulk of that time is taken by the positioning and wiring of mics, and me needing to play each drum, or all of them together, to see if we've got the right postprocessing added.

Recording process

Time is of the essence in a studio session. We only have so many hours, and so many tries, to get something sounding and feeling right. Monday's recording session saw me do four takes of each song recorded there, then the best parts of each take would be combined together as needed. Sometimes we didn't need that at all.

Most recording sessions, I'm typically there for the one song.

But whether it's the one song or multiple songs, the pressure is on. The pressure is even greater if I'm thinking of content for the ol' socials, because if I want an unbroken bit of visuals, then I have no choice but to get a good take without any splicing. It does affect how confident I feel when I'm on the kit, but either way, I'm gonna make a good go of it.

How the day goes

In a three-hour session I typically get a snack and some teas to bulk up and ease the airways. I eat and drink as and when needed, typically between takes.

In a full-day session like what I had on Monday, I have to make sure I bring lunch, drinks, and all of the equipment I'm using. Food break does also happen between takes, but it's not as haphazard. Everyone involved sets aside a time for lunch so we all can continue working as soon as we're done. It just feels like there's more that can potentially go wrong, so doing what we can to smooth things, including timing our lunch breaks together, can help.

Closing thoughts

I look forward to the day when more songs featuring my drumming make it to streaming sites / physical media / people's ears. We creatives know how important it is to have something to show for what we say we do, and sometimes that process of getting that media finished can take months, or even years. With regards to the drum takes, as soon as those are done, there's typically mixing and mastering to do after that.

And if one day, you happen to hear more of my drumming, I hope you enjoy it. x