MATT BROWN: Perfect Drum Sounds at the Source, The Physics of Drumheads, Why Tuning to Notes is a Myth

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, and now your host, Joel Wanasek. Hey everybody. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. I am your host, Joel Wanasek. And man, does it feel awesome to be back on the mic here? I've been really busy. We've been working on all kinds of really, really exciting things, so I haven't really been podcasting a lot lately. We've been just so busy and one of these amazing things is what I want to talk to you about right now. I have a very, very special guest on here, and that is Mr. Matt Brown. What's up, man? How you doing?

Speaker 2 (00:00:36):

Oh, how you doing, man? I'm doing good.

Speaker 1 (00:00:38):

It is always a pleasure to have you and Matt, if you're not familiar with Matt, Matt is literally one of the world's best drum techs, one of the sickest drummers and drum engineers I think I've ever met. I mean, Matt's pretty much a genius and he's worked with so many incredible producers like Elvis Best Cat and Jason Suecof, Mark Lewis, and Tony Bataglia and the List, Pete Thornton, the list just goes on. He's tech for so many incredible drummers like Alex Rudger and Anup Sastry, and you know what I mean? The list goes on of the people that you've worked with, Matt, and you are what I consider the best of the best and a hall guy. And I'm really excited because we've put together something with you that I think is absolutely incredible. I shouldn't say, I think I believe is absolutely incredible. And that is the ultimate drum production course.

(00:01:28):

And what we decided to do is we decided to sit down here at Unstoppable Recording Machine, and we thought about speed mixing. When we put out speed mixing last year, let's just say seven or eight months ago, we changed hundreds of people's games for them, literally improve their lives. You should see the testimonials. I can't wait to reintroduce this and let people see the impact that it's had on their peers in the community. It is just incredible some of the progress some of these people have made, and we really, really wanted to have that kind of impact here in the drums sphere. And we were thinking, we're like, how can we make the be all, end all drum course something that literally takes anything that's ever been done and destroys everything and totally reframes everything, and just gives you a really powerful, unique and interesting angle that's going to really help people up in their game and just totally change it.

(00:02:19):

So we thought about all of the people out there that are amazing at this and all the different texts and stuff, and there was one person we kept coming back to, and that was Matt Brown, because Matt is the guy. So Matt, man, what can I say? I am beyond excited to have you here and to talk about this course and what's in it and break it down. And we've opened it up and some people are already in it and experiencing it and loving it and man, it feels awesome. So tell it, man, how does it feel to be releasing your ultimate drum production?

Speaker 2 (00:02:51):

Man, first of all, thanks for having me on again, and it's always a pleasure to talk to you and I'm super excited about getting this course out there. It's like I've always wanted to, I'm one of those guys that gives away information to students and to, I love just educating people and to be able to have basically my 35 plus years of experience to be able to get that out and to share that with the world is just super exciting.

Speaker 1 (00:03:22):

Can I just rudely stop you right there and just reiterate how important what you just said is because think about it like this. I mean, most people out there that are top tier guys that charge big bucks and Matt is very expensive to hire and worth every penny and many times more. A lot of people that have gotten to that level of proficiency, they're not willing to share their information with people. They're not going to come to you and say, you know what? Everything I've ever learned, I had to do it the hard way, but here you go. I'm going to package this up. And something really nice and simple for you to understand, as long as you put in the work over time, you're going to just totally transform your gain. So I just really want to emphasize how incredible it is that Matt has taken the time to share with you this information, just the absolute fast track of how to do this stuff and how to really accelerate, I mean, God, what I would've given in my career, Matt, to be able to access this information because the first time I met you and just started listening to you talk about drums, I kind of just sat back and went like, oh, wow.

(00:04:27):

It just totally changed the game for me. I've never thought about drums like that. I thought I was pretty good at drums too when I met you, but I didn't know anything. So man, so you've been doing this for 35 years?

Speaker 2 (00:04:39):

Well, I mean, if we start counting from when I started playing, which is when I was three, I'm at 39 years now. So I mean, I was very fortunate. I do not discount the fact that I am extremely blessed to have been able to grow up with a supportive family first off. But secondly, with a father who not only was a great drummer and still plays to this day, but also is an amazing engineer and has had a recording studio since I was a kid, since I was the littlest of little. So I've grown up not only as a player in a supportive environment, but as a player, I started to learn the engineering side as well just because I was around the studio. And to have a mentor and that be my father, I know I'm really lucky and most people don't get to experience a life of learning a craft like I did.

(00:05:41):

And I'm very fortunate and a lot of the stuff that I'm sharing in the is from him, but there's also a lot of stuff that I've gone even further than him into researching it. And it's really cool to be able to, I'm just super excited to get this out there because I'm not holding any secrets. I'm literally telling everybody everything that I do on a consistent basis and how to basically win when it comes to recording drums. Not only just get the tone you're looking for, but do it in the quickest amount of time ever.

Speaker 1 (00:06:17):

That's just amazing. I'm totally blown away by that story. That's incredible. I still can't believe you agreed to do this with us, but I can't thank you enough for being cool and sharing your information. I mean, for me, it personally, that really resonates because I'm self-taught man, and I had to really struggle to come up and I was in a basement in the middle of nowhere, cornfield, Wisconsin, and there were no big studios or any big bands or anybody doing anything, and I had to figure this stuff up and really claw my way out, and I could only find what I could find on the internet, and the rest was just trial and error, and there was no one to, Hey, hey dude, how do I do this? So to be able to have someone like you come in and be able to be a mentor for anybody that takes this course and just to learn from you, I don't think there's ever really been an opportunity in drum production like this before, and there may not ever be again.

(00:07:11):

I mean, like I said, I kind of feel like we wanted to with this one, the bar for us was like, let's build the coffin and then put the nail on it because it's just like, I don't know. It's incredible when I watch the content that you've put together, I mean, like I said, I've been doing this for a long time and have had a very successful career, and I look back and I'm watching these videos and I'm picking up stuff, and I'm like, I did not know that. That's incredible. I never thought about that. And I'm sitting there smacking my head and I'm like, man, I want to go record some drum.

Speaker 2 (00:07:42):

That's the goal is I hope that it's an inspirational to people and it makes them want to record. I feel like, and we're still kind of coming out of this era of not recording drums. It's still very prominent to use only samples and only programming. And a big part of that was because recording drums is difficult and I like to, it's never occurred to me at least. It's never felt, to me it's the benchmark of a good engineer, but it really is the benchmark of a good engineer. Drums are the hardest thing to record, period. Absolutely. There's so many moving parts, there's so many variables. I mean, when you watch the course, you'll see how many variables there really are. There are a ton of little tiny things that can make the biggest difference. And I'm just excited to get this out there. I mean, I don't think you guys have really tapped into how I was actually trying to put this together before you guys asked me to do it, and I had been talking to my father about maybe I should put together a recording, like drum tuning recording thing, and this idea had been floating around for a while, and then when you guys hit me up to do it, I was like, yes, this is the perfect time.

(00:09:05):

I mean, somebody's asking me to do something I already intended to do now, and it's a perfect platform to do it. You have such a killer community with just people that are just going for it, and it's exciting. I can't wait. I've seen the success of what speed mixing has done to those people that have taken it. I've seen it and I've heard it, and those people that are contacting me for advice or feedback is almost all of them have taken the speed mixing class and the results are fantastic, and I can't wait to have that kind of impact on the community. I just want people to get great drum sounds. I'm so sick of hearing crappy drum sounds.

Speaker 1 (00:09:54):

Absolutely. And I really appreciate what you just said. And like I said, for me, I was self-taught, really passionate about education. For me, this is about giving back to the community and trying to give people a real chance to do something and to learn the best of the best stuff and give kids or just whoever's out taking this stuff, the opportunity to really, really fast track and to push the art farther because it's really about the art and something I'm very passionate about. I love that you're so passionate about this. It's just absolutely amazing and such an exciting time to be alive in production, and I just can't even imagine what some of the people are going to be doing with this information like five years from now.

Speaker 2 (00:10:35):

And

Speaker 1 (00:10:35):

That's kind of like the thing that keeps me up in the middle of the night and gets me excited is that if we can have some kind of small impact doing that kind of thing, that's really exciting. So for those of you guys here listening, if you head over to ultimate drum production.com, you can check out Matt's course here that we're offering. That's ultimate drum production.com, and the course is ultimate drum Production. I think we should dig in here and kind of just talk about each section and maybe give these guys here some good tips. Let's talk about it. So

(00:11:06):

This course is in six sections, and the first one is anatomy. And basically from my webinars I've been doing, I'm going to say that basically what anatomy in a nutshell is, and I'll give you a quick overview of them. Well, Matt, you can just dive in and start talking, but basically anatomy, you're going to learn that every single part of a drum has a sonic fingerprint that adds up to how the drum sounds, and as well as you're going to learn how to maintain your kit and repair everything. So you're going to learn all these little variables. So what can you tell us about the anatomy section?

Speaker 2 (00:11:36):

Well, I mean, first of all, it's a definite deep dive. I know drummers that don't know enough about drums to repair them. Most

Speaker 1 (00:11:49):

Don't even know how to tune less than 3%. In my experience as a producer, most,

Speaker 2 (00:11:52):

Right? Yeah, most don't know how to tune. And I mean, unfortunately, that's kind of expected from drummers, which is very sad to begin with. That's sad on its own. But then what's even more sad is if something happens to break or to fall apart, they don't know enough about the instrument to repair it and to maintain it. And so the first part, the anatomy basically just dissects the drum as if it was just like an anatomy course on the human body. It goes through and it tells you the guts, the bones, the structure, everything that involves making up a drum so that first of all, you can maintain the drum and you can repair it if something happens. That's ultimately the longevity of an instrument is really important in a studio environment. So having a working equipment is goal number one with that section. But the thing that most people don't realize is exactly what you said, that each little tiny thing that makes up the drum has a sonic fingerprint on the sound of the drum itself.

(00:12:57):

And what that does is by knowing the anatomy, we can then change up the way the kit sounds by changing out some of those parts that are very affordable and easily swappable. So you can actually take your one studio kit that you have, and by changing out maybe the hoops and definitely changing out the heads and maybe changing the way that it's sitting on the tom stand or what type of feet are on the floor, Tom, or all these little variables, you can change up with those pieces. You can change up the sound of the drum itself to add a little bit more variety to what you have as a studio. If you're limited with kits and don't have a wide selection, you'll be able to add some variety. But more importantly, the end game of that anatomy section is to be able to kind of predict what pieces you'll need in order to get the sound that you want by knowing that certain heads sound a certain way and that certain hoops have a certain type of attack to 'em, and that certain shells have an EQ setting that really sits well for that type of wood.

(00:14:06):

And those type of things start to add up, and you'll be able to basically have the sound in your head, and by knowing the pieces that are involved in the drum, you'll be able to put together the perfect sound for what you hear. It's

Speaker 1 (00:14:20):

Like sonic Legos. And that was a really important thing when I met you the first time, Matt, we were on a drum sampling session with Al and man, Al was like, dude, I got this drum tech. He's incredible. I have to hire him. I won't do this session. I'm like, dude, I have a guy. He's badass. We'll fly him out. He's more affordable, blah, blah, blah. And like, dude, no. And I'm like, come on, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, trust me, don't be an idiot. I'm like, fine, it's your drum pack. I flew down there and oh my God, he made me eat my foot. It was crazy watching you guys just sit in a room and just be like, Al's like, here's what I want achieve. And you're like, okay, we're going to do this with this head, with this shell. We're going to do this.

(00:14:57):

We're going to set it up over here. We're going to put the mics this, we're going to use these mics. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, show offs. And then I get in. Then you started hitting drums, and I started listening to the speakers, and I looked at Joey and Joe by partners at Drum Forge, and we're like, holy shit, that sounds incredible. And it was just like at that moment, it was a major aha for me that I realized. I was like, man, I just had my mind blowing, because the other techs I've worked with, they just come in and they tune drums. They're never like, look, dude, if you swap, okay, what kind of head do we need? Okay, let's swap out this stand. Little things like that, they don't think, they don't know, they don't understand. And also that was the thing that really blew my mind too, is when I actually learned that the head was the biggest contributing factor to the sound of the drum. How many times, man, a drummers come in and be like, dude, my new binga shells, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now I'm just like, yo, what heads you got on that thing?

Speaker 2 (00:15:52):

Yeah, exactly, exactly. The cars aren't worth crap unless the tires are good. And that's exactly, you can have a Lamborghini, but if you have old tires on it, it's not going to drive very well. And that's

Speaker 1 (00:16:07):

And the right tires.

Speaker 2 (00:16:08):

Yeah, exactly. You have to have the right tires for the vehicle. I'm just using that example. I just changed out the tires on my truck, and as soon as I got the new tires in, I was like, oh my God, this is a new, my truck is brand new. It rides so smooth, it's so quiet. This is amazing. And I mean, that's exactly what drumheads do to the drum. You can have the best shells in the world, but if you pick the wrong head combination, you're never going to get the sound that you want out of those drums. And yeah, it's funny, when you guys hired me for the drum forge thing, my first reply, we started emailing back and forth about what I was like, okay, well, what kind of sounds are you looking for? And all of this. And I think the first response from Joey was Just bring whatever you got.

(00:16:56):

And I was like, okay, this is a much more detailed question, detailed question than you guys are just, you bring whatever you got. And I'm like, no, no, no. Each one of these drums can go, every drum can go any direction we want. So what type of style profile do you want? How much of diversity and sound? Do you want me to pick heads that are going to stick to the rock genre, or do you want me to pick heads that are going to kind of exemplify and be the best for that drum? Or do you want me to push things in different directions stylistically on purpose? There was much more detail to that, and I think the reply was, well, I don't know, just make everything sound the best that it can.

Speaker 1 (00:17:36):

I mean, we're not used to working guys like you because I mean, like I said, I've hired techs, but no drum tech has ever asked me any of those questions. And furthermore, I learned to compensate for my lack of understanding how to record drums anywhere near your level by simply just becoming really, really good at mixing

Speaker 2 (00:17:57):

And

Speaker 1 (00:17:57):

Especially mixing samples. And I found that once I started learning this stuff, then when a drummer came in, I was much more effective at just making my own samples in my own studio and just making each drum sound a lot better, and I had a better understanding of what heads were going to be better. And it totally changed everything for me. And I kind of look back at that moment as that, like I said, that aha epiphany where I was like, I don't know, just the way I viewed drums changed after that day, and now it's just like, so it's really great that you're getting this information out. I went through almost an entire career without knowing it, and I could only imagine if I had learned this in the first year of my career, man. Oh man, my drum mixes would've been so badass.

