Ringo's bass drum on Come Together +

Regardless of writing skills, it was still a great look at what someone can do with some talent and 8 tracks. I am surprised they recorded the drums with one track, I would think the track is multi microphones?
 
DM60 said:
Regardless of writing skills, it was still a great look at what someone can do with some talent and 8 tracks. I am surprised they recorded the drums with one track, I would think the track is multi microphones?
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It probably is multiple drum mics all summed to one mono track.
 
I remember the very early recordings that if you paned hard left you would hear just drums, bass and backing vocals then with a hard pan right you would hear only lead vocals, guitar and maybe keyboards.
 
moresound said:
I remember the very early recordings that if you paned hard left you would hear just drums, bass and backing vocals then with a hard pan right you would hear only lead vocals, guitar and maybe keyboards.
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The Beatles did that to songs that were recorded for mono release but were "stereoized" to catch on to the new trend.

I have the Beatles recording sessions book which is quite interesting in that it covers the years in which recording changed the most and how the Beatles were leading the way. I recommend it for true recording geeks.
 
DM60 said:
That was what I was thinking as well. It does go to show that you can get a good recording of drums with just one track.
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Its probably not just one mic though. Many mics going to one track isn't really "just one track"
 
acidrock said:
And yet you've got guys with sixty tracks, a hundred plug ins and still can't get it quite right......
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What is getting it right though? I agree that most people's drums are bad but not everyone wants to sound as flat and dull as Ringo.
 
I like the bass drum tone, the little attack and the slight bleed of the snare that you can hear when it's soloed.
When the full band is playing I can hear mostly the bass drum attack. The fullness of the bass drum gets lost in the bass guitar, to my ears.
The original recordings were so good, so high definition, my hi-fi gear back then probably didn't reproduce it or I didn't listen that closely.
It's like when I watch Columbo on Netflix, the picture is like blu-ray almost. Which means the recording gear then was almost as good as today but back then TV's sucked. Or at least mine did.
 
DM60 said:
Regardless of writing skills, it was still a great look at what someone can do with some talent and 8 tracks. I am surprised they recorded the drums with one track, I would think the track is multi microphones?
Click to expand...

They started the session with a 4 track, putting all the drums on one track, which was common practice. This is 1969, things were going pretty well and I suppose they saw no reason to change a good thing. Stereo was not really popular then. They were still in mono mode.
 
By 69 they had mics on every drum. The mics are listed on page 514 of the book Recording the Beatles. An AKG D20 on bass drum, single AKG D19c overhead, a single D19C on each tom and the high hat, a Neumann KM-56 below the snare. Interesting the picture on page 515 shows another mic, a Sony C-38A next to the D20.
According to the book they went from two mics in 1963 to 12 mics in 69, but still recorded to one track. They must have spent a lot of time getting that kit balanced. Well I guess it shows in the recording.
 
Manslick said:
According to the book they went from two mics in 1963 to 12 mics in 69, but still recorded to one track.
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Two mics? You'd think it would be two overheads, but if they were using a single overhead in 69, then they probably hadn't thought of two overheads in 63.
 
The book says the song The End is the only one where the drums were recorded in true stereo, most evident during the toms work on the solo. Recollections by Emerick are he used two STC 4038 mics for overheads. Drums on tracks 1 & 2 thru the then new TG12345 solid state console. But the orchestra, it was all recorded to one track, track 3, and it makes me wonder.
 
It's interesting for what it's worth. I find it fascinating that certain instruments were not recorded at a high punchy level, but don't appear thin in the final mix. And a 'mix' is what it is. But while it's interesting dissecting it from a recording point of view, I'm so used, after nearly 38 years of listening to it, to hearing it as a song that I'll never bother to listen to the dissection again !
 
Manslick said:
But the orchestra, it was all recorded to one track, track 3, and it makes me wonder.
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The whole drumkit to one track. A whole orchestra to one track. Damn... This modern approach of having a mix with 70 or more tracks is just so unnecessary.
 
dobro said:
Two mics? You'd think it would be two overheads, but if they were using a single overhead in 69, then they probably hadn't thought of two overheads in 63.
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There is no point to two overheads when the drums are going to be in mono. It would sound worse that just one mic because of the phase.
 
Exactly. Duh. So if you had two mics to put on one kit, where would you put them? It would depend what kinda song, right? But for Beatles songs.
 
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