Dot Major: “I’ve never dragged and dropped a beat once”
“Why did I spend my whole life learning [drums] to drag and drop?”
London Grammar percussionist and solo electronic artist Dot Major has made the bold claim that he’s “never dragged and dropped a beat” when making drum sequences and that he only uses live recorded drums.
This was revealed during the latest episode of the My Forever Studio podcast, in which he discusses his approach to recording drums and other production techniques.
“I never ever in my whole life have ever drag and dropped a beat once, I don’t think,” he tells hosts Chris Barker and Will Betts. “It’s the one thing that I never do. For me personally, it just never works out.
“Why did I spend my whole life learning [drums] to drag and drop?” He laughs.
“I always use stuff annoyingly in one batch. Then I get to the end [of the session] and they’re like, ‘have you got this kick drum without the hat?’ and I’m like, ‘no’. ‘Can you get it back?’ ‘No.’ You can only ever get these things once but then it’s difficult to mix.
“The high hats are always different the whole way through the track.”
In response to the comment, Barker suggests that Dot Major should “put that on a t-shirt” in the same way that DJs might shout about not using the sync function when DJing.
“But do you quantize?” Betts asks. “Yeah, of course I quantize!” Dot Major replies. It’s then revealed that while all the recording is live, he does usually quantize “the hell out of” his drums to around 80 or 90 per cent.
Also in the podcast, Dot Major talks about which unusual but new drum machine he uses for his new material and why, even though it can sound bad, he still prefers it to the Arturia DrumBrute.
He also talks about how he bought his Jupiter-8 in gale force winds from a British synth legend and why mix engineers really don’t like his file naming scheme (or lack thereof).
The My Forever Studio podcast in partnership with Audient sees artists, producers and engineers create their dream fantasy Forever Studio, wherever they want in the universe. However, there are strict rules in the Forever Studio. The guests are permitted a limited number of items in their creative space, so they must choose carefully.
Listen to episode 52 of the My Forever Studio Podcast via Spotify or check out all episodes of the podcast.