Speaker 2 (00:18:39):

Yeah. The thing is, the whole course is designed around the source's king principle, and it really exemplifies if you get the instrument sounding good to begin with, then the mix, everything after that is so easy and becomes a creative, it becomes a creative decision, and you can work in the moment as opposed to problem solving the whole time. And I feel, I know personally as a mixer and I get tracks that are not recorded by me. I've spent so much time just trying to figure out how to make the drums sound good, that it's a majority of my mix time. It's like,

Speaker 1 (00:19:23):

Let me give you a secret. You replaced all of them with drums that you've recorded and don't tell the band.

Speaker 2 (00:19:29):

I mean, there have been a couple times that I've had a kit set up in the room already, and I was like, okay, I'm just going to rerecord this and I'll just go out and play the same part. And they'll never know. They don't know. They just don't know.

Speaker 1 (00:19:40):

But I mean, the thing is, you work on more natural genres than I do, so

Speaker 2 (00:19:44):

Right, right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:19:47):

You can't get away with it. I can where I can just be like, yeah, I'm just going to change snares.

Speaker 2 (00:19:50):

Right, right. Yeah. A lot of the work I do is a lot more natural sounding. If samples are used, they're used at mainly as just kind of reinforcement and evening out dynamics. They're not used as an upfront sound, and there's certain genres that that sample sound is desired. And I get it. I understand where it comes from and I appreciate it for what it is. And when I've worked in those genres, it's been my job as the tech or the engineer to get those sampled sounding drums from the beginning. And so this course shows you how to do that. I mean, it really goes into detail about how to get the drums to sound like a sample from the start. That way, the drummer, the psychological response of what happens when the drum kit sounds good to the drummer is just, you can't,

Speaker 1 (00:20:38):

Its incredible.

Speaker 2 (00:20:39):

You can't even describe it. I literally had a session yesterday with a band that I'm working with and an up and coming younger artists, and I had the drums set up when he showed up and they were ready to go, and he sat down and started playing. He was like, oh my God, these drums sound so good. And so when it came time to do drums after we worked on the song, it's literally he was in another zone as far as a player that I hadn't seen him play like that before. I had worked with him a couple times and the drums would always sound good, but this particular session was a little bit different than the rest, than the previous ones because where I set the drums up and the way they were set up and tuned and mics for this particular song just fits so well. There was this clicking moment within his head that he just first take of every single section was like, that's probably going to be it. Okay, well, we'll do another one just to see what you do to make it a variety, a little bit variety to it.

Speaker 1 (00:21:35):

I don't feel like everybody necessarily makes a connection. Here's the deal. So imagine this, the drummer walks into the studio the first time, and this is something I talk about we were doing on the webinars for this.

(00:21:46):

The drummer walks into the studio for the first time, and if the kit sounds like crap or it's positioned wrong in the room, isn't tech properly, the wrong things are picked for the sound and they sit down and play, they're going to get nervous. They're going to be like, man, I kind of sound like crap today. And then they're going to lose their confidence and they get all these people staring at them through the glass. The pressure's on the label, the a and r there, you know what I mean? It's stressful right now. Imagine this scenario. It's like boom. You go have gone through ultimate drum production. You are confident, you have learned from Matt Brown. You sit down, you get this crushing sound, you know exactly what you're doing. The drummer sits down on the kit and his eyes open up and they go, oh man, I've never sounded this good.

(00:22:23):

And they're excited. They're playing better. They're playing harder and cleaner more confidently. The room is going to sound better. Your equipment, your microphone, your gear is going to sound better. It's just going to enhance its way all the way up the ladder and translate into a much better recording. And the best part is the psychology. Imagine that. Then you walk into the room like a boss, and you're looking at the band and they're like high fiving. They're like, dude, this record's going to be so sick. Wait, do we get the guitars if the drums already sound this good?

Speaker 2 (00:22:48):

Exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:22:49):

And then you have the band and you've won their heart. And that's the real magic of recording is setting that precedent. So if you guys want to get started with Ultimate drum production today, it's ultimate drum production.com. Head on over right now to learn the science of drums and the anatomy of drums and so many other things here from Matt Brown. That is ultimate drum production.com. This is only going to be available to the sixth year coming up of March, so you definitely want to get on it because it's not going to be available again this year. We really want to run this as a group, so we can do this at a pure base and everybody can learn and work together. So, alright, the second section here, Matt, in this course is the science of How Drums work. And the way I've got this written down here is you're going to learn how drumhead work on drums, how drum heads move and how that can make tuning a lot easier as well as you're going to learn the differences of what different materials sound like via shootouts and more. So why don't you tell us about the science? Because this is really something that I think is a cool approach that you've done that I've never seen somebody else's do. It's like you break this down a lab, it's science and math and physics, and it's really cool.

Speaker 2 (00:23:58):

It's one of those things that I kind of always understood but didn't know why. And then I dove in really deep as far as like, okay, I love physics. If I wasn't a musician and I wasn't a recording engineer, I probably would've gone to school to be a physicist.

Speaker 1 (00:24:14):

I respect that, but I was too busy chasing chicks.

Speaker 2 (00:24:17):

I wasn't, I'm all about the math and science and that's why I'm a drummer. So I kind of always understood it, but didn't know exactly why I was doing what I was doing. I just kind of had a grasp of like, okay, this is the basic concept and I researched a little bit more. And the thing is, drum heads move. Most people would think that the drumhead just moves up and down. You hit it and it moves up and down. Or maybe those that are a little bit more educated think, okay,

Speaker 1 (00:24:50):

It doesn't just go up and down.

Speaker 2 (00:24:51):

Yeah, those that are a little bit more educated would assume that it travels in waves, like a drop of water hitting a still pond. It would travel in a wave like that. Okay. Those two things make sense. They totally make sense,

(00:25:05):

But the truth is, is because the head is suspended and tensioned over a circle basically, that not only does that happen, but there's so many other things that happen because all those waves that are created by striking the drum move the head in so many different ways. And so what I do in the course is I go into how all those, the most important parts of that, I mean, you get past six ways that the heads moves and you can't really hear 'em. The volume is so low and their contribution is so minimal to the drum sound, so it's not even worth worrying about. But those first six ways that the head move, understanding that helps the tuning side, it's huge. I mean, it helps the tuning side so much because you start to realize the connection between how much tension you're placing and the interaction between the two heads and all of that. And the best part about understanding the way that a head moves is when it comes to dialing in how much sustain you want or how much overtone or how little overtone you want, you can kill any type of overtone or expand the sound of the drum with minimal effort. Wow.

(00:26:20):

I've known a lot of people that like to tape up their drum heads or use lots of moon gels, like big giant pieces of moon gel all over the drum head. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:26:29):

That's me.

Speaker 2 (00:26:30):

And they still don't sound good. And so what I go into in the science part is by using the ways that the drumhead moves, you can literally cut down the amount of moon gel by a quarter of one piece by two little tiny pieces of an eighth of a moon gel. You can kill almost all the overtones in a snare drum just by knowing where to place them. And the benefit of that is every time that you add a moon gel to a drumhead, it changes the thickness of the head. And by changing the thickness of the drum head, you change the attack, you change the sustain, you change the fundamental of that drum head no matter what the tuning is. So what's the point of tuning a drum and getting it to sound good? If you're like, oh, well, I let put some moon gel on it.

