Another 80’s snare trick was tracking a Simmons snare tuned to the key of the song, overdubbed over an acoustic snare. In fact, my old band Helix did that in their biggest ever hit ROCK YOU. I’ve also noticed a lot of times that Mutt’s toms seem to be ‘tuned’ to the key of the song.
Howdy Glen, I saw you guys play once, long time ago, when we both had bigger hair and smaller bellies. On my last album we tuned every drum to the tonic chord for every song. Well worth it.
I often do three octaves for bass drums. A lower octave, with the lenght faded out quickly so it doesn't get too boomy, and a higher octave tucked in lightly to give the click a fuller sound, and to tighten up the mid-range. Some times I do the higher one as a 4th or perfect 5th if the octave is too high, and the 4th or 5th expands the overtones a bit.
Note: I do not preserve the time, but let it speed up or slow down with the pitch change, then just adjust the over-all lenght. I've found this works better for phase, as well as punchiness. But, if the boom is delayed too much on the lower one, I change the start point, by moving it forward 1 cycle (so its still in phase).
Mutt Lange had to clean up the original drum tracks, the studio where they were originally laid down had awful acoustics. So Lange brought in the Mobile One portable studio from England, and using the at the time state of the art recording software Mobile One had. Lange in effect re-recorded the drum tracks, and was able to get the sound he was looking for.
Bob Rock might have been using an AMS DMX 15 to hold samples and trigger during mix down. When I was making records in the late 80's to mid 90's that was a very common way to add kick and snare samples during a mix. That box came out in the late '70s and was a staple in every top end studio.
Pro-Tools didn't exist when the Black Album was made. There was an early version by Digidesign called Sound Tools that was only two channels and was for editing. The black beauty snare was probably triggered by patching the snare track from the tape machine to a Simmons Trigger Midi interface (to convert the audio to midi) then to an Akai sampler to play the black beauty sound
I'm pretty sure Butch Vig used this same technique when recording Nevermind. If you find just the drum tracks, you can see how the snare hits trail down after each hit. Almost like they are slowing the tape down at the end of each hit. It's wild man.
Literally my first thought was "Why go to the trouble when you can just put in a Simmons drum sound?", but of course you covered that. Great video! if there's one thing there will never be enough of, it's snare dum mixing tips.
Also, digital delays like the AMS 1580 could store a single shot sample and trigger it, you'd send the snare from the sync head of the 2-inch, so it's before the repro head and then use another delay line to delay it, so it was in time with the initial snare hit. Even the lowly SPX 90 could do it. Another trick was to send the snare out to a loudspeaker with a snare drum sitting on top of it and mic it up again and mix that back in with the original. Loads of little things we used to do to beef up snares.
I just picked up this plugin called Liquid Death that is a real snare sample that can be adjusted to low pitches like this. The cool part is though.. the sample aren’t pitched they are actual samples of the drum tuned that low.
Honestly, you’ve earned a subscriber. I learned something new about what work went into the recording of Back in Black and the Black Album. Although the examples were a bit exaggerated, you were able to even use them to paint a picture on what they were doing with the drums specifically.
At least on Pyromania, they blended in white noise into the snare sound as well to get it to have essentially some distortion and more of that "Pssshhhh!" sound to it. If I recall from an interview, getting the Pyro snare sound the way it is took them the longest of any instrument on the album.
Protools was like an 8-track digital project studio solution for the Macintosh back then when the Black album was recorded, while Session 8 was the equivalent for PC by Digidesign. However, protools was used alongside ... the Otari 4" analog or Mitsubishi digital multitrack machines of the time, for editing things like you mention here, that grey area between sampling, recording, sequencing and processing that seemed like some secret magic world of the top-producers :D
Rock & Staub used Scott Humphrey (Rob Zombie) on M’s Black album, he was the top Pro Tools guy in Los Angeles at the time, (and another Canadian). His PT rig was the size of a small van and held 30 Gigabytes! Scott also had to replace all the cymbal hits since so many takes were cut together you could hear edits in the cymbal phasing.
Thanks for this! I think since Back in Black was the first album I purchased this is what I think a snare should sound like. I had pretty much given up and just use an industrial snare mixed with a rock snare. Thanks so much for this, I would have never in a million years figured this out. Also thanks to the comments about tuning to the tonic, good idea, I ll try that.
