Band Aid "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (1984) - Drum Recording breakdown

[@simonhodgetts6530]

Phil’s fill during the instrumental section is the highlight of the track for me!

[@SBUK2010]

A lot more drum sound on the 12” version 💪🏼

[@zumazmusic]

I appreciate you taking a look at this. Right on! 😎🤘

[@willtalksrecording]

@@zumazmusic right back at ya, thanks for the comment and view

[@davidindge]

02:09 As a drummer, I noticed the tin of Red Stripe before anything else

[@DWH072]

Thank you for your insight, I always wondered why Phil’s drums seemed sow low in the mix, when his drums were typically prominent in most of his performances. You give great examples of why this was the case.

[@willtalksrecording]

@@DWH072 you’re very welcome, thanks for the view and the comment. To say that they recorded and mixed all this in 24 hours straight I think the record came out really really well. It must have been such a hectic session - you can see Trevor Horn getting a bit frazzled stepping in to help out in the full documentary. So hats off to everyone involved. To be honest I would attribute any unusual mic positions down to a severe lack of time rather than anything else, as well as the effectively mono sound of Phil’s drums in the original mix. They would have had to dedicate every possible moment to getting the vocals sounding good, and anything else was probably a bonus!

[@WilliamDelorenzo-y9v]

Phils back is jacked from his hunching

[@MeAndTheBoys_]

There is clearly 2 OH mics behind Phil, the other one is right above the floortom and ride. Okay, the stand and the mic itself are the colour of the background wall, so the second mic might be hard to see for some, but it's there on Phil's right side, from our perspective.

[@willtalksrecording]

Yep, somehow I missed that extra overhead mic. You can see the stands more clearly in the pan shots, now that you've pointed that out. So phew! It's not as unusual a setup as I'd believed.

[@chardrum]

​@@willtalksrecordingGlenn Johns?

[@christianparsons6050]

It was a stressful day for all concerned, and from what I've heard, Phil's drums were set up early in the day, around 9am, and a sound check was done by his tech (there is an excellent interview with the peak capped engineer on YTube) who apparently stood back and hammered the crap out of each tom individually. They were a bit miffed in the control room as to why he was hitting them so hard. Fast forward 12hours and finally they get to the drums...it becomes apparent that although Collins makes it look effortless he hits the living b'jesus out of those drums. They did about 5 mins of getting a sound up and then did the two takes. In that time the over heads could have gotten moved and gawd knows what else...not to mention the tuning of the drums would have changed a bit through temp etc, and all the bodies in the room blah blah...It was never going to be great...Still sounds like Phil Collins tho, no mistake👌

[@chardrum]

If I am correct the sample of drums in the beginning is from Tears For Fears 'The Hurting'

[@paulcastledine685]

Midge and bob said phil was fantastic. he did it on the first take. but phil wasn't happy with it. so did it again. and that was even better .

[@brianczach]

Talking about the snare drum, that's a Camco snare drum!! If you're not familiar, look it up. Amazing drums.

[@willtalksrecording]

@@brianczach I’m not, and I will! Thanks

[@Theratron]

Yeah, the snare threw me for a loop a bit, those are clearly DW-style tension lugs, long before DW started making drums. I found that both Camco and Brady were using that design around the time (1984). Very interesting. Something I always thought was a DW signature thing turns out not to be unique to DW at all 😅

[@nashvillehitmachine-offici7936]

loads of rock records used a more mono drum sound so the guitars could be panned and more up front - i really like the sound of this to each their own

[@willtalksrecording]

Hey, thanks for the view and the comment! I actually think the record sounds great too, drums and all. I am totally here for mono drum recordings, though I do wonder why you’d record stereo overheads if that was the plan from the start, it just opens the door to phase issues unnecessarily when one mono overhead would do the trick. But as you say, each to their own. There aren’t any rights and wrongs in audio, just what you understand of the theory and how you choose to put it into practice to achieve your subjective goals. SARM was a state of the art studio with great staff and equipment, so I’m sure this was something that worked well for them

[@LouisMoorhouseMusic]

Great video!! As a producer who happens to be blind, I always found this drum sound really interesting, and wondered what the recording setup was for it. It’d be great if, further down the line, some mixing info emerged about this track as well, because as you point out in this video, the drum sound is really unorthodox: very mono, not a lot of clarity etc, and yet at the same time I personally can’t hear any other style of recording/mixing working as well for this song! It’s part of the sound of this record, definitely. Have subscribed to your channel, looking forward to watching more of your videos.

[@willtalksrecording]

Hey @@LouisMoorhouseMusic , thanks for the comment and for subscribing! I love this kind of thing, being able to be able to see how some classic songs were recorded. I’m not sure about the mix process - part of me wonders if they had to mix the track during their 24 hour session which Trevor Horn gave them at SARM, which might explain why things like the drums ended up in mono - purely because of time restraints. But that’s not to take away from what is undoubtedly a classic track. If I find any more videos of the recording setups for classic tracks I’ll make some more videos in this series - I know there’s footage of Pink Floyd recording Dark Side for example…. Watch this space!

[@LouisMoorhouseMusic]

@ Yeah I believe that’s right, they had to mix it within that 24 hour window, so that would explain about the rather unique mix. But yeah, it definitely works! :) That’s great to hear you’ll be doing more videos like this. As I say, as a producer/mix engineer who happens to be blind I find footage like this really interesting, but obviously can’t see what’s going on, so videos like this one are super helpful.

[@ianlange7508]

On the kick it looks and sounds like they've ported almost the entirety of the front head but left the collar and a bit of the mylar so that the front hoop of the drum can remain on. That would be pretty common for this era (esp since Phil's toms are concert toms) and accounts for how the D12 appears to be centered in the drum.

