On this week's episode of our What's That Sound series, Noam and Jessica tackle a recreation of perhaps the most instantly recognizable drum sound in pop music history, tracked by the producer who has won the most Grammys. That's right: we're channeling Quincy Jones and his work on "Billie Jean".
The breakout Michael Jackson single was recorded by veteran engineer Bruce Swedien—who allegedly mixed the song 91 times before it was printed—with session drummer Leon "Ndugu" Chancler behind the kit. Legend has it that Jones directed Swedien to sculpt a drum sound with "sonic personality" that stood out from other pop tracks of the era. So how did they do it?
This time around, we opted for a basic and bare-bones setup: we used a muffled 1970s Gretsch kick miked with a Sennheiser MD-421 and threw a Shure SM57 on our Ludwig Acrolite snare. For the overhead, we used a single AKG C451 to capture the hi-hats (a pair of 14" Ziildjan K Darks).
The beat of "Billie Jean" calls for a deep distinction between each of the elements, and as it turns out, Swedien would take extra steps to isolate each piece of the kit. We followed his lead by building a blanket around the kick drum, and built a piece of wood with foam around it to avoid any bleed between the snare and the hi-hat. Once the kit was tracked, we overdubbed the iconic cabasa shaker present throughout the track.
Of course, it wouldn't be a Quincy Jones production without precise processing choices. Swedien was sparing in his use of compression in an effort to keep the transients intact, instead controlling the dynamics using tape saturation. To get that tight snare sound dialed in, we added an envelope follower to add attack and remove decay—as for that crispy high end, we EQ'd out all of the lows on the overhead mic. Another characteristic to the sound is that shiny digital reverb—for this, we used Valhalla's VintageVerb plugin and removed the hi-end filtering.
Was this recreation the one? Watch the full video above and find out.