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around 16 kHz; the cutting heads generally gave up around 8 kHz. (Some small labels used carbon microphones, also omnis. I have no information about what their frequency responses might have been, but they were probably poor.) Balance was set by positioning the musicians and the mic in the room; the drums were typically set on a riser at the rear of the group. If the producer wanted the drums more prominent in the mix, he’d tell the drummer to play harder. This was, and is, a remarkably effective recording technique—if the engineer knows how to place the single mic (or, these days, a stereo pair using one of the standard single-point stereo techniques such as ORTF, XY or M/S) and if the musicians know how to play together and balance themselves.

and challenging music. A lot of those small labels hired Rudy Van Gelder to engineer their records. Van Gelder began recording in his parents’ home in Hackensack, NJ when he was a teenager; when he reached adulthood he built a larger studio with similarly excellent acoustics in Englewood Cliffs, NJ. He’s notoriously closemouthed about his techniques, refusing to discuss mic choice and placement or allow photographs to be taken during sessions he engineers. In the absence of information from the source, we have to listen. (Radical concept!) My ears suggest to me that Van Gelder has always miked drums using a single overhead condenser mic, probably a large-diaphragm Neumann U 47 or, perhaps, a small-diaphragm KM 54. I don’t hear a separate mic on the kick; the coherence of the sound suggests 1940s—The Big Bands the use of a single microphone for the drumkit. Jump forward to the time just after World War II, when The drums aren’t entirely recorded with that one mic, the Big Band was still dominant in popular music (though though; one of the hallmarks of a Van Gelder session is lots other styles were beginning to of leakage—drums into the horn pop out of the woodwork, like What’s the Problem? mics, horns in the drum mic. Drums have been the foundation of popular music Never enough to create phase jump blues and western swing). We have the gift of an interview ever since the modern trap kit was developed in the problems and comb filtering, but with the late Bill Putnam, whose 1910s. Recording them has always been a chal- enough to create the marvelous Universal Audio studio in lenge, since drums have: sense of space that marks his ~ a broad frequency range that can cover almost recordings—yes, even the early Chicago (and later studios on the West Coast) helped create mod- the entire audible spectrum; ones in mono. You don’t think a ~ wide dynamic range, from the quiet tizz of the hi- mono recording can have a sense ern recording and music. (He also designed pioneering gear like the hat to the power of the kick and snare, not to mention of space? Listen to one made by LA-2A and 1176 compressors.) In a good spine-tingling cymbal crash; Van Gelder. ~ sharp attack transients, and low-frequency hits a 1989 interview published in the So what is his secret? My own Journal of the Audio Engineering which, in the vinyl days, could make a tone-arm fly feeling is that the secret of Rudy Society he talks about recording a off the record if improperly recorded and cut. Van Gelder’s recordings is Rudy Big Band, Guy Lombardo & his Van Gelder. He knows how he Orchestra, in 1946. wants the recording to sound, and he knows the room and By this time multi-miking was routine in popular record- his gear so well (after decades of use) that he can place the ing. Putnam’s studios had the capacity for combining up to musicians and mics in just the right places, with carefully 12 mics, and for a Big Band recording he’d mike individual controlled leakage, to get the sound he hears in his head. sections—but still not drums. In the interview, he discusses And that goes double for drums. miking a brass section (4 players), with the drums right Could you get that sound? You’re not Rudy Van Gelder, behind the brass players and picked up on their microphone. and you probably don’t have a U 47 available (neither do That mic was an RCA 44BX ribbon; these were bidirection- I), but several currently-available Microtech Gefell mics al, and, operated into the mic preamps of the day, they had a use the same M7 capsule, and the more expensive ones flat frequency response up to about 12 kHz, above which they have tubed U 47-style electronics. If you have a large, highrolled off. Those mic preamps had fairly high input imped- ceilinged room with really good acoustics, and you know ances, which suit classic ribbons well; see Scott Dorsey’s those acoustics intimately from years of working there, review of the AEA mic preamp give it a try. Move instruments (March 2007) and my own review and people around as needed; of the Benchmark MPA1 preamp make sure there’s no comb filter(October 2009) for discussion of ing, then start the recorder and how loading affects ribbon mics. the musicians. You’ll wind up with your sound, not his—but it 1950s—Rudy Van Gelder’s Jazz could sound exquisite. Beginning in the early 1950s 1950s—2120 S. Michigan Ave. Rudy Van Gelder made some of the finest jazz recordings in histoIf you’re a fan of Chicago ry. It was a fertile time in modern blues or early rock’n’roll you jazz; after the Bebop explosion of know that address; it housed the the 1940s, the music brought South Side offices and studios of forth some of its greatest players Chess Records, where some of in a myriad of styles (hard bop, the most influential recordings post-bop, cool, third stream, etc. in history were made. From Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians in Port etc.). They recorded for small Muddy Waters and Little Walter Stanley, London, Ontario before leaving for Cleveland labels like Blue Note, Prestige to Chuck Berry, the great musiPhoto courtesy free-classic-music.com and Savoy, and created exciting cians who came up from the
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Recording - January 2012

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