I remember reading somewhere about how the 910 Harmonizer was used for the ACDC stuff and how it was pretty unreliable and wouldn't always trigger when it was supposed to. From memory you can hear this happening at the start of either You Shook Me All Night Long or Back in Black (sorry can't remember which). Pretty sure the third beat is missing the harmonizer.
There is a massive snare sample used on parts of CRAZY by 4MINUTE that I tried to recreate the sound of by using a Pork Pie snare sample and layering in a 909 bass drum. Not exact but I think the results were pretty good.
In 92 Nick Menza was touring with an AKAI rack sampler; im pretty sure Bob Rock used something similar on Lars’ snare even though Rock has always stated that the black album snare was all EQs. He also at some point stated that you can do more production tricks on slow music rather than fast music 🤷🏽♂️🤷🏽♂️
And with all the effort these record producers put into making a snare drum sound like a million bucks, on the other side we have so many live sound engineers that bury the snare in the mix.
It's subtle, but present, in the context of a full mix. This explains the effect very well. As an audio engineer, I might have been hard pressed to identify and duplicate the effect other than trying EQ variations, and possibly a little reverb.
Always amazing to see how much sound can be changed. By separating the tracks, it is easier to hear just that specific part. Final mix much better due to fine tuning done earlier. I have a question.... Mutt engineered these sounds for AC/DC and Def Leppard. It is used on some of the best selling albums of all times. How is this done for live concerts ? How did they get the 'live' sounds so good ?
Hey Steven. Good question. Mutt didn’t actually engineer these sounds but I’m sure they were all his ideas and Tony Platt, Nigel Green, Mike Shipley, etc. were they guys that technically pulled it off. Back before drum triggers and playing along with Protools I doubt there was a way to pull this off live. Now it’s very easy to trigger these type of sounds or just have them on protools firing off while the band plays. Thanks for the question.
More than likely they used a Roland SDE3000 with a sampling trigger mod. They were very common in the late 80s early 90s. A lot of people would automatically put in the first snare sound from the Bob Clearmountain Drums CD.
Metallica never worked with Mutt Lange directly. Yet, someone should check this rabbit 🐇 hole. 🕳 Mutt Lange wrote Loving Every Minute of It. This was sent to Loverboy. The producer was Bruce Fairbairn, RIP. The engineer is Bob Rock. Recorded in 1985. Six (6 years) later, Metallica hired Bob Rock. Thus, the Mutt Lange trick! 🤯 Meanwhile, Mutt wrote and produced with Bryan Adams. Everything I Do I Do It for You was the biggest hit that year! 🤯 Degrees of separation led to Mutt Lange with Metallica. Great 👍 video 📹 👏
I built a drum template using BFD 3 ( w/vintage pack) for a classic rock style album I'm going to be making the next few weeks. I remembered this video (forgot about the pitch diving down though) and used Digitalis (which does all sorts of retro digital artifact emulations) to pitch shift the snare down an octave... it was part of the little extra I was missing! \m/
Will the sample get bussed to the snare bus, to be further processed with the main top, bottom, etc? Would you use a de-tuned snare sample to trigger snare verb? Aside from the few eq moves you did on the sample, do you compress it, or add saturation?
You can bus it to the snare channel or not... its really however you want to treat it. I usually keep them separate. Yes you can use it to trigger reverb as well. Yes I compress it like I do the main snare. Usually don't need saturation on it because its normally dirty anyway but you could certainly try it! Good questions Dave.
I know Mutt triggered a lot of Def Lep’s albums (Pyromania and Hysteria). I didn’t know he was using that setup for AC/DC Back in Black? I was unaware of the Bob Rock de-tuned Black Beauty trick too (pretty cool). I always figured that most drum tracks back in the analog days (early 80’s) were a combination of just different kits, different snares, tuned to the key of the song, panning the snare track right and left (adding a little delay and compression on either channel, or both) and lots of reverb, compression, and delay for the rest of the drums (and cymbals)? I just found your channel btw and going to subscribe and check out your vids. Also, I am not sure if you have covered this, but one of my favorite rock albums of the 80’s was the Ultimate Sin, but the drums and cymbals sound way over compressed for that album, and wondering if you have a vid on the recording of the drums for that album? Ps Randy Castillo was a phenomenal drummer!! 😉😉
... and all this time I just assumed that Mutt just used a LinnDrum machine for the Def Leppard tracks just like what the PWL folks did around the same time period. Perhaps this is because I heard elsewhere that Mutt used Rockman units for the guitars on Hysteria, and the concept of Occam's Razor being what it is? Cool info. to see!