(00:27:18):

And by doing that, you change the thickness of the head and completely change the tone of the drum that you liked before, but maybe you just had a little bit too much ringing. To be able to solve those issues very minimally is key. Speed and tuning is going to save you a lifetime. And then being really will and then being able to dial in the tone and to sustain appropriately and quickly without changing the attack and the actual tone of the drum is, I mean, that's the part that really wows people. That's the part that really wows drummers because it's their instrument and they're the ones that have to deal with the annoying ring and the snare drum that the guitarist hates. They're the ones that have to come up with solutions to these problems that as a drummer, you're like, oh, this is just the way the drum sounds.

(00:28:10):

But to everybody else, it's like, no, we want the drums to sound like this sound. And they play a sample that has been completely eqd and dialed out any overtones whatsoever. So by knowing the science, you'll be able to dial in that sound in the room, which will not only make the drummer happy because it's like, here it is. And it was this easy, it was so easy. But everybody else in your band, if you're playing live, they'll be like, ah, this sounds so much better. And they'll play better. Or if you're in the studio and they're sitting in there in the control room, they'll be able to hear the results immediately. And like you said before, they'll get stoked on what's coming up after the drums are done.

Speaker 1 (00:28:52):

Absolutely. I mean, that's such a critical point. And maybe I'm the only dude out there who loves those really ringy, heavy overtone snares, not I go on the forums and everybody's just, yeah, everybody just attacks 'em laced in metal. And it's always interesting for me because again, I sit there and I try to eq 'em out, and I'm always cursing at 'em because everybody, I'll be like, all right, this mix sounds great. And the first note will get back. Yeah, the snares really bring you, can you cut all the overtones? I'm like, dude, come on, really? And then it's like I feel like I deaden it and I lose some of my body, and I'm sitting there struggling with the drum, and then I got to compensate with low end, but now the stare doesn't bloom quite as much in the mix, and it's a compromise.

Speaker 2 (00:29:32):

It loses its impact in the mix, is the real thing. A lot of people don't realize that those overtones that the snare drum has, especially, they might sound horrible on their own, but in the mix, they help the drum sit, they help it project through everything. There's a lot of overtones you don't hear. I know for me personally, I love ringy snare drums. I love the way an intune ring sounds, but I've noticed that if you're not a really good player, that ring is very, very bad and it exposes your inconsistencies. It's like a really great guitar amp, like a really great guitar amp shows. Well, as a guitar player, show you all your technical flaws and you'll hate it immediately you'll be like, oh, this is horrible. I can't do my sweeps. And they sound all dirty and the strings are ringing. But that's the sign of a really great guitar amp is the one that exposes your flaws

Speaker 1 (00:30:28):

Because when you do get it dialed in, then people are like, wow, when you're turning heads.

Speaker 2 (00:30:32):

Exactly. And the same thing happens with drums. There is good overtones that are involved. And if a drum is in tune and those overtones are slamming and the player plays well, then you won't notice the overtones. But if the player doesn't play as well, you'll definitely notice the overtones and they'll become annoying and everybody will hate it Saying anger real quick.

Speaker 1 (00:30:55):

Oh hey, could I just have an off comment here that I actually like that scenario? I'm like the only person in the world I've ever met. It sounds terrible.

Speaker 2 (00:31:04):

Oh, it sounds awful,

Speaker 1 (00:31:05):

But it's a really awesome recording of a really terrible sounding scenario. You know what it is I like about it is it's really aggressive and a really raw way. It is just so pissed. I get angry when I listen to it and it makes me want to punch stuff and work out. So

Speaker 2 (00:31:19):

Yeah, I get it. That record, they were trying to do their garage days again, and I

Speaker 1 (00:31:23):

Totally

Speaker 2 (00:31:24):

Get it, but at the same time, I would never sample that drum and put it on anything unless it was a reggae record.

Speaker 1 (00:31:30):

Well, here's the thing though. Everybody remembers what that drum sounds like. That's a lot of recordings and a lot of drummers. Usually it's like the snare drum. Remember when Paramore dropped with Misery Business and all that? Everybody loved that drum sound and that drum sound kind of became like the stock de facto standard for that genre for quite a while. And

Speaker 2 (00:31:51):

Side note on that song, side note on that song. So while Paramore was in pre-production for that record, for Riot Riot, I was hired to teach Zach the drummer, to give him some lessons to up his technique. And as a part of what I did with him, I didn't do a lot. I did basically, I watched him play and I just refined the kid. He was 17 at the time and he's just naturally talented. He's a killer drummer. That guy's been great all the time. But all I did with him is just kind of study his posture, the way his kit was set up and helped him pull the kit into the way that his body works, and also worked on his hand technique a little bit to kind of open up the sound of his drums. And they were cutting demos in the studio and the kit that they had in there was an old beat up kit and the heads were just trashed and garbage.

(00:32:43):

And they'd been basically spending the afternoon part up until about five o'clock. They were writing guitar vocals, kind of writing and getting some ideas. And then in the evening, they would record demo drums for the record. Well, after my first lesson with Zach, I came back the next day. I was hired in to teach him for a week, and I came in the second day, the morning after they had recorded for the first time. And the first thing that the demo producer walks up to me, he goes, Hey man, what did you do to the drum kit last night? I was like, I didn't do anything. We didn't even touch the kit. It was literally sitting over in the corner. He's like, God, whatever you did, the snare drum sounded amazing. I was like, I didn't touch it. We didn't even get close to it. We were sitting and practicing on a pad over in the corner. We didn't even touch the drums. And it was just that one little piece of ergonomics that I did with him on the kit. The way as far as the way he sat and the way he held a stick changed that snare drum sound for them in a demo session. They were like, this is the best that snare drum has ever sounded, and I didn't do anything. So that just goes to show you the technique, the player, those things matter too.

(00:34:00):

That's a big part of the way that snare drum sounds, the way his snare drum sounds when he plays on records, it is just the way he hits the drum. I am very fortunate to have been a little tiny piece of why that record sounds the way it does.

Speaker 1 (00:34:13):

Well, that doesn't surprise me. Now that you tell me that. I didn't know that. That's incredible. Another record that was really, I think transformative in terms of drum mixes was the Metallica's Black album, at least for metal when that came out. Nothing had drums anywhere near that, and we all sat back, that was the first record I ever listened to as a kid. And I was like, oh, man, that sounds good. So

Speaker 2 (00:34:35):

Yeah, Bob,

Speaker 1 (00:34:37):

This is why it's important to learn the science of how drums work. You know what I mean? It's like when you understand this stuff, you see what a transformation it can have. I mean, these stories, this is the real life equivalent of what this knowledge teaches you. So if you want to get this stuff down and you want to learn the science of how drums work and get the fast track and not sit there and have to wade through hundreds of days of useless YouTube stuff, you get right over here, ultimate drum production.com, and you learn it from Matt because Matt is the dude. He knows this stuff better than anybody I have ever even heard of. And we producers, we get the bands, we can hire anybody, and we hire guys like Matt. So you just might as well learn it from Matt because Matt's going to, not only Matt, are you a great tech musician, producer, et cetera, but you're also a great educator and you have lots of experience doing that.

(00:35:29):

So you know how to actually teach, and that's a rare thing. So you've got this crazy calculus of all this stuff. So you go to ultimate drum production.com and you get going with that. So, alright, the next section here, let's talk about tuning. And this is something, there's a couple of things that really blew my mind in here. So the basic synopsis is you're going to learn how to properly tune drums from multiple genres to get the best possible sound no matter what you are working on as well as make cheap drum sets. Sound amazing. Right?

