If you feel the tracking process is
done once the drums, bass, guitars,
keyboards, and vocals are down, then
you may be missing out on a lot of
fun. Percussion tracks can be a
huge—and hugely entertaining—part
of the “sweetening” phase of your
recordings, and, no, I’m not talking
about simply adding a tambourine to
every snare hit (that is, unless you’re
planning to overdub a platoon of
tambourines to rival anything Phil
Spector did during his pre-jailbird
days as the creator of the Wall of
Sound). After all, even basic sample
libraries offer a fair amount of exotic
percussion instruments, and you
shouldn’t just leave these fabulous
sounds to waste away due to neglect.
Furthermore, you can score non-virtual
percussion instruments relatively
inexpensively by raiding toy stores, or
go the distance by purchasing professional
percussion tools from your
local music store (or online). Whether
you sequence or trigger samples, or
actually put hand or stick to wood,
metal, or drum skin, exploring the
sonic and rhythmic attributes of percussion
can add new layers of excitement
to a track you thought was
totally cooked. Here are three percussion
options from a recent acoustic
production of mine.
Stealing Time
Okay, there’s not much “new” in
today’s music world, but that doesn’t
mean you can’t borrow a cool idea
from a different discipline and make
it part of your own thing. For example,
Cheryl Munoz, background singer
and percussionist for the Ol’ Cheeky
Bastards, also studies flamenco dancing.
When she saw and heard a cajon
being played at a flamenco dance
concert, she decided to purchase one
and incorporate it into the Bastards
mix of folky, punky, Celtic music. The
cajon’s unique hand-slapped snare,
tom, kick drum, and wood block
sounds now appear as the main percussion
treats on OCB’s Working
Class Heroes and Truths [Rotten
Eggs]. We attached an Audix F-90
clip-on mic to the side of the port on
the back of the cajon, which allowed
us to record the cajon performances
with Munoz sitting in the control
room, and listening via the monitor
speakers, rather than headphones.
This situation meant she could play
as if she were performing live—a
“comfort” plus as she was still a newbie
cajon player—and there was virtually
no signal bleed from song tracks
into the microphone.
Shaker “Hi-Hat”
Hi-hat cymbals are supposed to be
aggressive and bright, and they do a
marvelous job driving everything
from funk to metal. But what if you’re
dealing with some gently strummed
acoustic guitars and the hi-hits are
just obliterating them? This was kind
of a big problem, because I had programmed
a hi-hat groove and all
the instruments were tracked to
the offending cymbal sear.
Ultimately, I decided to replace the hihats
with a shaker egg that exhibited
a sweeter, less-sizzling sound, and
the mild sh-sh-sh-sh fit in beautifully
with the acoustics, kicking the groove
while simultaneously not pilfering all
the tonal attention. I dug the effect
so much that I doubled the shaker
track—one with a red egg and one
with a black egg (somehow, I fooled
myself into thinking the color actually
made some kind of timbral difference)—
and panned them hard right
and hard left.
Bongo Time in India &
North Africa
For a more rockin’ acoustic track, I
channeled my inner beatnik and laid
down a sixteenth-note onslaught on
some bongos, one finger hitting the
“high” bongo, and another finger
swatting the “low” bongo in an
approximation of a rock hi-hat part.
(And, yes, I was replacing the hi-hat
cymbals again—which, at this point,
were rapidly being demoted to click
tracks.) The Audix F-90 came in
handy once more, as it could be
affixed to one of the tuning rings.
Just for the sake of doing something
idiotic (see how much fun percussion
sessions can be?), I decided to
double the bongo groove with sampled
tablas. Then, I tripled the same
rhythm part by playing a dumbek I
had bought on a whim. The rhythmic
layer was spooky, spicy, and driving,
and I panned the bongos in the
middle, with the dumbek mixed
slightly lower in volume on the right,
and the tabla samples sitting a bit
under the dumbek volume on the
left. What a blast!