Plastic Drum Ramp-Up in "In THe Air Tonight"

[Mobbenfuhrer]

Re : Phil Collins' "Something In The Air Tonight" (which incidentally I heard was banned from the British airwaves during the Falklands War ... go figure!).

Halfway through the song there's this nifty clash of drums that raises the tempo.

I have heard, not knowing anything about making music, that the drums are synthesised, ie not real drums at all.

My question to yers all is, do you think this makes the moment cheesy, or is it still 'pretty darn grouse'?

Polls are open.

[mantis]

Originally posted by Mobbenfuhrer
Re : Phil Collins' "Something In The Air Tonight" (which incidentally I heard was banned from the British airwaves during the Falklands War ... go figure!).

Halfway through the song there's this nifty clash of drums that raises the tempo.

I have heard, not knowing anything about making music, that the drums are synthesised, ie not real drums at all.

My question to yers all is, do you think this makes the moment cheesy, or is it still 'pretty darn grouse'?

Polls are open.

I voted "still pretty darn grouse", I always crank the volume up, just before that magnificent rise in drum levels. :D

[Docker_Brat]

Phil Collins is like aural diarrhea.

Never understood the appeal of that song. Cant stand it.. except for that one line "if you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand".

[Mobbenfuhrer]

Geeze DB, I can understand that song being a take or leave, especially with its overplayededness, but Phil Collins overall?

Knowledgeable that I may be compared to the bloke from American Psycho, I will nevertheless take a moment to say that some of his earlier music was pretty good, but many only see "I Can't Dance"ish stuff and pigeonhole him.

Can you honestly say that you think "That's All" is crap? What about "Mama"?

[lioness]

I agree with DB, I dislike the song AND Phil Collins. :) The only song I can stand is 'Against All Odds'.

Just on the topic of drums though, I prefer real drumming to 'fake'.

[Katthawk]

Gotta disagree. This song was the one playing when I was on a first date with a bloke. Hmmm.

I have no idea why, I don't like Phil otherwise anymore but 'that song' just has memories. Sad really. stupid more like.

I am no muso though so I just like what my ears tell me to like.

That loud drum crash is a bit of a bad intro to the words more like.

Actually, that's a good thread topic. Do the words mean more than the music? I digress as usual. :D

[Docker_Brat]

Originally posted by Mobbenfuhrer
Geeze DB, I can understand that song being a take or leave, especially with its overplayededness, but Phil Collins overall?

Knowledgeable that I may be compared to the bloke from American Psycho, I will nevertheless take a moment to say that some of his earlier music was pretty good, but many only see "I Can't Dance"ish stuff and pigeonhole him.

Can you honestly say that you think "That's All" is crap? What about "Mama"?

I'd rate some of the early Genisis stuff but as a solo artist, I can't stand him..

Someone famous once described him as a 'singing social worker', pretty good assesment of his songs. I am aware he does more than that 'another day in paradise' type crap but he just grates on my nerves.

Like you think Clerks is 'swill', I feel the same about Phil Collins. Vive le difference

[Mobbenfuhrer]

Originally posted by Docker_Brat
I'd rate some of the early Genisis stuff but as a solo artist, I can't stand him..

Someone famous once described him as a 'singing social worker', pretty good assesment of his songs. I am aware he does more than that 'another day in paradise' type crap but he just grates on my nerves.

Like you think Clerks is 'swill', I feel the same about Phil Collins. Vive le difference

Fair enough. In truth I don't particularly like Phil Collins much at all, although I do love "That's All". I just don't mind him as all ... although of course not fluff like paradise!

[Mooster7]

Phil Collins sux ass.

I hate fake drums. Hate it even worse when they are sampled off a track that's already been cut e.g. rappers swiping John Bonham chops directly off a Led Zeppelin record.

That said, I just bought a drum machine. Mostly for practice, songwriting, demos, and sending blues & jazz pieces to friends and so forth.

Any 'real' recording should be done with a real drummer.

