Soft Talk

A good session drummer is easy to come by if one knows where to look. My name is Douglas Carr. I perform and record music as Soft Talk and I am not a session drummer. While session drums are certainly an important part of the skillset I offer, what's more important to note is that I am not an all-around workhorse drummer. That is to say, my expertise covers a niche many recording artists may not even know their music could inhabit. 

My methods incorporate the use of live drums, sampling, foley, sound design, analog and digital synthesis and electronic music production. The toolkit I employ for integrating all of this is something in which I have invested a great deal of time, energy and head-scratching. The result of all of this is an approach to music production which encompasses far more than either tracked acoustic drums or programmed beats can offer. It is both a marriage of those methods and a departure from them both. 

My set of tools for accomplishing this includes Sunhouse Sensory Percussion, an extremely powerful and flexible hardware/software combo which captures the gestural expressivity of acoustic drums and enables intelligent sampling, sound design and control over hardware and software synths, in addition to a whole world of other amazing features. I use this in conjunction with Ableton Live in order to maximize its functionality and to automate and record what is happening. These two powerful tools, combined with various other hardware synths and audio/MIDI devices, amount to a super-instrument which is both a tactile and organic means of achieving a truly unique and deeply customized electronic sound which would likely not even be achievable otherwise.

It's a niche craft to be sure, but the possibilities this process brings to the table are nearly infinite and can add entirely new dimensions to music-making. 

I feel my job as both a drummer and a producer is for everything I do to remain wholly in service to the art. And that looks different every time. Sometimes it looks like simple brushes on a snare drum or sampling myself striking a rusty drainpipe with a flip flop. Sometimes it sounds more like a finely controlled machine of meticulously-crafted sounds. If what you're after is someone with great jazz or latin chops, I would be happy to point you in the right direction. But if what you want is to explore what is possible with a limitless palette of sound, a blank canvas, and drumsticks for paintbrushes, then I am humbly at your service.