MAD Drums!! (80''s music)...Just MAD drums!!!

I have a set, I’m a guitar/vocalist hack that played bars around here until a year or two ago. I can play (to the untrained ear) 90% of this song. I am not a drummer, but this is pretty straight forward for the most part.
What I can NOT play, as much as I want to is Slipknot, and it kills me to say it, Metallica. Joey Jorgensen of Slipknot is unreal. Neal Pert (as posted above) is quoted saying “most drummers can’t do with their hands what Joey does with his feet”. Whether you like them or not, watch him with his feet! It’s insane.
As for Lars...”sigh”, they play so much off beat, tempo change, and I swear he comes down on a different count with the kick every measure, so it’s hard to play. Just watch him live! Ha! He can’t play it either.

a reply to: TexasTruth

Hehe.

I absolutely love 'tallica. To a fault sometimes, admittedly. Lars sucks. Thankfully, his bandmates can improvise around him.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I think the guy is a tasty drummer -- those 16th-note triplet fills on the toms were super tight -- but the gobos are almost certainly only to treat the sound inside the room.

That's a big kit; he's probably got a dozen or more mics around it. The gobos help to minimize room reflections, thereby reducing bleed and getting a crisp, well-defined sound into each mic without time-delayed reflections that could cause comb-filtering or other signal-degrading phenomena.

Real "sound-proofing" is done in the construction of the room itself, and is expensive. Perhaps his room is soundproof, but there's no way to tell from the video.

Please allow me to be immodest: this is maybe the first time my knowledge has been useful on ATS. Very rarely do threads have a damn thing to do with things I actually know about. (I own/operate a project studio.)

a reply to: DictionaryOfExcuses

Good sound guys are priceless man. Live and laying tracks.
Where is your studio?

a reply to: TexasTruth

Living and learning everyday. I started out playing guitar and got into recording on Tascam cassette 4-tracks with knock-off SM58's back in the day.

I've done music in some form or another my whole life but put my shingle out this year. I'm throwing it all at the wall and seeing what sticks. I'm just now wrapping up my first couple big projects to come out of my studio, and also do other odd-jobs like guitar lessons and simple fretted-instrument repair jobs to supplement my income.

I'm in a small town in the once beautiful (mostly kidding) state of Oregon.

originally posted by: JinMI
a reply to: DictionaryOfExcuses

I'm not saying he's bad or anything less than a professional. What could be classified as complete boredom, from my basic drumming standpoint and knowledge, he pulls off with ease as you stated.

Maybe my expectations are the issue. Not being able to appreciate the difficulty of the integrity it takes to complete something mundane, IMO.

I hear you. Styles are what they are and we're all entitled to our preferences. Different rhythms for different dances, different musical codes from different musical cultures, different vibes to galvanize different tribes.

a reply to: DictionaryOfExcuses

I mean showing 10 minutes of a guy playing a 4/4 would be boredom.

Show me 10 hours of a guy playing a 4/4 perfectly, and that's impressive.

Semantics I suppose.

a reply to: DictionaryOfExcuses

That's a pretty damn good analogy / description of the moment, and the environment!!!

Excellent post!

I work in electronics (sound among them) and your analysis is spot on!!

Yes, there is sound deadening and attenuation in the space, but how much is not clear. In order to get a clean sound like that you would need as much. In my old radio days, we had sound "proof" studios. They weren't really sound "proof", but they were pretty close. There was definitely no echo or reflection. Sound moved one direction and stopped right there.

All of this is actually why I liked the video!

Danny Carey. He did some 80s stuff.

a reply to: TexasTruth

Good sound is not about the "guy", but more about the "space".

Now, the "guy" can design a space where there is no reflection, but that is truly an art.

For the record, I work in spaces which are very large, and stopping sound is a very interesting engineering challenge. We even have to adjust the timing of sound (i.e. delay) so that sounds arrive at the same spot at the same time. Otherwise, they are unintelligible. So we literally have to work with the speed of sound over distances of a few hundred feet. Sound reflection is a BITCH!!

Architects love glass, hard floors, hard ceilings...and all of these things are MURDER on sound. They also make for VERY noisy places. One of my jobs is to fix that....and there are methods, but they go beyond the scope of this OP.

a reply to: JinMI

I don't see how semantics is directly related to what we're talking about, which is musical preferences. There's no right or wrong when it comes to taste in music.

Are you saying that, all things being equal, you would prefer to hear 10 hours of drumming vs. 10 minutes? That strikes me as odd. The only reason I can see that being impressive is if you were only judging someone's endurance, which is not the point of music.

a reply to: DictionaryOfExcuses

I don't see how semantics is directly related to what we're talking about, which is musical preferences. There's no right or wrong when it comes to taste in music.

