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Drum Hum

Article from Making Music, October 1987


Once in front of a microphone, the drummer becomes a different animal. (No, we'll do without the suggestions, thank you.) Geoff Nicholls talks to one of the keepers... er, engineers, sorry.

I've been on some, how shall I say, 'odd' sessions with Paul Samuelson over the past three or four years, and he's always struck me as level-headed and hard working. He must be because during this period he's progressed from Fairlight owner and programmer through small-studio entrepreneur to his present situation as owner and producer/engineer of one of London's newest top-flight studios, 'Sam Therapy'.

Paul started out in the seventies as a live sound engineer, working with the whole spectrum of rock acts and drummers, from 'Philthy Phil' Taylor of Motorhead to more laid-back gentlemen such as Charlie Watts and Sly Dunbar. And as house engineer at the Venue in London for three years he was "in a way 'producing' a band every night."

So, for starters, Paul can give us some advice about playing live. "All musicians should understand the limits of PAs and engineers, and be aware of mike spillage (whatever happened to him?) and proximity effects." The classic cases are the guitarist with his/her Fender Twin on the floor (so s/he can't hear it) wound up to an excruciating volume and the singer with a weak voice standing 2ft back from the mike. The first results in an impossible balance, the second delivers more drums and guitar through the vocal mike than lyrics. "A band should realise they can destroy their own sound; it's taken out of the hands of the engineer. If one thing's louder than the vocal, there's nothing you can do."

Even the top professionals cause problems. An early tour with Sly and Robbie when they were in the backing band for the now tragically dead Peter Tosh, didn't go too smoothly. Robbie Shakespeare had an enormous bass stack and kept wanting more bass on stage. Meanwhile Sly, who's a quietish drummer — all subtle technique and understatement — was getting lost. It ended up with four or five mikes on the bass drum (acoustic in those days — perhaps this is why he's changed to pads?) and two on the pedal side, just to salvage some impact.

At the Venue such problems were confronted every night. "Without wanting to typecast people you realise that there are certain styles, and mix accordingly." For example, a rock-a-billy drummer will appreciate a mike placed close to the small tom to pick up the rim-tap clack-a-clack business. With a funk drummer, as well as a solid snare and bass drum, you pay particular attention to the hi-hat. This is often intricate and integral to the whole rhythm, yet hi-hats can get lost in live situations.

Percussion's interesting. "There has to be a trust between the engineer and percussionist so that if the musician wants to accent something he can come in close to the mike, and then back off" (a bit like vocal mike technique). Unfortunately "all too often you end up having to turn the mike down so the percussionist has to be close in all the time."

This experience has obviously helped with the new studio which incorporates a large live room ideal for acoustic drums. Paul says what you look for is a room which is live but not pingy. Yet you also want to be able to control the sound from very live to very dead.

Nowadays people are often trying to create a sound — say for the snare drum — which is unique, and more of an effect, though fulfilling the role of the snare drum in the rhythm. "It's comparable with the exploration of sound when keyboards are Midi'd together". And with the progress of digital reverbs and effects (Paul's particularly smitten with his new Lexicon 480L) the subtlety and control of sound is getting better all the time, whatever the sound source.

In any case, having invested in a good live room, Paul's seeing more and more drummers come in, though the hassles of recording real drummers are hardly decreasing. "The problem with real drums is you can very rarely drop in". Because of the ring and spill of the kit you can invariably hear a drop in.

What's frustrating for the engineer/producer is that a drummer may do a good take except for one bit which needs changing, yet he'll have to do a brand new complete version because of it. And this time he/she'll screw up somewhere else, or the feel will be lost or different. Everyone else can drop in and repair. "It's a restriction on the instrument and the technicalities of recording. Everyone's allowed to make a mistake!" Working with sequences, even the best drummers will wander a bit somewhere. "There are acceptable degrees of wander, and there are techniques to resample and quantise the real drummer's performance, but that depends on how far out the wandering goes. There are limits and that's what determines a drummer's rates (of charge) and reputation."

Timing again! Where else can we brush up? "I wish drummers, particularly the less experienced ones, would spend more time learning to tune their drums, because I have to say it's often atrocious: top and bottom heads, tension, damping — all over the place. The most over-looked problem is getting a row of four or five toms sounding consistent from one to the next. And then they instinctively get out the tissue before getting the tension right. You can get more ring out by tensioning than by damping. And what's really infuriating is spending ages tuning and miking five toms and then the guy only hits two of them. It's a waste of time and mikes and, in terms of drum shells ringing, and separation, it creates unnecessary drawbacks".

One more: low-slung cymbals. These make it difficult to mike properly and get separation — "sometimes you can't even get a mike underneath on the tom, with the cymbal flopping about. All through your drumming career it's going to be a problem, so maybe you should think about re-educating yourself and work on putting them a bit higher."

With all this hassle why are drummers making a bit of a comeback? Well as a Fairlight programmer Paul says he can get pretty close to mimicking a real drummer. "The Fairlight's got unlimited sampling time which means you get the stick impact on the skin, the air travelling down the shell, and the wood ringing forevermore after that. And the signal to noise ratio is well on digital spec." It's got 128 steps of accent so it's possible to copy anything a drummer can do.

But to mimic a drummer playing a complete track, with the slight changes of level every beat, plus all the little human deviations, that can take an age. So if you want the human feel it's generally easier to get a drummer, if he can play. Then you get the human spark.

"Having a room and the whole kit ringing away, the sound of sweat dripping on the floor, the occasional mike being hit by a stick and the expensive diaphragm shattering...!"


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Publisher: Making Music - Track Record Publishing Ltd, Nexus Media Ltd.

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Making Music - Oct 1987

Feature by Geoff Nicholls

Previous article in this issue:

> Technically Speaking

Next article in this issue:

> Chord of the Month


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