Speaker 2 (00:35:56):

Before

Speaker 1 (00:35:57):

I let you go on a tangent, I just wanted to say something about something that I learned from you that really changed my view of drums and that is every other drummer I've ever worked with when I was coming up come into my studio and they'd be like, dude, tune the Toms I third. Can you put the Toms and forths? What note should I tune this floor, Tom? Can it be a C? And I'm just like, okay. And I sit there and we try to do it, and it just never really worked. And then I learned from you that you can't actually tune a drum to a note and then you explain the physics behind it. And my eyes opened up and I went, oh man, that makes a lot of sense. So I started focusing on tuning drums to sound the best for the drum and the genre. And wow, what a difference. I mean, do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Speaker 2 (00:36:44):

Yeah, sure. Yeah. There is a misconception out there that you can tune drums to note. And part of that misconception is the fact that the way the human brain works, it tends to, most people don't know this, but the brain will filter out what it doesn't like. It will literally see the world in the most positive way possible all the time. And what I mean by that is there's a great analogy of people that work at garbage dumps. Everybody's like, oh, that's got to be a horrible job. The smell, the smells got to be awful. And you know what? It is awful for those guys for about the first 10 days and then after that they don't smell it anymore. The brain literally turns off the smell of the dump. So they just go to work like anybody else. They don't smell

Speaker 1 (00:37:33):

The garbage. You just made garbage man. So much more exciting. I hate that smell, but man, all I got to do is hang out with trash for nine days to never smell it again, like sign me up.

Speaker 2 (00:37:44):

So the brain works and it really does get rid of the stuff that we don't want to hear or to smell or to see. The brain makes your own universe basically. And so how that applies to drums is when you strike a drum head, there's all these ways that it's moving in. Each way that the head is moving is in harmonic from each other, which means that they're not in a pleasing pitch reference. So the difference between the two pitches are, first of all, they're not based off of actual notes and the music scale, the music scale is based off of what's pleasing and has developed over thousands of years and is not based off of frequencies. It's based off of pleasing intervals. And some of those are based off of actual frequencies like a four 40, like a tune to four 40 is an actual frequency that's zero zero.

(00:38:41):

There's no dots after it, right? There's no decimal points. Well, in the drums that doesn't happen. That only happens if one of those is actual frequency that has a zero zero after it, then none of the rest of them are. And the way that those interact with each other, they don't scale with actual musical scale that we're used to working in. So the in harmonics of the way that the drum head works conflict with the tone of the drum, it's technically impossible to tune to an actual note. It really is because there's so many overtones happening from this in harmonic reaction of the way that one drum head is moving. This is just one drum head. If we add the second drum head on the bottom, that interaction between the top and the bottom creates mass chaos in the drum. It really does. But what I go into is a way for you to tune those two heads in a manner that strengthens the most audible tone in the drum.

(00:39:49):

And what happens is when you strengthen the most audible tone, your brain filters out all the stuff that it doesn't want to hear. It focuses on the good stuff, it focuses on the good note, it focuses on whatever is the most prominent sound coming from that drum. So what I teach in the tuning section is how to tune the drum to get that most prominent note to be as centered as possible in a pitch. Now, because of that, some people might say, well then if our brain doesn't hear the other stuff, then you can totally tune to note. And my answer to that is, yes, in theory you could tune to a note, but the amount of time it takes you to get to that note is not worth the outcome at the end. That is the juice worth the squeeze type of analogy you could spend forever really dialing in this drum to a certain note. But there's a couple of things you're forgetting. One, does the drum actually want to sit there and are the materials that are involved in the composition of that drum going to be sympathetic with that frequency? You don't know what kind of life the wood lived before it was turned into this drum.

Speaker 1 (00:40:57):

God forbid the drummer smacks it 20 seconds later and completely changes the tuning after one hit. Right?

Speaker 2 (00:41:02):

Exactly. Exactly. But I mean the physical makeup of the shells themselves, if the wood was under stress, say maple tree A was used to make shell one and maple tree B was used to make shell two, the stresses of those two maple trees could be completely different from each other, and therefore the makeup of those two drums that might be the same size and same dimensions, they might not want to resonate at the same frequencies.

Speaker 1 (00:41:34):

It's crazy. This is rubbish, man. I just want you to tune my drum to some notes. I don't care about all these stupid excuses. It's small time. Just give me some thirds. I want to C sharp on that floor time. Let's go. I mean, I'll do it.

Speaker 2 (00:41:47):

It is just going to take me forever and that's going to cost you a lot of money.

Speaker 1 (00:41:52):

That was just such a game changer for me. So, okay, let's give some tuning tips here. So for those of you out there are wondering, okay, so what do you listen for? And you had a really good way that you explained this to me about the drum opening up and increasing in volume. What do you listen for when you're tuning a drum to sit where it should be sitting or within that range?

Speaker 2 (00:42:10):

Right, so let's just say you're working with the batter head, for example. So the resonant head is on the drum, but it's sitting on a towel, which is the way that you should tune. The heads mooting the other head. You don't want to tune the drum on a stand until the heads are in tune with themselves. So we're working on just the batter head. There is a point where once, if you're evenly increasing the tension on the head, there are probably several points during this. Knowing the harmonic overtones of any instrument, there's several points where the head will actually just come alive. And what happens is, like you said, the volume increases. As soon as you get to that pitch where that shell wants to live, the volume of the head just sitting on the shell will increase. And what's happening there is the engagement of the shell is sympathetic with the tuning range that that head is in.

(00:43:06):

And that happens on both sides of the drum. And what's crazy is when it happens on both sides of the drum, if you're using a thicker head on the top and a thinner head on the bottom, that's usually in predictable intervals from each other. And what I mean by that is a smaller drum, the interval between the batter head, which is going to be the lower of the two and the resonant head, which will be the higher of the two, the interval decreases. So let's say we have an eight inch tom, the interval between the two heads might be a minor second or even less than a minor second apart. But the drum will sound, like I said, it'll strengthen that main tone. The main tone of the drum will be strengthened because the way that the heads are interacting each other on that diameter shell is sympathetic.

(00:43:54):

And if we go to a bigger drum, say a 16 inch drum, the interval increases to something like a perfect fourth or a perfect fifth, somewhere around in that interval, in between the two, depending on the depth of the drum. And those two intervals because of the size, the size of the diameter and the depth of the shell will start to move sympathetically and in tune with what the drum wants to do. Like I said, each shell has its own kind of fundamental that it wants to sit at a place that it becomes alive, that it resonates and it gets excited about living in. And the idea behind tuning is to find one of those points and accentuate it because that's where a drum cuts through a mix. The best is when it speaks loudly and clearly it cuts through a mix just like crazy. And for those of you that are like, well, these runs are in C sharp, so we definitely need to be in the C sharp dominant scale. That's not going to matter With drums, nine times out of 10 drum drums are so short in their life as far as the length of the note and comparison to everything else, that's not going to matter. You just hear the attack, you maybe hear some thump and then they go away.

(00:45:15):

It is just the reality of the situation. And I have never, and I will say this honest hand to God, I've never had a problem with a Tom being out of tune of the song just because it was in the wrong pitch. I've never had that problem.

Speaker 1 (00:45:31):

I'll tell a secret, neither have I, nor have I ever cared. No one's ever been like, dude,

Speaker 2 (00:45:36):

That floor Tom, bro, it doesn't quite fit with the bass note.

