Unusual drum placement in old quad mixes

[sjcorne]

Jeff Beck Group's S/T is really interesting: tracks 4-6 and 9 have the drums in stereo isolated in the rears, while tracks 1-3 and 7-8 have them discrete in stereo across the fronts.

This one continues to baffle me. It's literally almost a 50/50 split: half the songs have the drum kit in stereo up front, the other half have it in the rear.

I looked at all the other Jeff Beck quads to compare- Wired and Blow By Blow were done later on and as such are a bit more polished/logical with the drums up front in stereo (though curiously neither has a quad remix credit). Rough & Ready and Beck, Bogert & Appice generally have them up front, but some tracks have certain elements of the kit in the rears (cymbals, overheard, etc).

I wonder if the engineer (Don Young did this one I think?) was afraid of making it a "set it & forget it" mix and wanted to switch things up midway, keep the listener engaged?

I actually like it when the instruments move around from song to song in a surround mix. A lot of people highly regard those Steely Dan/Donald Fagen mixes by ES, but I think they're really not his best work because they're kinda...predictable. Every track has horns and backing vocals in the rears. I think his best mixes are the ones that get wacky and switch things up on a track-by-track basis, like Van Morrison's Moondance or even the recent Guns 'n' Roses.

 

[key_wiz]

I don’t have a problem with drums across the rears. In fact, I rather like it since, as a musician, “drums behind me” is what I’m most used to hearing.

But drums all in one channel bothers me a lot for two reasons:

1). It does a huge disservice to the concept of “surround”. Drums spread across even a stereo mix does so much to “open” a mix and make it come alive. Who wants to hear a drummer go “around” the kit and not hear it move from side to side?

2). A function of #1, really, but pushing all the drums to one side just makes the entire mix sound thinner. It’s never as full (to my ears) as it should be regardless of how active the rest of the surround mix is.

 

[JediJoker]

But drums all in one channel bothers me a lot for two reasons:

1). It does a huge disservice to the concept of “surround”. Drums spread across even a stereo mix does so much to “open” a mix and make it come alive. Who wants to hear a drummer go “around” the kit and not hear it move from side to side?

2). A function of #1, really, but pushing all the drums to one side just makes the entire mix sound thinner. It’s never as full (to my ears) as it should be regardless of how active the rest of the surround mix is.

I agree with you in theory, but in practice, I really enjoyed the quad mix of Ain’t Nothin’ Stoppin’ Us Now and didn’t find it thin or distracting.

 

[sjcorne]

I'm continuing to go through my quad files:

• Jim Croce's quads (I have the 3 albums on Q8, I assume the GH uses the same mixes?)- the drums are usually in left rear
• Garfunkel's Breakaway is mixed extremely similar to Simon's Still Crazy- every track has a diagonally-panned instrument, including percussive elements
• Billy Joel's quads
  • Piano Man- "Travelin' Prayer", the title track, and "If I Only Had The Words (To Tell You)" have the drums in the rears
  • Streetlife Serenade- "Root Beer Rag" and "The Mexican Connection" have the drums/percussion in stereo in the rears
  • Turnstiles (not sure if it's really fair to judge this one as it's only SQ)- "All You Wanna Do Is Dance" definitely has some percussive elements in the rears
• Billy Paul's 360 Degrees- drums are locked in right rear throughout the entire album
• Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline- another real four-corner affair, most if not all tracks have drums right rear
• Carpenters' Now & Then- drums/percussion elements always right rear
• Best Of The Doors- All tracks have the drums in the rears, with the exception of the 4-track derived songs from the first album ("Soul Kitchen", "Take It As It Comes", "Light My Fire") and the live track ("Who Do You Love")

I'm noticing a new trend of drums locked to right rear along with other instruments in each corner, but not necessarily bass left rear.

It's really fun going through these old quads and taking note of the technical aspects of the mixes. Also, I appreciate the growing interest in this thread! I thought it might just be me and @fredblue

 

[M-D-Z]

I'm loving this thread. And I hope you won't take offense, @sjcorne, if I say that we need more of the sort of careful, analytical listening that's behind this sort of geekiness. (If I had more time and ambition, I would be one of those geeks!)

In fact, somebody, not necessarily you, should build a searchable, sortable online database that tracks this kind of thing for all of the instruments (and vocals) in a given surround mix. And then some clever programmer could write a bit of software that takes the data from a given album and, at the press of a button, generates a 2-D visual surround map of that album. (Maybe even track by track!) Anybody here have the chops for this?

As a musician, I've always dreamed that somewhere, sitting in a vault, all of my favorite heros' original studio music source masters were safely stored on 16, 24, 32 (or more) track tapes or files in their most perfect and highest possible resolution and condition, just waiting to be made available to me or anybody in an easily retrieved discrete chain of free access.

Then, I could listen to each musician playing their original part in any combination and learn how it was done.
I could also re-arrange everything to my taste for my listening pleasure.

As a drummer, I believe the rythym section carries the whole piece like a solid foundation, and therefore the bass, rhythm guitar and drums should be spread naturally throughout the sound field, and NOT each separately shuttled off into a corner.

