A film composer on writing to a scene that keeps changing
A film composer joins Hannah to explain scoring a scene that was re-edited five times, how temp music gets in the way and what a director really means by make it bigger.
The drum sound that came from a stairwell
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Show notes
Recording drums in a stairwell
A producer who built a whole record around one drum sound walks Hannah through how it happened: a locked studio, a concrete stairwell and a single microphone. The isolated stems are played so you can hear each decision.
- Why the studio drum room did not work for the song
- Setting up in the stairwell with one microphone and a long cable
- The raw stem, then the compressed stem, then the final mix
- Keeping the artist patient during a four-hour experiment
- Advice for home producers with no stairwell and one microphone
Microphone and chain details are listed in the notes.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to Room Tone, I am Hannah Whitlock, and this is the show about how records actually get made, by the people who make them. Today my guest is a producer whose biggest record has a drum sound that people have been trying to copy for years. It turns out it was recorded in a concrete stairwell, with one microphone, because the proper drum room was locked and nobody had the key. We are going to play the raw stem, then the processed stem, then the final mix, so you can hear every decision rather than just hear us describe it. And then we will talk about what you can do with one microphone and a corridor, because most of you do not have a stairwell. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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