Gavin Harrison here!

Hi Gavin!

I've been watching the musikmesse clips on the site here, and I was wondering those tracks will ever be released as playalong tracks. I understand that 19 days is on one of your DVDs.

The reason I ask is that I am studying music at university and the third track in particular would be great to include in my fourth year recital (if I could get the hang of it!).

Cheers.
Ewan.
 
Fox, based on a previous question

http://www.askgavinharrison.com/articles/138-Do-you-copy-paste-repeated-drum-parts-when-recording-to-save-time

"I do several takes of the same song and pick the best performance."

Fox622003 said:
Hey Gavin, I was wondering if you *always* recorded a track in one take, or sometimes recorded the parts separately, because I find it too frustrating, time consuming and can never get *everything* perfect when recording in one take, so I usually try to record as much as I can in every take, but end up having to link several parts that were recorded separately, I usually cross-fade the parts so they sound as if they came after eachother, but I believe some of the feeling might be lost when recording this way, so, what's your take on it?
Thanks a lot for all the questions you've been answering, all the best.

Fox.
Click to expand...
 
Hi Gavin,

Thanks a lot for your reply. I am really glad that you can spare some of your time for your fans.
I wrote you about Ride cymbal that you use. You told me that you use 1980's K Canadian ride in "19 days" at the concert on your DVD. Can you give my a piece of advice where to buy such a cymbal? Any link would help me.

I´ve got another question: Do you use 20" K ride when recording Porcupine Tree albums at the studio? If so, is it this one?
http://zildjian.com/EN-US/products/productDetail.ad2?catalogID=1009&typeID=9&productID=1415

My very last question: On 31 October 2009 you´re playing with Porcupine tree in Vienna, Austria.It is true? Are you planning anything special for the concert?

Thank you very much for your reply. C u at the concert!

Matěj
 
Hi Fox622003

Hey Gavin, I was wondering if you *always* recorded a track in one take, or sometimes recorded the parts separately, because I find it too frustrating, time consuming and can never get *everything* perfect when recording in one take, so I usually try to record as much as I can in every take, but end up having to link several parts that were recorded separately, I usually cross-fade the parts so they sound as if they came after eachother, but I believe some of the feeling might be lost when recording this way, so, what's your take on it?

One never gets everything perfect anyway - but I keep rehearsing it until I can get a satisfactory performance of the whole song down. Then I move on and do alternative takes - but it's not easy editing from one take to another because the intention can be slightly different - and therefore noticeable.

Hi ewanlaing

I've been watching the musikmesse clips on the site here, and I was wondering those tracks will ever be released as playalong tracks. I understand that 19 days is on one of your DVDs.

Sorry but I won't be releasing 'playalong' tracks.

Hi fromyesterday

Any interesting studio stories you can share? I remember recording once about 10 years ago and when I pulled my china cymbal out the engineer said "real drummers don't use chinas, get rid of that"

I can remember Vivian Stanshall (from the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band) asking me if I could hit my side drum (floor tom) with a wooley club.

Hi kotras

I wrote you about Ride cymbal that you use. You told me that you use 1980's K Canadian ride in "19 days" at the concert on your DVD. Can you give my a piece of advice where to buy such a cymbal? Any link would help me.

Ebay - but they're very rare.

I´ve got another question: Do you use 20" K ride when recording Porcupine Tree albums at the studio? If so, is it this one? http://zildjian.com/EN-US/products/p...productID=1415

Yes on some of the tracks I do - and yes that's the one.

My very last question: On 31 October 2009 you´re playing with Porcupine tree in Vienna, Austria.It is true? Are you planning anything special for the concert?

I believe we are playing there on that date.

cheers
Gavin
 
Gavin,

Your new album 'circles" is amazing. Amazing in the fact that I can barely count time signatures for the songs. I had a question about your drumming on "Break". When the drums do come in I can hear a lot of what sounds like double stroke linear notes between the hi-hats/snare/bass drum. I love the way you make the bass drum sound kinda choppy and off beat, I don't know how to explain what your playing but it all happens before Ric comes in with the vocals. Any explanations would be appreciated, unless of course I've confused you trying to explain my confusion. haha

Cheers

Eric
 
Hi Gavin,
I was wondering if PT is planning to release any of the live material from the Atlanta October 2007 show . I was at the show and Stephen mentioned it would be on a live album PT was going to release....I didn't know if this most recent release that is exclusive to Residents of a Blank Planet is to be the sole live release from that tour or if the Atlanta show (or some of the songs from it) will be released as well?

