Any of you audio isolation experts able to isolate the guitars on IKTAA?

[guitarfool2002]

It's easy to not realize there was no electric 12-string before 1964, considering how ubiquitous they became and still are.

Not to split hairs or derail the thread, but I think the Danelectro Bellzouki 12-string predates the Ric ('61 I think) !

The Bellzouki wasn't technically considered a guitar necessarily because of the body shape and the origin of the instrument, like the Coral Sitar it was one of Vinny Bell's oddball namesake ideas that Danelectro actually put into production where the others like Fender/Gibson wouldn't touch. Bell wanted an electric Bouzouki, and ran with the idea of making it 12 strings rather than 8, or whatever the traditional bouzouki had.

There are handfuls of bizarre Danelectro models like the Mandolin-guitar thing which was basically a guitar with something like 40 frets to "simulate" a mandolin...crazy stuff like that.

If it looked like a guitar or was made to be a guitar, I'd agree the Bellzouki was first. 

oh i see ... didn't consider it that way !

It's actually funny to consider Vinny Bell could have fallen ass-backwards into making the first electric 12-string by accident while trying to make that Bouzouki. If Danelectro had laid Bell's idea into one of their standard electric body shapes, and added a reinforced neck, back in '61, they'd win the race and I doubt the Rickenbacker 12 would have been as legendary as it is now because the impetus to design and produce something "new" wouldn't have been the same.

[guitarfool2002]

What's interesting is that guitars are leaking into the horn mic, meaning that they were amped.

The same point I raised a few pages ago: Just because a photo shows the guitarists in the booth doesn't mean they were going direct, it has to be equally assumed they could have been running into a mic-ed amp placed elsewhere.

And related to the reverb-chamber-send/return topics, Brian at least always had some kind of a slap echo or chamber echo on his bass, Danelectro tic-tac bass, and usually guitar depending on the part. Very, very few of Brian's mid 60's guitar and bass tracks are "dry", and these effects we can sometimes hear on the session tapes being applied during the tracking session and printed to tape, so they're not added after the fact during mixdown.

They only had so many sends and returns available to use, and at the most I'd say one echo chamber to use on any given session, unless Brian had blocked out the entire United-Western complex so he could tap into whatever other chambers the studio had. Gold Star, I believe, had one chamber...correct if I'm wrong.

And you wouldn't send a guitar or picked bass signal to the same place as, say, a drum track or keyboard, you'd have sonic mush instead of a nice effect.

So how did they do it? 

I think sometimes they sent groups to the same tape deck for slap, or the same chamber/whatever, just varying the volumes.

Other times, I think they just applied the tape echo to the bass/baritone or individual instruments, yeh. But this would have to go through the board. They also had a limited number of decks to be used for slap. And everything had to be mic'd up ... smaller homebrew/portable mixers would not likely have any echo sends or returns, they would be straight-up mic preamp-mixers. It's not really feasible that they would have set up a tape deck just for one player's instrument ... that would be much more easily accomplished routed through the board.

Are you saying maybe the players had like an Echo-plex or something plugged into their amp? That's a possibility I'd not yet thought of. You and Josh would know more than I if these dudes were the type to carry around something like that. I guess I just assumed not.

I wasn't thinking of that necessarily but more wondering as we listen to certain session tapes how they send and returned all of those individual instruments...I couldn't even come up with an educated guess on that. I agree with what you said about also having only so many tape decks available for the slap echo: It makes it more of a mystery how they did things when we hear a handful of separate string instruments having slapback on the tracking dates, and them adjusting the delay times and whatnot to fit each part, so it would seem. It's beyond what I could even offer as a wild guess how this was done for Brian;s sessions, or perhaps I;m making it bigger than it really was.

Not many players had access to personal tape echo devices like that. The first and most famous was an amp built personally for Scotty Moore to tour with so he'd have the Sun Records tape slap at live appearances, and that was a very expensive amp built by a guy named Ray Butts, who built those for other big names as word spread in the 50's what he had come up with.

I've heard - and I have not fact-checked this - that one of the early bands to successfully use the Echoplex live was the guy from "The Blues Magoos" who had one on stage to nail the "We Ain't Got Nothin' Yet" studio delay when he played live. I can't think of anyone before that who would have any call to use one live on stage before that, yet after the Sun Records guys, so maybe that's correct after all.

