House of Drumming.com

I recorded him last year for the Jeff Lorber album that is nominated for a Grammy this year.

Being a drummer myself, Vinnie is my favorite. Here's a couple things I noticed about him while recording him.

The click is VERY low in his headphone mix. He kept asking me to turn it down, and down and down... so I put headphones on to hear what he was hearing. He had it tucked in the mix so you pretty much couldn't hear it while everyone was playing.

He is literally an atomic clock. I started looking at how close to the "grid" he was in protools. At 96KHz he was roughly at most +/-50 SAMPLES from the grid line, and most of the time he was even closer than 50. That's 50 96-thousandths of a second!

Between takes he would noodle... He was doing advanced drum rudiments, stuff like Pata-fla-flas, Shirley Murphys, Ratamacues, etc WITH HIS FEET (on his double pedal) faster than I can do them with my hands! And this was no big deal for him, he wasn't even straining to do it.

And with all this technique and skill, the thing that impressed me most about him was his musicianship. One of the songs we were recording had a very basic and repetitive drum groove. And man, he laid it down with such focus, every single bar was just as perfect as the last. And he purposefully left out a lot of fills and whatnot to make it feel more "sampled" like a loop. He always plays to the song, and even though he has these incredible chops, he knows when NOT to use them as much as he knows when to use them... which to me is the most important part of any musician.

What makes Vinnie the best in my book is that he, while being phenomenally proficient, he can also be completely transparent. You'd never know it was him on some of the tracks unless you read the credits. For being the best drummer in the world, he is humble and doesn't have any ego and comes in to make the song sound the way the producer wants it to sound and nothing else. He's not trying to put "vinnie-isms" into everything he does.

[b]Seriously, if it were up to me, I would hire him for every session I record.

He always plays to the song, and even though he has these incredible chops, he knows when NOT to use them as much as he knows when to use them... which to me is the most important part of any musician.

Josiah wrote:heard this particular story before, vinnie is a monster. though i don't buy the double kick chops as told.

Ardent15 wrote:So I occasionally read the Gearslutz board, where a lot of musical recording/engineering pros hang out (including some very famous names in that field...).


EDIT: I think one of HOD's members posted that thread!