Nerdy recording stuff
Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 8:08 amI've been producing and recording music the majority of my life and love discovering what producers/engineers did to get iconic sounds from their 80s hits. I'd love to see what other studio notes and tricks you all know about.
Here's a couple cool things I found online:
- The snare drum sound for "If You Leave" by OMD was created with a LinnDrum and a drum sample from a Hall & Oates song (possibly "Bank on Your Love") layered on top of it. Speaking of "If You Leave", it was apparently written and recorded in under 24 hours before they had to leave on a tour because John Hughes changed the ending for Pretty in Pink and needed a new song from the band. Crazy.
(source: https://gearspace.com/board/showpost.ph ... stcount=16)
- The iconic snare drum sound for "She Drives Me Crazy" by Fine Young Cannibals was created in a super elaborate way. “I took the head off a snare drum and started whacking it with a wooden ruler, recording it through a Shure 57 microphone,” he says. “As I did that, I started twisting the hell out of the [API 550] EQ around 1 kHz on it, to the point where it was starting to sound more like a crash. I blended that with a snare I found in the Linn itself, which was a 12-bit machine, so it sounded pretty edgy to start with.” But the coup de grace for the sound was when Z pumped the processed and blended sample through an Auratone speaker set upside down atop another snare drum, which rattled the metal snares and gave the result some ambience and even more high end. The whole thing was limited slightly and then sent to a track on a roll of Ampex 456 running on a Studer A800 at 15 ips. Only a slight amount of reverb was added to the track later on.
(source: https://www.mixonline.com/recording/cla ... azy-375247)
Here's a couple cool things I found online:
- The snare drum sound for "If You Leave" by OMD was created with a LinnDrum and a drum sample from a Hall & Oates song (possibly "Bank on Your Love") layered on top of it. Speaking of "If You Leave", it was apparently written and recorded in under 24 hours before they had to leave on a tour because John Hughes changed the ending for Pretty in Pink and needed a new song from the band. Crazy.
(source: https://gearspace.com/board/showpost.ph ... stcount=16)
- The iconic snare drum sound for "She Drives Me Crazy" by Fine Young Cannibals was created in a super elaborate way. “I took the head off a snare drum and started whacking it with a wooden ruler, recording it through a Shure 57 microphone,” he says. “As I did that, I started twisting the hell out of the [API 550] EQ around 1 kHz on it, to the point where it was starting to sound more like a crash. I blended that with a snare I found in the Linn itself, which was a 12-bit machine, so it sounded pretty edgy to start with.” But the coup de grace for the sound was when Z pumped the processed and blended sample through an Auratone speaker set upside down atop another snare drum, which rattled the metal snares and gave the result some ambience and even more high end. The whole thing was limited slightly and then sent to a track on a roll of Ampex 456 running on a Studer A800 at 15 ips. Only a slight amount of reverb was added to the track later on.
(source: https://www.mixonline.com/recording/cla ... azy-375247)