[@willtalksrecording]

Super helpful, thanks for commenting with the extra info!

[@johotrod66]

Indeed, important to keep the rim in place to prevent lug rattle.

[@aMan-or9ij]

@@johotrod66 That's exactly right! I use that technique on my double sided toms when I want to convert them to concert toms. An old head (with almost all of the head cut out) sandwiched between the shell and rim (tension rods in) give the illusion of a two sided tom, the sound (and loudness!) of concert tom, and no rattle.

[@michaelcaplin8969]

As you can see from the footage when he's playing, there's two stands RIGHT behind him, like almost touching him on either side of his body, and those are the two overheads, while the 67 or 87 is a room mic :)

[@willtalksrecording]

You know what, you're totally right. Maybe a pair of U87/U67's, or possibly 414's? It's hard to tell from the footage. I've been watching the documentary back too and there's actually a section around 21:00 where Phil asks for the engineer to record ambient mic and for them to be placed really high and compressed heavily as "that's the key to what I do", so that goes some way to explaining the setup with the room mic/s. It does still sound to me like the toms are mostly out of phase with the overheads, even for concert toms, and I'm still not 100% sure what they were going for with the snare mic placement, but I am actually going to try it out on my next session and see what it gives in context. Maybe it's really really great but just looks odd!

[@mrose77]

@@willtalksrecording This was Phil in the peak of his gated reverb era, so who knows?

[@yeahno....]

Left handed kit, maybe the engineer wasn’t used to mic it up for stereo in reverse

[@KnapfordMaster98]

I'd love to see you do a video like this for One Vision by Queen. There's 1 detail that I've never seen mentioned or discussed a single time, Roger Taylor seems to have no snare drum mic and just has a cable plugged straight into the air hole on his snare drum. Would that even work as a trigger? It does seem like there's an electronic element blended with the snare, but its all still very weird to me. Great video!

[@willtalksrecording]

@@KnapfordMaster98 oh wow that sounds interesting. Thanks for the lead, I’ll check it out and let you know if there’s a possible video incoming in the future. There has been such a great response to this video that I’m definitely on the lookout to continue this into a proper series

[@johotrod66]

Phil was known for his use of concert toms, i.e top head only, which by their very nature lack the "fullness and tone" of double headed drums. I used a kit very similar to this in the '80s as well, and a characteristic (when close mic'd for recording) is a very sharp fundamental but not much body or resonance, particularly if only mic'd from above. Shoving a mic inside from underneath gave more body but could be very boomy and hard to control. In this footage we can see they are only mic'd from above, so they would be characteristically rather sharp and toppy. I'm sure that different mics would give different results, but that's beyond the realm of my experience and technical know-how. But you know all this I'm sure.

[@willtalksrecording]

@@johotrod66 hey, thanks for the insight! In the longer original take I did, I talked a bit more about Phil’s lefty setup and concert Tom’s but in the interests of keeping the video around 10mins a lot of that fell on the cutting room floor. Also drums are less my expertise than drum recording, so i decided to focus more on the technical aspects. But drum info is very welcome! Every day is a school day and I’m loving all the extra info which is coming to light in this comments section

[@owlnswan4016]

It turned out sounding great, however it was done. I disagree with the criticism. It all sounds intentional and what you discuss is part of the character. I like the variation in the sound of the toms you point out. Do watch the full 40th Anniversary documentary if you haven't seen it completely yet. There's a part in the documentary where they show Phil discussing how they should record his drums. Part of Phil's "sound" in that era was recording him with some distant mics with a real ambient sound being integral. I love it. The original engineer for recording on that date and engineering the original (non-12") mix is Stuart Bruce. He was recently interviewed about "Do They Know Its Christmas". Stuart even posted in the comments of the interview video. You can watch it here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/b5-up6OiprStgc0

[@willtalksrecording]

@@owlnswan4016 hello! Thanks for the comment and for the link to the interview - I will check that out for sure when I get a moment! I hope any criticism was purely technical, and even then only to point out some slightly unusual aspects of the drum mic setup, but that’s not to say whether it’s “good” or not, as that’s really up to each listener to decide for themselves. For my part this is one of my favourite Christmas songs, an important part of pop music history and also just a nice way to see loads of talented people all working together for the only time

[@mannygrossman]

Another album that was destroyed by it's weak drum mix is the first ASIA album. Same era too.

[@gtrdrumsplayerduarte]

Micking the floor? How? Even if it is on cardioid it is still within the cardioid lobe. It will loose some of the toppest end...

[@willtalksrecording]

Agreed, as you point out you don’t always have to angle a mic right at something to record it, sometimes the warmer off axis sound is more what’s needed. But that really is very very off axis. I’d guess if they wanted a warmer sound they could have chosen a warmer mic more conventionally positioned, but who knows. It certainly didn’t stop this being a classic record and a very high seller. Thanks for the view and comment, and Merry Christmas!

[@gtrdrumsplayerduarte]

@willtalksrecording What if it is set to omni?

[@willtalksrecording]

@@gtrdrumsplayerduarte it certainly could be. You’d get a lot of spill so maybe not the most useful for a spot mic, but definitely not impossible

[@dancollen8999]

Yeah its a real shame somebody like you wasn't there to make sure they didn't 'forget the fundamentals'! - obviously it would have been a much better recording. 'Am I missing something here?' - yes! Just about everything I'd say ... but mainly you are missing real world experience.

[@paulcastledine685]

I'm just wondering what's the point of this video .

[@robertbordevik5072]

Worst song In Christmas history. It’s horrible.

[@Hubo484]

Bad take

[@frv1995]

I disagree