So, the band I play for booked some time in a St. Louis studio to track a few songs. I was scheduled to go in on a Tuesday and spend about 8 hours tracking drums. Well, it ends up that they booked themselves into the nicest studio in St. Louis (and probably one of the nicest in the Midwest)... Four Seasons Media Productions.

I've been to a bunch of home/project studios in my time (some decent... some pretty crappy), but this is my first time tracking in a "real" studio. Unfortunately, I was so busy drumming that I didn't get much of a chance to drool over all their high-end gear.... but I did find some links online to a few pictures of their control and tracking rooms, just so you can join me a bit of gratuitous gear-lust.

It doesn't look like they have a functioning website, but the architectural firm who designed their rooms has a section devoted to Four Seasons where you can see some nice pictures.

Even though the main tracking room you see in most of the pictures looks nice and huge, it was actually quite cramped, because it was full of gobos that were dividing it up into little sections which were full of vocal mic's, and vintage amps, and grand pianos, and Hammond B3's and what not.

As you walk the halls, you can see autographed "Thank You" pictures from all kinds of bands. Off the top of my head, I remember seeing Matchbox 20, Maroon 5, Sixpence, Liz Phair, and a few other "big name" bands that I can't recall at the moment.

The control room we worked in was pretty impressive. It was nice and comfy.... not to mention full of a whole lot of really freaking expensive crap.  I do have to deduct a couple of points from them, though. They made the mistake of not having the omnipresent black leather couch at the back of the control room that all studios must include by default. (Theirs was beige...probably to match the color scheme... but really... tradition trumps color scheme any day. ) And there was nary a lava lamp in the entire joint, so you know someone was sleepin' on the job the day they were doing the interior design.

One of the nifty gadgets they had in there was a closed-circuit TV system for all the tracking rooms. They had video feeds from every room displayed up on a big TV in front of the console (so they could watch me look like a dork, as usual, while I drummed my butt off all night ). I barely got a moment to ogle all that rack gear before I had to head off to the drum tracking room. It can be seen at the back of this picture. It's the glass wall immediately to the left of the piano (which was a beautiful Steinway, btw)... you can see the entry door to the drum room on the far left. It was exactly what I would expect from a studio like this. The door was built like a tank and air sealed once you closed it. The room had a very tall ceiling (had to be 15-20 feet). There were no 90 degree angles.... lots of odd corners and angled walls and what not. The glass wall wasn't perpendicular either... it was tilted inward so that any reflections from the cymbals wouldn't bounce back at the mic's. Speaking of which, I was surprised at the mic's they used... mainly because they were all mics that I've used before... they had 421's on all the toms, a 414 on the hat, and.... (yes.... they really do use these in professional studios) a couple SM57's on the snare (top and bottom). The OH was a single condenser right above my head. Needless to say, I kept bumping into it every time I stood my tall, lanky self up from the throne (I'm sure the AE really loved that... ). I think it was a stereo condenser, because I glanced at it a few times (after knocking my huge noggin on it) and it looked like it had dual capsules... I didn't get the manufacturer, though.

Oddly enough.... that's about as attentive to detail as I was. I was so busy concentrating on remembering all the parts and trying to keep myself vertical after 8 hours of drumming that I didn't think to check out what kind of kit I was playing on, or what kind of console they used (I think it was an SSL), or much else.

I must say, though, that one of the nicest perks of tracking drums in a pro studio is drum techs. Even though I don't know what kind of kit I was on, I do know that they were probably the nicest sounding toms I've ever played, because the drum tech had tuned them before I got there. He also set everything up how I wanted it, once I explained my preferences. Then we went through the 8 or 10 snares that he had with him, and I got to pick out the one I liked the best (which was a very sweet sounding Slingerland that he found in a pawn shop somewhere in Texas.... I think). That whole deal was probably the best part of the entire experience. I also had my own monitor mixer, so I could control all the elements of my in-ear mix without having to bother the AE. Although, that's not an unusual feature for me, since my brother has a similar system in his studio.

Overall, it was a pretty cool deal... I laid some decent tracks down, and got to see how the "big boys" do their stuff. Needless to say, it's definitely something that I expect to do again in the future.... you know... when I'm all big and famous and crap.

WATYF