Hi I'm Sean Winchester, I'm a session drummer based out of Los Angeles
I have played drums for such bands as Everclear, Buckcherry, Leon and many others.
We're here at my studio the Winchester Wolf Den
we're gonna be taking a look at how I record drums
just like I would any other day here at my studio.
The reason I've set up my studio is
really out of necessity, the industry is constantly changing and more and more
drummers and musicians in general are finding themselves needing to do
sessions on their own. I found it to be a super fun and very necessary thing for
me to get myself into.
I get contacted to record drums for people for a variety of reasons
it could be because they are too far away to work in person with me but
they do like my drumming, it could be because their budget doesn't allow them
to be in a big studio yet or because they need demos recorded
to then be presented to a label to then go into a bigger studio later.
A basic rundown of my gear, I just run out of Logic Pro X
I use the Audient iD44 as my interface
all of my preamps now are Audient so I have the ASP880 and the ASP800.
I'm really interested in really true and clear uncolored preamps
after being able to hear the difference between the coloration of an API style preamp
and then just your typical interface converters and like their stock preamps
and then the Audient preamps, what I noticed is that everything was really
true and clear and I just didn't want to think about it anymore so I was just like ok
Audient preamps just from the top down just start with that
I don't need coloration because everyone I'm gonna be sending my drum tracks to
they'll be coloring it on their own.
So the way I have my mics set up
I've grown really in love with the Lewitt LCT 340s which are a small diaphragm condenser
on the two rack toms, they have outperformed any dynamic mic even like
421s and and all that kinds of stuff, those are for the rack toms.
This Warm Audio W14, it's supposed to be a clone of a C414 but I just think it's like stands
alone as a great large diaphragm condenser for a floor tom and then my
trusty Zen Audio modded 57, it's just got a mod a transformer in it, it does make a
huge difference, I recommend screwing with your SM57 for more fun
so I've just got that on the snare top
I've got a Lewitt tom mic it's a percussion mic but
it's more used for toms but I just kind of throw that on the snare bottom
and it actually picks up the snares and a little more fatness which I like
I use the Vanguard small diaphragm condensers for my overheads, I use the Vanguard Audio V44S
stereo mic for my room, that's in mid side. That I will never change ever again.
That microphone I'm gonna bring with me to like any room I record in
I'm just gonna like force an engineer to use it or at least try it.
For kick drum right now I honestly have an SM58 in the kick just pointed
straight at the beater to get all that flack that I need, it's awesome
and then I actually have a weird Golden Age Projects ribbon mic
the passive ribbon mic for the kick out and that thing continues to surprise me too
so that's kind of yeah basically my setup right now.
Today's session will be a song written by my good friend Jesse Charland, bass player of Hoobastank
we like to send each other tracks back and forth and I found that this was a
really dynamic song so you get a really good feel for how my setup works
So typically I like to get at least one solid take that I'm happy with but
obviously punch-ins are cool too so I'll bounce just an mp3 of my drums
kind of mock mixed in with the scratch of whatever they sent me and once we get
to a place where we are satisfied with the performance and everything then I
will just send them the raw audio with no plugins, no panning, nothing like that.
So now you've seen kind of what I'm doing here in my studio and I hope
you've taken something useful from it and thanks for checking it out.