Hi, welcome to the “Percussionist in the studio” section, that is my percussion recording journal in which I keep track of some of the diverse recording gigs I make in my studio.

Today I´m going to show you a recording that I made for Ruben a song songwriter and bass player from Argentina, who wanted me to record some percussion in his song to give that extra spice that the Brazilian music has.

All the tracks, all of the songs were already recorded, so I have to give the final touches song.

In the video above, you can watch the step by step of what I recorded and the final result of that percussion recording session.

Percussion Recording process

Ruben´s song is a classic bossa nova / samba song. Taking that in mind my idea was to add some percussion that matches.

To organize the recording I worked in it by sections, following the structure the song already has. When you listen to the song you can identify to different section, one that is softer and with more space in it, and the other that has more energy and sound busier.

Following that, I kept the first section simpler and with just congas and very few percussion in it. In the second section I recorded Congas and over them, I also added some additional percussion to help the percussion grow along the song.

The first instrument I recorded is the caxixi because it’s the simplest instrument I recorded, and also because itvhelped me to put all the other instruments in the right place.

The second instrument I recorded was the conga.  I tried to keep the rhythm  simple, because the track of the drum has a lot of information. What I mean is the drummer played a lot of breaks, so I tried not to get in the way of that. So the Conga pattern came out with was really simple and really melodic. I just tried to go into the spaces that the drum left me.

Addtional percussion instrument I recorded in the first section was: jam block playing the Samba Clave.

In the second section of the song, that goes high in energy I added two very traditional instrument from Brazilian Samba: one is the agogo, that plays a simple pattern and a Timba da Mao that plays a traditional tamborim pattern.

Luckely everything fit perfectly with the song and Ruben was happy about the final result of the recording, because I managed to get the right sound he was looking for his song.

So there you have it, another great day in the studio recording and sharing music with musician from all over the world.

Lucky me!.

Thanks for visiting this post.

I hope you found it fun and entretaining.

Facundo Alvarez