Jeff Loomis - the recording chronicles (2011)

EC2's...... Mmmmmm!!! Not sure if want. Bad experience with those sadly!

I think they are nice for metal! Very full bodied and punchy and easy to tune. But for my taste they are lacking some overtones.
Don't mix them up with the EC1s, which basically look the same - They are terrible!
 
Well, I had anticipated making a few more drum updates throughout the week, but after about ten hours of drum tracking each day, the last thing I wanted to do at night was sit down and write about it :lol:

We finished tracking the drums yesterday and Dirk flew back home this morning. It was a real pleasure working with him—he's a very friendly, humble, down to earth dude who is easy to talk to and fun to hang out with. And obviously, he's an absolute beast on the drum kit. One thing that really impressed me about his playing is that after warming up, I literally never once felt like he was regressing on his takes at all. In my experience, drummers will normally play well for a decent period of time, and then start to seriously decline as they get tired, but Dirk just never seemed to hit that point of decline…he would just go and go and go, and play the same parts as many times as he needed until he felt like he had nailed it to the best of his abilities. Never once did he resort to "Well, that was pretty good, but you can fix that, right?", it was always "No, let's do it again", even if it was like take number 20 (not to suggest that he actually needed 20 takes on very many of the parts!). We did do some punch-ins and some comping for fills and whatnot, but a big part of that was the fact that Dirk literally hadn't heard most of Jeff's new material until about a month ago, and there were some beats, fills, and structural things that had to be pretty much worked out in the studio.

Anyway, I took multi-samples of the kick, two snares (which both sound awesome, and were both actually used in the songs—one for the faster material and one for the ballads), and toms, so I'll get some of that goodness uploaded on here eventually so long as I get permission to do so.

Also, we got tons of good video footage and some good photos too, so I'll get more stuff posted online when I can.
 
Umm those skins look extremely beat for just being put on!!! 0.o Or did I misunderstand something?

I took that first drum photo at the end of the first day, which was about eight hours of tuning, mic placement, input EQing, etc. The tom heads really didn't sound significantly different at that point, despite the fact that you can see some of the wear. We also replaced the heads once again half way through the songs.
 
Anyway what custom amp is that?

There's a guy who lives across the street from the studio, and he makes custom amps by himself in his shop (really cool dude who seemed to know a lot). I'm not sure how he and the owner of the studio linked up, but they're basically branding his amps as "Fastback" amps, and they have them around for sessions at the studio, in an effort to generate interest from artists who record there. I think there are also a couple music shops in Seattle who have started selling his amps...

Anyway, they sounded pretty cool and chunky from what I could tell. We're going to borrow a couple during guitar tracking/reamping and see if they make the cut against everything else we have access to!
 
PS, I've been teasing Jeff all week that he ripped off Hoobastank :lol: 1:00 in the first video and 0:36 in the second.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=544BGa0mpI8&t=1m[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxwsu8JfvVU&t=36s[/ame]
 
Also, we got tons of good video footage and some good photos too, so I'll get more stuff posted online when I can.

Magnifico!

Sounds like everything is going peachy; Dirk is quite impressive and your description of him paints an ambitious, humble, and inspired player/individual.



one for the faster material and one for the ballads)

The inclusion of slower ballads makes me :tickled: (Azure Haze might be my favorite from ZOP). I can only imagine what soundscapes will be created on the Rhoades tracks.

Also, does this record have a name yet?
 
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Does anyone know what drum loop software was used for the song "departure" from Zero Order Phase?

I'm looking for something similar.