Getting he drums to fit in the mix like the Beatles'...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rickson Gracie
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michaelst said:
There were physics considerations also. Too much bottom would cause the needle to jump off the record, so you can almost not even hear the kick drum. Much of McCartney's bass playing is played in a high register.
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you can just see the engineer trying to get as much bass as possible in before the needle jumped! then taking it out and putting it in, then finally taking it out :D

on the topic did any one read the SOS article on re-mixing the beatles with george and giles martin? really interesting read.
 
elementary said:
My dad loves tellin this old story, i'm not sure how true it is but its fun:)

Reporter - "Is Ringo the best drummer in the world?"
John Lennon - "He's not even the best fukin drummer in the beatles"
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Interesting; can't claim to have read that quote, but I know that they all respected Ringo's abilities (they didn't get him in the band for his looks or to distract from Pete Best's looks despite various stories). As Lennon said in many interviews - but 'The Playboy Interview' (one of his last before he was killed) comes to mind as the clearest example - Ringo was a star in Liverpool before he joined The Beatles, because of his drumming.

Also every one from Buddy Rich to Jim Keltner loves his drumming, so I would think that either Lennon was joking or the quote is inaccurate. McCartney, Harrison and Lennon could all drum but apparently only one 'style' - i.e. not very versatile, although I love Paul's drums on 'Back In The USSR', and he's the drummer on the 'Band On The Run' album.

I like the Lennon quote which went something like, "Sometimes I get to thinking that we're superhuman - and then I look at Ringo and know that we're not".

GVDV
 
Timothy Lawler said:
+1 :)

Transcendent music.

Yeah, Paul could probably have played all the instrumental parts better than the other guys, and I've heard too that he would go back into the studio after their sessions and re-do various parts the guys had done. But, whatever happened with that, it was the group dynamic as a whole that made the chemistry happen to create those recordings.

I really wish I could go back in time and see them in Hamburg when they were playing clubs.
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I think that there's a difference between technical ability and 'feel'. Paul is pretty proficient technically on a number of instruments (Steve Miller said that working with Paul is like working with Mozart in this regard), but as someone else pointed out, listen to his solo albums and you can hear the absence of George and Ringo instrumentally. Yes, George had to practice until he got a part right, but what parts they are. Clapton always singled out his slide playing as especially unique, and his intonation with that is spot on. And Ringo's feel is amazing, too.

George Martin has said that he was "shaken" when he listened to discover how unique Ringo's playing was when Ringo and Steve Gadd's kits were set up beside each other for sessions for McCartney's 'Tug Of War'. I was surprised that it took George Martin until the 1980's (when that album was made) to discover that - he has reiterated that recently about the 'Love' album that he and his son, Giles, produced.

It's certainly amazing that none of The Beatles could/can read or write music.

GVDV
 
This may be slightly OT to begin...But reading through, GVDV, you said that you use a snare sound similar to the one in Green Day's "Good Riddance" as a sort of benchmark for snare sounds. I believe you have the song wrong, because as far as I know, "Good Riddance" is arranged for acoustic guitar, fiddle and vocal and that's it. I don't mean to sound like an ass, but I would love to be able to compare a Green Day track to a Beatles track and look for similarities, just to study. I've always loved how Green Day's recordings sound, the same goes for the Beatles. Any common threads, you know, a way to point in the right direction, would be worth making note of.
 
That quote about Lennon saying he's not the best in The Beatles is correct, but its Lennon, so he was being tongue in cheek.
 
I've read it in a gazzillion books. Might want to try the Anthology.
 
drum sounds

You know, its hard to get the drum sounds you want. And impossible to get them to sound exact even when you get decently close. I always try to think hard about what sound im after before i even try. Then i can go the easiest route to get it. Like if you want a muted thumpy kick drum sound, it might be easier to throw a towel over a tom and put up a ribbon mic and thump away while moving the mic around to get the sound you have in your head. And when it works people dont stress over that you didnt go about recording in the correct way. They just experience the recording.

I bet there are a million ways to get a shitty sound at abbey road. A million wrong mic placements and wrong tunings and all that. But they used the ones that sounded "good" to them. They never stressed over whether it sounded like a beatles recording they just set out for a "thump" sound (or whatever it may be) and did anything to get the sound right from the source before the mic was even up. I think if you aim for this type of production you will stumble into your own genius sounds that no one else gets quite exactly right.
 
wow it took almost 2 and half years to get a reply to my last post on this thread.

i think ringo is awesome. check out 'he said, she said' and 'rain' for some really cool ringo drumming. both awesome songs.
 
