The kit was Gretsch or DW with Zildjian K cymbals and a variety of snare drums. Everything went through Neve 1057's, except the cymbals- pretty sure those were board pre's. I think kick was U47, Snare SM57 (maybe another top mic). Toms were MD421's, there were a few other mics and a pair of U67's facing one another overheard going into Neve 2254 E's.
I don't recall how we amplified the bass- there was a single sub in there and we used a DBX 120x, as well. The bass was a relatively new Fender Jazz.
My pleasure. That was explanation was misleading. The U67's were looking down on the kit- the tops of the mics were facing- not the capsules. They were a bit closer together than a normal overhead array, as I recall.
Jason had them positioned over the front of the kit, however, this picked up more cymbals and less kit, so I asked if he could move them in so they were more in line with the snare.
I just want to say.. that Black Hole Sun was one of the songs when I heard it on the radio.. that the hairs on the back my neck stood up and I was just like "wow that sounds good." This is only happened to me a few times so.. I guess that's about the highest praise I can give.
Black Hole Sun uses 11 out of the 12 notes in the chromatic scale. He is a brilliant composer.
I love Chris' exquisite and unique sense of harmony and the way his odd and quirky chord voicings somehow never step on his quite normal and proper melody, while still flowing with grace, with beautiful tension and release. His use of cadence is magical.
I am particularly interested in the drumsounds. They sound like you chopped off the attack and release.. it sounds big, but kinda the tail and the attack is "confusing" for me. Did you use a parallel on the kit?
Oh. We didn't do anything like that to the drums or any other instruments.
thank you. the main interest is on the attack and decay of the drums. do you remember if you used a drumbus compressor/clipping the board with the drums?
We certainly didn't record them that way, but it's possible that Brendan could have used something like that in the mix. He definitely used a drum buss in mix down.
Pretty sure Brendan was sending the entire kit through a Summit DCL200 compressor on a subgroup. That's generally what he used for drums until later in the 90's when he started using a Fatso.