At Dan’s Tunes, we work to bring you a comprehensive picture of the Seattle music scene, and musical artists are a big part of that. But, an album doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It takes a whole host of people to bring a musician’s vision to life. In this series, “Behind the Scene,” we’re taking a look at all of the people who are integral to the process of making music that you probably haven’t heard of before — from producers and radio DJs to vinyl cutters and photographers. Our goal is to make the series both educational and a resource for artists looking to expand their teams. Today, we’re chatting with studio musician Saba Samakar.

If you’ve ever listened to a song so many times that you could sing all the parts note for note and then gone to a live show and been flabbergasted that you couldn’t follow along, you’ve witnessed the difference between a studio and a live musician. Saba Samakar grew up doing the same thing — particularly with his Pearl Jam records. Now both a live drummer in his bands Golden Idols and Stucky Jackson and the Boys and a studio drummer in his own right, Samakar has recorded for Ryan Lewis, Kesha, and Tones And I, among a host of local musicians.

I sat down with Samakar to talk about how he got into studio work, the difference between recording and playing live, and how he works with musicians to make their visions come to life. Below is our interview, edited for length and clarity.

What is your studio musician repertoire?

I started on drums. I’ve since branched out to include percussion. I’m just kidding. They’re like the same thing. I do drums and percussion, and then I branched out to bass guitar. Usually I end up doing some vocals, some backing harmonies. Occasionally I’ll do guitar, and very rarely I’ll do keys or organ. There’s something about the organ. It can be so many things. It’s so expressive and yet it’s got a fixed velocity, which means no matter how hard you hit the key, the same volume comes out. It’s unlike a drum or guitar or piano.

What’s the difference between being a drummer and being a percussionist?

That’s a great question. Percussion is almost always felt but not heard. You don’t often think, “Oh, I love the tambourine in this song.” But if you don’t hear it, it definitely takes something away. It’s often the last thing you add in the studio, and it tickles a part of the eardrum that other elements in the composition might not. The sound of a shaker is so distinct. It’s kind of chewy. It’s up there, and it’s crispy and sizzle-y and fizzy, and none of those adjectives are achievable by any other instrument in a percussive way. 

What are other percussion instruments besides shakers and tambourines? 

Some percussion is drums, like bongos and congas — the Latin, single-headed drums that are tuned up high. While they’re drums, if they went away you would still be able to recognize the beat as the drum beat. You’d still be able to recognize the rhythm of the song. 

Triangle. Handclaps. Snaps. The shakers shaped like an egg are really popular. The beads inside hit all surfaces of the egg. When you go forward it shakes, and when you pull back it shakes. But they make shakers that are lined with felt on the inside so you only get it in one direction. There’s different ways to articulate.

How did you get into music?

I started on guitar when I was 12. It’s been 20 years. My sister had a guitar that she got for Christmas one year, and she never played it. So I started playing it, and I really took to it. Then my mom got me a drum kit. I think there was a summer trip I wanted to go on, and it just wasn’t in the cards. So she got me a drum kit instead, and it was the dream. 

That was when I was 13 or 14. I had gone to a friend’s house and he had a drum set, and he taught me like one beat. I would think about it and talk about it all the time. I was a rhythmic kid. I would tap things out and hum and dance. It was the natural progression. Plus I was doing decently at guitar, and she wanted to encourage me. So drums for like 18 years.

How did you transition into studio work?

I didn’t do it on my own. I always wanted to, and I was like, “I have no clue how to do this.” I love hearing the differences between different drummers in the same style, different drummers in different genres, and the same drummer in different genres. When I was younger, I listened to Pearl Jam a lot, and they’ve famously had multiple drummers. I remember hearing live versions of songs where the drummer who was there for the writing and recording of the song is not the same drummer playing it live. I’m like, “Oh, this is a totally different song. He didn’t do that thing with the drums.” And yet it’s still the same song. Everyone knows the words. So getting into how differently a recorded performance can make a song feel, I was like, “I want to be a part of that.” When you’re coming up on any instrument, recording yourself playing is a really good way to hear how you’re doing. It’s the ultimate test. If you can nail a recording, that’s different from nailing something live. People listen to music with their eyes.

I’d been playing shows with bands for a long time. I had recorded with bands. I’d been in a bunch of studios in town, and I always enjoyed the experience. One day I went to Earwig Studio in Wallingford with a band called Levels to record a couple songs. I had some experience at that point as a recording drummer. I knew how to record. I knew how to communicate with engineers. That session went really well, and I met the engineer, owner, and proprietor of Earwig, Don Farwell. Don and I speak the same language, and at the end of the session he was like, “You should do this. You should.” I was capable of doing it before, but having someone else tell me that I should was the thing that made it possible. 

He was like, “Make a website and send me the link to the website.” And from there, whenever he has someone come in who needs a drummer, he’ll refer them to me. Through that, I’ve grown my clientele. It’s all through word of mouth at this point. I don’t get all of my gigs from Don, but that was definitely the starting point. 

What advice would you give to other musicians who don’t need a studio musician but are recording for the first time?

It’s a world of difference. It’s a snapshot of a moment in time that you’re going to listen to forever. If you’re steering the ship live, you start the first song and maybe it’s not going so well. You can course correct and find the energy of the crowd and your bandmates and fix the monitor mix. In a recording, if the first note is bad, you have to start over. You always start back from square one. A show can start bad and end great and still be a fucking awesome show, but a song can’t start bad. That’s just a bad song. 

How do you get in the head space in the studio to be like, “This is the take. Here’s the energy” ?

It’s about noticing the energy in the studio. You can’t hold onto it too tight. You have to be in it, among it, let it swirl around you. You become hypersensitive to people’s moods. I can tell when someone else is nervous. I can tell when it’s going to impact their performance. There’s such a bubbly energy in the studio that you have to respect, and you can’t try to reign it in. You can’t try to control it. You just gotta go with it. 

