Def Leppard - Pyromania

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I think it's interesting that Mutt supposedly had such a heavy hand in the "crafting of DL's sound," yet what really made them stand out at the time, if I remember correctly, is the fact that DL sounded that way live. Listening to the live was just like listening to the record.

Do you know if Mutt had a hand in selecting/briefing their touring sound engineers? Or do you think it's just a situation where DL just hooked up with good sound guys and said: "Alright, make us sound exactly the way Mutt does." ?
 
Well, right away... guitars aren't too much a big deal live... Pretty simple... and the fact that the drums were all electronic and only 2 mics were needed for the cymbals, made the drum sound pretty easy...

So, I don't think they were a hard band to produce live....


The one thing that can't be produced very closely live is the Backing vocals....

Def Leppard does them live, without any backing tracks and I think thats a downfall... I think it would sound so much better with Mutt singing all the layers on a backing tape or something...

I saw Shania Live and she had all the backing vocals on tape.... Well you saw her band singing, but funny how it was Mutt Lange's voice coming out of the speakers...

It really made a nice tight sounding well produced concert....



As for Mutt doing live... I don't think he ever did with Def Leppard, but I know he helped set the automation up on the board for Shania's show, and other sound aspects of her show..
 
I am a moderate DL fan and didn't know the extent they used synth drums on Pyromania...kind or surprised, actually. Did Rick Allen play on "High and Dry"? "On through the Night"?

I'm interested...was this a common practice in the hard rock world at that time? If not, why did Mutt do it? I don't think of it as a slam on Rick Allen, since they could have just used a session drummer if they were unhappy with his abilities. Seems like this was just Mutt's deal - is that the case?

-J
 
Yeah... Im not sure about those early albums.. I don't really listen to them, nor have I done much research on the recording of them...

The reason Rock bands were using Drum machines for drums back then (and still do) is because no matter how you tune a snare, it's still a snare....

Listen to the snares on a Poison song, or a Skid Row song, or One of them others, and it sound's nothing like a real snare that your sitting in front of and hitting with a stick..

They sound Huuuuuuge... And a sequencer has perfected timing...So, It's pretty much that combo with made Rock producers love Drum machines....

It wasn't a slight against Rick... In fact Rick is a great drummer and always has been... But they wanted that perfectly timed, and perfectly sounding huge hit exactly the same every time...

Listen to "Photogragh"... Just after the first chorus, before the second verse starts theres that drum lick....

Show me a drummer that can make it sound that perfect on a REAL kit....and show me a real kit that has toms that sound that big..

Even with Neil Peart or one of the other big drummers, there is always a varience.... a human feel..... That Def Leppard Lick sounds perfect, like a robot...

And that is part of the Def Leppard sound..

I get some garage bands in my studio once in a while and i try to explain to them that I can make there stuff sound so much better with samples... and the drummer can do the cymbals and the hi hats live.... Just leave the bass and snare and toms to me...

But..... nooooo, they always want to have a part in it and thats fine, but as you know, most garage bands aren't exactly tight, and great drummers with metranome timing are hard to come by in the garage band world....

Which is why, the band usually walks out with a typical garage band-sounding Cd..


My drums are all done with the sampled bass and snare and then live cymbals and hi hat.....
 
Vox, this might be something I could get into for the fun of it. Would you mind going into some detail about sequencers and the like. Basically, how the hell do you do it?
 
VOXVENDOR said:
Yeah, my producing and mixing, is definately influenced by Mutt and the Lep's

That answers some questions for me. When Joe had a disagreement over mixing techniques in another thread, I knew it was either Mutt or some of the Nu-metal.
This means, lots of chorusing, compression to the max on the guitars and compressed again on the master bus...a mastering engineers biggest pet peeve..

But like my friend Don used to say...Which one of you is laughing all the way to the bank..is it you!

Ive watched Hysteria 6 times, Ive got most albums except...ah hem...Slang. I recently misplace Euphoria...

Hey Joe...do you remember where you were when you first saw the photograph video on MTV?


Peace,
Dennis
 
VOXVENDOR said:
Yeah... Im not sure about those early albums.. I don't really listen to them, nor have I done much research on the recording of them...

The reason Rock bands were using Drum machines for drums back then (and still do) is because no matter how you tune a snare, it's still a snare....

Listen to the snares on a Poison song, or a Skid Row song, or One of them others, and it sound's nothing like a real snare that your sitting in front of and hitting with a stick..

They sound Huuuuuuge... And a sequencer has perfected timing...So, It's pretty much that combo with made Rock producers love Drum machines....

It wasn't a slight against Rick... In fact Rick is a great drummer and always has been... But they wanted that perfectly timed, and perfectly sounding huge hit exactly the same every time...

