This week's episode of What's That Sound sees Noam and Jessica take on a recreation of one of the most iconic drum sounds in the classic rock canon: Electric Light Orchestra's 1979 hit single "Don't Bring Me Down". Years after its release, ELO bandleader Jeff Lynne would describe their highest-charting hit in the U.S. as "a great big galloping ball of distortion". So how did they get it rolling?
As it turns out, Bev Bevan's beat from the Discovery album closer is actually a slowed-down tape loop pulled from a preceding track from the album, "On The Run". With that in mind, we started by recording the drums at a faster tempo before using a varispeed simulator in Pro Tools to slow down the pitch as well as the speed by about 20 BPM.
For this session, we opted for a four-mic setup: we placed a Neumann U47 FET on our Ludwig Vistalite kick, a Neumann U87 for our overhead to cover the crispness of the hats—a pair of 14" Zildjan K Darks—and a The Mic Shop MS47 to capture the room. The Ludwig Supralite snare was miked with a Neumann KM84, but rather than placing it above the top head, we pointed it at the side of the shell to achieve a "knock'' with more body.
Once the loop was tracked and slowed down—contributing exaggerated decay to all the drums—we processed the kit with a copious amount of compression, filtering, and tape saturation. The largeness of the low-end is partly due to a lack of filtering on the overhead mic, as well as applying ample compression to the room mic courtesy of a Chandler TG-1 on limit mode.
With any luck, this recreation didn't bring you down. Watch the full video above.