How Much Difference Does A Snare Drum Head Make?

According to Ross Garfield, otherwise known as The Drum Doctor, the single most important thing that you can do to make your drums sound great is to install new heads. But which ones? There are so many to choose from, that it's really hard to tell which ones are correct for the type of music that you're playing.

But we're lucky that we're living in the age of instant video, since Gear Guruz posted an excellent video comparing the sound of different snare drum heads. Don't equate the one that sounds better in this video as the best one for you though, since the sound only applies to the particular song, but do listen to the major differences between heads.

The 10 Most Addictive Sounds

If you're reading this blog, you already know how much sound makes up a large part of our lives because you're immersed in its creation in one way or another. 

It'll come as no surprise that the sounds we hear on a daily basis can end up having a profound influence on us, even decades down the road, so states Martin Lindstrom in an excellent post on Fastcompany.com. Lindstrom points out a few things that you probably weren't aware of (I wasn't). For instance, when the sound was removed from slot machines in Las Vegas, revenue fell by 24%, and restaurants have found that when slow music (slower than the rhythm of a heartbeat) is played, we eat slower and we eat more (wish I knew that when I owned a restaurant)!

So how were the 10 most addictive sounds determined? Buyology Inc. and Elias Arts, a sound identity company in New York, wired up 50 volunteers and measured their galvanic, pupil and brainwave responses to sounds using the latest neuroscience research methods. Much of their findings were surprising, such as just how many commercial brands over the past 20 years have made their way into the world's 10 most powerful and addictive sounds, even beating some of the most familiar and comforting sounds of nature.

I personally found many of the sounds on the following list a bit confusing, since I never would've guessed their influence, but others I'm sure every one will probably agree with. 

So here they are, divided into brand, non-branded, and a combination. If you click on the link, you'll hear the sounds.

Top 10 Non-branded and branded sounds:

1. Baby giggle

2. Intel

3. Vibrating phone

4. ATM / cash register

5. National Geographic

6. MTV

7. T-Mobile Ringtone

8. McDonald's

9. 'Star Spangled Banner'

10. State Farm

Top 10 Branded sounds:

1. Intel

2. National Geographic

3. MTV

4. T-Mobile

5. McDonald's

7. State Farm

8. AT&T Ringtone

9. Home Depot

10 Palm Treo Ringtone

Top 10 Non-branded sounds:

1. Baby giggle

2. Vibrating phone

3. ATM / cash register

4. "Star Spangled Banner"

5. Sizzling steak

6. 'Hail to the Chief'

7. Cigarette light and inhale

8. "Wedding March"

9. "Wish Upon a Star"

10. Late Night with David Letterman Theme

The Hanging Microphone

Everyone has seen the photos of the vintage large diaphragm tube mic hanging upside down in front of the vocalist. Many engineers think that it’s a fashion statement or some sort of convenience, but there really are several good reasons for placing a mic this way. Here are just a few things to consider;

• Much of the reason for hanging a mic upside down is because many of the early studio microphones used tube electronics. The heat rising from the tube can cause the diaphragm to change temperature over time, which will change the sound of the mic. Placing the tube above the capsule will let the heat rise without passing over the diaphragm.

• An excellent byproduct of singing slightly upward into a mic because it’s positioned upside down is that it forces the singer’s airway open and encourages a full body voice. Take a deep breath and sing a low note. Start with your chin to your chest and slowly lift your head until your chin is about 15 degrees above level. Hear any difference?

• Maybe even more important, the mic can be positioned so the singer is less likely to direct popping air blasts into the mic

• It’s easier for the singer to read any music or lyrics since it’s out of the way.

Now you can see that hanging the microphone was more than a random design, it was indeed well thought out placement by our engineering forefathers.

DIY Isolation Headphones

Having trouble with click bleed? Most drummers need the click at earsplitting levels, so bleed from the click track can become a problem, especially on quiet passages. The same goes for anyone playing an acoustic instrument like a guitar, dobro or violin (fiddle to you Nashvillians). The instruments are naturally quiet and the sound of the click can get easily out of hand.

If you can't afford a set of Vic Firth isolation phones (preferred by drummers these days) or just need to bang something together quickly, this video will show you how to do it on the cheap.


Headphone Hack! Make You Own Noise Eliminating Headset! - More free videos are here

Clapton On Singing

Playing and singing is something that most rock and pop musicians deal with at some time. Discovering the independence to do two things well at the same time can take a lifetime to perfect.

