Here are a couple of pics of session drummer Shay Godwin with Parton:

Session drummer Shay Godwin provides drum tracks online to clients worldwide. For his online drum tracks and for all recording sessions he has control over, Bell Sound in Hollywood is the place to go. Session drummer and string quartet alike enjoy the large, Vincent Van Haaf-designed tracking room. Drum tracks exhibit separation and clarity. eDrumSessions is a full service online recording studio, ready for online drum tracks, guitar tracks, bass tracks, string tracks, pedal steel tracks, lap steel tracks, horn tracks, vocal tracks, mixing, mastering, and anything else you could need. We have top quality session drummers available, as well as session guitarists and any other instrument you need. Let eDrumSessions.com give your music the life you envision. It starts with the drum tracks!

A proper live room for tracking a session drummer should ideally be large, so that the sound waves can mature and early reflections are minimized. Of course, smaller rooms can benefit from creative sound control devices such as absorbers and diffusers, but there’s nothing like the sound of real drums in a large live room for maximum clarity and impact.

Here’s why: When “trapping” a smaller room with acoustic devices you end up with drums that tend to sound boxy and small. Because the air around the kit is literally being absorbed and controlled, the kit never gets to “breathe”, producing a dry and boxy sound with your drum tracks. This is most easily heard in the Overhead and Room mics. Also, the smaller footprint also emphasizes lower midrange frequencies — you know, the ones that that produce those nasty nasal tones you can never really dial out once recorded. The low end also has no room to naturally expand, thus rendering your kick sounds anemic. This all means small drum sounds.

Regardless of room size, a live room must have a decent balance of hard surfaces (reflection) and soft surfaces (absorption). Importantly, the reflective surfaces should be broken up as much as possible, i.e. few parallel surfaces. This again produces the most natural recordings even amongst the many individual elements of a close mic’d drum kit. The separation and clarity the drums tracks will exhibit in a properly designed space is a revelation to hear – and once you hear your drum tracks this way you’ll never go back!

The control room is just as important as the live room, because for an engineer to get good drum sounds he needs to be able to hear accurately. Merely placing good equipment in a sub standard room is not good enough. You’d never cook a fancy meal in a dirty kitchen, yet why do so many engineers choose this route? Because properly designed rooms aren’t cheap to design, cheap to build, or cheap to implement!

Good speakers are good speakers. They were designed and manufactured under strict tolerances and in well-tuned environments. They are made to be used in proper spaces that won’t skew the acoustic frequency response and dynamic output, much like a Ferrari is designed to be driven on a race track. Putting one in traffic during rush hour would be compromising its performance characteristics. It would also compromise and skew the driver’s opinion of the car, thus rendering his judgment incorrect.

Performance speakers in a poor room ends up with the same results. Every day, recording engineers listen to their expensive speakers in flawed rooms and end up making very poor EQ and mic placement choices through no fault of their own. Their speakers and room in concert are lying to them. And they don’t know it! Thus, your drum tracks are flawed and incorrectly balanced – inhibiting you from producing truly stunning mixes of your precious material.
As there are many online session drummer services, there are many different types of room being used. These rooms range from closets and bedrooms in houses to large, professionally designed rooms in commercial recording studios.

Obviously going with rooms designed professionally for the purpose of recording is generally going to be the best idea. Such rooms are designed to be acoustically “flat”. This means that the room dimensions and construction are such that no frequencies are boosted, or attenuated, by the room itself and have the geometric properties previously discussed.

Before we look at professional rooms, lets take a general look at the many session drummers who operate in a home studio situation.

It is possible to get great drum sounds in a house. I have been session drummer on recordings done in houses that sound amazing. Some famous artists have made recordings in houses with excellent results, such as The Rolling Stones’ “Exile On Main Street”.

But more often than not, session drummers operating out of home studios have huge acoustical issues they are not even be aware of, and have tuned neither their tracking room nor control room. Often they just “deaden” things in the room, controlling some high-frequency issues by over-using soft materials but doing nothing for low-frequency issues.

Then there is the other end of the spectrum: professionally designed tracking and control rooms in a commercial recording studio.

For an example of a modern standard in studio design, one can look to rooms by the great Vincent Van Haaf. Van Haaf is the designer and architect of rooms in many studios, including the famous Conway Studios of Los Angeles. The main idea of the Van Haaf approach involves the use of geometry and space. There will be NO parallel surfaces. A control room should be symmetrical from a central line for the purposes of exact stereo imaging.

Van Haaf likes air to be the absorber and diffuser instead of relying on soft, diffusive materials (or as he puts it, “absorption by cotton ball”). This concept applies to both the live and control room.

