Mic Your Kick Drum Like a Legend

Sennheiser MD 421 with a packing blanket - that's the tip! Here we have Jake Reed explaining in greater detail how he achieved the classic Michael Jackson kick drum sound, as engineered by Bruce Swedien. After a quikc demo he goes into the overhead and other mics, as well as the percussion he used in the demo - along with shout outs to the original drummers on the MJ's records: John Robinson, Jeff Porcaro and Leon "Ndugu" Chancler.

Great stuff! He has since added

Something I wanted to mention but neglected to include in the discussion (whoops!) is how important the perc and hand claps are to this vibe. At 7:14 I said "percussion brings the party" but I can't overstate enough how important it is to the sum of the parts in the context of a song. The drum groove is the foundation but all of the perc parts working together thickens/widens the pocket and make it feel like a party AND it's SO FUN - which is the whole point of this. It's gotta dance! What's your fave perc instrument to play?

Here is the SOS article on Bruce Swedien: Recording Michael Jackson:

Bruce Swedien considers himself a lucky man. As the man at the desk for Michael Jackson's Thriller, which has defended its best-selling album status in the Guinness Book Of World Records for more than 25 years, there's no denying that he found himself in the right place at the right time, and there can have been few doors closed to him since, given a CV point like that! But if you look beyond the glare of Thriller's nine-digit sales figures, it's clear that there's a whole lot more to Swedien's story than good fortune: although the first of his five Grammy awards came with Thriller, his records with Quincy Jones and George Benson had already garnered three nominations for Best Engineered Recording before that.

More from Jake Reed

• Hainbach & AudioThing: Seconds 13-Nov-26
• OctaMEDIC - OctaMED v4 clone for Linux/Mac/Win 11-Nov-26
• ttiimmee: Turn Signals into Grain Clouds 10-Nov-26
• Mefjus Studio Insights 10-Nov-26
• Free ReBirth RB-338 Clone Released 09-Nov-26