Listen to "Photogragh"... Just after the first chorus, before the second verse starts theres that drum lick....

Show me a drummer that can make it sound that perfect on a REAL kit....and show me a real kit that has toms that sound that big..

Even with Neil Peart or one of the other big drummers, there is always a varience.... a human feel..... That Def Leppard Lick sounds perfect, like a robot...

And that is part of the Def Leppard sound..

I get some garage bands in my studio once in a while and i try to explain to them that I can make there stuff sound so much better with samples... and the drummer can do the cymbals and the hi hats live.... Just leave the bass and snare and toms to me...

But..... nooooo, they always want to have a part in it and thats fine, but as you know, most garage bands aren't exactly tight, and great drummers with metranome timing are hard to come by in the garage band world....

Which is why, the band usually walks out with a typical garage band-sounding Cd..


My drums are all done with the sampled bass and snare and then live cymbals and hi hat.....


Ive never heard good drums prgrammed by a non-drummer. (A "drummer" is someone who has studied the instrument for years, someone who can play more than 3 rock beats with fills that dont all go from left to right and end on the 1, has sticking patterns other than RL RL RL RL, has had more than a cursory exposure to linear funk and latin drumming and is at a two sound level of playing...can play patterns that have accents and non accents...dynamics, etc.) There are so many subtle nuances that people who think they know what drum tracks are supposed to sound like and who have no idea what a basic sequence of LRLLRLRR with the right hand on the bell and middle tom and the left hand on the snare and hi hat-- sounds like with the accent on the e's--so that their tracks all sound like they were sequenced by a keyboard player. If you think it sounds anything like the real thing, guess again. I agree though that sampled drums will sound better in the right hands than the typical garage band drummer who has no chops, never saw a metronome and loses the time after every fill.
Def lepard drums blow. Im a fan of the band, the vocals and the songwriting for the most part, but the drums are lifeless and boring, the playing sounds amateur. The drumming on Pyromania is better than the other albums but is far, far from the drumming done by skid rows drummer (which is not the best rock drumming either but is at least educated) or van halens drumming which is great for rock. Rock is very limited rhythmically so its like comparing week old potato salad with 4 day old cole slaw. Take a listen to some Pain of Salvation or deftones for some new tight, disciplined, musical and educated drumming. The 90s blew the 80s away rhythmically in just about every genre from R&B like destinys child to the backstreet boys pop (which has programmed beats but at least emphasizes the syncopated spots as opposed to the typical 8th note, quarter note emphasis in the 80s). Stuff like the nirvana-derivative-bubble-gum-punk like blink743 bands was more on an 80s level musically and by most measures seems to be gasping its last dying breath as bands like system of a down come to the fore.
As far as def lepard's vocals, I hear a huge DL influence on sound of the current boy bands in terms of the way the harmonies are written out over long melodies and the way they are mixed. That super clean airbrushed sheen thats so popular started with pyromania.
 
Quote>If you think it sounds anything like the real thing, guess again. I agree though that sampled drums will sound better in the right hands than the typical garage band drummer who has no chops, never saw a metronome and loses the time after every fill.

I never said they sound "real", in fact I even used "robotic" to explain the sound in one of the songs...

Quote>Def lepard drums blow. Im a fan of the band, the vocals and the songwriting for the most part, but the drums are lifeless and boring, the playing sounds amateur.

To each their own.. In my opinion, real live drums would wreck Def Leppards Sound...

Lets hear "Lets get rocked" with real drums... now THAT would blow... That whole song is structured around it's computerized sounding beat, and samples..

This is the biggest problem I find with trying to get the Idea of sampled drums across to drummer... Been-there-fought-about-it a million times, and I say the same thing every time... They are NOT aupposed to sound exactly real... If they were, we would be hiring a studio drummer and renting an awesome kit, but the whole point of "synthetic" drums, is to give things a different vibe, and imo Mutt Lange has done that..



If you think it's boring and it doesn't appeal to you, thats cool, it's all about opinion.. ;)
 
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atomictoyz said:


That answers some questions for me. When Joe had a disagreement over mixing techniques in another thread, I knew it was either Mutt or some of the Nu-metal.
This means, lots of chorusing, compression to the max on the guitars and compressed again on the master bus...a mastering engineers biggest pet peeve..

But like my friend Don used to say...Which one of you is laughing all the way to the bank..is it you!

Ive watched Hysteria 6 times, Ive got most albums except...ah hem...Slang. I recently misplace Euphoria...

Hey Joe...do you remember where you were when you first saw the photograph video on MTV?


Peace,
Dennis

Im Canadian... we have Much music, but same difference.... I don't really remember if I saw it... Nothing sticks out in memory.....