Thanks
 
Gavin Harrison said:
Hi RollMyCoaster13
Yes that's my SQ2 set and we've played "What Happens Now" many times live - and that ending is quite hard to play!!

cheers
Gavin
Click to expand...

Well I am lucky to experience the live rendition of this song for a couple of times and it's just simply amazing.
I remember during the shoot in 013 that John Wesley started tapping as you played a really awesome displaced part which really confused people (I really dig that kind of stuff. On the circles album, the second song has that in the chorus. It's just so creative and wonderful)

Btw, speaking of the dvd, I understand that it will be released next year. Is the songlist already decided? Really love to see the Nil Recurring material on it!

As the laptop system is concerned. We just switched to a laptop with the band too (for backingtracks and some synth plugins, we use digital performer on a macbook). Works pretty good and I'm very pleased with it.
I use a pretty big and technical setup which can give lots of errors when setup improperly. What I always do is make lists of tasks and procedures and follow those when building the rig on stage (and dismantling it). It gets the stress away as everything is lined out so you don't have to think about it anymore.
I labeled everything, keep a big folder with all the details (patches, connections, soundsettings etc.) and have everything documented and written out in procedures. It's really ideal for festivals and other gigs where stress is high and time is very short and tight.

What I always wondered was if you have a dedicated roady for Porcupine Tree that knows your drumset inside out and sets it up for you?
 
Hi euphoric_anomaly

Your new album 'circles" is amazing. Amazing in the fact that I can barely count time signatures for the songs. I had a question about your drumming on "Break". When the drums do come in I can hear a lot of what sounds like double stroke linear notes between the hi-hats/snare/bass drum. I love the way you make the bass drum sound kinda choppy and off beat, I don't know how to explain what your playing but it all happens before Ric comes in with the vocals. Any explanations would be appreciated, unless of course I've confused you trying to explain my confusion. haha

Some of what your hearing is 32nds played R (on the HH) LL (on the snare) and one note with the left foot. It's maybe a bit more obvious which note I'm pedaling with the left foot later on when my right hand is on the ride.

Hi Alex P.

In "Shallow", how do you think of the "middle" part: 3/4 or 6/8 ?

that's a good question because I guess it could be either. I think I was feeling it as 6/8

Hi Brodel

I was wondering if PT is planning to release any of the live material from the Atlanta October 2007 show . I was at the show and Stephen mentioned it would be on a live album PT was going to release....I didn't know if this most recent release that is exclusive to Residents of a Blank Planet is to be the sole live release from that tour or if the Atlanta show (or some of the songs from it) will be released as well?

actually we don't know at the moment. For the past few months we've been working on the new album and it's taking up all our energies. It's definitely a good recording of a good performance - so I hope it will come out one day - but it won't be any day soon.

Hi SantiBanks,

Btw, speaking of the dvd, I understand that it will be released next year. Is the songlist already decided? Really love to see the Nil Recurring material on it!

As to my previous answer - it's another thing that is on hold at the moment whilst we are concentrating trying to get the new album finished. So nothing has been decided with it as yet.

As the laptop system is concerned. We just switched to a laptop with the band too (for backingtracks and some synth plugins, we use digital performer on a macbook). Works pretty good and I'm very pleased with it.

We found that having all the stuff on the internal drive of the Macbook was far better than using external disc drives. There was just more things to go wrong.

cheers
Gavin
 
Hey Gavin, over the years did you develop any tinnitus & hearing loss? Is there anything you can do to protect the ears 100%? Currently I'm using double protection when playing drums, ear plugs (around 30db reducement) + isolation headphones (22db reducement), but I'm still not sure it's enough. At younger age I was pretty ignorant and didn't use any protection for awhile. Then I started to use the isolation headphones, but the tinnitus still progressed over the years. Man, my worst nightmare is to lose hearing on account of my favourite instrument...
 
Solid State Laptop drives are being used with great success on Macbooks internally. Booting cold to OS-X in 20 seconds or so. Logic 7 Pro loads nearly the instant you click the icon.