Peace,

[Stealth bomber]

Ah "In the Air Tonight". One of those songs that instantly makes you think of unhip loser guys wearing bad print shirts in pubs playing billiards trying to "air drum" to those fills.

Those particular drum fills are real drums. They sound fake because they are heavily processed, but they are real. It's basically gated reverb, which means a hell of a lot of reverb (think "gymnasium") but the decay of the reverb gets cut off once it quiets down beyond a certain noise threshold.

The main rhythm track, up to that point, is definitely fake though - the dinky boopBOOPboopBOOP thing running through the rest of the tune sounds suspiciously like the Roland TR-808 that Phil was particularly fond of using on ballads.

Phil Collins pretty much invented that cheesy cannon-like drum sound of the 80s. He was playing drums on a Peter Gabriel album and was messing around with processors before coming up with that sound.

I've always thought Phil was a terrific drummer with Genesis, although I think his solo material is, in a word, bland. Genesis went from being ultra-progressive to adult-contemporary dentist office music in the span of 10 years.

For whatever reason, Phil decided he was going to start writing ballads and stop playing drums, using his trusty Roland 808 instead.

There are few things that puzzle me more than when bands or artists who have perfectly good drummers start using machines (and later on, sequences and loops). I remember buying Queen's "Hot Space" album and getting all ticked off when I heard the canned drumming on the first few songs.

The Roland TR-808, and its ugly cousin the TR-909, have to be about the worst sounding drum machines ever created. I don't know why they were (are) so popular. The "cymbals" sound like crickets. At least the Linn Drum machines of the same era sounded reasonably authentic.

Linn Drums were the first drum machines to use sampled sounds and were so popular that they are now considered an 80s cliche. Icehouse's "Great Southern Land" is a good example of a Linn Drum track. Prince used it on everything.

And then there were the Simmons pads. For anyone who has seen hundreds of 80s videos and wondered what those plastic hexagonal-shaped things were that sort of looked like drums - those were Simmons pads.

Drum machines are probably not used all that often anymore. Computers and sequencers and loops are what I would guess are responsible for more drum tracks than anything else these days.

Most hip-hop drum loops come from James Brown and Sly & The Family Stone records. I think there is one James Brown song where everything but the drums cut out for four bars. That one segment has appeared on other records about 200 times.

The beginning of Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks" is another popular one. This one often gets sped up, I have noticed.

I, being a human drummer, pretty much have a philosophical opposition to all of this stuff. Not just because it makes me obsolete in many musical circles, but I find it cold and soulless.

I'll never be moved by most music recorded with fake drums and other instruments, just because I know it is (and I can tell probably 99% of the time).

I guess that I've come to accept it, for no other reason than the fact that it won't ever go away. I think if you asked most people what they thought, they wouldn't really notice or care that much how songs are recorded and produced.

I imagine a lot of people still think that music they hear on radio is simply a recording of a live performance. They probably have no concept of multitracking and Pro-Tools and Auto-tune and drum machines and looping and all this stuff.

I think that all most people care about is whether a song is good or not. If they like it, they like it.

The thrill for me in listening to music is knowing it can be performed in real time, by human beings.

[Mooster7]

:D

Yeah, Stealth I knew you'd come out that way. I agree completely. A band is all about what it can do live.

Right at the moment, I don't have a drummer, and I like to noodle around in my living room. So I bought one of these:

http://www.zzounds.com/media/DR-3_lg-c4290eebb2eb28020a1968e687082362.jpg

It's pretty cool. Completely programable. It also has 100 presets, and you can set the tempo to anything you want. It sounds best to mic it coming out of a bass amp. With my home recording stuff (not sophisticated at all, really) I can lay almost any drum track I want. Then come back and put some bass over that. Then follow on with a couple of guitar tracks. It's a good time, and like I said - more of a writing or demo tool.

I recommend it to home noodlers, but not to people wanting to release a professional recording. Then, you need a drummer....

Peace,