[WJamesM]

WJamesM wrote:

What a great interview. Thanks for posting that. Joey’s tales of having to tell studio engineers that they’ve set up the mic’s incorrectly, or live engineers that their gates are too “deep”, for how he plays, really shows how naturally biased the industry is these days against this playing style.

I was thinking more about this today and it took me to revisiting Alan White’s playing/sound on Lennon’s Imagine album, specifically How?. The little fill around 3:07-3:10 is it for me.

I mean, I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but with hundreds (or thousands) of drum sample packs out there you’d think someone would have cover it somewhere. Maybe they have but I’m struggling to find it.

• This post was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by WJamesM.

It occurred to me while making my morning coffee that I should probably clarify that posting this old Lennon link was more about an extremely dry drum recording that I find fascinating, but not so much about the dead, damped, or muffled drums that are also being discussed here. I think sometimes those two things get conflated in these conversations – I know that I have a habit of veering from one to the other when really they’re two different things (that often coexist, but don’t have to).

Along those lines I was thinking about the drum recording in Fleetwood Mac‘s Dreams – an oft quoted example of very dry, very immediate, somewhat damped, drums. Came across this magazine interview from 1978 where they discuss in great detail the recording of that whole album (including the fabled issue of worn out tapes and having to resync every overdub to the backup master tapes by ear with no other way of keeping the timing on other than manually riding the speed while listening to the phasing of the high hats). Quite fascinating stuff, and illuminating. It’s fun to mythologize about recording to tape, but what a nightmare it could be!

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-Recording-Engineer/70s/Recording-1978-04.pdf

[WJamesM]

What a great interview. Thanks for posting that. Joey’s tales of having to tell studio engineers that they’ve set up the mic’s incorrectly, or live engineers that their gates are too “deep”, for how he plays, really shows how naturally biased the industry is these days against this playing style.

I was thinking more about this today and it took me to revisiting Alan White’s playing/sound on Lennon’s Imagine album, specifically How?. The little fill around 3:07-3:10 is it for me.

I mean, I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but with hundreds (or thousands) of drum sample packs out there you’d think someone would have cover it somewhere. Maybe they have but I’m struggling to find it.

• This post was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by WJamesM.

1

Thanked by: Jeff Anderson

[WJamesM]

I don’t personally believe that this can be achieved with processing after the fact (envelopes, transient shapers, compression, eq, whatever). To be authentic it has to be baked into the samples with:

. . . a very, VERY, dead room

. . . deadened skins on the drums (tape, towels,    wallets, blankets, foam, bricks, etc.)

. . . no bottom (resonant) skins on the toms or kick

. . . mic placement often inside the toms (and    kick), very close to the top skin

. . . a playing technique that is very dynamic, and snappy from the wrist

Trying to get there with samples recorded without these techniques is swimming against a very strong current. Can you make an electric guitar sound like an acoustic guitar? Sorta. But an acoustic guitar is the better way to go for that sound.

1

Thanked by: Jeff Anderson

[WJamesM]

Thanks Jord – very kind.

[WJamesM]

Thanks guys. I think I’m just going to sell a guitar and take the plunge on SD3. I started out years ago as a drummer and am afraid that after awhile I might want to tweak & manipulate my beats beyond what EZX will allow me to do.

[Author]

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