Rat Scabies is a musician, best known as the drummer of The Damned. He has been in and around studios as both a musician and a producer since the 1970s. In 1995, my Dad toured with The Damned playing the Hammond Organ. Since then, my Dad has maintained contact with Rat. Recently I had a conversation with Rat about how the recording industry and process has changed in line with technological developments since the 1970s.
I was somewhat surprised by Rat’s acceptance of some new technologies: specifically his use of electronic drum kits as opposed to a live acoustic kit. In my mind, I had this picture of Rat laying down his drum tracks on a live kit with an abundance of cymbals and toms. In reality, Rat considers todays electronic drum kits to produce as authentic a sound as a live kit, with much more versatility (e.g. for a fraction of the price of a single live snare drum, one can purchase a sound pack containing hundreds of sampled snares). Additionally, being able to work in MIDI allows for far easier quantisation and editing of individual elements of the kit, making the recording and editing process much faster and less strenuous. With a live kit, one must consider phase between microphones, and any quantisation must be done across all elements of the kit. Traditionally, a recording with a significant error would be discarded, but with MIDI, it can simply be edited afterwards to remove the error.
Unsurprisingly, Rat considers the arrival of the computer and development of DAWs to have had the most significant effect on the recording process. It has made recording accessible to anyone. Nowadays, Rat himself does most of his recordings from home, saving large sums on studio costs which he would have had to pay in the past. Additionally, development of virtual instruments and even virtual musicians has enabled individuals to create pieces of music which in the past would have required whole ensembles to do. It also opens up music composition and production to a new, ‘untrained’ demographic. Rat used the example of The Doors being rather unremarkable musicians (they certainly wouldn’t compare technically to many of their classically trained counterparts), but very capable of creating great, popular music. In this modern day, you don’t even have to be able to play an instrument to make music!
I really enjoyed my conversation with Rat, and it was fascinating to hear his perspective on developments in recording technology and the current state of the music recording industry. Rat is due to reunite with The Damned for a reunion tour in 2022, and I look forward to seeing him at the Manchester show (yes I have my ticket already!)
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