Those are the basics, but the icing on the cake of Van Haaf’s control room design approach is the ceiling design. It involves designing the room like a big speaker horn, in which the ceiling is angled up and away from the monitors. This kind of design ensures the entire room will be a sweet spot.

As you can see, the design of the control room and tracking room of a studio has as much to do with sound quality of your drum tracks as anything. It is probably the most important factor after the expertise of the recording engineer.

It is worth noting that many online session drummers use the same rooms as tracking room and control room. This is generally to be avoided.

The point is to inquire about the rooms an online session drummer uses if no info is given on the site. If the session drummer records in a house, you don’t need to rule that service out but you must investigate the properties of the rooms.

Ask about dimensions, and request some pictures if none are provided on the site. If you like what you see on the site, you will want to ensure the pictures displayed are indeed the tracking and control rooms being used by the session drummer and engineer.

In the below video, session drummer Shay Godwin (founder of eDrumSessions) records drum tracks for a Universal library called “Killer Tracks.”

Since this client is in Los Angeles, he came to our recording studio to produce this session. However, even if you are on the other side of the planet you can produce sessions in real time at eDrumSessions. Through the use of NiceCast, our clients can listen in on the recording session live from anywhere in the world (no extra fee for this sevice) and communicate via Skype, iChat, or phone. This is like being in the control room with engineer Thai Long Ly; you can produce the recording session in real time. We encourage this as it keeps the communication high and ensures total satisfaction. Most online recording studios do not offer this option, usually going for a “keep the client at arm’s length” approach.

For clients who do not wish to or cannot schedule a remote recording session, we usually do three takes of a song to give the composer some options. Of course if a chart is sent that is adhered to. This online recording studio is full of professionals of all flavors, and we have musicians that can read fly paper.

The eDrumSessions recording studio is outfitted with top notch gear all around. Vintage Neve 8232 console, modern outboard pres such as the brilliant Geoff Daking models, the most amazing mic locker you could imagine. The tracking room is a masterpiece, designed by the masterful Vincent Van Haaf. Haaf designed the tracking rooms at the legendary Conway Studios.

The ad, for GoCompare (UK auto insurance company), is comedic in nature and references the movie “One Million Years B.C.” The feel of the music is shuffle, ironically sounding more like an American shuffle than a Brit-pop shuffle.

Online recording studio eDrumSessions.com is increasingly called upon for studio services by overseas production houses writing commercial music.

Session drummer Godwin recorded the drum tracks online for client Yellow Boat Music, a U.K. commercial production house. These sessions are done remotely, with producer Paul Cartledge communicating in real time via Skype, and listening in on the drum tracks recording session live via NiceCast.

Most commercial recording sessions involve two to three versions of the same song. This is done for different edits of the commercial. Only two edits were done for this session.

This commercial features opera star Gio Compario.

It is becoming common in these modern times for musical collaborations to take place between different nations because of the internet. Online recording studios are becoming an industry mainstay, due to cost-effectiveness of international collaboration that was once extremely expensive due to travel costs.

Here is a press release about the commercial, in which both session drummer Godwin and Yellow Boat Music are mentioned.

In this two-part article series I will describe some of the Aquarian products I use when recording online drum tracks at eDrumSessions. I am not being compensated by Aquarian for this article. However, in the interest of full disclosure I will mention that I am an endorser of Aquarian products. I use Aquarian drumheads in any situation which I have control to do so, and that would certainly would apply to online drum tracks I do through eDrumSessions.

In this first installment, the following products I use for online drum tracks will be covered: Texture Coated, Classic Clear, American Vintage, Modern Vintage, Texture Coated with Power Dot, Jack DeJohnette signature, and Super Kick 1. All of these are one-ply models I use for online drum tracks.

Lets begin with good old Texture Coated heads. Texture Coated heads are my first choice for general playing. The Aquarian coating process has become the industry leader. Chipping almost never happens, and the sound of brush “sweeps” remain nicely even-sounding through many recordings of online drum tracks. It is advantageous to have the surface not get too smooth too fast from brush playing.

I also use Classic Clear heads. Using them as bottom tom heads is a given. If I need more articulation out of my toms, I go to the Classic Clear heads as batter heads as well. I tend to favor the warmth of coated heads in general, but some online drum tracks may call for intricate tom work. One can always tune coated heads tighter to achieve more articulation, but that may not be the best option depending on the style of music. The Classic Clear heads are very useful if I need to tune the toms low but still need a lot of articulation. Again, I default to coated heads. “Tribal” tom work, for instance, can lose some of its weight with clear heads. This is applicable to all clear heads from any manufacturer, not just Aquarian.

The last time I used Classic Clear heads for online drum tracks was on a song for a client from Azerbaijan. The song was an up-tempo, fusion-esque song that called for a lot of articulate tom work, as well as some soloing on my part. I went for the Classic Clears to get that articulation. Although some warmth was sacrificed, for that particular piece of music it was a wise choice.

I have also gotten good results using them on my Ludwigs for a Bonham-esque sound for with of my online drum tracks clients.

American Vintage heads are slightly larger in diameter to fit vintage drums. They have a special coating that is different than the Texture Coated heads. The coating is more textured, which means louder brush sweeps. This is not usually a concern for online drum tracks, but it is helpful live.

The coating on the American Vintage model sounds warmer than Texture Coated heads. Of course some of the attack is minimized, unless they are tuned really tightly. They sound great tuned tightly for straight-ahead jazz music. These heads also sound amazing on my vintage Ludwigs, tuned in any range. They sound beautifully warm and “squishy” when tuned down low, and are a great choice for online drum tracks that require few but dramatic tom hits.

Modern Vintage heads have the same general properties as American Vintage, but are made to fit modern drums. This enables me to get a vintage sound out of a modern kit for online drum tracks.

In Part 2 of this series, I will discuss my use of Texture Coated with Power Dot heads, Jack DeJohnette Signature heads, and Super Kick 1 heads on online drum tracks.

The new “Full-Range” film has added more clarity and brightness to the Aquarian drumhead sound.  This has been accomplished without losing any of the amazing low end “beef” that Godwin appreciates.  The eDrumSessions online drum tracks sound has just gotten even more mega than it already was.

“Heroes Are Human” is available on iTunes.

Author Frederick has had quite a career.  She has written hundreds of songs that have been placed in television shows and ads, was Director of A&R for Rhino Records, and is currently Director of A&R for TAXI music.  In the book, Frederick recommends online drum tracks from eDrumSessions as a way to increase odds of getting music placed on television and film.

If you would like more info on the show, check out the Facebook event page.

eDrumSessions founder Shay Godwin has been involved in The Dirty Diamond since 2008.  Session drummer Godwin enjoys playing commercial jingles, but he enjoys getting out and playing with creative abandon.  As Babayan says of Godwin, “I feel like since he gets hired for so much session work, The Dirty Diamond is his creative home and refuge where he can be as free and expressive as he likes without any artistic restrictions.”  Babayan had used other drummers previous to using session drummer Godwin, but the personnel has solidified with the current lineup.

Enjoy reading the full article and be sure to check out The Dirty Diamond.

Here, session drummer Shay Godwin rocks out live with Grammy-nominated Florence and the Machine, with singer LP sitting in. In this performance of the song “Dog Days Are Over”, LP starts off and Florence Welsh comes up about 1:30 into the video.

It is good for a session drummer to get out and play live gigs once in a while. Most people are aware that the skills required to be a great session drummer can be somewhat different that those of a live drummer. However, if a session drummer records constantly in the studio without getting out to play live it can lead to overly-clean and polite playing. Something about live drumming can keep a session drummer playing with a high-energy, live vibe when in the studio, while maintaining the cleanliness of execution expected of a session drummer.

The author, Robin Frederick, released her new book in the wake of her previous bestseller, “Shorcuts to Hit Songwriting: 126 Proven Techniques”.  Frederick has established herself as a top-shelf songwriting tutor.

Frederick mentions eDrumSessions in a section discussing online session drummers.  Here is an excerpt:

“It takes multiple mics, cables, inputs, and a room with good acoustics to handle a full drum kit.  It also requires a great kit, an excellent drummer, and the know-how involved in mic placement and recording.  Consider hiring one of the excellent session drummers who offer to record to your track in their own studio.”

To read more, go check out **page 209** of  “Shortcuts To Songwriting For Film & TV.  You can click on the book cover icon and either scroll to page 209 or type “eDrumSessions” in the search field.

Session drummer Shay Godwin likes to step away from the online custom drum tracks and go out for some live drum work. As much enjoyment as Godwin gets from providing composers and songwriters with the best online drum tracks available, he also enjoys live performance just as much. The Bardot gig, which Godwin subbed on occasionally, is one of his outlets for live performance and an excuse to leave the studio.

Live or in the recording studio providing custom drum tracks, groove is first priority in Godwin’s approach. This is a key element of the success of online drum track provider eDrumSessions.com, which session drummer Shay Godwin founded. One of the main reasons for eDrumSessions 100% satisfaction rate is grooving drum tracks. Of course the amazing, larger-than-life drum sound achieved by engineer Thai Long Ly is a major factor in drum track satisfaction as well.