For guitarists in 1966 it was rare to have much beyond a Maestro or comparable early fuzz box, there really wasn't anything available in the way of external effects controlled by the player, and that Butts tape delay amp and the early Echoplex may have been too noisy and clanky for studio use in '66.

[guitarfool2002]

(slaps forehead...)  LES PAUL!

I often leave him out because he was from outer space, you have to consider everyone else and then Les Paul turns out to have done the same thing in 1947 or something. He had tape echo devices all over the 50's and 60's, including for his live shows and TV appearances, but most of that was his own home-brew creations so it's different than a production model.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

I agree that the guitar players wouldn't have been carrying around outboard equipment.

I also agree that these were studios with limited resources.  Western and Gold Star were wildly successful, yes, but they still lacked the big dollars that the record label studios had.  You look at the mic situation at Gold Star or Western vs. Capitol. 

I bet Gold Star's mic locker in 1965 looked something like this:

Electro Voice 666 x 15
Sennheiser 421 x 1
Neumann U67 x 2
Neuman U47 x 1
RCA 77 x 3
RCA 44 x 5
Shure 55 x 2

Western seemed to favor the Shure 545s over the 666s, but that's based on a handful of photos.

But Capitol would have had Neumanns, Telefunken, AKG... all the Austrian stuff.

Anyway, Western and Gold Star couldn't afford a lot of frills, just really high quality, great sounding equipment.  So, no, they wouldn't have had 12 tape machines around to add tape slap to every input signal, even if they could.

I really suspect they just used one or maybe two.  There's not a whole lot of adjustment you can make with those things anyway, in terms of adjusting the distance between the heads.

So let's take the WIBN session.  Let's suppose the board looked something like this:

Input:
1.  Kick drum - U67 or RCA 44 (according to Levine these are what he used for Spector.
2.  Drum overhead - U67 (per Levine), some tube LDC (per our Sonny and Cher session footage), or even a 666 (per other photos.)
3.  Glockenspiel/percussion overhead - possibly a 47, per photo evidence, but I've also seen 666s.
4. Timpani overhead
5.  String Bass - Shure 55, per at least 3 photos from different sessions
6.  Dano Bass - 666 on the amp
7. Fender Bass - 666 on the amp
8.  Jazz Box acoustic guitar - 666 on it
9.  Piano - Sennheiser
10. Tack Piano
11. Horns - RCA 44
12. Accordions
13. 12-string electrics, ganged up, direct.

Already, you see there's more sources than inputs.  So there would have to be more submixing with an ampex summing mixer or something.

Brian tended to group instruments in similar ways.  On WIBN the busses would look something like this:

Buss:
1.  Horns
2. Keyboards, Basses, drums, percussion, acoustic guitar (I think)
3.  Accordions, 12-strings

Oh, it's so late, I'm going to have to continue this in the morning.

[DonnyL]

What's interesting is that guitars are leaking into the horn mic, meaning that they were amped.

The same point I raised a few pages ago: Just because a photo shows the guitarists in the booth doesn't mean they were going direct, it has to be equally assumed they could have been running into a mic-ed amp placed elsewhere.

And related to the reverb-chamber-send/return topics, Brian at least always had some kind of a slap echo or chamber echo on his bass, Danelectro tic-tac bass, and usually guitar depending on the part. Very, very few of Brian's mid 60's guitar and bass tracks are "dry", and these effects we can sometimes hear on the session tapes being applied during the tracking session and printed to tape, so they're not added after the fact during mixdown.

They only had so many sends and returns available to use, and at the most I'd say one echo chamber to use on any given session, unless Brian had blocked out the entire United-Western complex so he could tap into whatever other chambers the studio had. Gold Star, I believe, had one chamber...correct if I'm wrong.

And you wouldn't send a guitar or picked bass signal to the same place as, say, a drum track or keyboard, you'd have sonic mush instead of a nice effect.

So how did they do it? 

I think sometimes they sent groups to the same tape deck for slap, or the same chamber/whatever, just varying the volumes.

Other times, I think they just applied the tape echo to the bass/baritone or individual instruments, yeh. But this would have to go through the board. They also had a limited number of decks to be used for slap. And everything had to be mic'd up ... smaller homebrew/portable mixers would not likely have any echo sends or returns, they would be straight-up mic preamp-mixers. It's not really feasible that they would have set up a tape deck just for one player's instrument ... that would be much more easily accomplished routed through the board.

