RCA did not have an echo unit when Elvis started recording there. When he first started, his vocals were very dry and he mentioned this to the engineer, who wasn't that familiar with his previous work at SUN records, which had a trend-setting amazing engineer that had set the tone for early R&R recordings... Scotty had a Ray Butts echo-sonic amplifier that used a tape based echo to get his sound anywhere... so they showed this to the engineer, who deemed the unit too noisy to be used for vocals, not to mention the low-fi sound of the guitar amp itself, but the engineer figured out that it was echo, more than reverb that they were after, as reverb would be more of a slower effect, and these guys were ready to rock... however the first song was Heartbreak Hotel... but in any case, what he did, was to close off a long corridor, or hallway, place an altec studio monitor at one end, and a quality RCA ribbon mic at the other end, and had an assistant move it up and down the long corridor until the proper delay and mix was found. Elvis did like the effect, and that technique was used on many of his early recordings, though there was some pushback on it being used all the time... don't be cruel gas a decidedly dry sound, as some others... but Heartbreak Hotel, the first of his RCA records, was always that cool sounding corridor, though later they did invest in a tape echo prototype.
Awesome info! I had always heard that on Heartbreak Hotel someone had accidently left the studio door open and it echoed out into the corridor (and that you could hear someone down the hall getting a coke out of the coke machine on the recording). I wonder if that's true or at least if it sparked the idea for a mic/speaker combo. Long live the King!
@schance1666 well, Sun had gotten the idea of Tape echo from Chet Atkins and Les Paul, who were both the earliest users of the technique, as they were both tape heads as soon as the the format became the professional medium that it was after the war. The only other effects that were known before that, or what the hammond company pioneered with their earlier spring reverb units... it was in the early forties that they actually figured out that they could put the driver from a speaker on a large spring and a pickup on the other side and make a nice reverb, sound. And from that technology spring, the plate reverbs later used by motown and other companies. But the tape delay was truly the sound of rockabilly.
Art was awesome - but I don't recall him ever playing on any blues/ R&B, or "pop" recordings that could have influenced Mr Starkey - though he could have influenced Charlie Watts as he was first a jazzer 🤷♂️
That lick is an adaptation from some of Art Blakey’s drumming from years earlier. Afro-Cuban rhythms applied to the drum set. As they have said in the video, most of the drummers back then were jazz drummers, as rock’n’roll hadn’t been “invented” yet.
Very good on the engineering side of things but I have to comment on the drum sizes that you mentioned in the beginning. 18” bass drums wasn’t really produced and used until the early to mid 60’s and 10” toms wasn’t really produced until late 70’s. The most common big band and jazz kits from the 40’s and 50’s was bigger drums like 22”-26” bass drums with normally 13” rack toms and 16” floor toms. Smaller kits with 20”, 12” and 14” got more popular in the 60’s
Yes, that’s generally true. I was particularly surprised they used a 14” floor tom instead of the 16” that was common in the 50s and 60s on 4-drum kits.
Great video! I knew some, but not all, of this information and you guys did a good job of conveying it in a way that's easy to follow. I'm very excited for this series.
i got several old tube compressors from the 50s, one even has instructions in the manual for blowing the unit up in case you get captured by an enemy army and you dont want them to get their hands on it! think it may have been the collins 26w not sure which one it was.
Les Paul Overdubbed on his recordings which were done on Portable 78rpm machines(recording to blank shellac disks). He had Two of them and Bounced from one to the other whilst Overdubbing. Eddie Cochran used the same equipment and method, recording all the parts himself at his Mom's house.
I believe the slap echo was an ''happy accident''. They'd have a 5 channel mixer, going to a mono ampex recorder. the recorder would go back into that mixer, on channel 5, to be able to listen back to the recording. Once decided to do another take, and the engineer probably ''forgot'' to turn off channel 5, the return of the tape machine, feeding back the delay of the machine back into the mixer, and there you have that sound, exactly like the 50's elvis slap echo. If you listen closely to those early recordings, the slap is not just on the vocal mic, it sounds a bit like that because the vocals are the loudest, but it's on the whole thing. Also makes more sense because aux-outputs were not invented yet, too, to send a separate channel somewhere. I don't have evidence, but I believe that's how it went down. When you hook stuff up that way you automaticly get these sort of happy accidents. But really cool video and really accurate cool vibey sounds..!!
Great idea for a series, and generally very well done. But perhaps the better quality on the Ray Charles track might be down to mics. By the late 50s U47s (say, as an obvious example) would have been widely available.
Yep. And the Atlantic recording studio was much smaller than RCA was using with Elvis. Tom Dowd used to tie a microphone inside some foam and stuff it under the bridge of Charles Mingus’s double-bass.
I don't understand the limitation of the tape tracks. Obviously it would make things easier, but why not just run multiple tape machines at the same time?
As we all should know, the human ear only has SO MUCH ability to hear certain nuances.... The recording techniques up until the mid Seventies pretty much cover the spectrum of our ear's ability. Most everything after that is over engineering. Besides... Just listen to almost any Remastered classic recording... They seemed ruined... And not as PERFECT as the original.
The new remasters are pretty good imo, the 2009 remasters with the terrible hard panning are definitely worse than some of the mono originals. The 2022 remaster of Revolver is pretty punchy and sounds awesome to me.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Props to Jess who can play literally every style flawlessly
This is gonna be a crazy good series guys
Phantastic drumming! Love the way the hihat comes in "late" on Jailhouse Rock. It's those details that make the difference.
RCA did not have an echo unit when Elvis started recording there. When he first started, his vocals were very dry and he mentioned this to the engineer, who wasn't that familiar with his previous work at SUN records, which had a trend-setting amazing engineer that had set the tone for early R&R recordings... Scotty had a Ray Butts echo-sonic amplifier that used a tape based echo to get his sound anywhere... so they showed this to the engineer, who deemed the unit too noisy to be used for vocals, not to mention the low-fi sound of the guitar amp itself, but the engineer figured out that it was echo, more than reverb that they were after, as reverb would be more of a slower effect, and these guys were ready to rock... however the first song was Heartbreak Hotel... but in any case, what he did, was to close off a long corridor, or hallway, place an altec studio monitor at one end, and a quality RCA ribbon mic at the other end, and had an assistant move it up and down the long corridor until the proper delay and mix was found. Elvis did like the effect, and that technique was used on many of his early recordings, though there was some pushback on it being used all the time... don't be cruel gas a decidedly dry sound, as some others... but Heartbreak Hotel, the first of his RCA records, was always that cool sounding corridor, though later they did invest in a tape echo prototype.
Awesome info! I had always heard that on Heartbreak Hotel someone had accidently left the studio door open and it echoed out into the corridor (and that you could hear someone down the hall getting a coke out of the coke machine on the recording). I wonder if that's true or at least if it sparked the idea for a mic/speaker combo. Long live the King!
@schance1666 well, Sun had gotten the idea of Tape echo from Chet Atkins and Les Paul, who were both the earliest users of the technique, as they were both tape heads as soon as the the format became the professional medium that it was after the war. The only other effects that were known before that, or what the hammond company pioneered with their earlier spring reverb units... it was in the early forties that they actually figured out that they could put the driver from a speaker on a large spring and a pickup on the other side and make a nice reverb, sound. And from that technology spring, the plate reverbs later used by motown and other companies. But the tape delay was truly the sound of rockabilly.
This is so incredibly interesting. Great work. Thanks for your immense effort, Jessica & Noam. BTW can't wait for the 1980s Hugh Padgham drums. 🙂
Aside from everything else, which is great, the title sequence is spot on. Whoever animated that did a great job.
Love this series, well done! My 50s fave sound is definitely the slapback sounds on Elvis’ 50s records.
Man alive I love these drum sounds
So that’s where Ringo got it from!
A lot of Ringo's influence HAD TO BE from Mr. Milt Turner... Think "What'd I Say" by Ray Charles.
That's a Moroccan style rhythm... So infectious!
Art Blakey, years before Ray’s recording. Blakey was approximating Afro-Cuban rhythms and applying them to drum set by the early 1950s.
Art was awesome - but I don't recall him ever playing on any blues/ R&B, or "pop" recordings that could have influenced Mr Starkey - though he could have influenced Charlie Watts as he was first a jazzer 🤷♂️
After Ringo, Densmore played that beat and so did Clark from the Byrd's and Grundy from the Zombies. Became pretty popular in the 60s.
I was thinking the same. I Feel Fine is identical!
Like this series. Great insight into how drums sound so different
I’d love to know more about recording Blues in the 40s and 50s
This is great - but I wish they'd included Buddy Holly & The Crickets too. Norman Petty was so innovative in his recording techniques with them.
What'd I Say drum beat is just amazing...
That lick is an adaptation from some of Art Blakey’s drumming from years earlier. Afro-Cuban rhythms applied to the drum set. As they have said in the video, most of the drummers back then were jazz drummers, as rock’n’roll hadn’t been “invented” yet.
Very good on the engineering side of things but I have to comment on the drum sizes that you mentioned in the beginning. 18” bass drums wasn’t really produced and used until the early to mid 60’s and 10” toms wasn’t really produced until late 70’s. The most common big band and jazz kits from the 40’s and 50’s was bigger drums like 22”-26” bass drums with normally 13” rack toms and 16” floor toms. Smaller kits with 20”, 12” and 14” got more popular in the 60’s
Yes, that’s generally true. I was particularly surprised they used a 14” floor tom instead of the 16” that was common in the 50s and 60s on 4-drum kits.
I'm 37 seconds in and I already know this is gonna be fantastic. Thanks!
Great video! I knew some, but not all, of this information and you guys did a good job of conveying it in a way that's easy to follow. I'm very excited for this series.
Your amazing drum room’s reverb is a big part of why your tone is so good.
They said they added that reverb w/ UAD chamber plugin, the room itself is pretty dry
These videos are awesome, thanks for making them!
That's wonderful thing!!
Man I miss the 50s
Drum sound was so nice
i got several old tube compressors from the 50s, one even has instructions in the manual for blowing the unit up in case you get captured by an enemy army and you dont want them to get their hands on it! think it may have been the collins 26w not sure which one it was.
Please do more!!! This is f*cking awesome!
Really great video, guys! 😊
Awesome!
Love this, great idea for a series!
Great video! Thanks!
Les Paul Overdubbed on his recordings which were done on Portable 78rpm machines(recording to blank shellac disks). He had Two of them and Bounced from one to the other whilst Overdubbing. Eddie Cochran used the same equipment and method, recording all the parts himself at his Mom's house.
I believe the slap echo was an ''happy accident''. They'd have a 5 channel mixer, going to a mono ampex recorder. the recorder would go back into that mixer, on channel 5, to be able to listen back to the recording. Once decided to do another take, and the engineer probably ''forgot'' to turn off channel 5, the return of the tape machine, feeding back the delay of the machine back into the mixer, and there you have that sound, exactly like the 50's elvis slap echo. If you listen closely to those early recordings, the slap is not just on the vocal mic, it sounds a bit like that because the vocals are the loudest, but it's on the whole thing. Also makes more sense because aux-outputs were not invented yet, too, to send a separate channel somewhere. I don't have evidence, but I believe that's how it went down. When you hook stuff up that way you automaticly get these sort of happy accidents. But really cool video and really accurate cool vibey sounds..!!
this is great! Awesome sound. And: the beauty of limits.
This is amazing... could be its own full video like the guitar pedal effects documentary.
❤
Great stuff 👍
Love these videos!! If you'll show plugin settings they'll be even better :)
Next episode has to have mention of Bobby Elliott, so underrated
Yeah, his playing with The Hollies was great
Are you all making sample packs of these recreation kits? You really need to. I'd buy them!
mic selections are at 8:15
Capris song moon out tonight has a really low tone snare drum sound it sounds great 🥁
recreate some classic breakbeats and speed them up! would love to hear you try the Amen or Think break.
Great idea for a series, and generally very well done. But perhaps the better quality on the Ray Charles track might be down to mics. By the late 50s U47s (say, as an obvious example) would have been widely available.
Yep. And the Atlantic recording studio was much smaller than RCA was using with Elvis. Tom Dowd used to tie a microphone inside some foam and stuff it under the bridge of Charles Mingus’s double-bass.
Forgive me if you've already done it but it'd be so cool if you did the drum sound to Amen Brother by the Winstons.
maybe im inpercepctive but ive never seen a headphone mixer with a talkback mic on it. great innovation
It says SWEET RIDE clearly on the cymbal (is it what we're hearing?) Is that a 20" K SWEET RIDE pictured? maybe a 21" ?
Bass drums and toms were larger than this, and the cymbals were often machine-hammered "A" Zildjians.
I don't understand the limitation of the tape tracks. Obviously it would make things easier, but why not just run multiple tape machines at the same time?
This was eventually done but, at this early stage, the technology to synchronize multiple tape machines was not yet implemented.
Is there any beat that Jessica can't do?
Hey, is it possible to recreate drum sound U2 - Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car from Zooropa Album?
Tape machines: 2 track came in 19 FIFTY three not 43; Three track in 19 FIFTY three not 43.
I can has samples?
Kind of Blue wouldve been a cool inclusion
Technology *IMPROVED, rather than "increased."
As we all should know, the human ear only has SO MUCH ability to hear certain nuances....
The recording techniques up until the mid Seventies pretty much cover the spectrum of our ear's ability.
Most everything after that is over engineering.
Besides... Just listen to almost any Remastered classic recording... They seemed ruined... And not as PERFECT as the original.
The new remasters are pretty good imo, the 2009 remasters with the terrible hard panning are definitely worse than some of the mono originals. The 2022 remaster of Revolver is pretty punchy and sounds awesome to me.
Great job guy’s 🫡
It was so interesting 🤝
Awesome!