- Joined
- Aug 14, 2018
- Messages
- 2,778
- Likes
- 8,164
Speaking of Led Zeppelin, John Bonham was famous for his huge bass drum sound. He played what were larger than usual kick drums for that era, with less muffling than normal, often recorded in highly reverberant rooms. You could clearly hear the big, open drum, yet there was a lack of warmth and deep bass. I guess it illustrates that the cues that make a drum sound large are not necessarily the lowest tones but more the character of the harmonics, sustain, and reverberation.
Absolutely. Jimmy Page and Glyn Johns certainly didn't invent distant miking, but nevertheless a big part of Bonham's recorded sound was that they used multiple mics to record his kit, including some at different distances, to catch some reflected sound and ambiance. And of course there's the famous intro to When the Levee Breaks, recorded in a highly ambient stairwell in Headley Grange (enhanced with reverb during mixing, contrary to legend, but still, lots of ambience in the original recording).
And that intro to Levee is perhaps the best example of what you're taking about - iconic, sounds enormous, and yet it's more or less totally lacking in truly deep bass notes from that kick - as is almost all of Zep IV and most of their other albums. The only one that comes to mind where I hear some moments of real lowest-octave energy is Zep II, where there are some prominent sub-50Hz rumblings during the theramin freakout section of Whole Lotta Love.
Relatedly, my understanding is that concert PA systems of the 1970s, like the ones Zep used, didn't have subwoofers and didn't reliably produce high SPLs in the bottom octave - so they just turned up the whole system even louder to help create the impact; apparently it's one reason (aside from general rock and roll excess) that The Who, Zeppelin, and other bands played so incredibly loud in that era. This lack of deep bass is certainly borne out in the Song Remains the Same and How the West Was Won releases, which document live Zep performances from 1973 and 1972, respectively.
An instructive contrast is the 2012 Celebration Day concert album, a recording of Zep's one-off 2007 reunion show with Jason Bonham on drums. Modern mics, modern PA, subwoofers out the wazoo - and the bass fundamentals on that recording, particularly the kick drum, are completely unlike any other Zeppelin recording, live or studio. The impact is an order of magnitude greater. Of course I'm sure all kinds of digital processing was done during mixing and mastering, and they might have punched up the kick drum's fundamental with EQ. But I highly doubt they used any fancy processing to synthesize bass fundamentals what were not already present on the recording.
It's quite fun to listen to, a great alternative live Zep sound to have available, and a very good performance by all four members - and yet, it doesn't quite sound like Led Zeppelin, and I don't think it's because of Jason - I think the sonic character is just different because of the extra low bass, for better and for worse. If you listen to Kashmir from Celebration Day and then from Knebworth 1979 (available on the 2003 Led Zeppelin DVD), the drums sound totally different, even though John and Jason Bonham are playing very similar parts. With John on the 1979 recording, though, the excitement and drama is all in the snares and cymbals, while with Jason it's almost all in the kick and snares - the cymbals on the Celebration Day version actually sound almost missing at times because the sonic character of the drums is so much more tilted towards the mids and lows than one would be used to from listening to live Zep recorded in the '70s.
Last edited: