Buffalo Nickel Recording New CD

Here's a rundown of the first of many sessions for the next Buffalo Nickel CD for anyone interested.

THE SESSION:
The session was at Plowhandle Studios on Friday Sept. 1, 2006. Steve Deaton was producing, and I (Elliott) was drumming with my trusty Pearl Rhythm Travelers, and an assortment of snare drums, and cymbals. We started recording at 9AM, and took a lunch break around 11:30AM. We started again a little after 12PM, and continued recording to about 3:30PM. When the day was done we tracked drums for 11 songs in six hours. The room at Plowhandle was great for doing drums! Something about the size of it, the walls, etc etc. gave the drums a punchy sound. The raw tracks pre-eq, and effects sound great.

THE PROCESS:
For certain songs I "doubled" my Rhythm Traveler tom-toms by inverting a second 12" tom, and a second 14" under my main (single headed) toms to simulate a double headed drum sound. Snare drums used were a vintage 6.5"x14" Gretsch wood shell, and a 6.5"x14" Tama Grandstar metal-shell snare drum. For certain tunes the drums were slightly muffled, for others they were wide open. The small 8"x20" RT double headed bass drum (with a small hole cut out in the front head for the mic) gave a gut-thumping punch with an AKG D112 mic.! Other mics included Shure SM57s for the snare and toms, and SM81s for overheads. I believe there was an A.T. room mic also...not sure on that one.

There will likely be more than 11 songs on the new CD. This was just the first of many more sessions to come, but the recording process for the next Buffalo Nickel CD has started. YAY!
EC