In Rolling Stone’s new issue, David Fricke has a conversation with Eric Clapton where he weighs in about singing and how it affects your playing.

How do you account for the fact that Jeff Beck isn’t as big a rock star as you are?
He deliberately carved that image. I don’t think he would deny that. He likes to be left alone. He wants to be underneath the car, working on the engines. He made that one record where he sang [the 1967 British hit "Hi Ho Silver Lining"], and rarely did it again. That’s always a bone of contention. I had a chat with his manager Harvey [Goldsmith] after he signed Jeff. I said, “Are you going to get him to sing?” He said, “I’ll try.” Good luck! But if he isn’t motivated [to do it], I think he’s missing something. It’s an enjoyable thing to do.

Most of the guitarists in that elite group that you mention [in the story] — Robert Cray, Buddy Guy, B.B. King — are singers. Jeff is not.
He sings when he plays. He has that melodic inventiveness that we were talking about yesterday [at Beck's house], that he puts into everything he plays. Derek [Trucks] is another one. I think Derek should sing. Because he has the same thing. He has a Voice.

A vocal mentality.
Exactly. But I would worry about the amount of sacrifice they would have to make in terms of their technique, in order to start focusing on being a vocalist.

Did you feel when you started singing regularly in the late Sixties that you had to dial back as a player?
Yeah. I don’t think I did it consciously. But automatically, once you start applying your discipline to one part of your vocabulary, another part has to suffer to a certain extent.

Why does it have to suffer?
If you’re just talking about the amount of practice that you take to sing. I’m talking from my experience. My concentration will become focused on whether I’m pitching properly, whether my diction is okay, if the evenness of breathing is getting to all of the [melody] line, that I’m not losing the last part of the line because I’m running out of breath. And then I’ve got a guitar solo: “Oh God, I have to do that as well.”

Some kind of prioritizing has to go on. The thing with Derek and Jeff and guys like that is they have spent their entire lives, so far, focused on that one element that they created. They probably know, subconsciously, that they will lose a little bit of ground.

Did you like your voice when you started singing?
No. I do now. It’s taken me to be an older guy, an old man, to have an old man’s voice. Because I only liked old men’s voices. As a kid, I didn’t like pip-squeaked singers. It was always someone with authority. And for a singer to have authority, they have to have some kind of social standing. Otherwise, it’s fake.

So when you sang “After Midnight” and “Let It Rain” on your first solo album, you didn’t feel you were convincing in those roles.
No. I also suffered from a delusion that a lot of people share, from what I can see. Which is, if you sing at the top of your range, it’s more expressive. So I figured out how high I could sing. Then I sang in that key. It’s a cop-out, because it’s easier to pitch — you just stretch. To sing in a lower key is harder work. You have to use your diaphragm more. All of these things come into play. And it’s like, “God, I don’t want to be bothered.” But that’s when it becomes authority. I didn’t learn all of that — it’s just maturity.

Abbey Road Studios Update

As predicted, all the controversy around Abbey Road Studios has led to it being declared a Grade II listed historical building by the British government today.

Grade II means that the interior can be altered by not the outside. This ruling is actually backwards for Abbey Road, since the interior is what really needs to be preserved, but it's a step in the right direction.

We can all breathe a collective sigh of relief now.

My Interview on Musician's Cooler

Dave Jackson of Musician's Cooler was kind enough to interview me for his podcast regarding my How To Make Your Band Sound Great book.

If you want to know a little bit about my background and a pretty good road story involving pyro gone wrong, check out the podcast.

Click on the podcast link right above the picture of the book.

Thanks, Dave!

Abbey Road Studios Not For Sale After All

According to a BBC report, EMI Records emphatically stated that the famed Abbey Road Studios are not for sale after all, although EMI is looking for investors in the property. It's easy to believe that the major uproar over the studio's potential sale had something to do with taking the property off the market, since the last thing EMI needs right now is any negative publicity or further confirmation of their weak financial status.

Even if a sale would've occurred, there appeared to be some buyers in the form of uber-composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and former Beatle Paul McCartney, as well as interest from the National Trust (the UK agency tasked with preserving historical sites). In fact, there seems to be ongoing plans to list the Abbey Road as a historical site, which will no doubt be accelerated due to the recent publicity.