Speaker 1 (00:45:40):

Yeah, dude, this mix sucks. I can't believe the Tom is ringing like a major third in a minor key. Like, dude, what are you doing, man? You're fired. You should have hired this guy.

Speaker 2 (00:45:54):

Yeah, the crazy thing I've noticed is when drums actually are in tune, like say by chance, they do line up with the key of whatever the song is. I know a lot of people subscribe to that method and they think it helps the drums cut through. In my experience, it makes it way more difficult. I have to do a lot more processing on the mix side to get that drum to cut through the same way as if it was just living in its own territory with as non-existent of the key of the song.

Speaker 1 (00:46:24):

Imagine that, right? It's crazy, right? Well, I'll tell you what, if you want to learn how to properly tune drums like a boss and do it right and get the best possible sound no matter what you're working on, as well as make cheap drum sets sound amazing, you get over to ultimate drum production.com right now and you go take this course from Matt because it's just like, I can't believe the amount of value you're getting. What we're charging for this course is literally less than you charge for an hour of your time to text. So for Matt to show up and clean his shoes off and stretch out and open up his, open up a couple of head packages, you'll get the course for less than a cost to do that. Dude, I love you, but you just got to get over to ultimate drum production.com. Let's talk about identifying the source. Now. This is the fourth section here of the Ultimate Drum production course, and the synopsis here is that you're going to learn the sonic characteristics of the materials, which drums are made out of the characteristics of different microphones and what to do if your drum room isn't amazing. And I think I want to kind talk about that maybe a little bit, because

(00:47:31):

There's a lot of us out there, dude, man, my first drum room was 10 feet by 11 feet and nine feet high. It wasn't a drum room.

Speaker 2 (00:47:40):

Is that the picture you just posted recently?

Speaker 1 (00:47:42):

Yes. Yeah. My parents sold that house where I built my first studio in n and I was in there the other night for the last time in my life, and a lot of crazy things came out of that room, including unstoppable recording machine. And man, it was kind of sad, but I made a lot of great records in that room and I didn't know how to record drums at all. Most of the time I was in there, but it didn't stop me from that room wasn't a limiting factor for me to be able to get a major label sounding stuff that was released and

Speaker 2 (00:48:14):

Make

Speaker 1 (00:48:14):

Stuff that was competitive, so you just got to know what the hell you're doing.

Speaker 2 (00:48:18):

Yeah, I saw that room and I was like, oh, this is not a bad room.

Speaker 1 (00:48:21):

I'll tell you what sucks about it, dude. It's like a trapezoid almost, because there's that corner and it's just a huge buildup of bass, and I had to trap it so thick all the way to the ceiling to even get a remotely even bass response. It was horrible.

Speaker 2 (00:48:35):

But see, there's ways to accentuate that for the positive for drums.

Speaker 1 (00:48:39):

I couldn't afford to hire you on any of those bands back then, so now I'd just be like, Matt, get on a plane. Let's do this for you. Right?

Speaker 2 (00:48:49):

Yeah. So the source makeup of drums, it gets a lot more complicated than most other instruments. One of the last truly acoustic instruments you have the voice and the drums especially, I mean, in this instance in regards to rock and metal music, most guys aren't even amping miking up an amplifier anymore for guitars. It's just, it's true. A cable into a direct box, into your interface or straight into your interface. And then JST plugins.

Speaker 1 (00:49:25):

What's funny, you're saying that right now, and literally I turn over my shoulder and I have all these amp racks with all these awesome amps, and I'm actually selling all of my heads. Well, I mean, I only mix and I don't need 'em, but I can't remember the last time I micd to head. It was probably two and a half years ago. I've been using Sims

(00:49:41):

And for me to do that, and I am a tube amp freak guitar nerd, dude, that tells you something. I'll be honest, I'm getting pretty damn good mixed with Sims and better than I want to admit. I mean, if I'm playing guitar, I still want to play through a amp, but when I'm recording guitar, man, I'm cutting di and I'm throwing it into one of my favorite sim presets. So there you go. I mean, that just shows to prove. I mean, literally, I turning around and I have a bunch of heads on the floor that Joe, my assistant, is taking pictures of and putting up for sale. Literally, it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:50:22):

So that being said, you have the human voice, which is an acoustic instrument, and that's really easy to kind of isolate a bad room. It's really easy to get a vocal performance that's usable in a crappy room. All you have to do is get one of those lots of foam around it and kind of isolate the microphone into a workable space. Not a big deal. It's pretty easy to do that. But with drums, you're completely based off the acoustics that you're in really. And so your source makeup of a drum is not just the drum and the heads and the tuning. It's also the room that you're in, and then it goes into all the way down the chain, like the microphones that you use. Those are huge. That's a huge, huge thing. And knowing what microphones you have and the EQ that they imprint on the source is a massive, massive thing, and it'll help you understand the drum sounds that you are getting really well.

(00:51:25):

If you know what those microphones sound like. And that's really what microphones are. Microphones are the first source of EQ on your drums. Then if you don't believe me, then just watch the section that we literally just cut to add to this, because I thought we needed to go through, we needed to go into more depth about microphones. I talked about 'em, I showed placements, and we have examples in real world situations. But I literally was sitting there the other day and I'm like, we need more information on microphones. Microphones are overlooked by a lot of people as far as how important they are into the sound of drums.

Speaker 1 (00:52:00):

Oh, it's true. I mean, come on. Perfect example. The guy across the hall, man, he doesn't know anything about any of this stuff. He just puts this stuff up and hits record and doesn't worry about it. He doesn't even tune his drums before a session. I'm thinking if he knew half of the stuff, even a quarter, this stuff, you knew how much better his drum sounds would be. And I keep telling him, but he doesn't want to listen to me. And microphones, placements and inputs is actually the fifth section of this.

Speaker 2 (00:52:25):

So

Speaker 1 (00:52:25):

You know what I mean? You can see how in depth this stuff is going. It's so important to understand this stuff. And I think it's really important to note, Matt, that we've taken this approach from the course where it's like anybody who's a seasoned world-class pro who competes on an A-list is going to learn something from it. But anybody else out there who's just starting or mid-level or anywhere in between is going to get something. Whether you're a drummer, whether you're a studio engineer for drummers like this is the opportunity for you to learn how to communicate with the studio engineer and actually get your opinion taken seriously by the producers and things like that because what's up and be loved by them because you know what's going on. And for the engineers, this is a way for you to really solidify your legacy and be sought after and really impress people and just give them such value and such a knowledge. And this is your first impression that artist walks in the studio and you come in and you just start ripping and killing amazing sounding drums and they're going to know they hired the right person. And that reputation is priceless.

Speaker 2 (00:53:27):

It

Speaker 1 (00:53:27):

Is. It's amazing. So I'll let you carry on more about placement and inputs and microphones.

