“I loved the sound he could get on tape for my drums. In rock music, getting this right is still one of the great tests for any engineer. Since the drum's original use was to spur on troops to warfare, rather than winning over a maiden's fair heart, it is hardly surprising that many a battle has been fought over the drum sound.
The kit - virtually the only remaining acoustic instrument in a standard rock context - consists of a number of different constituent parts which insist on vibrating and rattling through a remarkable range of sounds and surfaces. Worse, hitting one element will set up a chain vibration in the others. In the days of four-track recording, the engineer needed to capture, but keep separate, the firm impact of the bass drum and the hi-hat for marking the time, the full fat sound of the snare drum, the tuned tones of the tom-toms and the sizzle or splash of the cymbals. Setting up the mikes to capture this is one of the black arts of the business, and is a pretty good way of detecting the best practitioners of them. Alan's full range of engieering skills were self-evident as we began to piece the record together.”