Thanks Spidey. The did use a simple drum machine and then after everything else was recorded on top of the machine they triggered all the massive samples.
I’m a guitarist, but I did own a drum set for awhile… I set it up and tuned it the best I could. I invited an excellent drummer over to jam and check it out. He thought it was hilarious that I tuned the toms in fifths! Power cords! I didn’t know that’s what I had done.
That’s totally cool Jason. Many drummers tune Tom’s in 5ths, 4ths, 3rds, and combinations of all 3. My fav drummer Jeff Porcaro tuned his first 3 Tom’s in a triad and the low Tom a 4th below the lowest note of the 3 Tom triad.
I’m interested to know where you got the “Black Beauty sample” info from? The previous two Metallica albums used Rick Allen’s Black Beauty snare (Puppets and Justice) and the Black Album, Load/ReLoad is a Tama Bell Brass. Interesting to use a different snare, then include a sample of the previously used snare!
I’m not sure George. I have only heard one song off of that album and haven’t studied it. I did tour and play on records with Henry Paul from the Outlaws for about 6 years in the group Blackhawk. Great guy and great friend!
The Eventide is creating the dive but the Simmons sample is a diving sample. Many DAWS have a pitch function that you can control the amount of pitch and when the pitch changes. You could definitely use that for any type of drum. I imagine there are Simmons samples out there that you could purchase that would give you what u want too.
Do you have a video about tuning guitars down, slowing the reel recording slow then speeding the reel back up so the recording sounds even more perfect like Flemming Rasmussen did on Metallica's early albums?
@@BobbyHuff Hey boss Those insane production tricks on Taken by Force by Scorpions. Case and point the perpetual downward glissando at the end of Sails of Charon. Any Idea who made that magic and how?
@@BobbyHuff Yes, tune the guitars down first. I used to do it analog on a tascam tape 4 track. Just at normal tape speed record each string to tune to, then slow the tape down, and re-tune the guitar to those tones. Then when sped back up to normal speed, its in tune. However Metallica's albums Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets were sped up more and ended up sharp.
@@BobbyHuff If your chat allows links here's Flemming Rasmussen talking about speeding up the reel with metallica: ruclips.net/video/hMkLPPGnYRg/видео.html
Dr Bob, In reference to Hysteria and the huge/unique drum sounds. Lange along with his meticulous nature, the bands patience/loyalty, and Rick's open mind/ emotional state/ combined with his new physical limitations were just a case of turning lemons into lemonade. Or Lange was already on this path anyway based on recent recordings and we got the LP he initially set out to make. IMO I think all of these elements had to be present or Hysteria may have been an entirely different beast. Don't know if you have seen this but here is a clip of Rick on a Podcast speaking about samples, overdubs, Langes process and more! They even dug up a Mutt Lange interview and he speaks about Rick and Hysteria as well (Lange never gives interviews so pretty cool IMO). FYI Here's the link for a clip from a longer video on the same channel ruclips.net/video/p3Q261WIFAs/видео.html Have a wonderful day.
Bruce Fairburn again and 6 degrees of separation. The Mutt Lange game..lol. I already play a triva game involving Lange with my daughter. When listening to 80s rock, I will ask her who wrote it and her choices are Mutt, Desmond Child or Holly Knight! When listening to early 00s pop rock she can choose between Max Martin or Linda Perry LOL
i know not all mixs need same things...but in general , i think most snare sounds are WAY too loud - so much so it distracts my enjoyment of the track - i like to mix my snare so it is as unobtrusive as possible .... high cracking sound can be put way lower in a mix than this acdc/ metallica sound (for my style ) The bass drum is not as offensive to my ears ....so i dont mind that loud- ish .......i find a LOT of 80s music and quite a bit still today - unlistenable . I dont know how some engineers / producers can sign off on some of that stuff really ?
