Getting a Ringo sound...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rickson Gracie
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Rickson Gracie

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Ok, please spare me the "well first you need Ringo to play the drums." i am well aware that that is a factor.

I was listening to "Day in a Life" and a bunch of other Beatles classics and noticed that the drums are very "thin" sounding yet sit very well in the mix. They are clear and present yet almost brittle sounding. Almost the opposite of Bonham's sound. The snare is thin sounding but sounds great in the mix. Definitely not a boomy sound.

Does anyone know what I am talking about? What is the trick to getting this sound. Is it in the mix down? Is it a special way to compress the sound? Or EQ the drums?
 
The drums, the heads, the tunning, the room (and it's acoustical characteristics), the choice of mics (and their placements) along with preamp flavors will be the main factors (not to mention the performer) in obtaining a certain sound.
Sorry I don't know Ringo's specific details .... never was a big fan.
However, the first part would be to recreate the specific sound/style within your room and with your drums. Then with careful mic selection and placement ... capture it.

-Edit to add-
Sure you can pry use some judicial EQing and other effects to obtain a reasonable facsimile but it's best to start at the source.
 
I always thought some of the drum sounds during the middle trippy period sounded as if they were slowed down slightly (recorded faster back then of course).

One thing you can do to cop a Ringo feel as opposed to sound is to experiment with some overdubs drum wise, particularly with your floor tom. Take a hard listen to the end section of Strawberry fields. There's an overdubbed part. You can hear it a lot better in the version on the Anthology because all the other instruments are stripped out of it. And I still swear it's slowed down on the single version.

Also, don't ever underestimate any given drummers own personal brand of sloppiness, even Ringo, and besides I wouldn't have it any other way. Those songs wouldn't have had a fraction of their charm if Neil Peart had played on em.
 
Record with one overhead and a mic on the kick.

Record the band in one room together, but with some degree of partial seperation.
 
thanks cloneboy, is that really the actual miking set up that ringo used?

its just me recording, im not recording a band.
 
stereo ribbon mics for overheads and a condenser mic outside the kick about 4 inches away is what was used on some of the recordings.......i don't know which ones though and it may have been just one recording/record.

you can try putting t-shirts on the toms and snare and stuff the kick with a big pillow. this will typically make your drums sound like crap, but it might be just the sound you're after.
 
Ringo Drums

Rickson,
In fact for the better part of the Beatles' recording career George Martin used only 2 mics on Ringo's kit. One was a cheap AKG dynamic used as an overhead placed about 3 feet above the snare. This could account for the "thin" sound you speak of but it's more likely how it was mixed. Note that on most Beatle recordings the bass guitar is louder than the kick drum. The other mic was an AKG D-12 about a foot from the kick. There was no hole in the front kick head but a four-headed sweater that the Beatles wore in Help inside. Compress to taste & as the Beatles did, to fit the song.
This configuration was used roughly between Rubber Soul & Magical Mystery Tour.
Earlier records used the same mic configuration but with a Coles ribbon mic as the overhead.
On some of the later recordings like Let it Be, they used the Glynn Johns mic setup of LD condenser 2-3 feet over the snare, LD condenser next to the floor tom about six inches above it & pointing at the snare & a LD dynamic between an inch & four feet from the kick to taste. This will give you great stereo results in general & many engineers swear by it. Also used on many Stones, Who & early Zep records.
You can get very usable results using modern budget mics. I have used the Glynn Johns setup with all dynamic mics on a 4-track & been very pleasantly surprised by the results.
But remember this, no matter what any of the audiophile, slick with no soul, pro-tool it to death engineers tell you, Ringo had 3 important things going for him. 1) He had TIME. The Beatle's never used click tracks & Ringo famously was responsible for about 2 breakdowns in takes, the other thousand being reserved for the other 3 geniuses in the band.
2) He had INSTINCTS. He was able to figure out exactly what any given song needed on the skins & provide it.
3) He knew how to TUNE his kit. The sound on A day in the Life couldn't be more different from that of, say, Come Together but they're both just right.

