Tagged: Marvin Gaye
The 808
The Roland 808. It’s the drum machine sound I grew up on. Round, blippy sounding toms. A kick drum loaded with enough sub-bass to shake an entire roller rink. From hip-hop to pop music, the 808 dominated the programmed drum sound of the early to mid 80′s. You can even hear the 808 on Marvin Gaye’s 1982 hit slow jam, “Sexual Healing”.
Loop #67
Today I decided to go for that old 808 sound on my acoustic kit… and then some. To get the classic, “round” tom effect, I grabbed my trusty pile of dirty t-shirts, laid them across the head of each drum and de-tuned one lug to get some pitch bend. The rest is in the mix. Lots of gating, a ton of compression, some heavy panning, a dash of sub-bass and the entire bus mix ran through an amp simulator. Yep, that’s a lot of digital plugins just to recreate an analog machine from 1980.
Preview Here:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Download the Logic session here. (179MB)
Get the .wav file here.
Get the .rx2 file here.
131 BPM
Have you ever seen a real groove naked?
Warning – Geek Alert
After repeatedly listening to the Marvin Gaye drum track I posted last night, I decided to run it through The Echo Nest BPM Explorer and actually “see” what it looks like (at least tempo-wise). I know Marvin (or whoever the mystery drummer is) didn’t record to a click track, but the geek inside of me wanted to see some technical data. What does something that feels so amazingly perfect actually look like when graphed out by a computer a program?
Here’s the result (click to enlarge):
From the graph, you can see that the song slowly creeps up in tempo as the track progresses. However, I wouldn’t refer to this as “rushing” or “speeding up”. I call it human. And I can’t imagine this song any other way.
What’s Going On?
I just stumbled on something very, very cool. While trolling the internets looking for a new flowbee, I actually found the original, isolated drum tracks for Marvin Gaye’s classic, “What’s Going On“. Jackpot!
I’ve discussed this “double drum tracking” technique in an earlier post and it’s amazing to finally hear the two distinct drum tracks for this song on their own. The main drum track consists of the snare, kick and hi hat groove while the second drum track is more of a percussive layer made up of kick and a snare (snares off)/rimshot pattern. Together, they make up one of the funkiest, tastiest grooves of all time.
I’ve Googled my brains out trying to figure out who the actual drummer(s) is on this particular track but haven’t found any concrete answers. The credits for the album list Marvin (he actually got his start at Motown as a percussionist) and Chet Forest as drummers but I haven’t seen any listings for this specific song. Does anybody know the details? There’s a free drum loop in it for you.
Main drum track:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
2nd drum track:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
And finally, the full mix: