Distinctive drum sound tracks

daredrummer

Gold Member
There are some tracks that just have that distinctive drum sound heard no where else (electronics, of course, but in good use).

I'll start it off with mr. obvious, "In the air tonight' by P. Collins.
It's been 30 years and those are still the coolest tom sounds I've ever heard.

What do you guys got?
 
I think the obvious Phil Collins will come up alot. I think he was the only one who was really doing sonically different things with his drums.

But I think a couple of others would be Bill Bruford on Yes' Roundabout, and Stewart Copeland on the stuff he did with the Police from the third album 'til the end. He had his sound really different from everybody else by the time they got to Zenyatta Mondatta.

Even when Bill Bruford joined the re-formed King Crimson in the 80s, the saving grace was the tunable Simmons pads, but he was still using a pingy snare. So although he came up with alot of different textures, sonically it wasn't like the sound he got on the Fragile album.

Another different-sound came from Jack DeJohnette, Tony Williams, and Max Roach, I think you can tell who's who when they play.
 
Notable drum sounds are mostly the result of production, and to a lesser degree, the drums or the drummer. Remember, the question is about sound, not style. In that vein, we have Bonham on just about everything that Led Zeppelin recorded, Bev Bevan with almost everything ELO cut, I'll agree with Stewart Copeland in general and of course "In The Air". Let's not forget the Power Station gated drums from Tony Thompson (also on a few of Bowie's early '80s albums.)

But some drums indeed had a signature sound, and the most recognizable - to the geezers here anyway - were Hal Blaine's concert toms, heard on countless tracks throughout the late-'60s and through the '70s from the Carpenters to Neil Diamond to Cher, etc etc. You always knew when Hal was playing on a song, as much for those toms' sound as his style.

Bermuda
 
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