Nicko McBrain
- Thread starter Forostar
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GhostofCain
Ancient Mariner
Not true. He will still be a youthful 69 year-old at the first show!
Lego
Ancient Mariner
Agreed- he also used that drum on POM, Powerslave, SIT, and TFF.
It's a Ludwig model 402 Supraphonic- a 6.5x14" spun aluminum shell. The same drum favored by John Bonham and Alex Van Halen among others.
matic22
Ancient Mariner
TBOS was the whole TFF kit, if I remember correctly (he preffered the sound of it to the ME one). NPFTD was the SSOASS tour kit. Snares included.
Lego
Ancient Mariner
SSOASS - Not known, could be either the Ludwig 402 or a Sonor D-506 6.5x14" Steel, which is what he used on the subsequent tour
NPFTD - Sonor HLD-591 6.5x14" cast bronze snare (Never offered in catalogs, custom drum. Also used on Rhythms of the Beast.)
FOTD - Likely the Sonor HLD-591, but not known for sure. Nicko used this drum on the FOTD tour.
TXF - Not known, no photos of the drum recording session have ever surfaced. Likely a Premier Signia though.
VXI - Not known, no photos of the drum recording session have ever surfaced. Likely a Premier Signia though.
BNW - Not known, no photos of the drum recording session have ever surfaced. Likely a Premier Signia though.
DOD - white Premier Signia 5.5x14" snare (from TXF tour kit)
TBOS - Premier "Nicko's Sicko" 5.5x14" signature snare drum
Forostar
Ancient Mariner
Nice and interesting @Lego !
How do you compare the audio aspects?
There is also production and how to tune the snare itself.
As we know, FOTD has a lower (looser) sound.
If you could pick, which 5 albums have a favourite snare sound (and how does it work in the total sound) for you?
You may also mention more than 5 if you like!
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GhostofCain
Ancient Mariner
Didn’t Steve play drums on Virtual XI?
The_7th_one
Ancient Mariner
He also played photoshop 3.0 making Murray's head fitting in unknown body. These were his first steps as an art director
Lego
Ancient Mariner
Yep, on FOTD the snare drum was downtuned quite a bit, even further than it was on SIT. Nicko has historically like his snare tuned quite high- but since 2014 or so he's been tuning it a bit lower again.
In terms of best drum sound, I'd say...
- AMOLAD
- Somewhere In Time
- Killers
- Brave New World (although basically all the drums on this album are sample-replaced, but the samples are of Nicko's own kit)
- POM/Powerslave (the drum sound on these two records is almost identical - same kit, snare, and studio, and largely the same cymbals)
Kalata
Out of the Silent Planet
Forostar
Ancient Mariner
Hmm, I don't think I knew this. And I'm not sure if I find it very satisfying.
Did this happen on more albums?
Nice to see a Clive album here as well! Great sound indeed, the whole production!
D
Deleted member 7164
Guest
It was a rather known single instance, just like Face in the Sand double kick. Seems Nicko was open to some new stuff in this era.
"drums on album being sample replaced" is a very raw statement that drops some context. I'm sure Lego knows all about it - MIDI triggers are used on the drum to provide digital information about every drum hit, they are small microphones that automatically map sounds to MIDI, placed very near the drum skin or cymbal but they don't impede the instrument, thus are used with normal audio microphones in conjunction normally. This allows drummers to have two things at the same time in the recording - acoustic drum and electronic drum track perfectly aligned.
McBrain used this, and Shirley put patches of his own drum in the sampler/drum machine that renders the MIDI data. The end track is mix between real drum sound and digital sampling of the very drumkit.
Why do this for Maiden?
Well when you have album where instruments are compressed to the bone, if you use standard dynamics of the drumkit it's possible that certain drum hits are not going to be big enough to fit the sound. With this tech you can use sound of the maximum snare hit whenever you want, at any volume you want, because sampler is involved. Even if you hit the snare normally, the sampler can play the maximum hit sample at a lower volume. Because real drums have different sound depending on how hard you hit them. So what they did for guitars they did for drums too, but they couldn't use normal compression because drums behave differently.
Btw a lot of death metal technical drummers use MIDI triggers for live kicks to work around the tuning issues between two bass drums.
P.S. compare Dream of Mirrors album vs RiR. 4 minutes in, over the verses where drums have no bass kicks. Although Bruce is singing on the lower level, Harris is not plonking the bass hard, guitars are acoustic, on album snare sounds like it's hit like a truck constantly, but the drums are not volume loud, they don't jump out of the silentish dynamics. RiR, you can hear how the snare is a bit different sounding, still not volume loud, but still round and full sounding. Now go to RiR TV and you can hear the real drum sound. No loud play no big drum sound, they sound completely standard in this section. So there you go - MIDI vs analog compressor vs dry track.
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Lego
Ancient Mariner
To my knowledge, BNW is the only album where the drums are essentially entirely sample-replaced.
On basically all other reunion studio and live albums at least, the kick and snare (and sometimes the toms) are augmented with samples to a certain degree, but it's just certain songs or parts of songs and not entire albums, and in most cases the natural drum sound is still present, so it's not fully replaced.
Check out this isolated drum track of The Wicker Man and you'll hear how the toms, kick, and snare are sample-replaced. The cymbals are still live though.
Lego
Ancient Mariner
FWIW - based on what I've heard so far after a few dozen listens, I think Senjutsu drums are largely natural, except for the kick drum on most tracks and maybe the snare on one or two tracks. Darkest Hour and Hell On Earth in particular you can really hear the natural variance in tone on the snare drum as Nicko hits the drum in slightly different spots over the course of the track.