"We recently hired Matt Laug to do drums on 10 songs for our upcoming release. We play old school rock, and for that music he is ideal. I’m sure other styles would get similar results. After all, a great drummer is just that.

The first thing that came across with him, is his preparation and frequent communication. He is the easiest guy to deal with I’ve encountered in the music business, maybe in any business. He has exceptional feel, very fluid and hard hitting. He has a great sense of what a song needs. It becomes apparent why a top notch drummer is so important in a band or project. He showed zero ego and does what’s asked of him. And always did it with a great attitude.

He brought numerous snares to get whatever one could be hearing in their head. In particular, he had one that was custom made for him by DW. The shell is bronze, made to his specification. I have a friend in LA who stopped by that’s worked with Matt and many of their peers on sessions in the area. His instant reaction to hearing the drums was how killer that snare sounded. There’s a DW kit at the studio with a Black Beauty. The Black Beauty sounds great as expected, and it’s the best fit for certain songs. In the end the Matt Laug Series ended up on 75% of the songs, with the Black Beauty on the rest.

Another thing that appealed to us was his understanding of tuning. I wish every drummer had that. The drummer we were working with is a great player. However his understanding of tuning and what drums sound best was underwhelming. And so were the tracks we spent months on. Matt changed the snare tuning several times to fit the song. The kit was tuned like the recordings we’ve heard and desired. He brings his own cymbals as I‘m sure most do. His taste in cymbals fit our ears perfectly.

Playing my bass parts to his tracks was downright fun. He brought riffs and hooks to life. The fills which I asked for an abundance of, where what records are made of. When doing bass tracks I have the drums equal to the bass, with everything else just barely at intelligible. And I like it loud, it probably annoyed the neighbors. It was worth all the effort and $$ I invested in my facility at that point. His feel, groove and aggression really came through with that mix. Simply put, Matt is the rock drummer we all want. 

Tom and his facility are well documented on his website. The drums sound good in the tracking room, he used a total of 19 tracks. Batter & resonant mics on every drum, hats / ride, stereo OH’s, 2 stereo room mics, mono FOK, and an additional mono overhead. He also used a mic called Party, which is a dynamic pointed over the drummers head that’s heavily compressed. One set of room mics are Royers in the room, the others are in the hallway connected to it. There are plenty of desirable pres / eq’s / comps which were used well. Check his gear list for details. We ended up with great sounds ready for mix. The mono overhead and hall room are great color mics, party has a lot of grit. The rest are pretty self explanatory.

Parking is a little limited so it would be best to carpool. Spots on Whitsett seemed available on the weekdays I was there, if needed.

I would be very surprised if we didn’t use this solution again, if it’s available in the future. I was the only one to make the sessions, the others used ustream to monitor remotely. They commented on how great it sounded and the chat feature worked well. I’m glad I’m close enough to go, but it would be fine if I had to use ustream."

Digihead

Phoenix, AZ