Recreating the Sound: Ep.2 The "Van Halen Snare Sound"

hey everybody i'm rick biato and today's everything music it's episode 2 of recreating the sound this is a series where i attempt to recreate famous sounds from famous recordings on today's episode i'm going to attempt to recreate alex van halen's unmistakable snare drum sound alex van halen has one of the most recognizable snare drum sounds but really to me when he hit diver down in 1984 they really got it together if you try to research things on the internet related to his snare you really come up with a lot of dead ends i mean there is a lot of information but there's almost no pictures of his actual snare drum i mean really with him playing it all the videos his toms are blocking it or they're from the front or whatever it is so it was really difficult so i started reaching out to all my drummer friends and asking them oh no i don't know i don't know any pictures if you've seen those pictures nobody has this weird taping pattern so i made some calls and i got in touch with people that actually worked with alex van halen now i'm not sure if it's right or not but we're gonna attempt to see if it is in a modern drummer interview i think it was in the mid 80s or so alex talked about using a rosewood snare drum a lot after the starting around the third van halen record but from what i've been told he used many different snares predominantly though the ludwig super phonic or ludwig's super sensitive now he's always been a ludwig endorser his whole career for this video we're going to use the ludwig super phonic but we have a couple additional things number one is a controlled sound clear controlled sound he used the ludwig silver dots which are the same heads okay it's next day and i actually just got my silver dots from loving that's the ludwig silver dot it's the same head as the black dot but the dot is silver now ludwig actually has stopped making these so this is some of the last few that they have we're also going to put new hoops on it these are die cast tubes like you would typically see on a gretch drum kit die cast hoops give you a drier sound especially when you're doing rim shots it has a very particular sound and we're going to use some of this gaff tape and recreate his taping pattern on a snare we're also going to use some 2b rock and roll drumsticks let's get started [Music] the snare wires we're going to use are a simple 20 strand snare wire like they used back in the 80s we didn't have the 42 strand wires that didn't start to be common until much later than [Music] that [Music] okay i'm gonna start with this gaff tape now gaff tape is not duct tape it doesn't have the gooey stuff like it like duct tape does i'm gonna measure it out i'm gonna make an a let's start with two pieces like this go across this part of the drum go like that measure out another piece and then let's see here this looks pretty good go like this okay we're gonna put a long piece across like this okay that's the a for alex okay then we fill in these other pieces [Music] here [Music] and there we go so it should look like this from the top side as we put it on the snare so it's gonna be like that okay now i'm gonna put the head on i like to make sure that the where the remo thing is is there and i have my throw off right here get the die cast tubes here put it on make sure it's seat seated pretty well and then i'm just gonna put the uh put the lugs back in okay it was taking too long with the bottom head and i found my drum key drill bit that i've been using forever i didn't know where it was but this is really just to get it close i usually like to go around and get the drum finger tight first what i like to do actually when i'm finger tightening the drums as i put pressure on each lug like this and then finger tighten it because it gets it a lot closer than just finger tightening and then going back around and doing it again just a little bit of pressure we'll start getting it close then you can start using your key once it's once all the lugs are finger tightened that's pretty good good good then you know you've got a good even tension on the head to start i like to go opposite logs i like to go on a star pattern it's really weird i've never honestly used this much duct tape on a drum before it feels very strange the head does but i think it's going to sound cool i'm going to crank it up not too high i don't want to be choked but i want to make sure the bottom head is [Music] tight enough that you get some good snare action on it [Music] i don't want to super choke doing it by [Music] feeling doing this by feel and by pitch okay did a couple more tweaks to it brought it down just a little bit slightly higher than the snare in there put it on the stand here and get it up that looks good [Music] oh yeah okay [Music] i think i got it let's go to the control room check it out okay so for the drums we have all the mic preamps going through the nif style bae mic preamps and for the snare specifically we're going through the bae 1032 there's no processing afterwards we don't have any compression on it we are actually going through the neve 542 portico it's a tape simulator and we did that because uh back in the day of course it was going onto tape so we wanted to give it a little tape compression okay we've got the snare tuned up i've gone back and forth a couple times i have my good friend jack jones you've seen in many of my videos playing drums today i'm going to be in the control room with gl listening to the snare let's check out what it sounds like [Music] okay for this session we decided to bring the tracks into universal audio's new daw called luna that's been out since the beginning of the year and for us this is the first time that we've tried it and we love it so far rick and i come from pro tools backgrounds and it was very easy to use so you can see we've got a kick track we've got a snare track we've got our hi-hat track and we've got our overheads and then for comparison we have i'll wait by van halen so we have all five of those tracks sitting right there in there and we also have all the drums going to a drum sub and then we have uh some reverb coming off of the drum sub and that's really about it very simple okay now we're ready for the a b comparison with i'll wait from van halen jack is playing along with the track i'm gonna switch from van halen to jack and then back and forth it's pretty close it almost sounds like we're soloing the drums in van halen but these are jack's drums check out the snare i think it's it's pretty much there we'll talk about the eq'ing afterwards because that is really the key to the sound here it is [Music] so this one to me proved to be really challenging there's one thing that i think it misses his snare is a little bit drier i i messed around with the reverb couldn't get it to where it sounds like that kind of reverb and there's also something about the attack it's just it's very subtle the pitch is right it's close but it it's just alex the way he plays it there's just no way around it the attack is slightly off that's my opinion let me play for you one more time once again listen to the attack of the snare on the rim shot that's really where the sound differs [Music] slightly [Music] [Music] as far as the eq on this we're going through a little bit of 220 so we're adding a little 220 we're adding a little bit of 6.8 and we're adding some 10k but the real secret here to getting the alex van gaal and snare sound is adding uh 820 820 hertz and we're cranking probably about 10 db of that okay so the secret is not only the eq that 800 hertz bump but it's also hitting the rim shots in exactly the right spot we did about 20 takes and jack was moving his snare uh his rimshot around hitting them in different places trying to match uh alex's rim shot exactly that is another thing is the way that alex hits the drums is so important we also have some compression on the snare drum and like gl said the neve portico tape emulator it's actually hitting that so you're getting a tape compression sound on it and we have some compression on the master buss of the drums the five tracks or so that we have we have the snare hi-hat overheads and kick drum leave a comment let me know if you think it was close or what we could have done to get it even closer also let me know other classic sounds you'd like to see us recreate here that's all for now don't forget to subscribe if you're a first time viewer ring the bell that'll let you know when i go live and when a new video comes out give it a thumbs up leave a comment that's very important if you're interested in the biato book go to my website at www.rickbeater.com follow me on instagram at rickbiota1 check out the new biato ear training program at beautiertraining.com and if you want to support the channel even more think about becoming a member of the biato club thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 443,589

Keywords: rick beato, everything music, rick, beato, music, music theory, music production, education, Van Halen, Guitar, Drums, Recreating The Sound, Alex Van Halen, Eddie Van Halen, Snare, 1984, 80's, Drum Tuning, rick beato what makes this song great, Snare Dum, Snare Drum Tunung, Snare Sound, Drum Recording, Drum Micing, drum mixing, Drummer, Music, Drumming, Musician, hard rock music

Id: crDns9teyzk

Length: 12min 29sec (749 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020