When comparing 10 mins vs 10 hours of the exact same thing and whether you like one or the other would classify as semantics. I was pointing out the flaw in my own reasoning.

Also when paired up with a phrase such as, "I like the chorus, but not the rest." It's just silliness.

I'm not a sound engineer, but I've got a really close colleague who is probably one of the best in the business, so I've learned a fair bit from him. I've also had to work in "quiet rooms" (which are REALLY spooky!!).

I've always found it interesting...'no sound' (literally ZERO sound) is the absolute LOUDEST thing you've ever heard!!!

It seems contradictory, but I'll bet anyone who's ever experienced it will say the exact same thing!

I've seen a whole bunch of people just freak completely out on it! (and in our case they couldn't start making noise...but they would indicate they were panicking (big time) and they'd have to be escorted out before they lost it!)

Most people would go completely insane in a fully "silent" environment, in less than a half hour. Seriously.

Complete silence is a REALLY spooky thing! 99.999995% of people have never experienced "Silence", ever in their lives.

'Silence' is LOUD!!!! DEAFENING LOUD!!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

It is “the guy” as you just made my point. As a performer I am no good at setting my own sound. But a good sound guy will make a bad space sound good with the tricks you have mentioned.
I would put the EQ in a V pattern and crank that $h-t! Which may or may not sound very good. The guy I had playing lead for me would turn his stack up so loud I couldn’t hear myself at all. I REALLY needed a sound guy on those nights.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: TexasTruth
Good sound is not about the "guy", but more about the "space".

It's both in my experience. A person with trained ears can get good sounds from a bad room, while a person with untrained ears can struggle to get even acceptable sounds from a great room.

I love sounds and I love working with them. I like how they feel as much as I like how they sound. I HAVE to do it. I think of it like this: sound is wind; I spent twenty years sending my key up on a kite string just for the hell of it, and every now and then, the lightning of a soulful performance struck and it all started making sense, bit by bit.



I only ever imagined you as a tough-as-nails rancher! Would not have guess you also have a background in radio broadcasting. I think that's cool.

OK. I promised myself this would be my last post of the night. Must sleep. Cheers FCD!

a reply to: TexasTruth

Well, that's kind of different.

The "V" is okay if you knock the high side over and create a 'dynamic curve'. Mid-range is just noise; it's good sound pressure, but it's noise. What you want is low end, and push the energy to the high end but dump it off above your hearing range (or most) around 18k...because that also becomes noise.

So your dynamic curve forces some of that high end back (through attenuation) down into the 12k range, giving it that crisp sound. So you get the bottom, and the top, and your mind gets to play the middle!

I could tell you all about this stuff. We learned how to manipulate people with sound (in radio). Sound gets predictable after a couple minutes though, so you have to change the spectrum.

If you looked at a spectrum analyzer for the audio on your TV, you'd be SHOCKED. It's against FCC rules to have the amplitude be out of certain bounds, so why do commercials seem so LOUD compared to the programming? Well, because they turn their dynamic curve upside down. You get all mid-range and no bass or high end...which is why it seems like all freaking NOIZE!! Because it IS!!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

OK this'll be my last LOL. Have you ever been in an anechoic chamber? WEIRD environment. Microphone manufacturers use them for testing frequency response curves. Our ears are amazing instruments, so much so that when an environment is SO reflection-free that you can't locate where a sound is coming from, it royally screws with your mind.

a reply to: DictionaryOfExcuses

A person who understands acoustics can get a fantastic sound out of almost any space. It takes work in some spaces (sometimes a lot), but it can be done.

An electric guitar with all manner of effects is going to sound like crap on a concrete floor, metal ceiling and glass windows. A sax is going to sound like crap on a dirt floor. Put some wood on the stage and some chairs in the audience and a sooped up Strat and a good sax player is going to sound like a million bucks! Stick some stuff in the corners, and if either one of those guys can play some blues, you're in for a treat!

Look around a concert sometime. See where they stick the road cases. These guys are thinking.

a reply to: DictionaryOfExcuses

Yes, I have, and yes, it does mess with your mind...hence my statements above.

I've been in some "sound proof" chambers...and those REALLY mess with your mind (most people can't deal with them). Where I ran into them was in satellite construction (they were also "clean rooms"). Many satellites have ultra-sensitive sound gear on them, even something like the crack of a static shock can cause millions of dollars of damage to the sensor equipment. It's crazy how quiet those rooms are (your heart sounds like an atomic bomb going off!).