Drums Through the Decades: the 1950s with Elvis Presley, Ray Charles & More

[@1BigBucks1]

Props to Jess who can play literally every style flawlessly

[@alexwilliams2756]

This is gonna be a crazy good series guys

[@simonbergvall7151]

Very good on the engineering side of things but I have to comment on the drum sizes that you mentioned in the beginning. 18” bass drums wasn’t really produced and used until the early to mid 60’s and 10” toms wasn’t really produced until late 70’s. The most common big band and jazz kits from the 40’s and 50’s was bigger drums like 22”-26” bass drums with normally 13” rack toms and 16” floor toms. Smaller kits with 20”, 12” and 14” got more popular in the 60’s

[@BennyTheBusker]

Yes, that’s generally true. I was particularly surprised they used a 14” floor tom instead of the 16” that was common in the 50s and 60s on 4-drum kits.

[@Rocknrolldaddy81-xy8ur]

Your amazing drum room’s reverb is a big part of why your tone is so good.

[@RocknJazzer]

They said they added that reverb w/ UAD chamber plugin, the room itself is pretty dry

[@greyculture9112]

Aside from everything else, which is great, the title sequence is spot on. Whoever animated that did a great job.

[@SinnetSongs]

Man alive I love these drum sounds

[@gasperbarone]

So that’s where Ringo got it from!

[@slicksnewonenow]

A lot of Ringo's influence HAD TO BE from Mr. Milt Turner... Think "What'd I Say" by Ray Charles. That's a Moroccan style rhythm... So infectious!

[@thesoulboy7976]

Art Blakey, years before Ray’s recording. Blakey was approximating Afro-Cuban rhythms and applying them to drum set by the early 1950s.

[@2010georgian1]

What'd I Say drum beat is just amazing...

[@thesoulboy7976]

That lick is an adaptation from some of Art Blakey’s drumming from years earlier. Afro-Cuban rhythms applied to the drum set. As they have said in the video, most of the drummers back then were jazz drummers, as rock’n’roll hadn’t been “invented” yet.

[@MaPa60]

Love this series, well done! My 50s fave sound is definitely the slapback sounds on Elvis’ 50s records.

[@StandbyCymbalist]

I’d love to know more about recording Blues in the 40s and 50s

[@jeshkam]

This is so incredibly interesting. Great work. Thanks for your immense effort, Jessica & Noam. BTW can't wait for the 1980s Hugh Padgham drums. 🙂

[@rustygardhouse7895]

Like this series. Great insight into how drums sound so different

[@strickland306]

I'm 37 seconds in and I already know this is gonna be fantastic. Thanks!

[@usagi2988]

This is amazing... could be its own full video like the guitar pedal effects documentary.

[@swansonjoe7121]

Man I miss the 50s Drum sound was so nice

[@alexstewart839]

Great video! I knew some, but not all, of this information and you guys did a good job of conveying it in a way that's easy to follow. I'm very excited for this series.

[@patrikprommer3762]

Please do more!!! This is f*cking awesome!

[@wyrlismike]

i got several old tube compressors from the 50s, one even has instructions in the manual for blowing the unit up in case you get captured by an enemy army and you dont want them to get their hands on it! think it may have been the collins 26w not sure which one it was.

[@niekdriesschen3376]

I believe the slap echo was an ''happy accident''. They'd have a 5 channel mixer, going to a mono ampex recorder. the recorder would go back into that mixer, on channel 5, to be able to listen back to the recording. Once decided to do another take, and the engineer probably ''forgot'' to turn off channel 5, the return of the tape machine, feeding back the delay of the machine back into the mixer, and there you have that sound, exactly like the 50's elvis slap echo. If you listen closely to those early recordings, the slap is not just on the vocal mic, it sounds a bit like that because the vocals are the loudest, but it's on the whole thing. Also makes more sense because aux-outputs were not invented yet, too, to send a separate channel somewhere. I don't have evidence, but I believe that's how it went down. When you hook stuff up that way you automaticly get these sort of happy accidents. But really cool video and really accurate cool vibey sounds..!!

[@Ptrhairis]

These videos are awesome, thanks for making them!

[@HenkBok]

Really great video, guys! 😊

[@MattLeGroulx]

Love this, great idea for a series!

[@rinosphere]

this is great! Awesome sound. And: the beauty of limits.

[@Positive_Tea]

Great stuff 👍

[@JoanatanRichard]

That's wonderful thing!!

[@SeemoreDunkan]

Love these videos!! If you'll show plugin settings they'll be even better :)

[@BuffaloBeatle]

Next episode has to have mention of Bobby Elliott, so underrated

[@andrewpappas9311]

Yeah, his playing with The Hollies was great

[@Whiffofficial]

Awesome!

[@handssmelloh9173]

Forgive me if you've already done it but it'd be so cool if you did the drum sound to Amen Brother by the Winstons.

[@m.o.n.d.e.g.r.e.e.n]

maybe im inpercepctive but ive never seen a headphone mixer with a talkback mic on it. great innovation

[@56spider]

It says SWEET RIDE clearly on the cymbal (is it what we're hearing?) Is that a 20" K SWEET RIDE pictured? maybe a 21" ?

[@canalphillveras]

❤

[@paulhazel]

Great idea for a series, and generally very well done. But perhaps the better quality on the Ray Charles track might be down to mics. By the late 50s U47s (say, as an obvious example) would have been widely available.

[@thesoulboy7976]

Yep. And the Atlantic recording studio was much smaller than RCA was using with Elvis. Tom Dowd used to tie a microphone inside some foam and stuff it under the bridge of Charles Mingus’s double-bass.

[@tophergonzales6778]

mic selections are at 8:15

[@jojorabin]

Hey, is it possible to recreate drum sound U2 - Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car from Zooropa Album?

[@GloveBunniesVideos]

Is there any beat that Jessica can't do?

[@jamisondonald384]

I can has samples?

[@PhatLvis]

Technology *IMPROVED, rather than "increased."

[@slicksnewonenow]

As we all should know, the human ear only has SO MUCH ability to hear certain nuances.... The recording techniques up until the mid Seventies pretty much cover the spectrum of our ear's ability. Most everything after that is over engineering. Besides... Just listen to almost any Remastered classic recording... They seemed ruined... And not as PERFECT as the original.

[@planej6315]

The new remasters are pretty good imo, the 2009 remasters with the terrible hard panning are definitely worse than some of the mono originals. The 2022 remaster of Revolver is pretty punchy and sounds awesome to me.

[@glebinno5508]

Great job guy’s 🫡 It was so interesting 🤝

[@chriskon6229]

Awesome!