Recording - January 2018 - 19

I N T E R V I E W S B Y M I K E M E T L AY
George, this project was obviously a labor of love. I'd
like to start by asking about your overall approach;
what sets this drum sample library and its miking
process apart from others you've done, or heard?

George Massenburg: In a word-risk. It's the tremendous risk
that the Toontrack guys took in trusting me. I said, "Guys, if we want
to reach into the future, we've got to do this at the highest
possible sample rate and we've got to get the absolute most out of
this beautiful room at Galaxy." While the product, as released, has
24-bit/44.1 kHz samples, we recorded and saved 32-bit float/192
kHz samples and we've got those in the can for future use.
Now, they did release all of the ambient stuff we recorded,
and I did that for only two people... for me, and for one other
guy in the world: Hans Zimmer. I want you to publish that I
did this for Hans! I haven't been able to drive by his studio,
I'm not going to call or email him, I want to drop by in person
and say, "Dude! I've got your samples!" [laughs]

I'll be happy to! I met Hans many years ago at his studio
and he was a real inspiration-he got me thinking less
about gear and more about people.

That's so important, to take inspiration and pass it on. So
many people have looked at my work and said, "Hey, man-I
could be him! Let's do what he does!" I joined the AES in 1961,
and I got to hang with a lot of my heroes, and it's wonderful to
see that there are people today who can still inspire... I want
you to print this-I would pay to work for Justin [Vernon] and

Bon Iver, because they do production right! There are groups
that give me hope that music's going to keep getting better.
I also think that music technology is going to improve to the
point where high-quality audio can be easily delivered to the
home, and people will be able to compare it to this, this...
this turd in the punchbowl that is MP3! That's why I'm back
in education and research. I believe that if given high-quality
audio, people can appreciate it and will want it, and things
will turn around. I still record and engineer, but if I do my job
right as a teacher, the kids I teach will be able to do what I do
now, and I can focus on what only I can do. That's my deal.

Fair enough!

Doing the samples for Toontrack, it took going in there with
absolute confidence. I knew I was skating on very thin ice. I
said, "This is what I think we should do," and these guys went
with me all the way. I love them to death, they're the best guys
ever. I told Mattias [Eklund] that I can mix his record, and I
haven't heard from him! Remind him for me. [laughs]

I'll try to pass that along. [laughs] Let's talk for a
moment about the layered approach you took to miking
the kit. You started with the close mics, then you had
the ambience, then surround, and finally height...

Let's start with the close kit. In my world, the foundation of the
close kit is the overheads. We had two technologies for overheads-the beyerdynamic M 201 TG, and the Sanken CU-44X,

MIC PLACEMENT DIAGRAM
FOR THE SESSION.

RECORDING January 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - January 2018