Are you saying maybe the players had like an Echo-plex or something plugged into their amp? That's a possibility I'd not yet thought of. You and Josh would know more than I if these dudes were the type to carry around something like that. I guess I just assumed not.

I wasn't thinking of that necessarily but more wondering as we listen to certain session tapes how they send and returned all of those individual instruments...I couldn't even come up with an educated guess on that. I agree with what you said about also having only so many tape decks available for the slap echo: It makes it more of a mystery how they did things when we hear a handful of separate string instruments having slapback on the tracking dates, and them adjusting the delay times and whatnot to fit each part, so it would seem. It's beyond what I could even offer as a wild guess how this was done for Brian;s sessions, or perhaps I;m making it bigger than it really was.

Not many players had access to personal tape echo devices like that. The first and most famous was an amp built personally for Scotty Moore to tour with so he'd have the Sun Records tape slap at live appearances, and that was a very expensive amp built by a guy named Ray Butts, who built those for other big names as word spread in the 50's what he had come up with.

I've heard - and I have not fact-checked this - that one of the early bands to successfully use the Echoplex live was the guy from "The Blues Magoos" who had one on stage to nail the "We Ain't Got Nothin' Yet" studio delay when he played live. I can't think of anyone before that who would have any call to use one live on stage before that, yet after the Sun Records guys, so maybe that's correct after all.

For guitarists in 1966 it was rare to have much beyond a Maestro or comparable early fuzz box, there really wasn't anything available in the way of external effects controlled by the player, and that Butts tape delay amp and the early Echoplex may have been too noisy and clanky for studio use in '66.

yeh I think it was much simpler ...

the tape slap was basically what it was -- whatever the tape deck gave you. they didn't set the delay time beyond whether it was 15 ips (shorter delay) or 7.5 ips (longer). basically was dependent on the distance between the record and play head on the deck.

I think they just sent a group of instruments to it, and adjusted how much volume each element would get. If they had it cranked on one instrument, you'd hear it, if they had it pulled back for another, you'd hear it as a more subtle reverb in the mix.  I think they also overdubbed specific instruments (like Dano) along with things like the horn overdubs, to use a send for the Dano delay that way, etc.

[Iron Horse-Apples]

This is the sort of thread I come here for.

aeijtzsche, fantastic work on the IKTAA guitars.

Yes, the complete MIDI files for Pet Sounds would be welcome here

[monicker]

It's pretty remarkable to think that the period in which Brian was using the WC consistently spanned, what, three measly years of his life? For him to recall any minute details from that period, like what 12 string Carl was playing on the CG intro, is almost unfathomable.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

It's pretty remarkable to think that the period in which Brian was using the WC consistently spanned, what, three measly years of his life? For him to recall any minute details from that period, like what 12 string Carl was playing on the CG intro, is almost unfathomable.

And I do wonder if, should the right interviewer be involved, he might be finessed into answering more techy questions.  I don't think any of the Beach Boys really have much of an interest in that stuff, but in the right context, I wouldn't be surprised if there's info in Brian's head that would be useful.

So, an interviewer could get him talking about production, and sneak in a little question about reverb. Or something.  But it strange.  Brian's band literally has the composer and arranger of the work there, and they still get stuff wrong.  Whether this is because they aren't concerned about playing exactly what's on the record (which is fine) or because they can't quite figure it out, it's like, why don't you just ask Brian?  I still think the ideal interview situation for Brian would be, first having a musician interview him, and have both the interviewer and Brian at keyboards, ideally in Western 3 or something.  And just play stuff for him.  Anyway.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

What's interesting is that guitars are leaking into the horn mic, meaning that they were amped.

The same point I raised a few pages ago: Just because a photo shows the guitarists in the booth doesn't mean they were going direct, it has to be equally assumed they could have been running into a mic-ed amp placed elsewhere.

And related to the reverb-chamber-send/return topics, Brian at least always had some kind of a slap echo or chamber echo on his bass, Danelectro tic-tac bass, and usually guitar depending on the part. Very, very few of Brian's mid 60's guitar and bass tracks are "dry", and these effects we can sometimes hear on the session tapes being applied during the tracking session and printed to tape, so they're not added after the fact during mixdown.

They only had so many sends and returns available to use, and at the most I'd say one echo chamber to use on any given session, unless Brian had blocked out the entire United-Western complex so he could tap into whatever other chambers the studio had. Gold Star, I believe, had one chamber...correct if I'm wrong.

