Drum Tracks: Locating the Experiences of Drummers in Recording Studios

This chapter explores drummers’ experiences inside recording studios from social, spatial, and technological viewpoints to highlight the drummer’s place in the creative processes of making popular music recordings. Through our ongoing ethnographic research in studios, this chapter draws from observational fieldnotes when both authors were acting as ethnographers and drummers (‘drummer-as-ethnographer’) and a series of semi-structured interviews with eight drummers of varied backgrounds and experiences. Our analyses critique widely-accepted beliefs about drummers (or in Bourdieu’s terms “Doxa”) by spotlighting three key areas: (1) the social spaces of drummers in studios (i.e. where drummers ‘belong’, or not); (2) the production of social identities in studios (i.e. who drummers are in relation to power hierarchies within the recording process); and (3) the knowledge and involvement of drummers within the creative process of record-making (i.e. what drummers ‘know’ and are able to do with their knowledge in studios). We conclude the chapter by highlighting that although they are often overlooked, drummers are vital actors within the social, spatial, and technological worlds of the recording studio.