Drums are an integral part of reggae music, they provide the feel and groove of a certain song. This weeks session involved drum tracking for the three main songs on the EP. Chris Gill was once again called upon to play the drums while O’Brien played along as guide for him in the live room while Chris was set up in the isolation booth. Phil and I had already pre-booked out the microphones we had planned to use after researching how a lot of reggae producers and engineers set up microphones on a drum kit for their pieces. We decided on the standard stereo approach for the overheads with two AKG 414’s.

We settled on a different technique with the overheads with the cardioid polar pattern not completely directed at the kit. An AKG D112 was used facing the kicks front skin with a pillow in between as we had a very booming sound at first but the pillow really did the trick. An SM57 was used on the snare drum to capture the high-hat and the typical reggae rim-shot.

SM57 microphone position

After we finally settled on a good sounding kit we decided to start recording takes with conversations in between with O’Brien and Chris on what we thought about the takes and what could have been done better. This was a very important part of the session as I felt we were all involved as a team and that my input was helping push the project forward. After the session was complete we thanked Chris and listened to the takes we had recorded and was very happy with them, as was our client O’Brien Hesson. Next week we aim to be tracking bass guitar to then complete the majority of the rhythm instrumentation of the three main tracks.