According to the story, EMI had an offer for the property last year for approximately $46 million, which the company turned down. If it wouldn't take that offer, which sounds generous, it's hard to believe that it would find a better one now.

While it's true that studios like Abbey Road are dinosaurs in these days of extremely powerful and inexpensive personal recording setups, there will always be a place for a large studio capable of recording an orchestra since not many are left anywhere in the world. In fact, any kind of commercial studio with proper acoustics and a high quality signal path is getting harder and harder to find, which means that the ones left are still pretty busy since there are enough budgets to afford them (but barely so, it's still a struggle).

There will always be high-end projects and clients and they'll demand a studio like Abbey Road. It's unknown whether they'll be enough of them to keep the doors open, but at least it's good to know that the studio will probably have alternatives to stay alive if ever EMI should choose to liquidate it (which is still likely at some point).

Buddy Holly's Label Problem

As long as musician have been signed to record labels there's been misunderstandings about what's in the contract, almost always by the artist. What's unusual is when you actually have an audio recording of the disagreement. What's even more unusual is when this recording is from way back in 1956 and it involves the legendary Buddy Holly.

Here's the setup. Buddy and his band were spotted by a talent scout opening for Elvis and signed to the Decca label out of Nashville. Decca had them record 5 tracks with famed producer Owen Bradley, but no one liked the result, so Decca declined the option on Buddy's contract when it came up for renewal. Buddy was OK about being released, but wanted to be able to use the songs that he recorded, so he called the president of Decca to get permission. He also secretly recorded the call, which is what you're about to hear.

Decca refused to let him use the songs (which included what became his huge hit, "That'll Be The Day"), which is understandable since they wanted to recoup the money they spent. Holly eventually got around the deal by recording the songs for a subsidiary of Decca under the name of the band "The Crickets," which is probably why Decca never took him to court, which they probably had the right to do.

I spotted this video on the great Musicianscooler blog. Dave Jackson of Musicians Cooler recently did a couple of interviews with me regarding my Music 3.0 and How To Make Your Band Sound Great books. Thanks, Dave! I'll post the links when the interviews go live.

To Click (Track) Or Not To Click

One of the perpetual questions for a producer is whether to have a band use a click track when  recording basic tracks. Over the years, the decision to do so has become easier as a whole generation of players has grown up playing along with a click or loops, so it's a lot easier to find drummers who are more comfortable, and therefore better able to perform, with a click.

Here are the benefits to cutting a track to a click:

1) The tempo is more even so the song can feel better as a result (more on this later).

2) Because of the even tempo, it's easier to cut between different takes to obtain a superior performance.

3) During mixing, it's easier for the engineer to time delays and reverbs to the track so they blend better.

The major downside of cutting to a click with a drummer who's not comfortable with it is that the track can sound stiff and machine like. If the song doesn't feel good, none of the above benefits matter much.

While it's easy to believe that every hit song has an even tempo, that's not the case at all. I found the following graphs on a post called "In Search of the Click Track" that had some plots showing the tempo deviations from the average tempo for a number of songs. It's pretty easy to see where machines set the tempo and where it was all human clock.

The first example is a comparison between a Police song ("So Lonely') and a Britney Spears song ("I Love Rock n' Roll"). There's a huge deviation between Stewart Copland's playing (he's always been ahead of the beat and it sure is in evidence here) and virtually none in the Britney song, which is obviously a machine.

If we look at "Ya Ya" by jazz great Art Blakey, we see that the guy is as solid as a rock and as close to perfect as a human can get without playing to a click.

Charlie Watt's playing on "Sympathy For The Devil" is all over the place, but it's always felt pretty good to me and I never would have thought you'd find a deviation like this. It's a 17 bpm difference between the beginning and ending of the song!

But Nickelback, on the other hand, is obviously playing to a click, and the time hardly budges.

The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" proves that Keith Moon was playing along with a sequenced synth (you can see him wearing headphones during live concert videos of the song). The thing is, he could really do it well as he still made the song feel good, even despite his unorthodox style.

So what can we learn from these charts? If the feel is good, so is the song. Tempo variations are mentally overlooked by the listener under the right circumstances, and a solid steady tempo doesn't necessarily sound boring. Each song is unique, and therefore the question of "To click or not to click" remains unanswered because there is no answer.

