Back In The Studio

The little red light goes on, and I become the worst drummer in the world.

Well, that's how I feel, anyway.

The studio has a remarkable way of stripping away all the smoke and mirrors, all the fancy tricks that have no real place on a pop record, and any pretense or misplaced ego that enable you to think you're better than you are.

Today, I once again found myself behind the kit recording drums for Sean Waldron. And if I wasn't clear enough about it already, let me reiterate: the studio is an intense and reflective experience for me. A certain kind of pressure is created when you care a great deal about the music you're playing, including the nuances & subtleties of your own art form as well as the desire to capture a performance worthy of being listened to time and time again. Everything in the studio lives and breathes underneath a microscope, and even the smallest imperfections begin to become glaringly apparent as you listen back time and again to a track.

In the midst of all of this reside my own personal goals for the studio experience. First, I always want to be progressing. I want all the hours and blood, sweat, & tears of repetitious practice to pay off. I want to bring more to the table than I brought last time. Unfortunately, much like other aspects of life that require acute attention to detail, sometimes the nature of hard work does not easily lend itself to observable signs of growth. Like a person working hard on a fitness & diet routine, the progress may not be immediately obvious to the person doing it on a day-to-day basis. But, once they run into someone they haven't seen in six months, usually the results of all the hard work and effort become readily apparent.

And thus, the bridge to the second goal of my time in the studio: to impress the other musicians in the room. The artist, the producer, the engineer, the other players... all of them are targets to impress. While the vast majority of the listening public may not perceive the miniscule elements of what makes for a great performance, all of the cats in the control room certainly do, and their approval is essentially the tacit endorsement of my peers. It means the world to me and I always, (always) want those guys to say, "Man, that rocked."

Art is hard. Music is hard. Like everything worth doing, doing it well is difficult. The studio is the arena, where everything you've worked so hard to achieve fights to create something truly worthwhile. It can be frustrating and downright devastating at times, but it can also be immensely rewarding and vindicating. There are few things as cool than creating music to which people truly love to listen, and to do that in a timeless way, one has to take the plunge into the acoustically-treated walls of the recording studio.

I can't wait to go back again.