@@MariUSukulele Yes Joe is correct. A VERY famous Ludwig snare. Listen to Summer of 69 by Bryan Adams and that is the "poster child," sound for a Black Beauty
Another 80’s snare trick was tracking a Simmons snare tuned to the key of the song, overdubbed over an acoustic snare. In fact, my old band Helix did that in their biggest ever hit ROCK YOU. I’ve also noticed a lot of times that Mutt’s toms seem to be ‘tuned’ to the key of the song.
Ricky from TPB knows y'all put on the best concert around !
Yes! Great comment Glen. I have a video about tuning the snare to the tonic note of the song.
Howdy Glen, I saw you guys play once, long time ago, when we both had bigger hair and smaller bellies.
On my last album we tuned every drum to the tonic chord for every song. Well worth it.
84 christmas metal meeting , i remember helix , cheers rock on
Gimme an R!
Yeah, I hear that all over pyromania. Rock of ages comes to mind. Awesome stuff.
Yes by then it was all Simmons Drums mixed in.
Even if I don't use it in my own mixes I always learn something from watching your vids. Thanks Bobby and keep up the good work.
Thanks Iguana!
I often do three octaves for bass drums. A lower octave, with the lenght faded out quickly so it doesn't get too boomy, and a higher octave tucked in lightly to give the click a fuller sound, and to tighten up the mid-range. Some times I do the higher one as a 4th or perfect 5th if the octave is too high, and the 4th or 5th expands the overtones a bit.
Note: I do not preserve the time, but let it speed up or slow down with the pitch change, then just adjust the over-all lenght. I've found this works better for phase, as well as punchiness. But, if the boom is delayed too much on the lower one, I change the start point, by moving it forward 1 cycle (so its still in phase).
@@shaunscm Great comments Shaun!
Very cool Shaun!
The snare on For Those About to Rock is absolutely ridiculous. It's one of my favourite drum sounds.
Yes it’s amazing!
Mutt Lange had to clean up the original drum tracks, the studio where they were originally laid down had awful acoustics. So Lange brought in the Mobile One portable studio from England, and using the at the time state of the art recording software Mobile One had. Lange in effect re-recorded the drum tracks, and was able to get the sound he was looking for.
Bob Rock might have been using an AMS DMX 15 to hold samples and trigger during mix down. When I was making records in the late 80's to mid 90's that was a very common way to add kick and snare samples during a mix. That box came out in the late '70s and was a staple in every top end studio.
I bet you're correct!
Track notes for the Black Album list a trigger for the snare…
Finally got the answer to the monstrous snare sound of Def Leppard. ☺️👍🥁
yep - the Pyromania snare cannon explained!
Good stuff, doc! The UAD H910 plugin has a Tony Platt (engineer on Back in Black) preset for the snare detune trick. Aces!
HAHAHA!!! I had no idea. Thank for telling me man!
Pro-Tools didn't exist when the Black Album was made. There was an early version by Digidesign called Sound Tools that was only two channels and was for editing. The black beauty snare was probably triggered by patching the snare track from the tape machine to a Simmons Trigger Midi interface (to convert the audio to midi) then to an Akai sampler to play the black beauty sound
Awesome as usual THANK YOU.....Mutt Lange, Bob Ezrin, Phil Spector, Eric Valentine... four of my favourite producers 😊❤️
Great list!! Worked for 2 of them.
I've always thought some of these snares were more than just EQ. Thanks for enlightening us!
So did I!!!! Now we know!
Same here. Question answered for me.
You can really hear this effect on the “invasion of the thargoids” loop at the end of Billy’s Got A Gun on Pyromania
Dig the breakdown man! Great work! 🤘
Really cool trick. Eventide is so awesome
Thx Shane!
I'm pretty sure Butch Vig used this same technique when recording Nevermind. If you find just the drum tracks, you can see how the snare hits trail down after each hit. Almost like they are slowing the tape down at the end of each hit. It's wild man.
Now that I know what it is, I can totally hear it on the snare in Sad But True, especially those fills before the verse sections
Thats it Michael!
Also "Pour some Sugar On Me" as Mutt also produced that for Def Leppard.
You Shook Me sounds like the effects is every other snare hit. That’s creative!
Super coll David!
Literally my first thought was "Why go to the trouble when you can just put in a Simmons drum sound?", but of course you covered that. Great video! if there's one thing there will never be enough of, it's snare dum mixing tips.
