Chris Vrenna

Because he is a drummer capable of writing his own beats, Vrenna never uses loops. For programmed sounds, he often uses Battery and employs the drum sounds his synths have. “I tend to just start from some of those and layer stuff,” he remarks. “I just layer sounds underneath and then make my own stuff, and then put those through pedals.” With limited space in the crib room, Vrenna uses a compact Yamaha custom drum kit. Vrenna pads the room down when he records vocals, but then he pulls the padding off the walls for a boomier drum sound. Longtime friend and engineer Bill Kennedy, whom the drummer has known since his NIN days, helped him experiment with different ways to mike the kit and they created a good overall scheme. To record the kit, Vrenna placed a vintage AKG D-12 inside the kick and a Yamaha NS-10 (used as a mic rather than a speaker) outside the kick. “It gives you a nice sub,” he says. “You put that in front of the kick head.” For the snare, he placed a Shure SM7 on top and a Sennheiser 441 below. Sennheiser 421s are used on the two toms and either an AKG 451 or a Shure SM7 on the hi-hats. He favors the 451 because while the SM7 “gives a nice, thick chunky hi-hat, being such a small room, I kind of needed to thin it out.”

Vrenna says that most of the bass and guitar parts on the album were recorded direct. “Every single bass sound — and everyone's going to shoot me for saying this — is a [Line 6] Bass Pod Pro,” he says. “But then I come out of the Bass Pod Pro and always put that through my Summit Audio TD-100 tube DI. I don't use the compression within the Pod. I put that through an API and then my ADL tube compressor. Then that goes in. I use [the Pod] for its tones and then do other stuff.” As for the guitars, “A lot of the heavy guitar stuff is the Mesa Tri-Axis and the Recto Directo, things like that. Most of it is direct.” When he did choose to mike the amp, he used either a Shure 57 or a Sennheiser 421.

Vrenna says that most of the bass and guitar parts on the album were recorded direct. “Every single bass sound — and everyone's going to shoot me for saying this — is a [Line 6] Bass Pod Pro,” he says. “But then I come out of the Bass Pod Pro and always put that through my Summit Audio TD-100 tube DI. I don't use the compression within the Pod. I put that through an API and then my ADL tube compressor. Then that goes in. I use [the Pod] for its tones and then do other stuff.” As for the guitars, “A lot of the heavy guitar stuff is the Mesa Tri-Axis and the Recto Directo, things like that. Most of it is direct.” When he did choose to mike the amp, he used either a Shure 57 or a Sennheiser 421.

Because he is a drummer capable of writing his own beats, Vrenna never uses loops. For programmed sounds, he often uses Battery and employs the drum sounds his synths have. “I tend to just start from some of those and layer stuff,” he remarks. “I just layer sounds underneath and then make my own stuff, and then put those through pedals.” With limited space in the crib room, Vrenna uses a compact Yamaha custom drum kit. Vrenna pads the room down when he records vocals, but then he pulls the padding off the walls for a boomier drum sound. Longtime friend and engineer Bill Kennedy, whom the drummer has known since his NIN days, helped him experiment with different ways to mike the kit and they created a good overall scheme. To record the kit, Vrenna placed a vintage AKG D-12 inside the kick and a Yamaha NS-10 (used as a mic rather than a speaker) outside the kick. “It gives you a nice sub,” he says. “You put that in front of the kick head.” For the snare, he placed a Shure SM7 on top and a Sennheiser 441 below. Sennheiser 421s are used on the two toms and either an AKG 451 or a Shure SM7 on the hi-hats. He favors the 451 because while the SM7 “gives a nice, thick chunky hi-hat, being such a small room, I kind of needed to thin it out.”