And you wouldn't send a guitar or picked bass signal to the same place as, say, a drum track or keyboard, you'd have sonic mush instead of a nice effect.

So how did they do it? 

I think sometimes they sent groups to the same tape deck for slap, or the same chamber/whatever, just varying the volumes.

Other times, I think they just applied the tape echo to the bass/baritone or individual instruments, yeh. But this would have to go through the board. They also had a limited number of decks to be used for slap. And everything had to be mic'd up ... smaller homebrew/portable mixers would not likely have any echo sends or returns, they would be straight-up mic preamp-mixers. It's not really feasible that they would have set up a tape deck just for one player's instrument ... that would be much more easily accomplished routed through the board.

Are you saying maybe the players had like an Echo-plex or something plugged into their amp? That's a possibility I'd not yet thought of. You and Josh would know more than I if these dudes were the type to carry around something like that. I guess I just assumed not.

I wasn't thinking of that necessarily but more wondering as we listen to certain session tapes how they send and returned all of those individual instruments...I couldn't even come up with an educated guess on that. I agree with what you said about also having only so many tape decks available for the slap echo: It makes it more of a mystery how they did things when we hear a handful of separate string instruments having slapback on the tracking dates, and them adjusting the delay times and whatnot to fit each part, so it would seem. It's beyond what I could even offer as a wild guess how this was done for Brian;s sessions, or perhaps I;m making it bigger than it really was.

Not many players had access to personal tape echo devices like that. The first and most famous was an amp built personally for Scotty Moore to tour with so he'd have the Sun Records tape slap at live appearances, and that was a very expensive amp built by a guy named Ray Butts, who built those for other big names as word spread in the 50's what he had come up with.

I've heard - and I have not fact-checked this - that one of the early bands to successfully use the Echoplex live was the guy from "The Blues Magoos" who had one on stage to nail the "We Ain't Got Nothin' Yet" studio delay when he played live. I can't think of anyone before that who would have any call to use one live on stage before that, yet after the Sun Records guys, so maybe that's correct after all.

For guitarists in 1966 it was rare to have much beyond a Maestro or comparable early fuzz box, there really wasn't anything available in the way of external effects controlled by the player, and that Butts tape delay amp and the early Echoplex may have been too noisy and clanky for studio use in '66.

yeh I think it was much simpler ...

the tape slap was basically what it was -- whatever the tape deck gave you. they didn't set the delay time beyond whether it was 15 ips (shorter delay) or 7.5 ips (longer). basically was dependent on the distance between the record and play head on the deck.

I think they just sent a group of instruments to it, and adjusted how much volume each element would get. If they had it cranked on one instrument, you'd hear it, if they had it pulled back for another, you'd hear it as a more subtle reverb in the mix.  I think they also overdubbed specific instruments (like Dano) along with things like the horn overdubs, to use a send for the Dano delay that way, etc.

This is where Mark's presence would be helpful, because he's actually worked in some of these studios and could tell us how many chambers Western has.  Presumably they're still there?

Because continuing where I left off:

Buss:
1.  Horns
2. Keyboards, Basses, drums, percussion, acoustic guitar (I think)
3.  Accordions, 12-strings

I don't think there's any slap on WIBN, but let's say there was.  You send buss 1 to an EMT plate, buss 2 to the tape machine set up for slap and then on to a chamber (or vice-versa), and then buss three to some other reverb device?

But it would also be possible to send 1 and 2 to the same chamber and have the reverb return come back for both sends onto one return...

Clean multis would be so helpful here.

[DonnyL]

This is where Mark's presence would be helpful, because he's actually worked in some of these studios and could tell us how many chambers Western has.  Presumably they're still there?

Because continuing where I left off:

Buss:
1.  Horns
2. Keyboards, Basses, drums, percussion, acoustic guitar (I think)
3.  Accordions, 12-strings

I don't think there's any slap on WIBN, but let's say there was.  You send buss 1 to an EMT plate, buss 2 to the tape machine set up for slap and then on to a chamber (or vice-versa), and then buss three to some other reverb device?

But it would also be possible to send 1 and 2 to the same chamber and have the reverb return come back for both sends onto one return...

Clean multis would be so helpful here.

While I can think of about 10 different ways they might have set it up (and likely changed from session to session, etc.), I would guess:

They probably had a 'standard' or default setup with one send going to the main chamber, another ready for a tape machine for slap*, and a third setup for whatever plate (do we know it was an EMT?) or spring unit, etc.