Remember the Synclavier was available in 1977, and the Fairlight CMI in 1979, so it was feasible to do this with them back then. :)
Also, digital delays like the AMS 1580 could store a single shot sample and trigger it, you'd send the snare from the sync head of the 2-inch, so it's before the repro head and then use another delay line to delay it, so it was in time with the initial snare hit. Even the lowly SPX 90 could do it. Another trick was to send the snare out to a loudspeaker with a snare drum sitting on top of it and mic it up again and mix that back in with the original. Loads of little things we used to do to beef up snares.
@@ferociousmullet9287 That's taking me back! The Yamaha SPX90!
I just picked up this plugin called Liquid Death that is a real snare sample that can be adjusted to low pitches like this. The cool part is though.. the sample aren’t pitched they are actual samples of the drum tuned that low.
I just got that snare plugin. Its fantastic. They are gonna have a Dr. Bob preset. Honored to be a part of it!
@@BobbyHuff oh man! That’s awesome! How about that?!
The outro from BILLY'S GOT A GUN has that animated down-pitch thang goin' on, but cranked up to level 5. So dope.
Love it!
cool tip
@@bobbaumeister5243 thanks Bob!
Honestly, you’ve earned a subscriber. I learned something new about what work went into the recording of Back in Black and the Black Album. Although the examples were a bit exaggerated, you were able to even use them to paint a picture on what they were doing with the drums specifically.
Thanks for the sub Harris!
Joe barresi also tunes down his tom's an octave and blends that in to the original tom tracks. Really thickens up tom's and adds weight.
Great comment. I had no idea.
This is a game changer. Great video.
Thanks Beatmaker!
I'm listening to Pour Some Sugar rn and it seems like he chose to put the octave snare on for emphasis at certain points. Really interesting....
By that time they were using Simmons samples.
At least on Pyromania, they blended in white noise into the snare sound as well to get it to have essentially some distortion and more of that "Pssshhhh!" sound to it. If I recall from an interview, getting the Pyro snare sound the way it is took them the longest of any instrument on the album.
Yes the Pyro snare took much longer because technology for this stuff was in its infancy compared to Hysteria.
Protools was like an 8-track digital project studio solution for the Macintosh back then when the Black album was recorded, while Session 8 was the equivalent for PC by Digidesign. However, protools was used alongside ... the Otari 4" analog or Mitsubishi digital multitrack machines of the time, for editing things like you mention here, that grey area between sampling, recording, sequencing and processing that seemed like some secret magic world of the top-producers :D
Nice - I hear a lot of Tom Petty and The Heartbreaker's "You Got Lucky" in this technique.
That stuff was brilliantly recorded and mixed by Shelly Yakus. Great sounding, fat, drums. Stan Lynch played fabulous too!
Rock & Staub used Scott Humphrey (Rob Zombie) on M’s Black album, he was the top Pro Tools guy in Los Angeles at the time, (and another Canadian). His PT rig was the size of a small van and held 30 Gigabytes!
Scott also had to replace all the cymbal hits since so many takes were cut together you could hear edits in the cymbal phasing.
Scott is super talented!!
Never though about using an eventide on the snare... Sounds interesting. As always, great trick, thank you Bobby!
Thanks as always Jav!
Thanks for this! I think since Back in Black was the first album I purchased this is what I think a snare should sound like. I had pretty much given up and just use an industrial snare mixed with a rock snare. Thanks so much for this, I would have never in a million years figured this out. Also thanks to the comments about tuning to the tonic, good idea, I ll try that.
Hey Paul! Yes every rock snare should sound as good as Back in Black!
I remember reading somewhere about how the 910 Harmonizer was used for the ACDC stuff and how it was pretty unreliable and wouldn't always trigger when it was supposed to. From memory you can hear this happening at the start of either You Shook Me All Night Long or Back in Black (sorry can't remember which). Pretty sure the third beat is missing the harmonizer.
Wow I’ll have to check that out.
Haha I always thought that was a creative choice where they left it off that hit
There is a massive snare sample used on parts of CRAZY by 4MINUTE that I tried to recreate the sound of by using a Pork Pie snare sample and layering in a 909 bass drum. Not exact but I think the results were pretty good.
Yes that’s a great snare and great sounding track!
