The Metal Mania EZX, recorded by Chris Rakestraw and drummer Dirk Verbeuren at the One On One Recording Studios in Los Angeles, is a testament to Chris’ attention to detail as an engineer. We checked in to ask a few questions on his background and the overall aim and vision for this project!

To rewind to the very beginning, how and when did you discover you had an interest for music and recording?
Early on, in my high school days, my friend Mitch Marlowe had a cool little four-track machine, and he would record bands. At that time, I had no idea about anything related to recording. I just wanted to slap the bass, and rock, haha! After being in a couple of bands back in NC, I moved to San Diego. It was in San Diego where I decided to take a community college course about recording. That only really consisted of MIDI, keyboards and sequencing. But, I was good at it, so I made the decision to continue the recording path and see where it would lead me. Fast forward and I ended up cutting my teeth at a couple studios in Hollywood, – and it was all downhill from there. Haha!

How did you first cross paths with Dirk?
The way I remember it, I met Dirk through his wife Hannah (the famous rock photographer). I had needed a guy to come play drums on some Danzig stuff, so knowing Dirk was a drummer, I hit him up. Dirk showed up to East West Studio 2 – and killed it – and we just hit it off. A guy like that, who’s beyond professional and easy to work with, of course you’re going to end up being long-term homies! I had no idea that a few years later, I’d be working with Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, and that sooner or later, Dirk would be sitting at the drum set again.

What was your overall aim with the sounds and the project on a whole?
I wanted to capture an EZX that was fundamentally useful to producers and engineers, but also accessible to the bedroom musicians. What that really means is that I wanted to capture quality instruments (mostly Tama and Meinl – tuned by the great tech Dave Vanderlinde), struck properly (Dirk), with great mics (Austrian Audio, Shure, Neutrik, Sennheiser), in a great room (One On One, Studio A). I barely used any EQ over the entire session full of mics. I think maybe I rolled a little low end of the hat mics, but that’s it. The point is, this sample pack will respond well to EQ and post processing by the user because the phase hasn’t been jerked around by a bunch of on-the-spot EQ decisions during recording. Over years of mixing other artists’ records, it’s sometimes tough to chase a tone when other tonal decisions have already been recorded to tape. With this pack, you get a blank slate, which I think is reflected by my range of presets.

To you, what defines a great drum sound?
I think that a great drum sound supports the genre/music properly. If you’re a mid tempo artist, you might love a big boomy kick, and a snare that isn’t so bright that it fights the singer. Or, if you’re an extreme metal act, you may want every drum to sound hard like a brick of steel. Just depends, but with that in mind, from a fundamental mindset, ideally as much in phase as you can be from the engineering standpoint and nothing. I think when I listen to a record that has a “great drum sound,” I just hear proper ambience (Foo Fighters), or lack of (Prince). When I was making the presets for this pack, I was imagining their use in a type of band/song. So it just keeps coming back to what serves the song and genre.

Having had the chance to work with the sounds when making presets and really digging into the product, what are your thoughts?
These samples turned out so killer! Toontrack is just amazing at taking hours of recorded work and translating the dynamics to this software. The sounds are just as I expected, they receive EQ/compression well since they weren’t over processed during recording. I was especially surprised at how well the cymbals turned out. I used a set of Manley Reference mics that weren’t in any typical placement that you might expect. My decision to use Sennheiser E 602 II mics on the outside kick turned out well also. At the time of recording, I was nervous about not using a condenser mic, but you can treat this outside kick mic however you want and still get a killer, boomy woof when needed. I think I’ll be using this technique in the future as well. The Austrian-Audio OC7’s and OC818’s on the toms were killer too! You’ll notice over most of my presets, the amount of tom processing/eq isn’t that heavy. This was simply because those mics just sounded correct to me. One other thing I discovered about Toontrack products is the ability to create macro knobs for settings that you want to control. This blew my mind and opened up a can of creative worms! You can control multiple parameters across multiple mics with a single knob which you get to dictate the ranges…it’s just amazing. Toontrack really is the premier drum sample library company.