If they wanted to receive a delayed signal from the chamber, they could simply patch an output from the chamber into the slap deck. Vice versa for sending a delayed signal to the chamber. They could use this in combination with the standard chamber return.

There are more possibilities. They could bring a return from the slap deck to a channel that has a chamber return on it. You could get a delay of whatever dry signal was going to the channel + a delay of only the echo of whatever other tracks were being fed to the chamber.

* Keep in mind, there was not likely a 'dedicated' slap machine. During tracking, they probably used the same mono deck that was used for mixdown. They could also use one track of the stereo mix deck (or both) for 3 channels of separate slap during tracking if they wanted.
They would also be able to use the stereo deck for slap during mono mixdown (or vice versa for stereo mixes).

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Let's talk about the use of un-miked instruments.

Pianos, in particular, during the 65-67 period, often seem to be mostly off-mic or very low in the mix if there is a mic from it going into the board.

Sloop John B, for instance, as we've discussed, has that pounding piano that is all but inaudible, particularly in the final mix.  But there are other instances.

WIBN has the two pianos, the tack piano and probably the baby grand.  Neither of these seem to be "coming from anywhere."  The tack piano seems a little more defined during the "you know it seems the more..." section, when you can hear the tacks hitting the bass strings in the bass line, much like in Here Today.

So here's the question, if there is one:  Do you think that some of these pianos are truly un-miked?  Or is the fader on them just way down? 

There is a photo from a Spector session, which you can find on Getty Images, that shows Jimmy Bond and Ray Pohlman over in their little bass corner.  Jimmy's bass clearly has a Shure 55 on it, but Pohlman's amp seems to be un-miked.

Obviously, there are plenty of anecdotes about Spector not miking things.  The famous one about Billy Strange's Zippity-Doo-Dah guitar ending up being pulled all the way down, for instance.  This kind of thing could be another important piece of understanding how Spector rubbed off on Brian.

Any thoughts?

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

I also have a new theory about the bass situation on GOK.  This whole time I've been assuming that, if there is a third bass in there, it would be Carol, and it would have the usual tone that Brian requested.  But what if Brian instead had Carol dial in a tone very similar to the string bass?  Way back on the tone knob, etc.  That could explain why I haven't been able to pick out the third bass--I had been looking int he wrong place.

[DonnyL]

Let's talk about the use of un-miked instruments.

Pianos, in particular, during the 65-67 period, often seem to be mostly off-mic or very low in the mix if there is a mic from it going into the board.

Sloop John B, for instance, as we've discussed, has that pounding piano that is all but inaudible, particularly in the final mix.  But there are other instances.

WIBN has the two pianos, the tack piano and probably the baby grand.  Neither of these seem to be "coming from anywhere."  The tack piano seems a little more defined during the "you know it seems the more..." section, when you can hear the tacks hitting the bass strings in the bass line, much like in Here Today.

So here's the question, if there is one:  Do you think that some of these pianos are truly un-miked?  Or is the fader on them just way down? 

There is a photo from a Spector session, which you can find on Getty Images, that shows Jimmy Bond and Ray Pohlman over in their little bass corner.  Jimmy's bass clearly has a Shure 55 on it, but Pohlman's amp seems to be un-miked.

Obviously, there are plenty of anecdotes about Spector not miking things.  The famous one about Billy Strange's Zippity-Doo-Dah guitar ending up being pulled all the way down, for instance.  This kind of thing could be another important piece of understanding how Spector rubbed off on Brian.

Any thoughts?

I feel that if Spector did it, it's likely Brian did it too. I mean, they were the same musicians, same studios, engineers, etc ... so these wouldn't be a big secret at the time. I think some things were not miked up. Since leakage was part of the wall, I guess you could say Spector was a master of 'felt rather than heard', and BW used it a bit.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Let's talk about the use of un-miked instruments.

Pianos, in particular, during the 65-67 period, often seem to be mostly off-mic or very low in the mix if there is a mic from it going into the board.

Sloop John B, for instance, as we've discussed, has that pounding piano that is all but inaudible, particularly in the final mix.  But there are other instances.

WIBN has the two pianos, the tack piano and probably the baby grand.  Neither of these seem to be "coming from anywhere."  The tack piano seems a little more defined during the "you know it seems the more..." section, when you can hear the tacks hitting the bass strings in the bass line, much like in Here Today.

So here's the question, if there is one:  Do you think that some of these pianos are truly un-miked?  Or is the fader on them just way down? 

