We're honored to be working with you on this drum sample library, Indie Rock Drums Volume #1. Tell us a little bit about what people can expect when they buy it.

In today's session (volume 1) we are recording a drum kit from our studio collection. It's a Ludwig 1965 -1966 mod orange maple drum kit. It's got single-ply heads on it, so it's a very resonant setup. Sounds very natural. We have other complimentary pieces that we've added to this kit as well.

Over the years, I've developed a number of techniques for getting a naturalistic and powerful drum sound, and I'm using all of those techniques on this sample pack. This drum sample session is fairly typical of a setup that I would use for recording a live, rock band, actually. In addition to the microphones and the acoustic sound of the drum kit and of course the room here in Studio A, there are a couple of little auxiliary touches that would conceivably be added in post production or mix down in a conventional setting, that I have included in this drum sample pack. Specifically, some light signal processing that I would normally do at the mixing stage, but we've incorporated that all into this sample pack.

So there are a lot of benefits to owning it.

You get the benefit of the sound of the acoustic spaces captured here today in Studio A. You get the benefit of the drum sound - techniques I've developed over many years. The benefit of carefully tuned drums, nice microphones, careful signal processing and professional engineering. You are going to get all those benefits in this sample pack.

You've got a unique way of recording and mixing rock drums - very technical and precise, down to the choice of cables and the spacing of drum mics...

My method of recording has pretty much all been developed over the years through experience. There's not a lot of received wisdom in my method. Of course, when I was developing my methods, I tried all of the conventional techniques and a lot of them I found wanting. So I set about an experimental method of finding ways to do things that were more satisfying to me.

I fall back on naturalism and the techniques that I've developed to make a naturalistic recording. That is, I can open the microphones and know that what's coming out of the speakers is faithful.

How important are the drum rooms, the physical spaces you record in to achieve your sound?

You really do need physical space, to put people in, and good acoustics to flatter the acoustic sound in the room. This building (Electrical Audio Studios) was built over 100 years ago originally as a dairy barn. The walls are made of adobe, which is an unfired earth brick, and has really nice acoustic properties. The adobe structural walls are massive, and that massiveness prevents the transmission of sound. So we can be operating in this studio with impunity and not interfering with the session. This is Studio A where we are recording this sample pack, but Studio B is just across these adobe walls, but because they are so massive and dense, we don't interfere with each other. It also prevents the noise of the city from making its way into the session and competing with the sound of the musicians. The surface texture of the Adobe is quite coarse. And that provides a kind of a softening effect of the reflected sound - so you don't get a brittle slap echo off of the walls. You get a slightly mellowed, more low frequency and mid range reflection from the reflected sound in the room. The ceiling has some absorbent material on it that prevents a flutter between the floor and the ceiling.

What kinds of music inspired you to make music of your own and eventually help others produce their music?

I really wasn't interested in music until I discovered punk rock, which was a cultural phenomenon that started a whole bunch of chain reaction effects in my life. It was the first time that I felt like there was art or culture that was suitable for me and my goofball friends and I took to it like a fish to water. And when I came to Chicago, I immediately just immersed myself in the underground punk music scene here. It was an incredibly liberating experience to be around all manner of freaks and weirdos and creative people and just an enormous amount of creative energy, yet completely irreverent, completely unconcerned with convention. Seeing how people, who were marginalized in the normal world and deemed not worthy in everyday life, now had a platform where they could function among peers, and create stuff that was recognized as valuable for its own sake had an impact on me. A lot of the behavior that I've developed as a business owner, as a musician, as a recording engineer, I can trace very clearly back to my experiences in the underground music scene where we had to do things quickly and efficiently because nobody had money. The music that was being made was unique and distinctive, and you couldn't expect it to sound like other people's music.

You allow so much freedom for the artist to express themselves in the recording process that it has often caused friction with their record labels - who want to control everything. Nirvana's In Utero is a good example. How would you describe your recording and producing philosophy and why does it piss off record labels? (laughter)

I try very hard to remove my ego from the process. So that whatever is happening in the studio, makes its way into people's living rooms, un-judged by me or unmolested by me. So all my techniques, and all my experience has been focused on perfecting that notion - the notion that the music that the band is making in the studio at that moment is theirs. They're presenting it as a finished thing. And I don't need to fuck around with it and make it suit me. What I need to do is bring that into the listening environment for other people so that other people can hear what those people are up to. There's a kind of a trope in the recording business, that musicians need someone externally to bounce ideas off of, or to give them guidance or to make decisions for them to help them find themselves or whatever. And I find that entire notion alien. I think it's almost insulting to say to a musician, who has written songs and is performing them with full voice, to say they don't know what they're doing. My experience has been that when people are given full agency to define what they're doing, to get to sound however they want, play any guitar they want, play any amplifier they want. That becomes their record! Let them make decisions about their own music. It's almost as though the recording industry has convinced itself that people aren't sure-footed and don't have a good idea of what they want in their music, as a way of justifying a kind of meddlesome instinct on the part of the engineers or producers or the record labels. It's a way for those people who aren't actually doing it, to claim authorship of the music that bands are making. The number one thing for me is to let the people that come into our studio know that they get to make the decisions. They can make the kind of record they want. If they want it to be messy and noisy and explosive, it's going to be messy and noisy and explosive (laughs). They're not going to hear from me that they should tone it down for the people at home. That perspective is destructive. Because what you're doing is you're taking something that is a thing, it's organically in a state and you're like slapping it around until it suits you. And I just I refuse to do that. I don't want to be the person responsible for bastardizing someone else's idea. I want you to come into the studio with a frame of mind and a perspective and I want the record that makes it out the front door to represent that perspective 100%.

You've recorded and produced a lot of diverse acts, from rock to grunge to indie and punk. Do you have to connect with the music in order to work with an artist?

Even if it's something that I don't 'get' - and there's a lot of music I don't get. Even if it's from an aesthetic or from a scene that doesn't resonate with me, that's okay. It doesn't matter if I don't understand it. It doesn't matter if it's not music for me. It doesn't matter if I'm not a fan of it. I'm still going to be able to do a competent job, and the people here in the studio with me are still going to get a record that represents them legitimately.

That's an encapsulation of my entire recording philosophy is that what happens in the studio is legitimate already. It doesn't need me straightening it out with a metronome or an auto tune.

Listen, whatever you're doing, it's legitimate already, you know?