No moving parts, bumping the macbook hard (on accident of course) doesn't cause the seeker arm to go nuts, etc. Longer mean time between failure. Reliability seems really really high.

It just may be worth the price tag.
 
Gavin Harrison said:
Hi euphoric_anomaly


As to my previous answer - it's another thing that is on hold at the moment whilst we are concentrating trying to get the new album finished. So nothing has been decided with it as yet.

As the laptop system is concerned. We just switched to a laptop with the band too (for backingtracks and some synth plugins, we use digital performer on a macbook). Works pretty good and I'm very pleased with it.

We found that having all the stuff on the internal drive of the Macbook was far better than using external disc drives. There was just more things to go wrong.

cheers
Gavin
Click to expand...

Sorry, I must have been reading over your previous answer. My apologies.

I hear my harddisks rotating and spinning over my speakers so that alone is a reason to use the internal harddisk. I'm very happy with the laptop setup now. Going to take it to the next level and add some softsynths that I can play from my rig and see if it will still work.

But as connecting to the FOH is concerned, I was wondering what you send out to them? Just a stereo mix output of the backingtrack (with or without effects?) or do you send a multitrack output?

@Fromyesterday:
If I get a new macbook, I really concider replacing the internal disk with a solid state.


As other people here are concerned that want to perform with a laptop, I have some small tips and tweaks that might be useful for some here. These help a lot if you also use the laptop for other stuff (like internet).

Make a new user account that will only use the stuff that is really needed. Don't give it administration rights (no need for it). Just make sure it can access the music programs, plugins and music files. Disable anything else including wifi and bluetooth cards, network connections (you can disable the virusscanner too for the windows users), startup programs (no need to run stuff in the background. You won't use it so why make the programs use your processor?) and especially turn of the energy saving stuff.
You might want to set a very natural background (in case the screen is visible in the audience and the background can offense someone or can be a little embarrasing). When needed, tweaking the colors of the interface can be setup for the user account too (not sure how that works on mac though).

Also, never update, upgrade or renew drivers or other software before a gig. Always testdrive updates and upgrades in rehearsalroom to make sure nothing weird will happen during performance :)

And be sure to talk to the engineers at FOH to let them know what you feed the desk with.
 
Hello Gavin. I just heard that PT is coming to Finland next october. That's Great! Saw you last time over an year ago at Tampere.
Have you got any possibilities to do clinic in Helsinki during that visit? I can convince you that it would be popular!
 
kamelisko said:
Hello Gavin. I just heard that PT is coming to Finland next october. That's Great! Saw you last time over an year ago at Tampere.
Have you got any possibilities to do clinic in Helsinki during that visit? I can convince you that it would be popular!
Click to expand...

Gavin Harrison said:
I'd love to do a clinic at Berklee but I don't do those kind of things whilst I'm on tour with a band - it's too complicated from a timing/schedule point of view and an equipment nightmare.
Click to expand...
.

From the previous page.
 
Hi Gavin!!!
Everything is OK?
I've just readed that you're in Italy in november, especially in Padova (my city!!!! °_°) 7\11!!!
there's just the possibility of meet you?thanks a lot, however, i'm very happy to see (and hear) you behind the drums again!!!
PT are the best band ever...and they have the best drummer worldwide!

i'll edit this post to show you my last bricolage opera...a tingle cups holder!It isn't wonderful and super professional like yours...but it seems to work!
http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/230/24042009258.jpg

what do you think?

Cheers from Italy!
 
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Hey Gavin, hope everything's going good.
I wanted to ask about the playing behind the beat thing you've mentioned a couple of times. In my band, while after a minute or so the rest of the band stops following me and we start playing together, they'd still try to keep up with me if I raised the tempo or lowered it, so I don't see how it would work in this setting (unless I didn't get the concept right!). I mean, does the drummer need to play independantly from the others tempo wise? as in not having them follow him for this to work?
And why do you still use the DW drop clutch, don't you use a Cobra Clutch now?
About the BeatNik, how does it work for you, is it worth it getting it?
Oh and by the way, I read about your influences and was surprised to not see Peter Erskine in there! I mean, while both of you are very different players all in all, you share that great touch with the instrument so that's why I expected to see him there.
All the best and hope they aren't too many questions!

Fox.
 
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