Keith_H said:
I read a thing about the Beastie Boys tring to emulate his sound one time, it said he had a really long bass drum - the way the b-boys got that sound was to wrap a refriegerator box around the end of the bass and putting the mic at the end..
Okay, here we go:
I'm a major Bonham head.
When you say you want to get the Bonham sound, WHICH Bonham sound?
His drumsound changed over the years.
If you want the "ZEP II to Physical" type of sound:
Put a mic on the snare, a mic on the kick, and an overhead. Put the mic directly over the drummers head, and as high as possible above, aimed at the drummer's head.
Toms:
Tune the bottom heads tight and the top heads an octave lower in pitch.
Kick:
Use a full front head, with minimal (a pillow or folded blanket) muffling...or use Remo Muff'ls. Moderately tight tuning...Bonham's kick was pretty tight actyually, listen to the drumsound...mosty people think of "Kashmir" when they say Bonham, but hell, that's just reverb and flange.
I say listen to Stairway, The Ocean, In the Light, The Rover, or In my Time of Dying to get a better example of his sound.... it's not as "boomy" as everyone seems to think it was.
Tune the snare, the toms, and the kick in a descending order (as if the Kick were the next lower "tom").
(You should be able to play the piece that they play on the bugle at the begining of horse races across the kit.)
The kit that Bonham used in the "II through Physical" was a 9"x13"rack tom, 16"x16" & 16"x18" floor toms, and a 16"x26" Kick Drum made from Acrylic.
(Everyone thinks it was a 14" mounted tom, but watch the movie-the tom is smaller than the Snare in diameter.
This would also make sense, since on his next kit -everything else was 2" bigger in diameter-so the step from a 13" to a 15" would be the natural progression.)
The Acrylic makes a major difference in the sound, it's much brighter than wood, and an Acrylic kit is about twice the volume of a wooden kit....I played one of these kits for 5 years, and it was aweseome, but the shells began cracking, and that was the end of that.
The Kit on "In through the Out Door" and "Prescence" was a Stainless Steel kit with 15" mounted, 18" and 20" floor toms, and a 28" kick.
The Cymbals were large diameter Paiste's, and generally fairly thin..which gives them a bit lower pitch.
I have a Paiste Sound Formual 20" full crash, and it has Bonham written all over it's sound, I love it!
The Bonham sound has to do with tuning the kit so that the entire kit works well as a unit, since there really isn't a whole lot of close micing.
What Bonham originally did (according to both Glyn Johns and Eddie Kramer) was, he would put an
Overhead above his kit(first Album is when this was done), and he would measue drumstick lengths away from the mic over his head...Then he would play for about half an hour to adjust his playing for the mic position (if it needed more kick, he'd hit the kick harder, etc.) Then he would threaten anyone with physical violence if they moved the mic-because he had then adjusted his playing, and prepared himself to record.
He was a hell of a drummer be able to do that!
I know very few today who could do it that way....I've been playing 20+ years, and I'm not sure how well I could do it-I've never really tried.
But I generally use 4 mics (because I use a replica of the "Presence"-era drumkit-but I use two 28" kicks-so there's a D112 permanently Mounted inside each kick, a snare mic (Beyer M422), and 1 overhead (a PZM mounted to the ceiling) to pick up the toms and cymbals.
Tim
Thanks for the link Track Rat, good readin'...