I believe that the difference between a good drummer and a bad one is how good his internal clock is. That is, if the drummer can play steady and even within himself (where the snare and hat always hit in the same place relative to the kick drum, despite the tempo), the drummer will be considered "solid." I think these charts prove that what makes a song is not a tempo thing, it's a feel thing. A good drummer equals a good feel, but a good drummer may not always equal a good tempo.

7 Tips For A Better Rehearsal

Regardless of where you're at in the musical food chain, rehearsals are an essential part of your life. One of the major differences between a pro and an amateur is in rehearsal technique. Here's a quick checklist to make those rehearsals go a little smoother so you can get a lot more accomplished.


1) Have an agenda. Know what youʼll be working on before rehearsal even begins. It saps so much energy out of a band to argue about what you're going to do when you have to decide at the rehearsal. Learn something new, work out something that doesn't sound right yet, but keep moving forward. And plan the next rehearsal at the end of the last one.

2) Know your parts before you get there. You canʼt concentrate on playing with the band if you donʼt know your parts. This applies more to cover bands, but can also apply to bands that play their own music as well. Usually the songwriter will record at least a rough demo before the band gets together to work it out. If you work out the changes and get an idea of where the song is going beforehand, there'll be a lot more time to experiment so you can perfect playing with the other musicians during rehearsal.

3) Concentrated on the details. It's not just the changes that make the song, it's all the other things that take it to the next level. Learning to play dynamically and concentrating on the turnarounds, builds, attacks and releases make all the difference in the world in how the song finally sounds.

4) Stop immediately when thereʼs a trainwreck. Address the problem while itʼs fresh. Don't let a mistake go by, especially if the player or players making it aren't aware of what they're doing. Remember the golden words, "How are your playing it?"

5) Work on the most difficult part first. Start as close to the part that's giving you trouble as you can and donʼt stop playing it until it works. Repeat until you get it, even if you have to play it slower at first, or softly so you can hear yourselves better.

6) Donʼt rehearse a song to death. Give it a break and come back later. One of the worst things that a band with their own music does is play the same songs every rehearsal. Give them a rest, especially if you've been playing them for a long time or out on gigs. Don't worry, you won't forget how to play them.

7) Rehearse your show. Before you play a gig, rehearse the entire show, including what youʼll say in- between songs, sound and light cues, etc. This is what a major touring band does and that's why they can nail it from the first night of the tour onwards. The less you leave to chance, the better your show will be.

Just by following these simple techniques, you'll find that not only will your rehearsals be more productive, but your shows as well.

Abbey Road Studios For Sale - A Video Tour

EMI Records has had a tough go of it since the investment fund Terra Firma purchased it right before the world economic collapse a couple of years ago. What made it particularly difficult for Terra Firma is the fact that they borrowed most of the money for the sale from Citibank. Now TF needs gads of money to pay off Citi, which means they have none to invest in just the thing that drives the record business - new artists.

So EMI has been in a death spiral. It can't pay it's bills and artists with half a brain won't touch them with a ten foot pole. What can they do? Sell off parts of the company, of course.

Now comes word that the revered Abbey Road Studios are now on market, according to an article in the Financial Times. The studio, which was purchased in 1929 for about $160,000, reportedly will bring in tens of millions of dollars, since the brand name is worth far more than either the studio or real estate. That will hardly put a dent in the more than 5.5 billion dollars still owed to Citi, but the studio is bound to prosper more away from EMI than within it. If you're not much into music history, Abbey Road is where some of the biggest selling records of all time were made, including most of The Beatles recorded output, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, and many many more.

So if you're thinking of buying a studio, let's take a look inside Abbey Road.



Notice a few things in the video (you never see the entire complex - only the entrance and studio 2).

1) All the equipment in the hall. This is something that you just don't see much any more, but it was a pretty common sight in the days of the multi-studio complexes.

2) The analog tape machines, both in the hall and in the studio. The studio also had an old Sony 3348 digital tape machine as well.

3) The console is at right angles to the window viewing the studio. This was also common in studios of the time, but practical too, since you'd never be able to see in the studio if the console was placed traditionally in front of the window.

4) The control room is high up on the second floor. It sure was easy to see just what was going on in large studio like Abbey Road #2, but I imagine the assistants must get pretty tired having to climb those steps all day.

Whatever happens, let's hope that Abbey Road lives on and on. It's a special place.

If you read my Music 3.0 blog, sorry for the cross-post, but I thought the topic fit for both.