Recording Ringo's early drum sound

[Seafroggys]

Don't have any longterm projects on the backline, so decided to do a new drum video, this time re-creating Ringo's drum sound on the early Beatles records pre-Revolver. Using the gear and plugin that I have, I had a lot of fun approximating and making choices. I haven't done a 2-mic drum setup in close to two decades, so it was fun dialing a sound with that limitation. Also the first time I ever used a ribbon mic to record drums!

While I am happy with most of the sound, I dislike the snare sound I got. Maybe I need to retune my snare, or try a different snare. But I like the toms, bass, and cymbals sound. But I go through my process and signal chain in the video if you're curious how I got this.

 

[PorterhouseMusic]

That whole thing was cool. And sounded great. What's not to like? Well done sir

 

[Bstrom]

You got a decent recording considering you relinquished control over cymbals and drums. About impossible to balance them all out for more ideal sound with just two mics, so if you're happy it was a success.

 

[DM60]

If you see Get Back, they have a lot of information of how Ringo recorded/setup the last album. Pretty incredible that the album was recorded as a live band. But it shows how Ringo was set up. I was impressed of how tight those guys were in their final days.

 

[rob aylestone]

I hear a mismatch in genre (and time). I don’t understand where you’re coming from at all? If you want to recreate Ringo’s sound for those early Beatles recordings, then it has to fit? The song you recorded suits close mic, modern techniques. All the clever stuff you’re playing gets lost without the multi-mic setups. Ringo’s open style was recorded as they did dance bands at the time, overhead, open sound, tight snares, very damped toms and a jazz kit in comparison with an expanded meatier kit. Me personally, if you hadn’t mentioned Ringo, I would have just wondered why you had such lightweight drums for the song? A bit like a 60’s technique on a 90’s song maybe? Perhaps right for a when I’m 64 style song, but it wouldn’t fit a Made in Japan track from just a few years later? Interesting experiment, and done nicely, but it’s not Ringo in sound, style, or playing, so a bit mismatched? I think it shows that it’s not mics, it is where they are put that matters.

 

[Seafroggys]

Hmmm, there seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding of what I'm trying to do here, given some of the responses from other forums. I'm not trying to play like Ringo. I'm not trying to sound like Ringo's drums. I'm purely trying to recreate the recording process that Norman Smith used on those early Beatles records, to see how it would sound like with me playing, with my gear, on my drums (I deliberately wrote that text into the video because I just KNEW people would complain that it doesn't sound like Ringo, and it still happened!).

As far as the backing track goes, long story but this wasn't the one I intended to use, I had a collection of like a hundred backing tracks and I was going to use another one, but I lost the CD (problem when you hardly use optical media anymore is you misplace stuff) so I had to use one of the three backing tracks saved on my studio computer and went with this one, since it was my favorite of the 3.

I do plan on making a version 2 of this, since there were a few things I got wrong. The mono overhead is actually way too far away, I was going off of memory from what I saw in photos from the book "Recording The Beatles" (where I got all this information) but when I looked at it again after I shot and edited the video, the mono overhead was actually at Ringo's forehead height. We're about the same height, but he sits higher up, so it'll be a bit above my head, but regardless it should be viewable in the frame. That should help with the snare tone (the only thing I wasn't happy with). I also went too heavy on the compression, Norman didn't even use the Fairchilds on the drums, he used the Altec Compressor, which was much slower (fastest they could go was about 30 ms)....my compression choice would have been more appropriate for the later Emerick era. So I need to really slow down the attack and back off the drive on the plugin. Also, the bass drum ended up being a tad bit clicky, while I did like it, it should have been thuddier, so I need to play with that mic positioning some more.

If you see Get Back, they have a lot of information of how Ringo recorded/setup the last album. Pretty incredible that the album was recorded as a live band. But it shows how Ringo was set up. I was impressed of how tight those guys were in their final days.

Eventually I do want to go through the evolution of Ringo's recording setup. The next step is the Revolver setup, Emerick's first album as main engineer. In addition to the D19/D20 combo, he added a KM56 on the snare bottom. This one will have to wait, as I don't own any cardoid SDC and need to pick one up first or borrow one. After that would be the Sgt. Pepper's setup, where he close miked the toms and hi-hat with more D19's. Then I think I'll go with what Glyn Johns did on Let it Be, since it varied a bit from what Emerick did (I believe Johns used a U67 on the overhead).

 

[rob aylestone]

Why?
If you use any technique it has to be suitable. You could swap an orchestra or a choir fit a rock band and it would sound awful. It sounded great on the orchestra? You could reproduce the Motown wall of sound setups and stick a jazz band in. I bet it would sound dreadful.

If it makes you happy, cool, but that drum sound in my humble opinion is worse than doing it with close miking.

 

[Papanate]

Hmmm, there seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding of what I'm trying to do here, given some of the responses from other forums. I'm not trying to play like Ringo. I'm not trying to sound like Ringo's drums.

You say the opposite in the header: 'Recording Ringo's early drum sound’ - so really your just playing drums with a slight nod to the two mic setups they used back them - you also use a ton of plugins - so the end result is just a drum sound from two mics - what’s the point beyond satisfaction for yourself?

 

[Seafroggys]

You say the opposite in the header: 'Recording Ringo's early drum sound’ - so really your just playing drums with a slight nod to the two mic setups they used back them - you also use a ton of plugins - so the end result is just a drum sound from two mics - what’s the point beyond satisfaction for yourself?

Because Ringo has way more name recognition than Norman Smith. You gotta get the clicks first, then explain it in the video/video description. Any yeah, I use a lot of plugins, because I don't have a fucking $15,000 Fairchild or a multi-thousand dollar REDD desk lying around to do this. That's the point. IT'S EXPLAINED IN THE GOD DAMNED VIDEO! And is there anything wrong with personal satisfaction for myself and wanting to share it?

Why?
If you use any technique it has to be suitable. You could swap an orchestra or a choir fit a rock band and it would sound awful. It sounded great on the orchestra? You could reproduce the Motown wall of sound setups and stick a jazz band in. I bet it would sound dreadful.

If it makes you happy, cool, but that drum sound in my humble opinion is worse than doing it with close miking.

I mean, that's objectively true no matter what? Ringo's early drum sound was worse than his later drum sound.

 

[rob aylestone]

This I think is my point. His early sound fitted the 60's stuff quite well, but soon sounded compromised as the material changed - I don't quite get the effort you put into deliberately recording in the compromised manner? It's kind of interesting but ultimately defeating? I would get it if you had covered something like She Loves You, but the choice of music seems to have been guaranteed to fail?