I hope this rant helps & God Save Ringo,
yours,
A Beatle fanatic,
small
 
Thin drum sounds are appropriate for some types of songs or music. Not everything can be huge and fat. But, if the drums are thin they should have tone, dynamics and clarity to them.
 
Cloneboy Studio said:
Thin drum sounds are appropriate for some types of songs or music. Not everything can be huge and fat. But, if the drums are thin they should have tone, dynamics and clarity to them.
Click to expand...

See My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" LP. The drums kind of have to take a back seat because the guitars take that record over. The result is very thin sounding drums, but it happened to work really well.
 
Cloneboy and Small are right. In fact last night I was leafing through my "Beatles Gear" book and saw a few pictures where Ringo's kit was mic'd just like that - one OH and one kick. It's a great book, BTW.
 
i read an interview where george martin said that he put a condenser mic about 4 inches from the kick.......it might not have actually been for inches.......maybe a little further away, but i know for sure it was closer than a foot.......he said he got in a bit of trouble for it, but he told the higher ups that the band liked that sound. i don't remember if i just heard about the stereo ribbons, or if i read it in the same article.

i think martin was talking about the first time he recorded them. since tape op is about the only recording magazine i read, it was probably a tape op article if anyone is interested.
 
Don't forget...

Don't forget...Ringo was a Ludwig player. This IS important. Ludwig drums sound like Ludwig drums. Pick any Abbey Road session, set it up identically except for the kit - use a new DW, or whatever boutique brand is the most fashionable at the moment. Will it give you the sound you're after? Nope. Not ever.

What do Zeppelin, Beatles, Cheap Trick, etc., etc., have in common? THE sound of rock and roll - Ludwig.
 
Bun E. Carlos is easily one of the world's greatest rock drummers, period.
 
geoff emerick used lots of mic on the kit a(t the revolver stage). he used two STC mics as overheads. he used D19s on snare (under and over) he used D19s on toms too. in some songs he took off the bottom skin of the tom, and recorded under and over aswell. its good but u gotta watch out for phasing. he used a bass drum mic aswell about 3 inches away from it. but i cant remember what mic. geoff and george seemed to be big fans of the d19s they prob used a couple of neumanns here and there. this is just the stuff that ive managed to find out. if u think this is a load of rubbish....fair enuff.
 
I always thought...

the drum sound on "A Day in the Life" was like an "empty garbage can" sound. :eek: Still, I love it!! ;)
 
peopleperson said:
See My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" LP. The drums kind of have to take a back seat because the guitars take that record over. The result is very thin sounding drums, but it happened to work really well.
Click to expand...

my all time favorite album. definately a great guitar record, but i would argue that many of the songs have a pretty full drum sound. there are a few like #4 (to here knows when) where the drums are absolutely buried in the mix. there are also a few tracks where there just wasnt alot of drumming. very minimal (loomer and sometimes).

some of the drums have a bonham-like "slowed-out-open-heaviness" quality to them. i love the drums on only shallow, come in alone and soon.

i heard that with this record all the drums are actually loops of the drummers original takes. none of it is live.

listening to previous mbv records, that drummer liked to play fast. it must have killed him to play loveless with its slowed out heaviness :) .
 
I think some of the early Beatles and stones sound comes from the attack as well as the equip. Ringo probably used very light sticks. Back then, drummers didn't play hard, ...you just didn't. Everyone would kick you in the pants if you did. Later on, they discovered that it sounded cool to play really hard and turn guitar amps up to 10.

Those early sessions were recorded the way everyone recorded before engineers got into overdubbing. Either one mic, or only a couple, and everyone played at whatever level it took to balance things out. And this would mean that a drummer would have to be able to play lightly and still get the "feel" he was going for.

I wonder how George Martin felt about loud guitars? Also I wonder who's idea it was to use them...the bands, or Martin's?
.......Anyone know????????
 
Compression is a huge part of the old Ringo / Beatles / George Martin sound. They breathed the track like crazy in many mixes, deep reduction and long releases.

War
 
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