There is a photo from a Spector session, which you can find on Getty Images, that shows Jimmy Bond and Ray Pohlman over in their little bass corner.  Jimmy's bass clearly has a Shure 55 on it, but Pohlman's amp seems to be un-miked.

Obviously, there are plenty of anecdotes about Spector not miking things.  The famous one about Billy Strange's Zippity-Doo-Dah guitar ending up being pulled all the way down, for instance.  This kind of thing could be another important piece of understanding how Spector rubbed off on Brian.

Any thoughts?

I feel that if Spector did it, it's likely Brian did it too. I mean, they were the same musicians, same studios, engineers, etc ... so these wouldn't be a big secret at the time. I think some things were not miked up. Since leakage was part of the wall, I guess you could say Spector was a master of 'felt rather than heard', and BW used it a bit.

And just think, now an engineer would record a piano with 18 mics. 

[monicker]

Let's talk about the use of un-miked instruments.

Pianos, in particular, during the 65-67 period, often seem to be mostly off-mic or very low in the mix if there is a mic from it going into the board.

Sloop John B, for instance, as we've discussed, has that pounding piano that is all but inaudible, particularly in the final mix.  But there are other instances.

WIBN has the two pianos, the tack piano and probably the baby grand.  Neither of these seem to be "coming from anywhere."  The tack piano seems a little more defined during the "you know it seems the more..." section, when you can hear the tacks hitting the bass strings in the bass line, much like in Here Today.

So here's the question, if there is one:  Do you think that some of these pianos are truly un-miked?  Or is the fader on them just way down?  

There is a photo from a Spector session, which you can find on Getty Images, that shows Jimmy Bond and Ray Pohlman over in their little bass corner.  Jimmy's bass clearly has a Shure 55 on it, but Pohlman's amp seems to be un-miked.

Obviously, there are plenty of anecdotes about Spector not miking things.  The famous one about Billy Strange's Zippity-Doo-Dah guitar ending up being pulled all the way down, for instance.  This kind of thing could be another important piece of understanding how Spector rubbed off on Brian.

Any thoughts?

I feel that if Spector did it, it's likely Brian did it too. I mean, they were the same musicians, same studios, engineers, etc ... so these wouldn't be a big secret at the time. I think some things were not miked up. Since leakage was part of the wall, I guess you could say Spector was a master of 'felt rather than heard', and BW used it a bit.

And just think, now an engineer would record a piano with 18 mics.  

Obviously you're joking (what is the standard these days for mics on a piano anyway?) but i've been thinking about this lately. Especially with regards to drums--this obsession with micing every piece. it just seems absurd and unnecessary (i guess unless you're doing something like death metal). And doesn't it make mixing a bit of a nightmare? Does any instrument ever get recorded in mono anymore as standard practice? I imagine even something like a trumpet, it's standard practice to have a close (ish) mic and then a room one. I feel like it's all somehow a reflection of the general culture, though i'm not sure yet how to articulate that. More is more. More is better. Total control over everything. Bells & whistles. Distractions. Overdoing it.  

[DonnyL]

Obviously you're joking (what is the standard these days for mics on a piano anyway?) but i've been thinking about this lately. Especially with regards to drums--this obsession with micing every piece. it just seems absurd and unnecessary (i guess unless you're doing something like death metal). And doesn't it make mixing a bit of a nightmare? Does any instrument ever get recorded in mono anymore as standard practice? I imagine even something like a trumpet, it's standard practice to have a close (ish) mic and then a room one. I feel like it's all somehow a reflection of the general culture, though i'm not sure yet how to articulate that. More is more. More is better. Total control over everything. Bells & whistles. Distractions. Overdoing it.  

I'm not sure what normal people are doing, but I think 2 mics is still fairly standard, maybe a third in the middle or the back of an upright or something. I would assume that most do not even use real pianos.

The drum thing is pretty nuts. Some people literally put 15 mics on the drums (not joking), though I think the standard is 6-10, which is still outrageous. I feel like you're asking for trouble that way. But whatever works for you I guess.

The funny thing is you're still ultimately getting to a final mix ... you can figure it out earlier or later.