Speaker 2 (00:53:31):

Well, I mean, just to go back to the source a little bit more, we also go, this isn't just about the drums, it also goes into symbols as well and explains how important symbols selection is for the overall sound of your drums. You can make a killer, killer recording with a cheap $200 drum set, but putting the right heads, the right tuning, the right mics and the right symbols on the kit, if you upgrade, if you have the right symbols from the beginning, it'll make the cheapest kit. You can find sound a hundred times better. Like,

Speaker 1 (00:54:09):

Oh, I cannot agree more, Matt, if there's anything that pisses me off more than anything when it comes to mixing. Yeah, B eight. Well, yeah, don't tell Josh Newell, he will find you and destroy you if you use B eight on a recording. He hates them more than anybody and we hate them almost just as much. So

Speaker 2 (00:54:27):

Tell you this, they don't make an EQ with enough dip switches for the B

Speaker 1 (00:54:31):

Eights. Yeah, I mean, I had to invent an entire plugin called DF clarify to mathematically go in and make that stuff not sound like garbage. So nothing sucks more man than when a drummer comes into your studio and they have garbage cracked symbols that are just, and there is no amount of EQ that can save your sanity and the blood that will come out of your ears and the tears of blood. You will cry when you get to mixing no matter how good your mics are, how good your room is, man, when the symbols suck, session killer. Oh man, it brings a tear to my eye because I have sat in a room and just sat there and recorded symbols. I'm like, I'm going to hate my life later. I'm going to hate my life. And I get to mixing and I'm like, man, and then I'm referencing and I'm going, Ugh, why do my symbols suck? This is so important to get right.

Speaker 2 (00:55:22):

Yeah. Yeah, I touched base on that and go into detail. I mean, symbols are relatively easy and explanation versus drums. You can't change the way a symbol sounds like a symbol is a symbol. So you

Speaker 1 (00:55:37):

Can hit it with a sledgehammer that helps.

Speaker 2 (00:55:39):

You can change what you hit it with and you can maybe hammer it a little bit more if you want to change it. But as far as being able to provide versatility and a symbol, it is not really there. It is in the drums, but I do go into how to choose the symbols that would be best appropriate for the studio. I go into that and basically explain how symbols work and how they're made to people so they can invest in a nice set of symbols if they have the budget or want to save time in the recording.

Speaker 1 (00:56:12):

I mean, it just makes sense. Why wouldn't you get something that's amazing and buy it once and get a great sounding recording every time, which will get you more clients and allow you to make more money and attract more. You know what I mean? You get a lot of bang for your buck out of something like that. I mean, look, this information is so important and I feel like everybody that needs it, that records everybody. There's no reason not to get this information. Like I said, the price point we're offering that this and the amount of value you're getting to me, it's ridiculous. It is almost shocking how good what you're teaching is and how much of it there is and just there's all these awesome bonuses and other things that we threw in, but I mean it doesn't need it. All that stuff aside, the core offering here of ultimate drum production is just so mind blowing.

(00:57:02):

I mean, I kind of want to go home and watch it again after this because I feel like every time I do legitimately, I'm picking up new things from it and I'm like, oh, I missed that last time. I feel like I'm an old dude. I've been around, I'm teaching people how to record and mix and master for a living and I am learning stuff about it. And I'm like, man, I feel like I should already know this. But damn, that's how good it is. It's crazy. So you guys need to go over to ultimate drum production.com and get on the train here with Matt because it's just like if you're not, I feel sorry for the people that aren't taking advantage of this because man, the people that take this are just going to be savage. It's going to be straight beast mode. They're going to get up there, their drum mixes are going to annihilate. These are the guys that are going to be pushing the industry forward and you're all going to be listening to their records in a couple of years from now going, man, how did you get that drum sound? And they're just going to be like, and we're going to be like, and then I'm going to go in and I'm going to look through the database here and I'm going to look 'em up and see that they took UDP and I'm going to smile and I'm going to be like, aha.

(00:58:02):

I mean, there it is. It's going to happen. Mark my words. I know. And it's going to happen a lot of times. So man, that's great. Ultimate drum production.com. This offering is just incredible. So let's talk about the mixing section. And I think it's cool because there's a lot of bonus stuff. I did some bonus content and mixing samples and all kinds of stuff like that, but Matt's going to teach you how to take small rooms and make them huge, make minimal mic setup, sound massive, all these different unique ways of approaching a drum mix and just getting the most out of your drum sounds without relying on samples. And that is just so huge and something I feel like is a secret deep down desire for every single person, whoever has mixed a record that had to use samples is like the macho tough guy in us is like, dude, I want to mix real drums and get 'em on par with one of my sample mixes, if not better. And most of us don't have the skills to do that, and you're going to show us how to do that and to muscle that stuff out.

Speaker 2 (00:59:00):

So in the course we have four real world examples that are different genres. We have four different genres ranging from an alternative pop all the way to a metal. And not only that, there's also with Micing the kit, we go from a single mic all the way up to five mics and then we jump into eight mics and up.

Speaker 1 (00:59:21):

It's incredible.

Speaker 2 (00:59:21):

And I go through not only placement and my choice of where things are going or ideas for placement because let's be honest, there is a big part of identifying your drum sound as a producer that involves taking the information that I've given you and playing and experimenting and trying to find your voice. I mean, then that's really where

Speaker 1 (00:59:45):

The, yeah, you need the fundamentals though. You need to learn to walk before you can run and you can find your voice much faster and more effectively.

Speaker 2 (00:59:51):

Exactly. It's like I'm the training wheels and you're riding the bike and once you get used to riding that bike, you can throw the training wheels away. You have that knowledge of what it feels like to be balanced and you can go and do your own thing and then you can start jumping with bikes or whatever bike riders do nowadays

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):

They flip and they really do some crazy stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):

Right, exactly. So the idea of what I'm presenting there is here's some ideas and easy ways to start and you can go from there and make your own choices. But in the mixing section, I jump into those minimal micing techniques all the way up to the Luke Collin metal section at the end with Luke Holland playing where there's 28 inputs and he has a four piece kit. So 28 inputs on a four piece kit. Let's do the math. That's quite a lot of mics.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):

That's incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):

It's overkill is what it is, but do it. We had it. So we did it. But in the mixing side, I think what's interesting about the mixing side is, at least from my perspective, is each one of these genres is approached differently. Each one of these mic setups is showing the way to get kind of a characteristic drum sound from the beginning. And there's a lot of versatility in the mixing sections. I deliberately tried to present different ways and different thought processes and just conceptual ideas of how to mix drums. And so this isn't just watching one guy like a typical nail the mix where he has his drum sound and he dials in his drum sound, this is the way he did this drum sound for this song period. And it goes beyond that. It's a lot more versatile and shows you different concepts as far as how to get a drum sound. You can go from something that's very jazzy and I show you how to dive into that type of classic rock jazzy thing all the way to something that's super technical metal. And along the way I'm changing all of those techniques up just a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):

I think this is worth noting. I don't feel like people really quite may not quite grasp, you've literally worked with artists like cannibal corpse and monuments all the way to drowning pool all the way down to John Anderson of Yes. I mean you've worked the whole gamut. I mean, a lot of people don't understand a drum tech that comes in that does a lot of vintage stuff isn't going to get modern drum gen sounds. You get how to make those sounds all the way across the scene. You've been on sessions with a-list producers and all these genres and you have this knowledge. And I feel like that's really just worth mentioning here because I don't know, it's just incredible the amount of experience you have at doing this. It just blows my mind.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):

Yeah, like I said, I'm very fortunate to have grown up and had the exposure to all of it. I mean, just literally probably three weeks ago I had a world renowned jazz trio with a good drummer friend of mine who, but the trio itself is world renowned, a piano bass in drums. I had them in the studio cutting a record live, and he's one of those drummers that usually brings his kid everywhere. But when we booked the session, he said, I'm just going to bring my cymbals and snare. Don't worry, I'll let you do the drums. So I set up the drums and I tuned them and I got the whole room set up. And so we tracked 15 songs on that day. The next day I had a metal band come in and do drums for do another six songs for their record literally the next day. So I had to, the whole room got changed, the whole drum set of got changed. Everything was, and I went from one extreme to the next, but in 48 hours I had recorded two records. That one was jazz, one was metal, so

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):

I bet you didn't even break a sweat. Clinton is

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):

For

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):

Listeners. I have it. There could be a reality man. You could have those types of chops.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):

Yeah, it's nice to have the versatility for sure. I mean, as an engineer, it opens up the gate to anybody that wants to come in. I'm not,

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):

Doesn't it?

