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Thread: Nick Mason and Alan Parsons talk about Pink Floyd and Recreating the Drum Sessions

  1. #1

    Nick Mason and Alan Parsons talk about Pink Floyd and Recreating the Drum Sessions

    I'm producing a project with my company Sonic Reality and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd and engineer/producer Alan Parsons. During the sample sessions in London I interviewed them both and various video clips of the interviews have been posted on the SR Youtube channel. I thought I'd share it with my friends on PE that are into Pink Floyd. Oh by the way... today is David Gilmour's birthday.



    Here’s all 5 parts + Dark Side with Mason & Parsons (so far, there are over 9 in total that will be released over time)

    Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R6bK6zYajI

    Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYeMO9dUZRI

    Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZCVpO8VOTY

    Part 4 (MEDDLE): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDa7dz4GrUM

    Dark Side Interview with Nick Mason & Alan Parsons:





    Part 5 (WYWH): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6qvnYRlhU4

  2. #2
    Cool interviews. Thanks for sharing. The drums don't really sound like they did on the albums. Too bad you couldn't get a hold of one his old Ludwig kits.
    "Young man says you are what you eat, eat well."
    http://www.blissbomb.net/

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Stickleback View Post
    Cool interviews. Thanks for sharing. The drums don't really sound like they did on the albums. Too bad you couldn't get a hold of one his old Ludwig kits.
    It's the same spec drum kit, same mics, same people and it does sound like they did on the albums from the recording aspect of it. The source. However, how it is mixed in context of someone's song is where the differences might be depending on how someone chooses to balance the levels of the individual mic channels or process it with effects etc. In the studio we had the original tracks up and Nick's new tracks and when you A/Bed them it was dead on - at least for Dark Side which is what Alan originally recorded. The other material has more of that early 70s Floyd drum sound (although this kit is the one used on The Wall).

    I think I have video footage of Alan A/Bing between the original and the live session. We've done that before with engineers like Ken Scott and various drummers like Terry Bozzio, Billy Cobham, Rod Morgenstein of the Dixie Dregs, Woody Woodmansey of David Bowie's Spiders from Mars and Bob Siebenberg of Supertramp.

    Here's an example of Woody playing a Bowie track and us A/Bing with the original (so I might do that with Parsons and Mason just to prove the point):


  4. #4
    Here's a video of the Parsons/Mason session that RecordProducer.com put out that might be of interest. A little behind the scenes in the session but doesn't have the A/B thing I was talking about.





    Here's the Bob Siebenberg Supertramp drum sample session as well:


  5. #5
    Interesting. I thought perhaps he was playing a newer set of DW drums. Those drums are ringy in the video. Did you guys end up damping them at all?

    The drums sound very muffled in the Woody Woodmansey video. Drum tuning is a mysterious craft and quite subjective depending on player/engineer etc.

    Have you ever recorded Bruford's drums? Now there's a lively drum sound.
    "Young man says you are what you eat, eat well."
    http://www.blissbomb.net/

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Stickleback View Post
    Interesting. I thought perhaps he was playing a newer set of DW drums. Those drums are ringy in the video. Did you guys end up damping them at all?

    The drums sound very muffled in the Woody Woodmansey video. Drum tuning is a mysterious craft and quite subjective depending on player/engineer etc.

    Have you ever recorded Bruford's drums? Now there's a lively drum sound.
    No. We actually had a DW kit there that was used on the Division Bell (it belongs to Graham who is seen in the video asking Parsons some questions. He assisted me on the session). But we didn't have time to sample that one. The main one was the Ludwig and some extra snares. We also sampled rotos and other things. But, anyway, yeah in the video they do sound ringy because they were documenting an early stage in the session before everything was tuned up, dampened etc. Also that's camera audio which compresses and distorts a little with loud sounds like that so that itself doesn't give an idea of the product's sound. It's more just to see how things were conducted and to ask Alan some tech questions. But in the end there was more treatment to the drums to get it to sound right.

    As for Woody's kit, yeah that's "the sound" of Ziggy Stardust and the other albums Ken Scott produced with Bowie. Back then the style in England was dampened drums and this was to an extreme! I mean, a lot of people know about the Ringo tea towel thing. That's extreme too. Ken Scott recorded a lot of The White Album and Magical Mystery Tour so we did a Beatles style kit with him as well (and there's another one I did with Parsons that's coming out soon). I'm into those old vintage 60s and 70s dampened drum sounds. I'm also into the Collins and Bonham open drum sounds as well and we've done a fair amount of that as well with producers Hugh Padgham, Nick Davis...

    Now, for Bruford, we DO actually have the one and only Bill Bruford drum sample library. BUT... it's just a re-programming of his original library that he did called "Packet of 3". It's inventive especially in terms of the grooves (drum loops) but the kit isn't nearly detailed enough and it doesn't have what I would have wanted to capture which is the drum sounds similar to Close To The Edge and One of a Kind. I DID ask him if he wanted to update it and do a new session but he's not into it (or drumming much these days either). Shame because he is one of my favorite drummers and had a very cool acoustic kit sound back then on Yes, Crimson, UK and his solo stuff. I may try to recreate some of those sounds anyway just to have around. I'd use them myself! Love that Bruford snare.

    Speaking of UK, here's the Roto Kit we sampled with Terry Bozzio which, despite the context being "Missing Persons" it's actually a pretty good old Bruford style kit because of those big floppy Roto toms. Also Terry-era UK and Zappa.


  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Squids View Post
    However, how it is mixed in context of someone's song is where the differences might be depending on how someone chooses to balance the levels of the individual mic channels or process it with effects etc.
    It's true. And not just the mix- it's shocking how radically different a finished drum sound can be as soon as you put it in context with instruments. We found that with Neal... you hear the raw drum sound and you're going, "It sounds like his drums but that isn't the sound on the albums, it's all ringy and cheesy..." And then you hear it in context with the music and it's, "OMG, there it is!!!!"

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