For me, I like the kick to be predominantly on the floor and all around, everyone taps their feet or dances to the kick drum, then with the snare front and center, hihat slightly left, floor toms more to the right... for those bombs, ride should be high center right, crash above the floortoms, bass guitar should be inescapably locked in balanced acoustic counterpoint and woven deeply into the drum soundfeild for a rock solid foundation.
The singers, lead guitars and other soloists can hang spatially distinct from the rhythm section, but all groups depend upon an ability to hear what the drummer and bass player are doing at all times, and I think it is critical to deliver that level of truth and realism to the audience.

One optional difference I see is that the drummer's L&R can be swapped because everyone else hears the Hihat and floor-toms on the reversed side from the drummer who sits facing out toward the audience.

I also think it is great when you can hear for example the reflected echoes (occurring after snare rim shots) bouncing milliseconds later off the room to give the impression of space.
Spatial Psychoacoustics can and should play a MAJOR role!

When you listen to Steve Gadd's latest jazz release, also Billy Cobham's Drum n'Voice Vols 1-4, you can easily hear how a lead drummer with expansive top tear recording experience can arrange the sound in each channel (be it stereo or quad) to build a cohesive sound with superb musical clarity.

 

[sjcorne]

In fact, somebody, not necessarily you, should build a searchable, sortable online database that tracks this kind of thing for all of the instruments (and vocals) in a given surround mix. And then some clever programmer could write a bit of software that takes the data from a given album and, at the press of a button, generates a 2-D visual surround map of that album. (Maybe even track by track!) Anybody here have the chops for this?

That's a cool idea- It won't tell you what instruments are where, but the Foobar waveform monitor plugin is incredibly handy. It generates a waveform for the track you're playing in real time, showing just how discrete a mix really is and it sometimes can reveal channel imbalances or swaps visually. Looking at a waveform doesn't give you the whole picture, but based on the look of the wave you can sort of get an idea of where the drums are.

This is the Doors' "Hello I Love You" quad mix from The Singles Blu-Ray. You can see the rear channels have lots of amplitude spikes- this is indicative of percussive activity. Sure enough the drums are only in the rears in this track.

Here's Sly & The Family Stone's "You Can Make It If You Try" from the AF SACD. Visually you can see the percussion track is right rear because it has the most volume and those spikes close together.

On the other hand, this is Poco's "Angel" from the D-V Seven SACD. You can clearly see the drums in the front with different information in each rear speaker (in this case acoustic guitar). A lot of Columbia quads have this look- the front channels are percussive and ALWAYS at equal volume to support the phantom center image, and the rears usually look different, sometimes going silent and then spiking back in.

Diagonal placement is harder to see in the waveforms. This is Paul Simon's "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover" from the Still Crazy Q8. You can see that FL and RR sort of match with percussive activity.

Maybe "reading waveforms" could be it's own thread altogether? I know some despise them and think they detract from the music, while others like me love 'em!

 

[key_wiz]

I agree with you in theory, but in practice, I really enjoyed the quad mix of Ain’t Nothin’ Stoppin’ Us Now and didn’t find it thin or distracting.

I don’t know if I find it distracting, but yeah—-thin is the word I would use. I need drums on both sides of my head! The kick is going to be in the subs for the most part, so that sound will fill the room regardless with most systems but I think the snare should be dead-center on a rock-pop recording. And if some of the toms, cymbals and other percussion are going to be on one side, then some others should be on the other side.

The purpose of “surround” is to SURROUND us with music!

I can understand if it’s a older recording where all the drums may have been recorded to a single track, but by 1976, I seriously doubt this album was recorded that way. They probably used at least 4 tracks to record the drums and then mixed them all down to one?

Well, that’s one choice, I suppose.

 

[M-D-Z]

I don’t have a problem with drums across the rears. In fact, I rather like it since, as a musician, “drums behind me” is what I’m most used to hearing.

But drums all in one channel bothers me a lot for two reasons:

1). It does a huge disservice to the concept of “surround”. Drums spread across even a stereo mix does so much to “open” a mix and make it come alive. Who wants to hear a drummer go “around” the kit and not hear it move from side to side?

2). A function of #1, really, but pushing all the drums to one side just makes the entire mix sound thinner. It’s never as full (to my ears) as it should be regardless of how active the rest of the surround mix is.

There is one time I actually really love to hear a drummer on a recording all piled up into mostly one side... ...

And that's only when the other drummer is piled up on the opposite side and they are playing stylistically complementary to each other in and out of synchronized musical bliss!!!

 

[fredblue]

(after the leaked info over at the SHF and in anticipation of potential upcoming Charlie Rich stuff from DV) I was playing some of his old SQ records and noticed there's some Charlie Rich Quad stuff with bass in rear left and drums in rear right including the track "Behind Closed Doors".. very nice!

 

[sjcorne]

(after the leaked info over at the SHF and in anticipation of potential upcoming Charlie Rich stuff from DV) I was playing some of his old SQ records and noticed there's some Charlie Rich Quad stuff with bass in rear left and drums in rear right including the track "Behind Closed Doors".. very nice!

