That Jeff Lynne drum sound

[ComposerLDG]

How's he do it? He has a definite signature drum sound, and I always wondered how he got it. Sounds to me like a combination of compression, a heavy gate, and maybe mic placement? I get the impression that he's got the mics pretty far away from the drums in a pretty lively room.

Anyway, just wondering...

[mojobone]

Look up Roger Linn's LinnDrum. I think it's pretty much only the earliest ELO tracks that didn't use it, or the sounds in it were based on what Jeff Lynne was doing, already. XlNAudio did a fine job of sampling them to analog tape; you can hear 'em here: http://www.xlnaudio.com/products/adpak/reel_machines Here are a few more resources:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep13/a ... s-0913.htm

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb14/a ... s-0214.htm

http://www.mixonline.com/news/profiles/ ... nne/366370

Here's one of the relevant bits: "Looking out to the main studio area through the control-room glass, Mack would have seen Bevan behind his drum kit in the far left corner, Groucutt on DI'd bass next to him, and then Tandy's DI'd keyboards. The drums were miked with a Neumann U47 on the kick, a Neumann KM84 on the snare, a Sennheiser MD421 on the toms and Neumann U87s as overheads.

"All of the drums were double-tracked,” Mack says. "The overdubbed kit was in the bathroom, and I just stuck one mic up there and compressed it with a Urei 1176, overloaded. We did that on every album, but on Discovery we just recorded the bass drum, snare and toms in there for more control. Otherwise, it would have been too messy.

"To this day, Jeff insists that he doesn't mind reverb on other people's recordings but he doesn't want it on his recordings. So I'd have to capture the real room sounds and then I'd always cheat a little bit by adding some reverb. Often, he would go over to the tape machine and stop it running, in order to hear if any reverb had been added. Well, whenever I saw him walking over to that machine I'd have my finger on the mute button, and as soon as he stopped the machine I'd hit the mute button so he couldn't hear what I'd added.”

[andygabrys]

listen to the studio vs. live versions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo0RpBGHjwA (studio)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxELf7F5xlY (live)

you hear what Mojo is saying. the Live version has some gated non-linear reverb on the snare but otherwise sounds pretty different.

[Paulie]

Ah yes.. the famous Linn Drum. 1982 price was $2,995. Average US income that year was about $21,000. So almost two months salary for that bad boy.

[mojobone]

Yeah, pretty much any piece of professional keyboard gear went for 3-$5K, back then and the cheapest SoundCraft mixing boards started at $5K. My first mixer was a Kelsey Pro Club +3 with 12 mic channels and dual onboard Crest power amps. It was $3K used and weighed 225 lbs. (without the roadcase) At one point I was car-less, so I took it to my bar gigs in a borrowed shopping cart.

[andygabrys]

that....and a Synclavier was what... $350 k or something like that. A macbook pro has many times the sampling and storage capability of that now.

[ComposerLDG]

In 1978 when I went to Berklee, the Polymoog had just come out. How we marveled at a synth that wasn't monophonic! I remember playing one at a music store near the school, but I didn't even bother to ask how much it cost because I knew I'd never be able to afford it!

[mojobone]

that....and a Synclavier was what... $350 k or something like that. A macbook pro has many times the sampling and storage capability of that now.

Gods, no. The first batch of Synclaviers were a half mil, with options. Only universities owned them. It was only about 8 years later they were down to $300K and that was the budget model. Also, the phone in your pocket likely has more processing power than the biggest, best Cray supercomputer the Navy owned, back when I was in the Navy. BTW, in the interest of bumping up my geek cred, I met Rear Admiral Grace Hopper during my service; she was surprisingly flirty for her age, (60-ish, by my guess, at the time) but then, I've always had a soft spot for the smart ones.