Mould

[The Moderator]

Its funny you should say that as the drums from the rehearsal where done with a td3 electronic kit direct into the recording setup which is how the drums are programmed on cd, though brooke said this was a new kit setup and they had some problems with it hence the drums sounding odd in places from trigger misfires ect.

[Tyranor]

I feel tricked They seemed quite live to me. Guys still surprise me.

[Myklon B]

Dan uses the electronic kit for recording mainly, and in rehearsal if we need to keep quiet, it's a practical measure more than anything else. We had a few problems with latency (ie. a delay between Dan hitting a pad and the computer making the corresponding sound) and glitching during that rehearsal so they sound pretty unbalanced in places.
This is our preferred way of doing things now but for years (up to and including the last-minute-replacement programming on "Deleted Scenes") the drum patterns were put together beat by beat painstakingly in Cakewalk, which is an extremely slow and dull process...

[xenolith]

Slow and dull is right, I'll sometimes make entire MiDi arrangements which can be useful for certain procedures; editing/arranging/tabbing and what not - but mainly for the ease of it lest I have my own latency issues, which are only less annoying than entire system crashes.

Have to say I was fooled too, but that's the TD-3 for you - that's a fine looking electronic kit, how well does it play, latency aside?

[Tyranor]

Myklon said:

"Deleted Scenes") the drum patterns were put together beat by beat painstakingly in Cakewalk, which is an extremely slow and dull process...

I see. I had to face that too but not in such extent. "Deleted Scenes..." has the most incredibly precise programmed drums I have ever heard. Really. Don't you want to say that drums were added after guitars been recorded (dumb question of course but I suppose you did in vice versa way)?

[Tyranor]

Another curious thing. The "Chained" track. It was said that this one was recorded during "Ichneumon" session, right? But unlike the whole album that track has let's call it very one-dimensional sound. What are the reasons? Mix problems?

[myklon B]

Well, it's a bit of both. I had some rudimentary drum patterns sketched in while doing preproduction demos for the other guys, and once everything'd been recorded it was relatively easy to go back and add all the touches, variations and flourishes that precisely fit the riffs with the benefit of having all the other instruments fully in place.

As for the precision and complexity, it just comes down to regular practice and my own approach to programming. All the concerns about the drums being rushed at the last minute were because of the sounds themselves and the mix, which could've been a lot better if we'd had more time.

As for that version of "Chained In The Damnation Asylum", it was recorded during the "Ichneumon" session, but at the time of its axing (October '02) the vocals were still unfinished and very little in the way of noise had been added. If it sounds thinner, it's probably because of the panning, which I think was altered at some stage.

[Tyranor]

No, not thinner I really ment. All intstrument are very centered into one dimension and whole track sounds very compressed. That is what I wanted to point. Sometimes I just have to put some reverb to give more sphericity while I listen to "Chained" but that doesn't really help that much

[The Moderator]

Brooke Said: Chained was never giving the full mixing treatment like the other album tracks, also that track was never mastered, mastering changes the sound of a track more than you would think.
The TD3 played ok but all but the snare where clunky rubber pads, dan now has access to a TD12 where all they pad are mesh heads that respond more like realy drums skins when you hit them. some non axis recordings made with the TD12 will be available soon.

[Tyranor]

Well thank you for clearing things up for me on this matter