Nice work! I'll add it to the list.

I've noticed some rear drum action in Carly Simon's "Anticipation" (from The Best Of Carly Simon) and "Another Door" from her debut album.

Joni Mitchell's Court & Spark has the "Mahavishu-style" mix with the drums in wide stereo in the rears.

 

[fredblue]

Nice work! I'll add it to the list.

I've noticed some rear drum action in Carly Simon's "Anticipation" (from The Best Of Carly Simon) and "Another Door" from her debut album.

Joni Mitchell's Court & Spark has the "Mahavishu-style" mix with the drums in wide stereo in the rears.

you're welcome
while i've heard all the Carly's & both Joni's, i think I ought to leave the WEA Quad mix placement research to you.

really i'm not overly familiar with the mixes of many of them and not inclined to revisit many of them either, unless they are reissued on a modern format.. tbh i'm nowhere near as much a fan of the mixes as I am of the CBS Quad mixes, which to me are on the whole by far the most interesting, exciting and engaging musically.

there are exceptions of course, I have enjoyed a number of excellent WEA Quads incl the Doobies, AWB, Bette Midler, the James Taylor's, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple Stormbringer, Robert Mason/Stardrive, Gil Evans' "Svengali", Donny Hathaway, etc.. and when the WEA's are good they are very very good but a number just haven't consistently grabbed me as Quadraphonically as the majority of CBS mixes.

 

[sjcorne]

really i'm not overly familiar with the mixes of many of them and not inclined to revisit many of them either, unless they are reissued on a modern format.. tbh i'm nowhere near as much a fan of the mixes as I am of the CBS Quad mixes, which to me are on the whole by far the most interesting, exciting and engaging musically.

Oh I agree, the Columbia's are definitely my favorites followed by Elektra/Asylum- I LOVE the two Eagles albums, the Doors, the Jackson Browne album, etc. I'm actually also a big fan of the some of the ABC/GRT's which I think usually get a mixed reception around here (maybe because of all channel swaps ). I think I've heard a pretty solid chunk of all the quad out there, and ultimately I found that each label put out some great mixes and some lousy ones, though IMO Columbia put out a hell of a lot of winners!

A lot of people think CBS adopting SQ led to the failure of quad and while it's not really untrue, I appreciate it for forcing their engineers to push the boundaries and go really experimental with their quad mixes. Without SQ we probably wouldn't have all these extremely dry 4-corner mixes with individual guitars in the rear speakers or an entire drum kit in one rear speaker.

 

[sjcorne]

Believe it or not I am still working on this- been paying attention to the drum placement as I've been recording in my latest batch of Q8s:

• The Raiders' Indian Reservation generally features drums in the rears, with some dramatic rolls between the rears on the title track. This is definitely one of the best mixes out of that early series of gold-bordered SQ discs from Columbia.
• Think I've posted about it before, but Aerosmith's Toys In The Attic has got to be one of the weirdest Columbia quads I've heard to date. I could honestly do an entire thread on this one. It is very discrete, but breaks nearly every rule of mixing for SQ (likely because all the Aerosmith quads were done by their own engineer, Jay Messina, instead of one of Columbia's in-house guys):
  • It's unusually wet-sounding, which is strange because most Columbia quads are generally dried out in comparison to the stereo so the SQ encode/decode has more separation)
  • Reverbs from the front can be heard in the rear and vice versa, and there's often little coming from the rears except the most subtle percussive bits, like triangle or cowbell
  • It's not all the different than the 5.1 mix (which was also done by Messina)- which begs the question of why they didn't just use his old mix instead of commissioning an entirely new one.
• Lee Michaels' Nice Day For Something has rear drums in some tracks, others have elements of the drum kit spread around to all 4. Still working on that one, more info to come.

 

[fredblue]

do you have the "Swans Against The Sun" Q8, sjc?

 

[sjcorne]

do you have the "Swans Against The Sun" Q8, sjc?

Never heard of that one...

 

[fredblue]

Never heard of that one...

a Michael Martin Murphey album from 1975 which got a CBS Quad mix, released on SQ & Q8.

https://www.discogs.com/Michael-Murphey-Swans-Against-The-Sun/release/7301184

i mentioned it because i remembered it being an unusual mix (by Dick Bogert & Warren Vincent) but don't recall the details now. i'll revisit it when i get a chance and report back.

 

[sjcorne]

Updated List:

 

[sjcorne]

So looking at this chronologically, it seems the "Drums RR, Bass LR" style was popular towards the beginning of the CBS quad program, as they were working with titles that were recorded 8-track, (Sly, Super Session, etc). Then it comes back with a vengeance in 1976/77 as the program was winding down.

It's also worth noting that Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline quad, despite being released in 1974, was actually done years earlier and delayed, which would explain why the mix fits in better with those earlier Columbia quads from '71 or '72 than the more sophisticated mixes done in '74 or '75.

 

[fredblue]

please can you add;

Michael Murphey "Swans Against The Sun"

to the list
as a Bass LR/Drums RR mix?

many thanks!!

 

[sjcorne]

Resorted in chronological order: