SONOMA WIRE WORKS NEWS: MAY 2006 EDITION
ANNOUNCEMENTS
FEATURED COLUMN
- Meet Rick DiFonzo of Discrete Drums
by Lauren Tremblay
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MEET RICK DIFONZO OF DISCRETE DRUMS
By Lauren Tremblay
"Collaboration" in the context of the soon-to-be-released RiffWorks Standard with RiffLink brings to mind late night online songwriting sessions with bandmates strewn across the country and around the world. Guitar in New York, bass in Stuttgart, guitar in Woodstock, vocals in Denver. The advent of RiffLink opens up many previously unimaginable opportunities for songwriting collaboration among RiffWorks users. And now, a new collaboration between Sonoma Wire Works and Discrete Drums, one of the world's premier drum content providers, expands those horizons even further by offering even more original InstantDrummers for you to choose from. We caught up with guitarist and president of Discrete Drums, Rick DiFonzo, to find out what you can expect from the new partnership.
Lauren: What style of drums are included in the Discrete Drums library?
Rick: Currently our products can be used for rock, pop, R & B, country, metal, funk and hip hop. Of course a lot of the styles depend on what you do with the tracks. If you use a project that has a slight funkiness to it, and just use dry tight gated tracks, it could be appropriate for an R & B project. If you use a lot of room ambience and slam it with heavy compression, tune the kick track down, distort the snare and go a bit nuts, the same drum tracks would be right for a metal project. I've even used some of the heavy metal drums on light pop songs. Having said that, we're releasing some more tightly focused products this year. Our upcoming Ruff Drumz is a funk, R&B, hop Hop collection. We also have reggae, blues and country projects in the works. Our goal is to offer tons of content in every musical style that needs actual drums.
Lauren: What styles of drummers will be available to RiffWorks users?
Rick: Eventually we hope to offer all of our drummers to Riffworks users. We currently have 3 drummers, supplying 120 or so song projects, with lots more on the way. The bases we will cover are rock, alt rock, pop, hard rock/metal, blues, country, reggae, and R & B. We have no plans for polkas at the current time.
Lauren: Who does the drumming for the tracks?
Rick: So far we've been lucky enough to work with Greg Morrow, Chris McHugh, Tony Morra, and Andy Kravitz on drums, and Eric Darken on percussion. Together their discographies are very impressive, but most importantly, their feel is amazing.
Lauren: Where do you record?
Rick: The bulk of it has been in Nashville, although our upcoming release was done in Philly. Nashville has some truly great studios, and great players from all over the country migrate there for work. They still make records the old fashioned way in Nashville - with human type people. Also, the engineer I wanted to work with is there - Steve Marcantonio. It's always a blast to head down there and grab some great drum tracks.
Lauren: What has been your favorite recording session so far?
Rick: I'd have to say the EarthBeat / Series Two sessions were the most fun. They were done in the same week at the Sound Kitchen in Nashville with Chris McHugh and Greg Morrow playing drums, and Eric Darken doing some really amazing percussion loops. We drove Eric nuts getting a really diverse and strange batch of loops from his massive percussion collection. Then we had the drummers come in and play to the loops. The result is a collection of multitrack drum and percussion projects that really move. Nothing was programmed - it was all PLAYED, and we're very proud of it. I'd also have to say that the Heavy Mental sessions were incredible as well. For that we used the massive Big Boy room at the Sound Kitchen. Tony played great, and the sound we got was absolutely huge.
Lauren: Have you heard your material on any records?
Rick: I have not heard them, but I've been told that quite a few country records have used our stuff, and I hear our drums on TV all of the time.
Lauren: How did Discrete Drums come about as a company?
Rick: I'd planned a drum library in the mid 90's because I was not happy with the products available at the time. I come from a rock and roll background, having played guitar on record and/or tours with Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Roger Waters, Belinda Carlisle, Joan Osborn, Cyndi Lauper and others. The drum libraries at the time were limp, and despite claims to the contrary, did NOT rock. I shelved the idea though, as I couldn't see competing with the big guys in the business.
Rick: However, when home computers reached the stage where they could actually handle lots of audio tracks, I decided to go with a multitrack format, as no one else had done it. I needed drum tracks for my writing, and knew lots of great drummers from my days as a session and touring guitarist. I figured if they could do tracks for me remotely and send them to me in a multitrack format, then many others would need or want that sort of thing as well.
Rick: At that time there was only one drum library that actually rocked, and although the drums sounded great, and the drummer was great, the stereo mix was swimming in room ambience - and not in a good way. It was then that I went to a friend of mine with the idea of a multitrack drum library, and he invested heavily in it. We started the company, and I went into the studio right away. Basically Discrete Drums grew from my need for really rocking drums that I could mix myself.
Lauren: What made you decide to partner with Sonoma Wire Works?
Rick: We felt that Sonoma was a good fit, because like us, they are a people driven company, who have a great idea, and are implementing it well. They are also a forward looking company and we see a long and very close relationship with them. It also doesn't hurt that Riffworks is a great platform for our content!
Lauren: What advice would you give to RiffWorks guitar players using your drum sessions?
Rick: Tune up. There's nothing worse that catching a moment of inspiration and having it be out of tune... Other than that, crank it up and have fun!
Lauren: What's coming next from Discrete Drums?
Rick: The next projects will be Hip Hop, Blues, Country and Reggae, probably in that order. We've also recently launched i-studio.net where musicians can hire one of our drummers (or guitarists, bass players, keyboardists) to play on their project. Our engineers can also mix their projects. Our goal is to provide the best sounding, most useable drum and percussion tracks to musicians of all levels. With all of the content we have produced, and will produce going forward, there will always be something we haven't covered. If you need something that we don't have, you can hire of our guys to give you exactly what you need.
As a small, people driven company, we are very in tune with our users. We always welcome suggestions, comments, requests and just input in general. After all, it does no one any good if our products collect dust in someone's studio....
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