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Web Exclusive Interview
The Rock Icon Gets All Loopy
 Joey
Kramer
Joey Kramer
could be the first superstar to become a "modern-technology studio drummer." With Joey's new Drum Loops And
Samples CD set, anyone can now have the legendary Aerosmith drummer's incredible feel on their record or
demo.
The Rock Icon Gets All Loopy
by
Billy Amendola
Joey Kramer could be the first superstar to become a "modern-technology studio drummer." With
Joey's new Drum Loops And Samples
CD set, anyone can now have the legendary Aerosmith
drummer's
incredible feel on their record or demo. For drummers, the disc is
ideal for analyzing and for practicing to. For
songwriters and
engineers, the collection of downloadable studio drum tracks is hard to
beat in terms of groove and
flexibility.
MD Online caught up with Joey hot on the heels of MTV's Icon tribute show and the release of the
double-disc O, Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits collection, and just before he headed back out on tour with the
band.
MD: Recently Zildjian made a presentation to you. What was that about?
Joey: I gave them the kit
that I used on the last tour. They're going to put in the lobby of their factory.
MD: How does it feel to be an MTV
"Icon"?
Joey: [laughs] It's good. You can click on me now at their site.
MD: Let's talk about
your drum loops CD. How did the project come about?
Joey:
It was Peppy Castro's idea. Peppy and I have
been friends and
songwriting buddies for many years, and years ago he said to me, "You
should do a drum loop CD." And I
said, "I'm not sure I'm ready to give
my [stuff] away that conveniently in such a nice, neat little package
where
everybody can just have access to it." But since then I've
changed how I feel about it. Now I'm hoping that it will be a
useful
tool, rather than letting my ego worry about giving stuff away.
MD: Do you think people would be sampling
beats off your albums anyway?
Joey:
Well, I suppose if they really wanted to they could try sampling off
the
records. But this is a more useful tool as far as songwriting goes,
and less complicated in terms of publishing.
MD:
What makes your CD different from others?
Joey:
There are three things that separate this from other drum CDs
that are
out there: Number one is the quality with which it was recorded. The
drum sounds, which are completely redone, are
the same quality that
would be on an Aerosmith record.
Number two, on any other loop CD, they'll give you one
bar to loop. But because of what my
playing is about--the emotion and the feel of it--there are two bars,
and in some
cases four. Whatever it took to establish a feel. There's a
real feel to everything that's on there. It's all on a grid
so you can
cut and paste it, and all the parts can butt up to each other.
The third thing is, we did something that no one
else has ever
done, which is a multi-track version. There is an 8-track version where
you can load it into the Pro Tools
and it'll download onto eight
tracks. So you can mix anything any way you want.
As far
as the material
itself, I just tried to cover the gamut of whatever
could be useful--stuff for ballads, stuff for shuffles, stuff for rock
'n'
roll.
MD: That's a killer shuffle on track 10. Did you follow a click when recording?
Joey: Oh, yeah,
you've got to, so it locks up.
MD: Did you play along to any music?
Joey: No. Just to the
click.
MD: There are a few of your classic Aerosmith beats on there.
Joey:
Yeah, I just hope it
becomes as useful to as many people as I think it
can be. There are about three hundred figures on there, plus a whole
bunch
of fills and samples, with all the individual sounds.
MD:
For drummers who want to analyze or copy your style,
it's a good
practice tool for them. But what do you say to the drummers who
complain that maybe it will put them out of
work?
Joey: I
think there are two schools of thought on that. There's the drummer who
is friends with all the
machines and synthesizers and works along with
them side by side. And then there's the drummer who looks at all
that
stuff like it's the enemy. To those guys who look at that stuff as the
enemy, all I can say is, their days are
numbered. In this day and age
you've got to become friends with all the technology and learn to work
with it, and get the
best of both worlds.
Anybody who's savvy
with computers, with Pro Tools--or whatever format they are
working
in--can use it to loop whatever they want. If they want to learn some
of my beats, they can just loop them over and
over again, and play
along.
MD: How were the drums recorded? Take us through the
process.
Joey:
We were in a room in Rumbo Studios out in Canoga, California, with the
drums out in the middle
of the room. We just found the sweet spot in
the room, and those drums - man, they just sang.
MD: What kit did
you use?
Joey:
We used a vintage Ludwig jazz kit, which had a 20" kick drum, an 8x12
tom, and a 14x14 floor
tom. We swapped among about dozen snare drums. I
used the same toms and kick drum to record just about everything.
It
was surprising even to me how good they sounded. But Marti Fredrickson,
the producer who I recorded this with, and who
also did Aerosmith's
last record, is a great drummer himself, so he's always on the lookout
for drums that sound
good.
Marti's one of the best musicians
I've ever met. He's a great guy, a regular guy. When he heard
about
this idea, he was like, "Dude, that would be great. I'd love to do it."
And I like his work so much that I knew I could
depend on the finished
product coming out the way I would want it to be. On so much of the
material that I hear done on Pro
Tools, the drumming sounds like a
machine. But Marti, being a drummer, is very conscious of preserving
the feel.
There's a way to do that, but you've got to be careful
because it's really easy to make it too
perfect.
MD: You want to retain that swing.
Joey:
Yeah, it's got to have it. My feel is what
I'm all about. Marti and I
would sit together, and it could be, "I love the way I go into the fill
over here, and the way it ends
over here is really great, and the
middle of it in that last chorus over there is nice," and he'd say, "No
problem," and
he'd put it all together. A lot of times I'd do have him
put it together, and then I'd learn it that new way and go
back in and
record that way. I like to school a song to the point where I go into
the studio and play it twice, maybe three
times at most. And then Marti
can make a composite of the takes. But I would say that he's generally
going to use
about 85% of one take. I don't favor using a great verse
part, say, for all three verses, because you wouldn't play it the
third
time the same way you would the second time.
MD: How long would you play each
beat?
Joey:
Until it felt good. Everything was pretty loose. There are twenty-five
or thirty Aerosmith songs on
there, though that's the minority of
what's on there. The majority of it is beats I've never played or
recorded
before, just stuff that's out of my head.
We used bpms
as a starting point. I would play like ten or twenty different
parts,
and then we'd move the tempo up or down, and I'd play them again. Then
there are a couple of things on
there that are the same, but with
different snare drums. Also, a couple of times I'd play the same figure
on a tight hi-hat,
then on a loose hi-hat, then on a cymbal, and then
on a bell. That way you could use the same basic part in
different
sections. It's all pretty logical.
MD: How long did the whole thing take?
Joey: I played for
about eight to ten hours a day for three days. Well, the whole thing--thinking it up and getting to the point of knowing all that
stuff--that took about thirty years. [laughs]
For more about Joey Kramer's Drum Loops And Samples, go to
www.audioicons.com.
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