Sonic Reality

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 7:09 pm

A little behind the scenes vid at Genesis' Studio called the Farm... sample sessions with Hugh Padgham if you're interested in being a "Fly on the stone wall".

andywright67 · Post by **andywright67** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 4:40 pm

Thanks

andywright67 · Post by **andywright67** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 4:37 pm

Hey Dave, hope you're well.

Any chance you could give us an insight into how Mama was recorded and what processing was used, etc...? I'm currently working on a demo and would really love to nail it, especially Phil's kit sound, the synths and the looped drum beat heard in the intro and throughout.

Cheers,

Ash

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 4:20 am

andywright67 wrote:Hey Dave, hope you're well.

Any chance you could give us an insight into how Mama was recorded and what processing was used, etc...? I'm currently working on a demo and would really love to nail it, especially Phil's kit sound, the synths and the looped drum beat heard in the intro and throughout.

Cheers,

Ash

We will be revealing a lot of inside info from interviews with Hugh Padgham when his drum samples are released. So some things are better in his words. However, they did that record in the same studio you see Nick Davis mixing Mama in 5.1 at. The gear hasn't changed much (or the chairs as you can see... the ripped 70's chairs are still there!). So, whatever you see there in the racks is a part of it and that SSL.

Short off the top of my head answer is that I believe the looped drum beat was done on an EMU SP12 which was quite "crunchy". I don't know what the source sounds were - if they sampled them or if they were factory sounds. Believe it or not they often used a lot of factory sounds. For instance, the lead sound in Mama is a factory preset from the NED Synclavier. It's an FM voices sound. We have that sampled in our Rare & Vintage collection or the Bonus Bank. You can find it on esoundz or email allen (at) esoundz (dot) com and he can help you.

The percussive sound I believe is on the Arp Quadra but you can make that sound with a filter envelope on Sonik Synth 2 or any analog synth plug-in pretty much. The pad that comes in the middle is a Prophet 10 and that's a distinct sound but again you get emulated it on SS2 or on one of the Prophet 5 emu plugs. Best would be a real one if you can find one. I might actually sell one of my Prophet 5's actually. I have two and only need one really.

The drums though... there's a whole magic to that. But if you watch the Hugh Padgham quick video there you can see WHERE we are, with the stone walls - that's Genesis' Farm Studio where they recorded Mama - plays a BIG part in the sound. That and his particular single head Gretsch or Premier kits (in the case of Mama it'd be a Gretsch... In The Air Tonight was a Premier). So the sound of that room plus the way Hugh mikes it (U47 fets, U87's, Sennheisser MD421a...) and then running the room mics through an 1178 Ueri compressor (stereo 1176), maybe use the SSL dynamics on some of the other channels and some gates on the room and BAM you've got a MAMA of a drum sound.

Now, don't worry if that just came off as a bunch of words we're going to eventually show this stuff in how to form on video with the ability to have the sound itself recorded by Hugh in your hands. That's what Studio ProFiles is all about. The authentic real deal stuff. So if you want to get the Mama sound... we'll have as close as you can get! Hugh Padgham recording AT Genesis studio where it was originally done... sampled, packaged up and put into our Infinite Player plug-in for the Drum Masters series. It should be done before the end of the year. It comes after we're done with Neil Peart's kit and before that the Ken Scott Collection with Cobham, Bozzio, Morgenstein... some really exciting projects are getting close to completion.

andywright67 · Post by **andywright67** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 1:44 pm

Awesome stuff Dave, thanks a lot, the info is a big help

I look forward to seeing these kits emerge and dearly hope they'll all be ported to BFD format also.

Best,

Ash

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 3:05 pm

Yeah we'll do them in BFD. It will actually be easier to do the newer kits like Ken Scott Collection, Neil Peart and the Hugh/Nick stuff in BFD because we had BFD in mind when doing it vs. the previous Drum Masters stuff where we were concentrating more on the groove part and didn't want to go CRAZY with kit sizes... so they're more like 1-2 gigs vs. a Ken Scott kit which at the moment is 10 gigs each... I guess we may have to trim that down perhaps!!!!! Neil Peart's kit is MASSSSSIVVE and I am sure the Collins-style Padgham kit when we get to that will be pretty big too considering how many toms. But to have a lot of velocities AND articulations across the keyboard AND discrete mic channels AND some alting... well it takes up some space!!!!!! We're not even going to release the 96k versions for a while because those are the largest. We do have Ocean Way Drums at 96k though and that's about 5-6 gigabytes per kit when we do that. Pretty high end stuff! As high end as it gets for drums in terms of the audio. Keep in mind BFD and most of the other drum plugs only do 44.1 - even if that IS done for a reason. It's called "Sanity"!!!! Getting into these high sample rates does sound amazing and the resolution is like you're in the room with the drummer. But the tradeoff is you need more ram, hd space and a faster computer. I like to offer BOTH the super high end stuff as well as the meat and potatoes get the job done stuff so when it does make its way over to BFD I am sure that will be a nice stream-lined version that isn't TOO insane... even if we'll offer at least a 48K version in Kontakt and also a STEREO version which is even more "Reasonable" on taking up our computer's resources to get nice sounding results. We do it all! Just takes time.

andywright67 · Post by **andywright67** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 3:22 pm

This is what I've got thus far of the intro loop using BFD2. It defo needs some more crunch a la the 12 bitness of the EMU SP12, but I ran out of plug slots in BFD2's mixer on the master

It took me ages to get the same kinda snare sound too using an envelope shaper, damping and tuning.

Hope you like it!

http://rapidshare.com/files/214582258/G ... er.wav.zip

yellowfever · Post by **yellowfever** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 3:25 pm

andywright67 wrote:I'm currently working on a demo and would really love to nail it, especially Phil's kit sound, the synths and the looped drum beat heard in the intro and throughout.

So the whole song then?

andywright67 · Post by **andywright67** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 3:33 pm

Working on it. Gonna take it into a session soon and work on all the other parts. I think Phil's main kit part should be easy enough to nail when it kicks in through the use of compression, but the toms will be the hardest to replicate IMHO as in BFD2 we have no open-bottom skinned toms, nor high concert pitched ones.

Thanks for the info Dave re what's happening with the BFD2 stuff, it all sounds great, and it's very much appreaicted that you do all this stuff.

I'll post back another demo asap.

Best,

Ash

Sonic Reality

KVR Audio

Sonic Reality & Hugh Padgham at Genesis Studio