London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

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leigh
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London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by leigh » Sun Aug 10, 2003 6:34 pm

"The older guys at Decca, the people that I learned from, used to laugh at me for putting a mic on the bass drum at all," recalls [engineer Bill] Price. "They used to say to me, `the object of the bass drum is to keep the band in time - it's not meant to be heard.'"

From an article at M*x Online, detailing the London Calling recording sessions.

Leigh

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Re: London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by E-cue » Sun Aug 10, 2003 7:08 pm

That's a pretty rad article. You don't normally see stuff like that from M*x.

"One particular technique involved placing a pair of Neumann U87s about 15 feet up and 10 feet in front of the drum kit as ambience mics and mixing them in with a pair of STC 4038 ribbon mics placed behind the kit at floor level."

Behind the kit at floor level... gotta try that with some ribbons this week.

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Re: London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by @?,*???&? » Sun Aug 10, 2003 8:13 pm

Bill Price got some real enviable tones. London Calling sounds amazing, the Pretenders discs sound amazing and Never mind the Bollocks has a ton of character. His kick drum tones are certainly full heads front and back. No internal miking going on.

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Re: London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by AstroDan » Sun Aug 10, 2003 10:00 pm

...and Never mind the Bollocks has a ton of character.
Totally.
Last edited by AstroDan on Sun Aug 10, 2003 10:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by cgarges » Sun Aug 10, 2003 10:20 pm

E-cue wrote:Behind the kit at floor level... gotta try that with some ribbons this week.
I've had good luck doing that with 4050s in omni, as well.

Chris Garges
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Re: London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by heylow » Sun Aug 10, 2003 11:16 pm

Strummer.....an SM58.

That dude coulda sang through anything though!



I wish we could actually see the track sheets. It makes reference to them but there are no links. Guess you gotta buy the mag....that is.....unless someone were to SCAN them or something. Of course I never make such a suggestion. :wink:



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Re: London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by kayagum » Mon Aug 11, 2003 8:14 am

Forget the mic choices- what about the "tackling the singer" method for getting emotional vocal takes from Joe Strummer?!?!?!

:shock:

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Re: London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by leigh » Mon Aug 11, 2003 11:45 am

Yeah, tackling the singer is a rad idea. There was a thread on here just last week about how to get a better performance out of a whispery, mumbly singer...

This Mix piece reminds me of an idea I had for Tape Op, which would be a column focusing on a single album. Something with some proven staying power, ie at least 5 years old and still sounding good, but where the people involved could still remember some of the recording experience.

I actually got the idea from an old issue of what must have been an incredible mag called Recording Engineer/Producer (R-e/p for short). The issue I found is from August 1975. If you ever see old issues of this mag, pick it up, it's the shit. (Sample table of contents: Troubleshooting an Audio System Without Test Equipment, Getting More On Four, A Simple Panning Network, Phasing and Flanging, Relapping Your Own Heads.)

Anyhow, the piece in this issue of R-e/p is called "A Production Analysis of the Doors' Strange Days: An in-depth interview with Paul Rothchild, Bruce Botnick, and Robby Krieger." This album, btw, was recorded in 1967, so the interviewer got these guys together about eight years after the fact to discuss the album. It's about seven pages long, and includes both diagrams of the live room (both instrument layout and which mics were used) as well as illustrations called "composite visual schema." The latter is like an abstract Venn diagram of how big all the instruments are in the mix and where they are placed in the stereo field. Never seen it before.

So this has had me thinking about doing this kind of piece for Tape Op. Looking for feedback on this.

Leigh

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Re: London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by NewAndImprov » Mon Aug 11, 2003 4:58 pm

leigh wrote:I actually got the idea from an old issue of what must have been an incredible mag called Recording Engineer/Producer (R-e/p for short). The issue I found is from August 1975. If you ever see old issues of this mag, pick it up, it's the shit. (Sample table of contents: Troubleshooting an Audio System Without Test Equipment, Getting More On Four, A Simple Panning Network, Phasing and Flanging, Relapping Your Own Heads.)
Leigh
Oh man, I remember discovering RE/P while still in High School, it was a huge inspiration for me at the time. Great mag, up there with Tape Op. I wish I still had my old issues.

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Re: London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by joeysimms » Mon Aug 11, 2003 9:12 pm

u don't normally see stuff like that from M*x.
You do in the Mix Online Archives, they got the goods on about 100 sort of classic songs / albums, including Funhouse, Stayin' Alive, Paranoid, etc. Good little breakdowns on what went into some of these things..

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Re: London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by uqbar » Tue Aug 12, 2003 7:51 am

I've recommended them her before, but the classic album series DVD's on "Never Mind the Bollocks" and on "Transformer" are amazing and give lots of fun stuff on the making of. For example you get an explaination of how the drums were recorded on Bollocks and how Johnny's vocal's were done.

mark

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Re: London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by JGriffin » Tue Aug 12, 2003 10:27 am

Yup, RE/P was a great magazine. I still have a few, I think. Used to steal 'em from the studio at the university.

M*x mag has a "Classic tracks" article every month that details the making of some great song or other. This month it's Patsy Cline's "Crazy."

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Re: London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by JGriffin » Tue Aug 12, 2003 10:32 am

Interesting, btw, to see the description of the gated snare process on the Clash record. I've usually seen the development of this technique credited to Phil Collins in the early '80s.

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Re: London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by wrenhunter » Tue Aug 12, 2003 12:08 pm

leigh wrote:This Mix piece reminds me of an idea I had for Tape Op, which would be a column focusing on a single album. Something with some proven staying power, ie at least 5 years old and still sounding good, but where the people involved could still remember some of the recording experience.

So this has had me thinking about doing this kind of piece for Tape Op. Looking for feedback on this.
You should definitely do this, it's a great idea. You could probably get a pretty long thread going with suggestions for topics, but I'll throw out Murmur by R.E.M.

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Re: London Calling engineering notes and kick drums

Post by concubine » Tue Aug 12, 2003 12:57 pm

This Mix piece reminds me of an idea I had for Tape Op, which would be a column focusing on a single album. Something with some proven staying power, ie at least 5 years old and still sounding good, but where the people involved could still remember some of the recording experience.
So this has had me thinking about doing this kind of piece for Tape Op. Looking for feedback on this.
I think that's an awesome idea! I'd love to see pieces on any of these:

Wire - 154
Brian Eno - Another Green World
Joy Division - Closer or Unknown Pleasures
Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak
Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Fleetwood Mac - Tusk
and i totally agree with whoever mentioned REM's Murmur.


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