I just think it's part of the switch from the producer 'on the floor' to the 'mixer/DJ/computer programmer' being the focal point.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Obviously you're joking (what is the standard these days for mics on a piano anyway?) but i've been thinking about this lately. Especially with regards to drums--this obsession with micing every piece. it just seems absurd and unnecessary (i guess unless you're doing something like death metal). And doesn't it make mixing a bit of a nightmare? Does any instrument ever get recorded in mono anymore as standard practice? I imagine even something like a trumpet, it's standard practice to have a close (ish) mic and then a room one. I feel like it's all somehow a reflection of the general culture, though i'm not sure yet how to articulate that. More is more. More is better. Total control over everything. Bells & whistles. Distractions. Overdoing it.  

I'm not sure what normal people are doing, but I think 2 mics is still fairly standard, maybe a third in the middle or the back of an upright or something. I would assume that most do not even use real pianos.

The drum thing is pretty nuts. Some people literally put 15 mics on the drums (not joking), though I think the standard is 6-10, which is still outrageous. I feel like you're asking for trouble that way. But whatever works for you I guess.

The problem with all of this (in my view) is that you're still ultimately getting to a final mix ... you can figure it out earlier or later.

I think the "standard" drum set up is as follows:

Kick drum gets 3 mics, one on the pedal side of the head, one inside the drum, and one outside the front head.

Snare and toms get top and bottom.

Mic on the hi-hat, and on each cymbal.

Then you have two overheads, maybe a mono overhead also, and if you're in a nice room like Western 2, you have a mic about 10-15 feet back from the drum set at about head height.  Then you put a mic in each corner of the room.

So assuming two toms and one crash and one ride, that would be 20 mics.  I have seen this done.

[DonnyL]

Obviously you're joking (what is the standard these days for mics on a piano anyway?) but i've been thinking about this lately. Especially with regards to drums--this obsession with micing every piece. it just seems absurd and unnecessary (i guess unless you're doing something like death metal). And doesn't it make mixing a bit of a nightmare? Does any instrument ever get recorded in mono anymore as standard practice? I imagine even something like a trumpet, it's standard practice to have a close (ish) mic and then a room one. I feel like it's all somehow a reflection of the general culture, though i'm not sure yet how to articulate that. More is more. More is better. Total control over everything. Bells & whistles. Distractions. Overdoing it.  

I'm not sure what normal people are doing, but I think 2 mics is still fairly standard, maybe a third in the middle or the back of an upright or something. I would assume that most do not even use real pianos.

The drum thing is pretty nuts. Some people literally put 15 mics on the drums (not joking), though I think the standard is 6-10, which is still outrageous. I feel like you're asking for trouble that way. But whatever works for you I guess.

The problem with all of this (in my view) is that you're still ultimately getting to a final mix ... you can figure it out earlier or later.

I think the "standard" drum set up is as follows:

Kick drum gets 3 mics, one on the pedal side of the head, one inside the drum, and one outside the front head.

Snare and toms get top and bottom.

Mic on the hi-hat, and on each cymbal.

Then you have two overheads, maybe a mono overhead also, and if you're in a nice room like Western 2, you have a mic about 10-15 feet back from the drum set at about head height.  Then you put a mic in each corner of the room.

So assuming two toms and one crash and one ride, that would be 20 mics.  I have seen this done.

I'll bet it sounds gross ...

another switch from the days of old. I think drums were originally perceived as simply part of the 'rhythm section', the in the mid-late '60s as 'one instrument' and on to a group of smaller instruments, then on to a group of 'tones' and audio flavors to mess with later on, with no 'instrument' in sight !

[monicker]

Wow, i've never heard of three mics on the kick, that's insane. Also, micing each cymbal is so overkill. In my opinion cymbals don't need to be miced at all. This over-micing drums leads to an overly present/bright drum sound that i don't think sits well in the mix. I guess i understand why the approach is used, considering how much the emphasis has shifted to "the beat" in popular music over the last few decades. I just really dislike that sound. I am of the belief that a drum kit doesn't even sound particularly good in person, and it's only in the production that it becomes a nice, usable sound. Seriously, listening to a drum kit a few feet in front of me with the naked ear sounds kind of shitty, even if it's a great quality kit played by a great drummer. 

Question for anyone who does their own recording: If you only have two mics/inputs for drums, how do you do it? Omni overhead and a dynamic on the kick?

What was the standard for micing drums on a Spector/Brian date? 

Also, getting back to un-miced instruments, i used to think the piano in DYLW was not miced but i've recently changed my mind to thinking that it sounds like it was just purposely mixed very low. This has always fascinated and kind of confused me. I'm not really sure what Brian was going for here.