Since I’m a hired gun, part of my job is scoping people out and seeing where they’re at. Seeing what I can do to make their job easier. It’s not my music. I’m not super emotionally involved. I want it to go well, but the song isn’t about my grandma. I see myself more on the side of the engineer or the producer rather than the artist. I’m not there to pour my heart out. I’m there to help them pour their heart out. 

What’s the process of working with you like?

Usually just a song and a chat. Folks can provide as much or as little info as they want about the demo. [They can provide] notes on what they want it to sound like or what kind of drum tones they’re going for or what influences they have. I like hearing what artists have to say and what they think the drums should sound like. I also really like trying to guess what it is they’re not hearing that would add to it. If I can make some musical reference they weren’t thinking of that fits, that’s a good feeling.

I was doing a session with Ryan Lewis, and it was the end of a really, really long session. We were all exhausted. There was this one last song we were trying to do. He kept saying, “Play half-time and double-time.” And I was like, “What does that mean?” But we kept trying, and then the energy we’d been surfing all day fizzled out. With the last two takes he was like, “Just do whatever you think is right.” I had a minute not recorded where I was able to consider for myself, “What does it mean for a beat to be both the propulsive energy of double time and the laid back feel of halftime?” I tried it, and it totally worked. I heard him over the talkback monitor like, “Yeah!” The answer was Dave Grohl and Questlove.

How long do you normally spend in the studio? 

The shortest is two hours. The first hour is setting up drums and microphones. I always try to use the first take of whatever we record because the energy is the best. We do one take followed by a safety take from which we can composite. That would be for one song. The longest folks go is like eight hours on the books and then whatever bleeds over into the next day or the wee hours of the morning.

How has COVID impacted your work?

Studios are pretty conducive to distance and masking, believe it or not. If I’m recording with a band, it’s common practice to record bass and drums together and then overdub all the other instruments. So if we’re recording bass and guitar together, we might still be in the same room, but 10 feet away from each other and masked up.

What do you charge for studio work?

It’s generally a flat rate of $100 dollars per song. That’s it. This is something Don has helped me with. I used to say, “It’s a hundred bucks a song, but if you don’t have it we can work something out. I want you to get your song out.” Because I do want people to get their songs out. But Don was like, “Don’t do that. Charge what you’re worth.” If I had any advice for creatives, that would be it: Charge what you’re worth. Be really fucking good. Be really fucking outstanding, but then charge for it.

Do you have studios you work with more regularly or does it depend on where the person who hires you is recording?

I generally go to Earwig. I love Earwig. They’re really cost-effective, and I have a really good relationship with Don. I know the sound of the room, and I know the sound of the drums. We’re going to get the most stuff done there.

Do you normally use a studio kit as opposed to your own?

It’s a little of both. At Earwig, I prefer to use that kit because that kit in particular sounds really good in that room, and typically it sounds suitable for the genre of music that I get hired for the most, which is rock to indie rock to alternative rock. What I spend the most time thinking about is the texture of the drums and various cymbal options. I don’t know who said this, but they said any song is just a voice and a snare drum. That’s all you need. If you want to change up the sound, all you need to do is change the snare drum and it will change the sound of the entire kit. 

I did a session way back, and we could not dial in any of the drums. The last thing I tried doing was swapping out the snare drum, going from a really deep snare drum that sounds really low to a really shallow snare drum that sounds higher pitched and much more articulate. It transformed everything. The whole track sounded different. Drums are the most genre defining instrument.

Why?

Recording technology has had the most profound impact on what drums sound like more than any other instrument. The most readily identifiable sonic characteristic of an era is the drums. Drums from the sixties sounded very lively and roomy because they had minimal microphone techniques. The microphones captured a lot of the sound of the room. In the seventies, drums somehow sounded even bigger. Think of John Bonham and Led Zeppelin. In the eighties drums sounded like machines. Drum machines were so big. In the nineties we went back to real drums, but our recording techniques were so much more refined that for the first time it could sound like a real drum set in a real room that you were in.

If I have a guitar sound that’s “old school,” it doesn’t make the whole song feel old school. But if you have old school drums, then it’s an old school song. If you have eighties-sounding drums, then it’s an eighties-sounding song. But you can have an eighties-sounding guitar and the whole song isn’t necessarily transported to the eighties. 

What’s your favorite part of studio work?

I feel like I’m going to sound like a customer service rep, but it’s delighting the people I’m around. Usually I get hired by folks who haven’t been in a studio too often or too recently, or maybe it’s the first time. Being able to provide a really fun experience for them and help them bring what they hear in their head to fruition is fucking sick. It’s like, “Yo, I get it. I hear what you’re trying to do. So let’s do it. This is going to be sick. Watch, hit record. This is going to rule.”

What’s the most frustrating part of studio work?

Excessive apologizing. Never fucking say sorry in there. It just kills the vibe so quickly. If recording is a snapshot of an instant, you don’t want the picture to be like, “Ah, sorry.” That’s terrible. I know so many vocalists who apologize a lot as they’re singing, and I’m like, “Hey dude, you didn’t hire me for my voice. You’re the only fucker in here that can sing. Don’t apologize. Don’t do it. 

Whenever you’re hiring someone, I suppose you want to bring an air of being ready and professional, but it’s supposed to be fun. Fuck around. You have to capture the energy of it and the spirit of the studio, of being in there with people you like. People are gonna like it a lot more than you think. It’s also not as big a deal as you think. Finished is better than perfect. 

To contact Samakar for studio work, visit sessionsaba.com or text him at (206) 574-8827.

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