In 92 Nick Menza was touring with an AKAI rack sampler; im pretty sure Bob Rock used something similar on Lars’ snare even though Rock has always stated that the black album snare was all EQs. He also at some point stated that you can do more production tricks on slow music rather than fast music 🤷🏽♂️🤷🏽♂️
They def used a detuned black beauty…I have the sample. Def brilliant eqing and mixing as well.
Thanks man!
Great tutorial- thanks
Thanks Gerry!
Super informative as always!
Thanks Jason!
Almost like reverb. Enjoy your videos!🖤
Thanks Lilian!
This is similar to the trick Tony Visconti used a few years earlier on David Bowie's Low and Heroes albums.
Didnt know that!
Love it -one of my favorites so far :)
Thank you Greg!
it really sounds like a Def Leppard record!
And with all the effort these record producers put into making a snare drum sound like a million bucks, on the other side we have so many live sound engineers that bury the snare in the mix.
It's subtle, but present, in the context of a full mix. This explains the effect very well. As an audio engineer, I might have been hard pressed to identify and duplicate the effect other than trying EQ variations, and possibly a little reverb.
Agreed. I couldn’t figure out what was going on..
Always amazing to see how much sound can be changed. By separating the tracks, it is easier to hear just that specific part. Final mix much better due to fine tuning done earlier.
I have a question.... Mutt engineered these sounds for AC/DC and Def Leppard. It is used on some of the best selling albums of all times. How is this done for live concerts ? How did they get the 'live' sounds so good ?
Hey Steven. Good question. Mutt didn’t actually engineer these sounds but I’m sure they were all his ideas and Tony Platt, Nigel Green, Mike Shipley, etc. were they guys that technically pulled it off.
Back before drum triggers and playing along with Protools I doubt there was a way to pull this off live. Now it’s very easy to trigger these type of sounds or just have them on protools firing off while the band plays. Thanks for the question.
More than likely they used a Roland SDE3000 with a sampling trigger mod. They were very common in the late 80s early 90s. A lot of people would automatically put in the first snare sound from the Bob Clearmountain Drums CD.
Man this is so awesome! Your channel is a gem
Thanks Devin!
Metallica never worked with Mutt Lange directly. Yet, someone should check this rabbit 🐇 hole. 🕳
Mutt Lange wrote Loving Every Minute of It. This was sent to Loverboy. The producer was Bruce Fairbairn, RIP. The engineer is Bob Rock. Recorded in 1985.
Six (6 years) later, Metallica hired Bob Rock. Thus, the Mutt Lange trick! 🤯
Meanwhile, Mutt wrote and produced with Bryan Adams. Everything I Do I Do It for You was the biggest hit that year! 🤯
Degrees of separation led to Mutt Lange with Metallica. Great 👍 video 📹 👏
Thanks man! Randy Staub also mixed for Mutt on Dark Horse by Nickelback!
You are welcome 😊
Hi Bobby, thanks for the great tip. I'm mixing a song right now and I am going to try it out, right now! Cheers, Simon.
Thanks Simon!
I built a drum template using BFD 3 ( w/vintage pack) for a classic rock style album I'm going to be making the next few weeks. I remembered this video (forgot about the pitch diving down though) and used Digitalis (which does all sorts of retro digital artifact emulations) to pitch shift the snare down an octave... it was part of the little extra I was missing! \m/
GREAT!!!!
Again well explained. Very interesting!
Suggested video: How to make the massive toms in Bon Jovi's "It's my life".
Thanks Andre. Good idea.
Will the sample get bussed to the snare bus, to be further processed with the main top, bottom, etc? Would you use a de-tuned snare sample to trigger snare verb? Aside from the few eq moves you did on the sample, do you compress it, or add saturation?
You can bus it to the snare channel or not... its really however you want to treat it. I usually keep them separate. Yes you can use it to trigger reverb as well. Yes I compress it like I do the main snare. Usually don't need saturation on it because its normally dirty anyway but you could certainly try it! Good questions Dave.
Love these videos man. Thanks for the tips!
I know Mutt triggered a lot of Def Lep’s albums (Pyromania and Hysteria). I didn’t know he was using that setup for AC/DC Back in Black? I was unaware of the Bob Rock de-tuned Black Beauty trick too (pretty cool). I always figured that most drum tracks back in the analog days (early 80’s) were a combination of just different kits, different snares, tuned to the key of the song, panning the snare track right and left (adding a little delay and compression on either channel, or both) and lots of reverb, compression, and delay for the rest of the drums (and cymbals)? I just found your channel btw and going to subscribe and check out your vids. Also, I am not sure if you have covered this, but one of my favorite rock albums of the 80’s was the Ultimate Sin, but the drums and cymbals sound way over compressed for that album, and wondering if you have a vid on the recording of the drums for that album? Ps Randy Castillo was a phenomenal drummer!! 😉😉
Thanks John and thanks for subscribing!
As always, great stuff!!!! Thank you for sharing your secrets! They are invaluable!!!
Thanks Anthony.
... and all this time I just assumed that Mutt just used a LinnDrum machine for the Def Leppard tracks just like what the PWL folks did around the same time period. Perhaps this is because I heard elsewhere that Mutt used Rockman units for the guitars on Hysteria, and the concept of Occam's Razor being what it is?
Cool info. to see!
Thanks Spidey. The did use a simple drum machine and then after everything else was recorded on top of the machine they triggered all the massive samples.
Really cool stuff Bobby thanks ! Metallica Black Album is all tape so I have no idea how Bob Rock spiced up the snare but great tips. cheers
I’m a guitarist, but I did own a drum set for awhile… I set it up and tuned it the best I could. I invited an excellent drummer over to jam and check it out. He thought it was hilarious that I tuned the toms in fifths! Power cords! I didn’t know that’s what I had done.
That’s totally cool Jason. Many drummers tune Tom’s in 5ths, 4ths, 3rds, and combinations of all 3. My fav drummer Jeff Porcaro tuned his first 3 Tom’s in a triad and the low Tom a 4th below the lowest note of the 3 Tom triad.
Tony Visconti did this on the David Bowie records Low, Heroes and Lodger, you hear it on all the snares.
Awesome tip Dr Bob! Love it.
Thanks my friend!
Cool video…. Do you recall the Yamaha effect rack with the Gate that replaced this trick.
Excellent! Subscribed...
Thanks so much Bobby!
I’m interested to know where you got the “Black Beauty sample” info from? The previous two Metallica albums used Rick Allen’s Black Beauty snare (Puppets and Justice) and the Black Album, Load/ReLoad is a Tama Bell Brass. Interesting to use a different snare, then include a sample of the previously used snare!
I’m not sure if they used a sample of that Black Beauty or not. My guess is that it was one of Bob Rocks samples tuned down.
killer trick bobby thank you for doing this
Thanks Rob
Thanks Bob, great stuff
Did Mutt do that when he produced the Outlaws album, “Playin’ To Win”, from 1978?
I’m not sure George. I have only heard one song off of that album and haven’t studied it. I did tour and play on records with Henry Paul from the Outlaws for about 6 years in the group Blackhawk. Great guy and great friend!
Great stuff! But how do you actually create the "dive"? Do you have to have the Eventide or something similar?
The Eventide is creating the dive but the Simmons sample is a diving sample. Many DAWS have a pitch function that you can control the amount of pitch and when the pitch changes. You could definitely use that for any type of drum. I imagine there are Simmons samples out there that you could purchase that would give you what u want too.
You need more subscribers!💪
Thanks Greg! One by one!
Do you have a video about tuning guitars down, slowing the reel recording slow then speeding the reel back up so the recording sounds even more perfect like Flemming Rasmussen did on Metallica's early albums?
Did he produce those Uli era Scorpions albums too?
Never heard that one. Interesting. They would have to play it in a lower key as well..
@@BobbyHuff Hey boss Those insane production tricks on Taken by Force by Scorpions. Case and point the perpetual downward glissando at the end of Sails of Charon. Any Idea who made that magic and how?
@@BobbyHuff Yes, tune the guitars down first. I used to do it analog on a tascam tape 4 track. Just at normal tape speed record each string to tune to, then slow the tape down, and re-tune the guitar to those tones. Then when sped back up to normal speed, its in tune. However Metallica's albums Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets were sped up more and ended up sharp.
@@BobbyHuff If your chat allows links here's Flemming Rasmussen talking about speeding up the reel with metallica: ruclips.net/video/hMkLPPGnYRg/видео.html
Love these videos bobby! The secrets to my favs! Could have been an AMS unit for the metallica triggers!
Thanks and yes I agree on the AMS
Always awesome!
Thanks Paul!