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):

It's amazing. It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):

I always did a lot of different genres. I am glad I never exploded in one genre to a point where I could only work on it. I mean, I've worked in so many different genres in my life and worked with so many different types of artists, and I really believe because I was adaptable in my career and I really tried to learn different styles of music and stuff like that, made me a better overall producer, a better overall mixer. I can mix pop and for example, I just had a number one song in Japan doing guitar pop stuff, and I can mix EDM and pop at the same level. I can mix metal or rock, and it's just awesome to be able to do that because these skills transfer is what I'm trying to say is that these skills transfer across genres if you take the time to learn them and it gives you a new thing.

(01:04:47):

For example, when Billy Decker called us when he was taking nail the mix, I'm like, Billy, dude, you got 13 number ones, dude, you are one of the top call country guys. Why are you learning to nail the mix You should be teaching us? And he laughs and he goes, dude, I'm here because I like what you guys do with your metal drum sounds and stuff. And he's like, I want to take that Nashville. No one's doing it, dude, and it's going to mess everybody up. And he's like, I'm going to be the guy that brings it. I mean, think about how he's thinking, man.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):

Right, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):

Any question to you why he's one of the number one dudes? I mean,

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):

It makes total sense, man. He's crossing the boundaries. And that's really where I'm coming from too, is I have the experience in all these genres and to be able to mix genres and to blend sounds and create something new in a particular genre just because they're not used to hearing these sounds. It's really refreshing. I it's really refreshing.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):

You live or die as a producer by your ability to do that. Exactly. He who creates the next big thing is the person for the next decade and takes, that's the unicorn. It's like that's what Joey did in his little garage. He invented that sound and he was the metal core guy. And I mean, look at his career if you want to see a perfect example of what that can do for you. So

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):

Alright, well we're going to get a little bit wrapped up here. So I just want to take a second here, Matt, to chat out with the audience. And I want you guys here listening to imagine what your life is going to be like when you can get an A-list drum sound in any room with any set of equipment or what your life will be like when you don't need to hire a drum tech like Matt because he's expensive even though he's good because you have the expertise in mastery to already make any drum kit sound amazing. Or what would your life be like when you don't have to rely on your mixing skills to fix your drum sounds? Hello, that was a big problem in my life. Or imagine what your life is going to be like when you can easily get the drum sound out of your head to come through your speakers. My friends here. This is the opportunity to do that. Okay. And like I said, I'm offering you this information somebody's entire life. What did you say, Matt? 39 years of playing. 39 years.

(01:06:54):

Yeah, 39 years of drum experience thinking about it every day with a passion. I mean, I like drums and I went after drums when I was working on them, my career, but I mean, I didn't sit around all day every day thinking about 'em for years, let alone a decade, even a year. You know what I mean? So you are taking one of the most brilliant minds in the entire world and taking that information and you can implant it directly into your head. And you just got to ask yourself, what is my time worth? Do I want to sit there for the next 10 years and struggle and do the hard way or do I want to get on the fast track and really learn this stuff from the best of the best, the best, and take that information and leverage that time, like I said, for less than literally what it costs to go out and hire Matt for a day and take that leverage your entire life, your leveraging the life of a human being and using it to advance your own skills and do it.

(01:07:46):

Who knows what type of incredible thing for your art, for your legacy, for your reputation. So that is the offer and what we are so proud and excited to present to you because we know that this is going to change lives. I can't guarantee that you're going to do the work, but I believe that if you come in and you watch every video and do all the chats and get involved in the community and go through and do the homework and really, really work on this stuff, there's no reason that you're not going to up your drum game and it's going to really change things for you. So head over to ultimate drum production.com. Matt, I want to thank you for one, not only taking the time to do this today and talk about this incredible, incredible offering that you've put together. This course is really, really, really groundbreaking stuff in my opinion.

(01:08:32):

Thank you. And not only that, but just being so cool and knowledgeable and being willing to share your information with people out there because people are hungry never before. They want to learn. They want to make great music, they want to do better sounding records than we did when we were that came before them. So I think it's really an amazing, and it's a very noble thing of you to do. So I just want to thank you for being the guy who went out and learned all this stuff and was so passionate about and then just being so willing to share that information that it's just incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):

Oh, thank you for actually coming to me and asking me to do it. Like I said at the beginning, I'm just super excited to get this out there. I love teaching. I still do it actively on a regular basis. I teach a high school drum line and percussion section here in town at the Arts Magnet. I also teach the recording class, and I just love educating. I really like getting the information out there. I feel like there's a lot of people that think by exposing the secrets, you're killing your own career. And I think the exact opposite. I think by telling people what I know and what I've learned over my life, that it'll expand their lives, but it'll also enhance mind beyond I can, beyond what I can ever imagine. So

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):

Thank you for giving me the opportunity. I would like to close this out, kind of getting away from the sales pitch for a little bit and just say that I want to ask Forrester about the drums on Carnival, and I think I know what kit he used, what heads he used, what mics he used, and I want to put this out there to see how accurate I am. And this is all based off of the information that I know that is presented in the course. The idea of each sonic fingerprint is there. So I want to say that the drum set was a Pearl Masters maple series, probably the four ply rings with the four ply shell. I want to say the Toms were 10 inch, 14 and 16, so 10 by eight, 14 by 14, 16 by 16. The kick drum was a 22 by 18.

(01:10:41):

I want to say that the heads were coated emperors on the top. Clear ambassadors on the resident side. For the Toms, the snare drum was probably a, I want to say it was probably a steel snare drum with die cast tubes, die cast tubes on the Toms as well. Coated emperor on the snare drum batter ambassador hazy on the snare side with a standard 20 inch strand. The Tom Mikes were four 20 ones. The snare drum top was a 57 snare drum bottom was a 57 kick drum. Sounded to me like a D one 12, possibly with a beta 52 on the outside and maybe a 91 on the inside. I don't know. I haven't opened up the session, so I'm just guessing just from the way they sound overheads. I want to say the overheads were probably four fourteens, and as far as the room mics, probably an 87, a U 87 and maybe a U 47. So Forrester, if you're listening to this, please let me know how accurate I am, and if I'm wrong, then I will buy you a bottle of bourbon or something.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):

If you even get one of those things right. I'll be pretty impressed because I just listen to it. I'm like, that sounds awesome. I have no idea how to get that sound, other than I can listen to it and try to chase it with EQ and flipping out samples and stuff. So, well, Matt, thank you so much for your time. Everybody. Please head over to ultimate drum production.com and get on Ultimate Drum production. This is the opportunity to take and change your drum game into something incredible. As you can see, Matt is a legend for a reason, and anybody who's ever worked with Matt or learned from Matt knows that Matt is the best of the best. So thank you so much for your time. I'm Joel Ek. You were listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast podcast theme. Go to get in touch with the URM podcast,

Speaker 2 (01:12:41):

Visit urm.com/podcast and subscribe.