This week's episode of What's That Sound? is a slightly different one from Noam and Jessica, being that there are actually two different official mixes for this song—the first done by Tim Palmer back in 1991 and a more modern take done by Brendan O'Brien. As you might have guessed, the song we're tackling today is Pearl Jam's classic, "Even Flow."
While both mixes maintain the energy and heart of the song, it's interesting to compare how the raw sounds recorded in '91 can be mixed so differently. The original mix feels much closer to the later 1980s with the tricks that it employed.
Like a lot of the other grunge/rock records of the time, this song employs a lot of direct mic'ing and digital rack reverb units to create space. This tends to make the drums sound a bit less natural, as more sound is coming from the digital reverb and less from the room mics. Also, because things were generally quieter in recordings back then, they used significantly less compression than they would use today so there’s a bit more dynamic range.
Meanwhile, in the 2009 mix, Brendan O'Brien removed most of the reverb from the original—but still had to get that length and energy from somewhere. Instead, he amped up what we hear from the room mics and applied a lot of compression, which infuses the energy of the room back into the mix, albeit in a more modern way without the reverb.
Jessica's drum kit today was comprised of a vintage '70s Gretsch kick and toms, a Ludwig Supralite snare drum (and a Ludwig Black Beauty snare sampled on top), 14-inch Zildjian K-Dark Hats, an 18-inch Zildjian Medium Thin Dark Crash, and a 21-inch Zildjian K-Sweet Ride.
The microphones used in this episode were:
- Kick-in: Beyerdynamic M 88
- Kick-out: Soundelux ifet7 (FET47 Clone)
- Snare Top: Shure SM57 (kissed with 1176 compressor)
- Snare Bottom: Shure SM57
- Hi-Hat: Neumann KM84
- Toms: Sennheiser 421 (x2)
- Ovehead: Mic Shop C-12 Pair
- Room Mics: Coles 4038 Pair (compressed w/ Chandler TG-1 Limiter)
- Mono Room Mic: Mic Shop MS47 (U47 Clone) (smashed w/ 1176 Compressor)
Check out the full video above to see the complete rundown of how Noam approached recording and processing these recreated grunge drums. Then click the listing above to download a free sample pack of the drum sounds that we created here.