For the monthly Meinl newsletter I reasently put together a Spotify playlist called „The Beauty of electrified and programmed Drum Grooves“, in the April issue I talk about „Reverse Engineering“: how to transfer those vibes to our drums, specifically how to emulate those cymbal sounds (get the link here).
I promised to link to some beautiful stories and further explainations. Here you are:
The story of the 909 cymbals:
The TR-909 was the first Roland drum machine to use samples for its crash, ride and hi-hat sounds. Therefore in 1988 Mr. Atsushi Hoshiai brought two of his Paiste Formula 602 cymbals (15″ Hi-Hat, 18″ Thin Crash) to the recording.
The PCM samples (coded at 6 bit/18 kHz) were stored in a 32 Kb ROM HITACHI HN61256P.
The green tea accident that might have led to the legendary TR-808 cymbal:
Don Lewis, an early pioneer of drum machine modification, relates a story from his visit to Roland’s Tokyo offices in the late 70s, where he worked with chief engineer Tadao Kikumoto.
>>That day he had a bread board of an 808 and was showing me what was going on inside – he sort of bumped up against the breadboard and spilled some tea in there and all of a sudden he turned it on and got this pssh sound – it took them months to figure out how to reproduce it, but that ended up being the crash cymbal in the 808. There was nothing else like it. Nobody could touch it.<<
Earl Young laying down the Dance-Hat prototype
Why Prince refused to upgrade from LM-1 to Linndrum
>>The LM-1 had a crystal clock that wasn’t quite as accurate as the next one, so the timing of the LinnDrum, the old cheap[sic!] LinnDrum that Prince used, the LM-1, it wasn’t as robotic, it wasn’t as rigid which made it slightly more human. When that thing would heat up, [then it would] speed up a little bit and drift a little bit. So there was that. And the other thing is that it had individual [tuning and] outputs for all the sounds<<
(Susan Rogers on Engineering Prince)
PS. „If you check out [the] list of LM-1 sounds, you may note that there weren’t any cymbals. Bob Easton, whose 360 Systems took over the manufacturing of the LM-1, filled the gap. ‚Bob manufactured two cards that he would install into LM-1s to provide cymbal sounds; one card was a crash and the other a ride. Each card had about 32K of memory.'“ (Mark Vail „Vintage Synthesizers“)
Phil Collins with the Linndrum:
Two Hihat Sounds (open/close) = Two Hihat Pairs
1. On two stands:
2. One hihat machine, one extra hihat pair – taped – layed on the floor tom:
Cymbal plus (White) Noise
3. Crasher
Sample Specials
22“ Hihat
Steve Gadd Cardbox Hihat & controlling the length how long the cymbal rings:
Benny Greb Twofer or the „Hihat-Snare-Stick“ as he calls it.
Oldschool Ride, Sizzle Bell and Crash Swell:
Last but not least: My drumsounds.de search engine for alternative drum and cymbal sounds.
PS. For the gear heads, a lot of Meinl instruments were used in the 25 minutes of the videos:
6“ Byzance Splash, 8“ Generation X Drumbal, 8“ Candela Bell (discontinued), 8“ Byzance Splash, 8“ Benny Greb Crasher Hats, 10“ Custom Shop Hihat (discontinued), 12“/10“ Generation X Electro Stack, 12“ Byzance Splash, 14“ Byzance Jazz Thin Hihats, 15“ Byzance Jazz Thin Hihats, 18“ Anika Nilles Deep Hats, 18“ Byzance Thin Crash, 18“ Byzance Vintage Trash Crash, 20“ Byzance Extra Dry Thin Crash, 20“ Byzance Clubride, 22“ Byzance Extra Dry Thin Ride, 22“ Byzance Sand Crash/Ride , 22“ Byzance Jazz China Ride, Hihat Tambourine, Waterfall, Ching Ring, Cabasa, Chimes, Caxixi, Kessing, Triangle, Cymbal Bacon, Louis Conte Shaker, Crasher, Slap Shake, 8“ Drummer Timbale, 14“ Cymbal Mute,Rivets & a Tama Hat Stack 🙂
E-BEATS 
Mai 13, 2023 um 6:47 pm |
[…] Vickick Feltbeater)2. Trommeldämpfer (BFSD Donut, Mr. Muff Muffins, Evans dbOne-Felle, SnarePal, Meinl Cymbal Mute, Gewichtscheiben)3. Practice Cymbals (gerne mit Sizzle Kette), 10″ Muffin auf dem […]