I was 8.. back in 1983 I remember the older kid across the street from me, was into AC/DC, and one day I went over and he showed me this awesome new band called Def Leppard.... (He had a copy of Pyromania)...

I don't think he or I knew at that point, that they had 2 previous albums.. :D
 
Vurt said:
Vox, this might be something I could get into for the fun of it. Would you mind going into some detail about sequencers and the like. Basically, how the hell do you do it?

Well Basically... You have drum sounds in a Drum Machine or in a sampler.... Expensive drum machines and samplers have 8 outputs usually...

You assign all the different drum sounds to a different soutput and run them all into there own tracks on the recorder..

The Midi of your sample/sound module is hooked up to some sort of a sequencer, for arguments sake, lets say Cubase or something....

You either use pads are just play on the keys.....And..

You play along by hand to a clicktrack,(jus bass drum and snare and toms.. and then when your done, you quantize it all to lock it in perfect time...

Then when you have it the way you want it... mute the click track or do away with it, and then record the "beat" onto the tape...

Then... A drummer, or in alot of cases (ahem) a producer sits down and plays the high hat onto a seperate empty tack, by hand... (I mean a real live hi hat)... Then real live cymbals are recorded.. Usually 2 -4 different cymbals and all onto there own tracks and performed seperately, so as to get no bleeding...( and they are later panned all over the place..)


It slightly varies, but this is the most common method for rock...

I do know for a fact that Mutt Lange used an older verson of Cubase or something similar, loaded into an Atari, and used an Akai S1000 Sampler, on Bryan Adams album "Waking up the Neighbours"

Same album with the Hit "Everything I do, I do it for you..", and "Can't stop this thing we started"

That whole album including those hits was done by the exact same method as I described above... I know cause Bob Clearmountain told me personally.. (I picked his brain about some Mutt stuff, cause they worked together on that album.)


All of my newer songs at NWR were done with that method also..

http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/rockpop/voxvendor/singles
..Joe
 
Oh, I should add......

Hysteria, and pretty much anything newer than it, is all samples, even hi hats and cymbals...

I was explaining the "Pyromania" period... in my post

Now, DL uses all samples for drums and cymbals...
 
Uh I believe he played Ludwigs on that

He had not had his accident yet. I saw this tour in 83 and I am pretty sure that they used real acoustic drums. I would be shocked to find out otherwise. Later albums post accident used the synth drums.
 
Yes, on tour he played live... the album is sequenced sounds...Thats what were talking about.. the album...

Joe
 
Voxvendor,

I have no problem with sampled sounds. I own an acoustic sonor kit along with a pintech/roland kit. I also program beats electronically in reason and audiomulch. Im a fan of both overproduced drum sounds and underproduced live sounds. I remember being into the huge snare when I first heard pyromania in 1985 (I was 9) and I can still see the appeal and where they were coming from. Im talking about the playing, the performing...the drum parts were not well written on any def lepard record...they sound amateur, like a nondrummer wrote them, IMO.
 
VOXVENDOR,

Great sound man, I can tell you were conscious in the 80's as I was!!! I'm gonna hit ya up for some details here, cause I want that backup voc's sound you got!

Can you describe exactly how you got those backups on "In My Head", including the panning, EQ's, reverbs, delay, and amount of layers. I'd like to hear it all!

Thanks, and great job on the production. S/R
 
Wow, I just listened to "In my head" You MUST tell how you did that. Specifics! I love it!
 
VOXVENDOR said:
I was 8.. back in 1983

8 in 1983..... I was 18 in 1983 ;)

I remember it pretty well, I saw High and Dry on MTV and most rockers in high scholl were freaked out because the level of success for their ages. I was at a party at my friend Dereks neighbors house (3 blond chicks in the same family) and we were drinking a bit, there was maybe 40 ppl there. The room just stopped when the video came on. I still get this cool feeling when I hear the song Photograph.

Anyhow, my 2 bits on the drums. I was trained as a percussionist since I was a small child, I didn't switch to guitar until 84/85 or so. I think drums are like anyother instrument, they need to fit the music. I don't think that accoustic drums sounds are best for every occasion. I listen to alot of Steve Vai, and he agrees as well. He can be quoted if you like. I think you can ruin a song if the correct instruments are used. What if VH used an acoustic piano instead of a synth for "Jump" or did Eruption on a banjo. Not quite the impact. Because of the example of Vai and Allen I delved into experimenting with synth type samples for drums, I got one song Im writing vocal parts for that sounds awesome mostly because the drums, very much like DL, with some gated flanging too :)

If it fits wear it...
DL has sold more records than everyone here combined, so if using drum samples or synth samples is bad, how did they do that. To each his own.... Elvis was once told to stick to driving trucks, because he sucked? As far as opinions go...welcome to reality ;)

Peace,
Dennis
 
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