DRUMMING
During my 25 years of professional experience, I've had the opportunity to play with a great and diverse range of artists and productions, including the Lion King on Broadway, Woody Allen's Dixieland Jazz band, Bill Haley's Comets, the Midtown Men, Burlesque to Broadway, Michael Powers, and a plethora of independent New York artists and theater productions. Please feel free to peruse my resumé, and don't hesitate to contact me about adding my drumming skills to your music project, stage production or recording project. No project is too small.
On Stage:
IN THE STUDIO:
One of my favorite aspects of music making is recording in the studio. It requires a meticulous mindset from a playing, sonic, and conceptual standpoint. I take a lot of pride in my session work, which has been refined through my decades of experience. Here are a few Samples of some of the studio projects that I've been involved in:
Pop and Rock:
Jazz and More:
Brushes:
My Home Studio!
The easiest way for me to provide you with my drumming magic is to create it for you in my new personal recording studio. With my Apogee interface, ART Preamps, and impressive arsenal of microphones, I can achieve a professional sound equal to that of paying big money for a big studio. The advantages of me creating a track "offline" for you is that I can really take my time and get it right, without being under the time pressure of expensive studio rates.
My Electronic Studio Option:
While the above samples are of me playing in various professional studio applications, I have done quite a bit of work in the last few years utilizing my electronic setup. This setup allows me to create convincingly real sounding drum tracks. I do this by actually playing the parts live on my electronic drums while recording the MIDI data into a computer. Then, I make whatever fine-tuning velocity and timing adjustments are necessary to the performance. Finally, I select the appropriate sounds from a variety of professional sample libraries and tweak them to get them just right before rendering them to audio files.
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Should you decide to go this route, all you would have to do is send me a mix of your tune, and I'll play drums to it, and send you back a folder with all of the drum tracks as separate audio files, just like if you were to have tracked the drums at a real studio. Listen for yourself to examples of my virtual drums:
Sound Chasing:
Utilizing the technology explained in the paragraph above, I have employed a common production technique called "sound chasing", where a producer or artist attempts to achieve a sound and feel from a song by another artist. In the following examples, I selected sounds from my various sample libraries to emulate the drum sounds on a few popular tunes you'll probably recognize. The first part of each track is the original song, then when it drops out, the drums continue with my emulation:
Rates:
Generally, my rates are flexible, as no 2 projects are alike. Here are some general starting points, though:
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$500 for a full day in the studio (up to 10 hours), $250 for a half day (up to 5 hours). Transportation and cartage of gear to and from the studio will be negotiated as an additional charge. If the studio has drums and percussion I can use, that could bring the cost down. FYI, many top session drummers use the studio's house drums on most sessions, and just bring a few snares and cymbals of their own. It's a New York thing... Heck, there's even a big name session drummer (this guy has recorded tracks for Pink, Alicia Keys, Britney Spears...) who doesn't even own a set of drums!!
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If it's just a few tracks that you need drums on, that can be negotiated at a fair price, though in this case, I strongly recommend the following:
Home Studio tracks - $100 a song. This includes consultation, and a few revisions (of course, doing later revisions isn't even an option when recording tracks in a studio) to make sure you get exactly what you want, and I'll work endlessly to make sure you do! Upon our consultation, I'll gage whether using my sample library is appropriate, or doing it live in my studio, where I'm capable of getting great sounds. Regardless of the method, I'll add basic percussion (tambourine and shakers) at no additional cost! Also, did I mention that I'm a great bongo player?
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If you do a little research, you'll find my rates to be extremely fair and affordable, especially for a drummer who has more than 20 years of professional experience.