She Said She Said is amazing, some of the best drumming he ever did.

Whenever they come out with new remasters (the current CDs were remastered in 1987!) they better bring out the drums more, they are a tad quiet on record.
 
You want an insight into how the Beatles were recorded, read this.

http://www.recordingthebeatles.com/

This book looks assume and ,if as advertiesed, it contains everything you'd ever want too know about the Beatles recodings.


There is also a book by Mark Lewisohn called "Complete Beatles Recording Sessions". In this book you will see track sheets, sessions notes and even the union/seeion card for the drummer who played on some (a lot) of there early recordings.
 
Yes, I've read both books and actually talked to one of the authors of Recording the Beatles. They are amazing books. And Lewisohn, of course, is the master of Beatle recording books. He's hard at work on his own multivolume history of the Beatles, which I really can't wait for.
 
Something often overlooked is that Ringo played quite softly. His style had (still does) a very light touch, almost like he was playing with acoustic instruments. I always admired that quality and wish more drummers could grasp the concept.
 
First you would need to use thin drumheads on the toms.

I doubt the close mice'd the toms I think they normally mic'ed the kick, and an overhead or two was probably it., and you wouldn't want to EQ the drums too much.

See, what happened back then was - they had really good sounding Mic preamps and mics, but they didn't use much EQ.

With the advent of EQ, it allowed them to use (and produce) cheaper mic's and preamps.

That's why if you use, say a pair of Neumann K184's for over heads, you basically don't have to EQ them if the room has decent acoustics and the drums are tuned well. Try that with cheaper condenser microphones, and you'll be cutting midrange like crazy.... and they were using High Quality condensers for overheads.. mic's that we'd have to pay thousands of dollars for toady.

Heck - the entire mic path for what they had would probably cost about $14,000 per channel in todays market.(Mic, Pre, Compression, etc.)

I would suggest you buy and read anything you can by George Martin.

A great book that I have always promoted to people is "All You Need Is Ears" by George Martin - it is a great book, and has some info in it that is quite amazing ans some of it is humorous.... the man is not only a genius - he's quite a character as well.




Tim
 
In Geoff Emerick's recent book he says that his mic techniques were a big part in getting the Beatle drum sound. Apparently he broke all the rules and started micing very close to the skins and what not. But generally he did everything depending on the requirements etc

btw...I read Ringo actually hit the drums quite hard, especially early on.
 
Ludwig drums had a lot to do with the sound as well the Fairchild compressors that were used by Geoff E. and George M.
 
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Drum sounds are all about the room. A good drummer in a good room will always sound interesting and will always fit well in the mix no matter what style of production you choose.
 
gvdv said:
The Beatles recordings that had the drums panned hard left or right were the result of American record company executives mistakenly re-mastering some tracks from the 4 track masters around the early '70 s for the 'Red' (The Beatles 1962-66) and the 'Blue' (The Beatles: 1967-70) double albums (which functioned as Greatest Hits in a way). George Martin wasn't involved in the project and was aghast at hearing the tracks.

As for the idea that Ringo didn't play on some tracks, as any of Lewisohn's books, and a basic awareness of multitracking, will show, this is a myth. All of the White Album tracks (including 'Sgt. Peppers') were recorded on a four track machines (sometimes linking two machines together). Because there were often multiple instruments, parts had to be recorded 'sound on sound', i.e., three of the four tracks would be recorded, and then combined by being bounced to the fourth track, 'locking in' all of the previous parts.

Because the rhythm tracks (incl. Ringo's drums) were put down first, it was impossible to re-add the basic drum parts later, so it's impossible for Ringo to not have been on these tracks. That accusation was made by a really famous session drummer in 'The Big Beat', Max Weinberg's book of interviews with 14 or so really famous and great drummers (including Ringo).

Just a little info. :)

I really like Ringo's snare sound, particularly on The White Album, and on the 'Please Please Me' album. Greenday's snare sound is very similar to this, on 'Good Riddance (The Time of Your Life)'. I always aim to make that my 'standard'/reference snare sound.

GVDV
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Remastering the tracks would not change the stereo image, just the overall sound.When a record company remastered any album, if they did, they would not alter any mixing.They would never be givem master tracks, only stereo mixes. This is a myth also.
 
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