Portishead Drums..

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trjeam

trjeam

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I've been listening to a lot of Portishead lately. Stuff like "Numb", "Strangers" ext.. and I've noticed that their drums bang.

They sound so thick, and I was wondering if anyone could help me out as to how I could get drums that sound like this..

I just need some guidance. Thanks for any help.
 
perhaps you could make enough money mowing lawns to hire their drummer for a couple sessions

seriously though,
you could do a little research to find out exactly what drums they use, and try something similar. or you could just do a little sampling.
 
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The techniques they used on some of their material (especially on Dummy) were quite odd (aka brilliant :)). They would record each of the tracks and then have them mastered to records. The records were then mixed backed together off of turntables into a multitrack reality. This was not only for drums but, also vocals etc. I am not sure of the method for recording the initial tracks but...

One way of accomplishing a simlar feel to the sound is to record your sounds to analog multitrack recorder using multiple tracks for the same signal the tweaking each of the individual tracks and "ping-pong" them to other tracks. And then do it again and again tweaking each of the tracks until you get one drum track to dump into a sampler DAW etc that fits the mood you are looking for...

I read an interview with Geoff where he outlined some of his approach to recording Dummy and it was one of the single most ispirational interviews i ever read.

At the time my "studio" consisted of a yamaha tx16w sampler (using a casio cz-1000 if memory is correct as controller) and an analog 8-track recording console (yamaha mt8x). I borrowed my brothers Boss dr-5 druim machine for basic sounds and pattern programming and would spend hours recording to tape and then sampling from tape only to record back to tape. It was amazing what replaying an analog cassete over and over would do to the sound of even basic drum sounds.

Another trick from the same interview is to take your drum track and reverse it. Then apply reverb and other effects to the reversed audio and the flip it back around.

I love the grittiness of the '90s Bristol trip-hop sound and have never been able to accomplish anything close without at least some analog recording in the process. But, that is just me i am sure others have differet experiences.
 
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I'd heard that one of the portishead tricks for drums was to take a breakbeat and to have it pitched down to half speed.
 
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I know someone who recorded portishead several times and he said that one of the things they always seemed to want to do was take their whole kit into a tiny little cupboard type room, not usually set up for recording. This created some very interesting ambience on the kits which you can definitely hear on some of the tracks.
 
sample off old records.
i was under the impression that "dummy" made with mostly all sampled breaks.
then when it came time to make "portishead" geoff barrow was tired of breaks, but wanted to retain that dirty retro sound. hence came the complicated routines of recording, smpling rerecording etc.

http://kotinetti.suomi.net/heikki.hietala/Interviews/Geoff Untitled.htm

slowing down breaks with give you a good dirty sound, for sure.
and check the over compressed drums on many track.
 
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ehcsztein said:
The techniques they used on some of their material (especially on Dummy) were quite odd (aka brilliant :)). They would record each of the tracks and then have them mastered to records. The records were then mixed backed together off of turntables into a multitrack reality. This was not only for drums but, also vocals etc. I am not sure of the method for recording the initial tracks but...

One way of accomplishing a simlar feel to the sound is to record your sounds to analog multitrack recorder using multiple tracks for the same signal the tweaking each of the individual tracks and "ping-pong" them to other tracks. And then do it again and again tweaking each of the tracks until you get one drum track to dump into a sampler DAW etc that fits the mood you are looking for...

I read an interview with Geoff where he outlined some of his approach to recording Dummy and it was one of the single most ispirational interviews i ever read.

At the time my "studio" consisted of a yamaha tx16w sampler (using a casio cz-1000 if memory is correct as controller) and an analog 8-track recording console (yamaha mt8x). I borrowed my brothers Boss dr-5 druim machine for basic sounds and pattern programming and would spend hours recording to tape and then sampling from tape only to record back to tape. It was amazing what replaying an analog cassete over and over would do to the sound of even basic drum sounds.

Another trick from the same interview is to take your drum track and reverse it. Then apply reverb and other effects to the reversed audio and the flip it back around.

I love the grittiness of the '90s Bristol trip-hop sound and have never been able to accomplish anything close without at least some analog recording in the process. But, that is just me i am sure others have differet experiences.
Click to expand...


Thanks for such a detailed post.
 
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