DECONSTRUCTING DRUMS
Three years ago, U2 engineer Robbie Adams explained in SOS how he recorded Larry Mullen's drums with just three mics, an approach he had picked up from Flood, who, said Adams, "is bored with all this traditional, big stereo nonsense." Flood explained that his way of recording drums was partly born from necessity, and partly from reading Mark Lewisohn's classic book on The Beatles' recording sessions: "When we were working on Achtung Baby, we had two drum kits set up, and I had very few channels on the desk, so that was a bit of a problem. I noticed from the photographs in the Beatles book how there was always one mic parked just above the drum kit. I thought it was maybe just for the photo or something, but then I saw it in other studio shots as well, and so, because of the problem I had with too few channels, I decided to try it out on one of the two kits. I put one mic on the bass drum -- an AKG D12 or Neumann U47 -- a Shure SM57 on the snare, and an SM58 as the overhead just above the kit.
"What started to happen was that people would prefer that drum sound, even though it's virtually mono. I also noticed that with Larry, who is a powerful drummer, when you put the drums in stereo you have to have the levels up higher on playback, whereas the mono drums were more powerful, even at lower levels. When I thought about it, I realised that if you're standing in front of a drum kit, you hear it in mono -- you don't hear the toms panning neatly from left to right in your ears. Also, a mic just above the kit compresses the sound. And that's the same effect that happens in the ears of a drummer or when you stand close to the kit; the sound is compressing in your ears because of the level of air pressure. So when you have a cheap, lo-fi overhead mic in that position, and add compression on a mic that's already compressing, it brings out the excitement, the same feel and natural balance that the drummer is getting."
"I've used the three-mic approach as a starting point ever since. You can do all sorts of things with it. For example, if the room you're recording in is rather dead, you can add a bit of room reverb just on the mad-sounding compressed mic. That will give the illusion of the drums having space, and yet the physical punch still comes from the middle. I will sometimes add two more overheads, like a 414 or 87, placed a bit higher up, or at the same height as the drummer's ears. A lot of the times we end up monitoring kick, snare and these higher overheads, and then if the track sounds a bit lame, we'll feed that extra low overhead mic in, which can bring out all the reflections that the drummer gets and that you may not hear normally. It's always good to experiment and listen to the sound the drummer gets in the room. When we were working on Pop in Miami, we were in a room that had very little character, so we put the two ambient mics right in the corner, pointing towards the ceiling, away from the drum kit, thus deliberately creating a woolly, booming drum sound that went well with the brightness of the drum kit. We were always pushing for character, and trying to stay as far away as possible from a generic rock drum sound."
HOWIE B: SONGWRITING & HI-TECH PRODUCTION
What was U2's songwriting process for this record?
"Apart from maybe two songs which Bono and Edge had written before we started, during pre-production, it was fairly freestyle -- there were jams, and songs were built from those. After the end of that jam, we'd look at that track and see if there was anything worth keeping; and if there was, what it was and how we would keep working with that tune. For example, we might stop working that day, and each work away on our own with a cassette, thinking of our own melodic ideas, or structural ideas. Bono would then start looking for a character to the song; what it might be about, and so on. It was a quick process in one way, but also fairly slow in another; it was fairly quick to get the song started, and then it was a case of moulding that piece of music into a song. That's where the production started."
Which equipment did you use in the studio?
"The main thing I was using was record decks, which I would use to turn them onto stuff. I also used an Akai S3200 to sample bits of Larry's drumming, and put them into completely different songs. For example, on 'Please', there was a sampled loop of Larry's drums which I had taken from his drumming on 'If God Will Send His Angels', which was interesting. I made a lot of loops of Larry's playing, as well as guitar loops. I sampled Edge all the time, too, and made sequenced guitar sample patterns, which was an interesting thing to happen to Edge -- they'd never thought of doing that before. Sometimes I would sample, say, a guitar, but it wouldn't come back sounding like a guitar; it might sound more like a pneumatic drill, because I would take the raw sound and filter it, really destroy the guitar sound, and rebuild it into something completely different [see the 'Sampling' box for more on this].
"I also used a Clavia Nord Lead an awful lot, along with filter banks, voltage-controlled oscillators, and an Oberheim Echoplex for tape delays. The Nord Lead really shone out on this record -- it's a fantastic synth. I'd just started using it when we began the album, so it was a fresh sound for me. It's a very quick keyboard to get a sound out of, because the way you work it is very 'analogue', even though it's a digital synth. The analogue-style controls are fantastic. Apart from the Nord, we used a Roland Juno 106, an EMS VCS3, and a little bit of Yamaha DX7. There's also a Hammond in there, and a fair bit of Rhodes."
Is there anybody within the band that can use sequencers?
"Yeah! Larry uses sequencers; he'll demo some ideas, maybe program a groove for himself, and play around with it; and Edge uses a very basic sequencing package to work on ideas. But sequencers aren't really the best thing to work on sometimes... you can become a slave to them. There were a few keyboards sequenced on the album, and I sequenced some guitar loops and a few bits of percussion, but generally, sequencers were not used much on this record. When we did, we used an Atari running C-Lab Creator."
HOWIE B: MIXING & EFFECTS
Which console and multitrack did you use on Pop?
"We used a Otari MTR90 multitrack, with mainly a 1972 Neve desk. Rupert Neve made that for EMI -- it was the first 24-buss desk that he made. It's a split console too, which was interesting, as most mixing and recording desks are in-line these days, and I did my apprenticeship on a split console. It was great to come back to that -- a split console has its own character, and the way you record and mix is a bit different. The desk was also a fantastic tool for me -- I used that like another instrument."
Is that how you achieved some of the amazing sounds on the album? For example the vocal treatments and heavy bass sounds all over the album, the echoes on the vocals and bass drum in 'If God Will Send His Angels', and the distorted drum sound on 'Miami'. Were these effects created during the mix or when recording?
"It was very easy to record the vocals; very little EQ, just a little compression, and off we went. Sometimes, depending on the song, there'd be an effect used later, but when we started off, it would just be Bono with his SM58 going for it. Sometimes he'd sing to an effect; delay, flanging, distortion or whatever, just to react to it. But it wasn't as if we spent three weeks looking for a particular vocal treatment; we didn't do that at all.
"The trick with the bass sounds is really to make sure the bass is there when you record it! Because later on, you can only bring out sounds that were already there. I didn't add anything; the bass was already there, it was just a case of putting it in a place where you can hear it. Sometimes that's purely a matter of level -- it can be as simple as making the bass track louder -- and sometimes you need to use EQ.
"On 'If God Will Send His Angels', there's no reverb at all on the drum kit, so again, the echoes you hear are just to do with the sound of the kit when it was recorded, and the balance that I set up later. On the vocals on that track, the reverb you hear is just an analogue plate reverb; two pieces of metal with a spring between them. The balance on that song is like the balance on all the others; there's nothing fancy going on there. It's the space that song happened in that gives it its incredible character.
"The drum sound from 'Miami' comes from quite a few things -- it's basically very extreme EQ used sparingly, on particular tracks. The main groove is actually just Larry's hi-hat, but it sounds like a mad engine running or something really crazy -- about as far away from a hi-hat as you can imagine. Part of the effect was deciding when to use it and when not to. Sometimes when you use something extreme and then take it away, the space that you leave when it's not there is just as extreme, even though there's no longer anything extreme going on! For me, the task in 'Miami' was to make it unlike anything else on the album, and also unlike anything else you'd ever have heard before.
"'Miami' was a live mix; I didn't use any computers or automation, which made it really interesting. Most of the album was like that, but with that track in particular, there was no need for automation, as it was a very simple track in the end; there were only maybe nine tracks of audio used on it. It was also more fun and more musical to do it live -- I think I got a fairly large sound out of just nine tracks, and several of the things that happen on it only happen because I was doing it live. If you go into a mix with preset rules -- you know, that you use this reverb on drums, and that processing on vocals -- I think it ends up sounding very straight, and very contrived. But if you go in with the approach that anything can happen, with no set rules, that's when it gets exciting. That's how I attack mixing. It makes it more interesting, and it's more creative. You open new doors that way; you discover things that haven't happened before. Like I said, the desk was a very important instrument in the making of this album, especially the way that me and Flood use it. It's something we can both play, the way that Edge can pick up a guitar and play a fantastic song. I can go onto a desk and use it in a way that no-one else will, and it's the same with Flood."