Honestly, in the Mutt examples, I preferred the dry sound without added samples or effects. It’s a more timeless sound.
Nice video man!
Bob Rock was the producer on that Metallica album en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallica_(album)
That is correct.
Very nice as always!
Thanks Mathias!
I like your gimmick.
Nice one!
Dr Bob,
In reference to Hysteria and the huge/unique drum sounds. Lange along with his meticulous nature, the bands patience/loyalty, and Rick's open mind/ emotional state/ combined with his new physical limitations were just a case of turning lemons into lemonade. Or Lange was already on this path anyway based on recent recordings and we got the LP he initially set out to make.
IMO I think all of these elements had to be present or Hysteria may have been an entirely different beast.
Don't know if you have seen this but here is a clip of Rick on a Podcast speaking about samples, overdubs, Langes process and more! They even dug up a Mutt Lange interview and he speaks about Rick and Hysteria as well (Lange never gives interviews so pretty cool IMO).
FYI Here's the link for a clip from a longer video on the same channel
ruclips.net/video/p3Q261WIFAs/видео.html
Have a wonderful day.
Thanks for the great comments. I have seen that clip. Not only is Mutt a great producer but sounds like a great friend as well.
Loved this video…
Thanks JasoN!
be nicer if it was smooth , i dont like the break up on the tail . maybe i could automate something like that hmm ???????
Next Mutt Lange mystery to solve-- why is there only 2 known photos of him from the early 80s that are still used to this day? :)
Haha! He is incredibly private. There is unseen footage of him in the new Shania documentary.
Cuz he has a great face for radio.
Where do you find Simmons drum samples?
Hey Mike. I would think there are some on line…??
soooo many tricks soooo little time🤘
That trick is very obvious in Mutt's Def Leppard productions.
Agreed with Simmons!
I heard Aerosmith "rag doll," when you showed the trick
Yes! Definitely something going on with that snare as well like a Simmons drum! Good call.
Bruce Fairburn again and 6 degrees of separation. The Mutt Lange game..lol.
I already play a triva game involving Lange with my daughter. When listening to 80s rock, I will ask her who wrote it and her choices are Mutt, Desmond Child or Holly Knight! When listening to early 00s pop rock she can choose between Max Martin or Linda Perry LOL
Is it actually a confirmed fact by either Rock or Staub that this was done on the black album?
Yes. I have the snare...
Mutt Lang was on Metallica Black Album?
No but they used his snare trick.
This is every freaking Def Leppard album!
Yes. They used Simmons sounds to enhance.
Mutt Lange didn't work on The Black Album, THAT was Bob Rock.
That is correct. But he used a Mutt Lange trick…
I always assumed they were just hitting a bass drum at the same time. 🤷♂️
I heard def leppard
Great vid. I haven't seen one of yours in a while. BTW, I was the 666th like!
Haha! Thanks for stopping by Aaron!
i know not all mixs need same things...but in general , i think most snare sounds are WAY too loud -
so much so it distracts my enjoyment of the track - i like to mix my snare so it is as unobtrusive as possible ....
high cracking sound can be put way lower in a mix than this acdc/ metallica sound (for my style )
The bass drum is not as offensive to my ears ....so i dont mind that loud- ish .......i find a LOT of 80s music and quite a bit still today - unlistenable . I dont know how some engineers / producers can sign off on some of that stuff really ?
Fair enough!
Truth to my ears too.. 80s gated snare so loud as to eat the mix.Ruination
Bob Rock produced Metallica Black Album.
Doctor, doctor pleeease … may I ask you, what exactly a 'black beauty' is?
It's a type of Ludwig snare
@@joevining2603 appreciate it
@@MariUSukulele Yes Joe is correct. A VERY famous Ludwig snare. Listen to Summer of 69 by Bryan Adams and that is the "poster child," sound for a Black Beauty
@@BobbyHuff awesome! This is much obliged!
Another rock 80s trick was whiskey! 😂
Hahahaha
What if Lars just detuned his snare and tracked again?
Too many flams!
I don't think pro tools existed if 89 or 90 great video though
I think early Pro Tools or Sound Tools ,as they called it, released some time in 89 but I don’t think they used it on the Black Album.
I thought it was marrying Shania Twain?
I thought the drum sound on "And Justice For All" was absolutely killer and to my ear better than the "Black" album.