Latest Drum News
Drummer/writer Stuart Williams posted an interesting article about how some of the classic drum sounds were captured for Music Radar. The below video dispels many of the stories of how incredible sounds were captured.
Producer Glyn Johns’ work with Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles (although additional mics can be seen in Abbey Road studio sessions), The Eagles and many, many more gave us a simple-yet-great-sounding way of capturing the whole kit, with an even balance and practically foolproof phase coherency.
However, as musical and studio polymath, Rick Beato explains in his video, the technique was actually born by accident after Glyn forgot to move a mic back into position while tracking Led Zeppelin’s debut album.
The basic principle consists of three microphones: one on the bass drum, an overhead placed above the center of the kit and a side mic placed slightly above the floor tom pointing at the snare.
The overhead and side mic are positioned an equal distance from the snare drum, keeping the stereo image of the kit intact, while also ensuring that the sound hits both mic capsules at the same time, while the bass drum mic adds the low end of the kick drum.
The result is a natural snapshot of the kit with minimal fuss, as long as you get the source sounding great to begin with.
In the video, Rick Beato demonstrates just how you can apply Johns’ famous technique yourself, with the option of adding in a snare mic (something that Johns often records but doesn’t always use). Of course, this being key to the early Zeppelin sound, Beato has placed his mic setup over an appropriately Bonham-style Green Sparkle Ludwig.
Richard John Beato (born April 24, 1962) is an American YouTube personality, musician, multi-instrumentalist, music producer and educator. Beato’s YouTube videos about music regularly get over one million views. Since the early 1980s, he has worked variously as a musician, songwriter, audio engineer, and record producer, and has lectured on music at several universities. Based in Black Dog Sound Studios in Stone Mountain, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, he has produced for and worked with bands such as Needtobreathe, Parmalee, and Shinedown.
Read the original story: HERE