[DonnyL]

Wow, i've never heard of three mics on the kick, that's insane. Also, micing each cymbal is so overkill. In my opinion cymbals don't need to be miced at all. This over-micing drums leads to an overly present/bright drum sound that i don't think sits well in the mix. I guess i understand why the approach is used, considering how much the emphasis has shifted to "the beat" in popular music over the last few decades. I just really dislike that sound. I am of the belief that a drum kit doesn't even sound particularly good in person, and it's only in the production that it becomes a nice, usable sound. Seriously, listening to a drum kit a few feet in front of me with the naked ear sounds kind of sh*tty, even if it's a great quality kit played by a great drummer. 

Question for anyone who does their own recording: If you only have two mics/inputs for drums, how do you do it? Omni overhead and a dynamic on the kick?

What was the standard for micing drums on a Spector/Brian date? 

Also, getting back to un-miced instruments, i used to think the piano in DYLW was not miced but i've recently changed my mind to thinking that it sounds like it was just purposely mixed very low. This has always fascinated and kind of confused me. I'm not really sure what Brian was going for here.

Omni overhead (like an EV 635a) and something like an EV RE-XX on the kick is a good sound. Or if you have a good room that's kind of live, you can use a condenser right behind the drummer's head and get the entire kit (kick and all) pretty good.

Josh can tell you better than I how they did it in on the classic sessions. I think it was 3 or 4 mics usually.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Wow, i've never heard of three mics on the kick, that's insane. Also, micing each cymbal is so overkill. In my opinion cymbals don't need to be miced at all. This over-micing drums leads to an overly present/bright drum sound that i don't think sits well in the mix. I guess i understand why the approach is used, considering how much the emphasis has shifted to "the beat" in popular music over the last few decades. I just really dislike that sound. I am of the belief that a drum kit doesn't even sound particularly good in person, and it's only in the production that it becomes a nice, usable sound. Seriously, listening to a drum kit a few feet in front of me with the naked ear sounds kind of sh*tty, even if it's a great quality kit played by a great drummer.  

Question for anyone who does their own recording: If you only have two mics/inputs for drums, how do you do it? Omni overhead and a dynamic on the kick?

What was the standard for micing drums on a Spector/Brian date?  

Also, getting back to un-miced instruments, i used to think the piano in DYLW was not miced but i've recently changed my mind to thinking that it sounds like it was just purposely mixed very low. This has always fascinated and kind of confused me. I'm not really sure what Brian was going for here.

There are numerous photographs of drums from numerous studios, and they pretty much agree.  The standard set up was two mics, one overhead and one kick.

See, e.g.:

 Sony C-37a overhead and U67 on kick.

You see a lot of small D condensers overhead, like this:



Here you see what appears to be an RE-15 as the overhead.
 

I've seen photos of the 666 as an overhead too.



Here's another mic overhead.
 

I could literally find dozens more that show one overhead, of varying types.

I've never recorded in a nice enough room to do it that way--it simply has to be a good sounding room.

[DonnyL]

Here you see what appears to be an RE-15 as the overhead.

it's a 635a (I knew it was a good sound!)

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Sure enough.  I knew it wasn't actually an RE-15, but the easiest way to get people to correct you is to put forth the wrong information.

[Sam_BFC]

I think the "standard" drum set up is as follows:

Kick drum gets 3 mics, one on the pedal side of the head, one inside the drum, and one outside the front head.

Snare and toms get top and bottom.

Mic on the hi-hat, and on each cymbal.

Then you have two overheads, maybe a mono overhead also, and if you're in a nice room like Western 2, you have a mic about 10-15 feet back from the drum set at about head height.  Then you put a mic in each corner of the room.

So assuming two toms and one crash and one ride, that would be 20 mics.  I have seen this done.

That does sound pretty crazy...surely this induces all sorts of phase-cancellation issues?

--

Cool pictures of drum mics at old Wrecking Crew sessions - looks like they had the overhead very close in to the kit compared to what we might expect today with pairs of overheads...?

[GuyOnTheBeach]

Regarding Brian getting technical, I've seen a couple of interviews where he is at a mixing desk (the Endless Harmony one and one with George Martin come to mind) where he goes into more detail than he usually does, I sometimes think his surroundings are key, he usually goes into more detail about the musical side of things when there is a piano handy, so if he is able to mess about with a mixer during interviews, I'm wondering if that helps him to explain technical aspects without having to go through strenuous examples or something.