? The Dirty Diamond, whom Shay plays drums for, was asked to participate in an upcoming Zappa tribute album. Some of the world’s best session drummers, such as Vinnie Colaiuta, have played with Zappa and recorded in this very room.

This footage is from an iPhone leaned against the glass outside of the drum room. That is why you hear such loud guitar and bass, soft drums and nothing else because the iPhone was next to one guitar amp. There will be more footage up of session drummer Shay Godwin from this session in the near future.

Van Halen is, in my opinion, one of the great rock drummers.  One of the reasons for this is a swagger, a swing, a thing in Van Halen’s drumming that is not present in most of today’s rock drummers.  I think it is partially the Bohham influence responsible for this positive aspect to Alex’s playing. 

Strangely the Bonham influence on Alex Van Halen is rarely discussed.  Perhaps it is too obvious to mention?  Enjoy.

http://www.moderndrummer.com/updatefull/200001641/Alex%20Van%20Halen

   “Alex Van Halen never cited John Bonham as a pure influence, but the sound was always there. Perhaps more so than any drummer from the early 1980s to the present, Alex Van Halen inherited the Bonham mantle.

Van Halen’s drum work was, like Bonham, built from the ground up, with the deeply entrenched ability (his dad was a big band musician) to swing a rock groove like a tornado tearing down a city street.”

com. Ly is a huge and integral part of the well-known quality of online drum tracks eDrumSessions. A great thing about Ly is that he understands the physics of sound, the gear he is using, and all necessary technical knowledge while allowing his ears and his artistic sensibilities guide him. Whether recording online drum tracks or anything else, Ly doesn’t allow his vast technical knowledge dominate his great ears and artistic instincts.

Particularly interesting is his discussion of electronic music, then still relatively new. He talks about the musical possibilities versus the potential for musical harm. Vinnie says, "Sound-wise, electronics opened a whole new area… But, what does it have to do with music and pure notes

? It's at a turning point and I am real interested to see which way it is going to go. If acoustic and electronic will be a successful marriage, or if one is going to tug too much away from the other side." Brilliant.

Often the "sonic coolness" side of things has won over actual good songwriting. In other words, for too many folks these days music is exciting only if it slaps them upside the head with electronic might. Contrast the integrity of songwriting between R&B hits of yesteryear and the hits of today…you get the point.

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Lebrew Jones had no blood anywhere on any clothing he possessed (which makes no sense at all given the mess of a crime scene), the timeline presented by the prosecution doesn't add up, and the mentally disabled Mr. Jones was easily led into making false statements by lazy, corrupt detectives.

I was sad to accidentally learn of this while researching Lebrew's father, and to see this happen to the son of such a great

and influential musician.

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Most interestingly the correlation between jam band music and other forms of improvisation are briefly mentioned, as well as the fact that the term "jam band" can be credited to Coleman Hawkins.

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The outspoken rapper/commentator and his outfit Public Enemy want to record another album. I have to say I support them. This is not only because I am an old-school P.E. fan. It is also because they are being creative with the way they seek funds to produce the record. They are having fans directly finance it through an organization called Sellaband, and are the first major act to do so.

Some ahead-of-the-curve indie artists have been doing this. I play for a brilliant artist named Janet Robin who financed her last record, “Everything Has Changed”, through fan dollars. Kudos to any artist who can pull that off at any level.

While I wish P.E. success and look forward to their album, I must admit I will not bother seeing them live. Unless they have a drummer. Period. How they can possibly not understand that the show would GO OFF with a drummer is beyond me.

I saw them live in college and left during the show. Suggestion: they should hire me. Second suggesion: if I am booked they should call ?uestlove.

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He represents a perfect marriage between tradition and modernism. In fact his traditional foundation enables him to play very adventurous, modern things and still keep a Jimmy Cobb-like hard swing going. Many drummers lose their swing feel the second they “take it out”.

Nash has ears and musicality that guide his technique in a way that has enabled him to play with such a wide variety of jazz artists. Anyone with an opportunity to hear him live will be rewarded with high inspiration.

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This is an under-covered subject in the media so good for him for serving as a soldier and continuing to serve as a citizen.

Troy is playing a small doumbek drum, presumably because it is light. It is interesting to hear, as he is playing military snare-type rhythms on a middle eastern hand drum. Troy is sponsored by Yamaha Drums (why the HELL did an American manufacturer not get behind this?????), Latin Percussion, and Sabian. Go Troy!

