OK Let's Talk Y2KrimDrum Gear - For the Crimson TCOL Record

I used nine V drum pads, five DrumTec pads and a Korg wave drum. The V pads went into a Roland TD10, and the Drum Tec pads went into my D Drum 3 brain. The signals from the V kick and V snare pads were ‘Y’ to access both brains from  the same pad. An additional pad sat under the hi-hat area, to my left, and was ‘Y’ to the kick pad, allowing me to play the same kick sample with my hand.

The midi out of the TD10 and D Drum3, and Notron sequencer went into an MX8 midi patchbay, this allowed me the speed of direct  analog input to the V & D brains, but the flexibility to route and merge anything via midi. Additional midi sound sources I used were the Alesis DM pro and an Emu Audity 2000 (the audity  was never used on the record). I could also access my samplers, an old Kurzweil K2000 and a Roland S760, plus sounds in realtime from my beatboxs, an MC303 and a Tribe ER1. However for this Crim record no beatboxes were used. ProjeKct X is a different story....beatboxes survived!!!

All  my audio went through a Mackie 24 X 8, so I could buss 8 inputs to tape, an additional 2 inputs to tape came from the B mix. The 2 mix was used as a live monitor mix after going through a Trace Elliot amp and Celestion speakers. In addition I had a TC Fireworx and a Korg Kaos pad as effects in my rig and at my feet two stomp boxes (a comptortion and an Electro Harmonics Micro bass synth) to send to tape. Tama kick pedal, Vic Firth sticks, maglight and a red screwdriver.

After we got to tape we really went to work. Engineer Bill Munyon and I transferred ‘the take’ to Pro Tools where we could replace or add sounds and effects, and correct both the midi and human latency. Often we made additional passes through my Fireworx or put various combinations through my Dayking EQ or guitar amps (a matchless or small smokie amp) and re-mic them to add air, space and fizz. A Sherman Filter Bank was also used in abundance to further recharge the limp sounds. Some PT plug-ins (amp farm, vari-fi, lo-fi, pitch change, time expansion, Reso & Bruno) were used. On a few occasions additional Paiste cymbals, Saragosa percussion, Taos drums, a bit of found percussion or an old drumkit were overdubbed. As we approached the  final mix  my drums might be as wide as 28 tracks, so instruments were sub mixed in ProTools down to 14 faders on the mixing desk. The general approached was 2 tracks each for kicks, snares, toms, cyms, samples, loops & effects. I generally had 3 snare sounds (original, ringy and crispy) arranged in stereo on the two snare faders. Similarly the feet (boomy, chesty, etc.) were brought up on two faders and cymbal faders might include metal overdubs or metallic effects and so on. Additional compression and a bit of 'verb were added at the mix. That's basically it.