My Secret

SOUNDCLOUD >>> Coming Soon

I’ve got a little secret that no one will ever find
I keep it buried deep inside hid within my mind
When the world gets too intense, static cracks and roars
I disappear into that state where my spirit soars

Most days I’ve got 10 million things on my mind
Others I spend looking for things I can’t find
I see the world in a light you cannot perceive
And I know things that are true you wouldn’t believe

Take me to the river, let me feel it wash over me
Wash away my sins and my hurt… Let my spirit be free
Take me to the mountain, let me breathe in the air
Let my soul feel the wind… Let my spirit be there

I want you to know…

I want you to know
I’m not feeling well
I look at this place
I really can’t tell
Everyone stares right through me
Don’t think I can take it much more
I can’t help the way that I’m made
I stare at my shoes and the floor
And everything moves much faster than I
Family and friends in the blink of an eye

Gone…. Gone….


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Words and Music by Dave Ryder Copyright © 2015
Drums: Chris Rose

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I visualize the video for this song with the camera focused on the protagonist, who is moving very slowly, while all around him people in his life are flying around at hyper-speed.

A few notes regarding the song

It's hard to describe what this song means to me as a producer/engineer. In a way, it’s the culmination of years of hard work – Chris Rose’s maturity and tastefulness have never been more evident as he blazes through a stellar performance. I have never gotten a better drum sound* (I’ll go into the recording technique a little bit below), and it seems that every song raises the bar in sound quality . And I have to give props to Chris, with very little rehearsal he was able to flow through the time signatures: 7/8 to start with into 6/8 (with bars of 5/4 thrown in between the second verses and the following transition chords), then during the mellow bridge it becomes a 3/4 jazz waltz, and then finally it goes back to the 7/8 coda. Dan was crucial to this recording as well, his natural sense of timing really helped anchor the groove.

* Recording the drums
For this entire project I really made a conscious effort to capture ALL of the instruments (not just the drums) as they really sound. I close mic’ed the individual drums paying particular attention to the mic placement – it was all about the sound, if it didn’t sound right, we moved them until they did sound good. Also we didn’t use any muffling or tape or padding on the kit (except for a tiny pillow just lightly touching the beater head of the kick drum), we just left them wide open. Chris did a great job of tuning them so they sounded open and not choked, yet didn’t have unpleasant ringing or overtones.

Don’t get me wrong, when a kit is wide open like that there is always going to be some ringing, but what with the close mics and sheer volume we were playing at I didn’t think it would be a problem, and it turned out it wasn’t.

I used an AKG 414 Buls for the right overhead, and a CAD Equitek for the left overhead, nice large condenser mics only a couple of feet above the cymbals. The toms were mic’ed with Sennheiser 421′s with no EQ rolloff, the snare got a single SM57 and the kick got an AKG D112 mounted on a stand and stuck through the hole in the resonating head, and pointed directly at the beater about 7 inches away from it. We didn't mic the hi-hats, between the overheads and snare mic they were plenty loud (the right overhead was positioned right over the hats).

The drumheads and cymbals are:

Here are some pics, click for a larger image:

The kit

Closeup of the kick mic placement, from the front:

Micing the kick

Another view:

Alt view

I think the key thing I did differently from previous recordings was going directly from the mics to preamps straight into the sound cards – and afterwards just a little EQ on individual tracks, mostly adding just a little hi-end to the snare and kick. Other than a slight reverb on the snare, and a tiny amount of limiting on the kick, there are NO EFFECTS used at all on the drums (no drumagog, or doubling, or any other studio trickery).

One thing I have always done is to pan the kit from the drummers POV: from the hats to the hi tom down to the low tom, the panning is from left to right, as the drummer hears it while he’s playing it. I feel it makes playback more realistic to the drummer, and puts the listener into the “driver’s seat” as it were.

Alt view