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It would often seem that young players want to emulate the Bonham hugeness-of-sound, but misinterpret this as being achievable simply by hitting really hard. Hitting hard is all fine and good but Bonham achieved his sound not by wailing, but by getting as huge and wide a tone out of his drums. He knew how to hit the drums and draw a big sound out without having to slam them.

I compare Bonham to the late great Art Blakey in this respect. Blakey was referred to as a “loud” drummer, but he was always in full control of his dynamics. He just had a very wide, sonically rich playing style that some people mistook for plain old loudness. Contrast this with many of today’s young drummers who hit the drums with a very loud transient and yet have a very thin tone!

At some point music will take a turn away from constant over-compression and drummers that have tone and know how to groove will shine again in rock music. Thanks to John Bonham for showing us how it is done!

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I feel blessed to be able to go to the Soultone warehouse practically down the street from the eDrumSessions recording facility and have access to all these cymbals!  Its amazing!  And I get to hang with some great, talented drummers. 

One of Soultone’s top artists is Jonathan Moffett.  He is the man.  Read about him below and enjoy!

Soultone Artist – Jonathan Moffett “Sugar Foot”

The impact that Jones and all of the studio musicians he worked with at Motown had cannot be overstated. Firstly, the Motown hits themselves would not have been what they were without the musicians that played on them. This in not meant to convey disrespect to the great singers that sang on the Motown hits. Nevertheless, as drummer Stanley Jordan (who is greatly influenced by the Motown drummers) stated: “you could’ve had Deputy Dawg singing on some of those records and they’d still be hits”.

The power of those hits was in the groove and spirit of the musicians and Uriel Jones was every bit the part of that. I have heard people describe the “Motown sound” as being attributable to everything from the microphones used to the density of the floorboards in the studio. These things have a small role but to gloss over the fact that the Motown sound IS the musicians that played on the tracks is a joke.

I am thankful to Uriel for setting a template of funkiness that rocks. When I play rock music I add funk to the feel. Not in an “R&B drummer playing rock” kind of way, I mean rock drumming on a stylistic level mixed with a funk feel. Part of what helps me do this is plenty of Uriel Jones in the listening diet.

One last thing I would like to say in tribute to Mr. Jones is that he was actively playing until just before his death. That means he lived, lived, and lived before he went to the next level.

He had health issues, but he didn’t just wait to die. He LIVED until he died. Thanks for the example, Mr. Jones, musically and personally.

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I would love to witness the editing process as it will be such a huge part of things. On the Miles 1967-1975 recordings, extensive tape splicing was employed making for a few bumpy transitions. I consider that to be part of the charm of those recordings.

I have seen Gerry play live with bassist Dave Carpenter in the past. Perhaps he would have been involved with the Electric Thrasher Orchestra sessions if he was still with us. Its a shame, Dave is missed by many in L.A. Kudos to Gerry Gibbs for tackling this tough music.

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The drummer, Darren King, plays some very interesting hi-hat and snare combinations that seem influenced by programmed drum patterns, Stewart Copeland (The Police), Larry Mullen Jr. (U2), and David Robinson of The Cars amongst other elements. Darren King's playing with MuteMath is certainly some of the more interesting pop drumming I have heard lately.

Let us all wish the "Spotlight On Haiti" event the best as we keep the people of Haiti in our prayers.

If you are in the Gulf area don't miss your opportunity to help the people of Haiti while hearing some great music.

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There was a palpable sense of joy to the information he was imparting, and even had some great stories to tell about his stellar performing career. I have no intention of minimizing that great performance career but here my comments focus on Mr. Chapin's educational impact.

Jim Chapin's book “Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer, Volume I, Coordinated Independence as Applied to Jazz and Be-Bop" is one of the best drum set instructional books ever written. I myself grew tremendously while studying from it. Rest in peace, Mr. Chapin.

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For years professional recordings were made only by those who had a large budget. Artists signed to major labels and those with investors were predominately the privileged ones who got record professionally.

The difference in sound between recordings made in a professional studio and demos made otherwise was always as chasmic as it is now.

However, with the advent of online recording studios has come a real “power to the people” type of situation. Now artists that don’t have huge budgets can get the professional studio recordings they need to make their music really stand out. This goes especially for drum tracks, as recording drums is the most complicated procedure requiring the most expertise.

Now artists don’t have to rent a room to record in, nor do most of the other work that used to be involved in obtaining pro drum tracks. One can now simply pay on online recording studio to track drums or other instruments, with no logistical fuss and huge budgetary requirements. Welcome to the revolution.