This is one part on how the recorded Tommy Lee's drum sound - it doesn't sound easy:
“Tommy was very exacting about his drums and was a very adventurous experimenter,” says Werman. To get an even more explosive sound, engineer Duane Baron made use of the studio's P.A. system to send kick and toms back out into the large main studio.
They also discovered a new way to isolate the drums. “We were just screwing around and trying to find an optimum way to record drums, keep the leakage down and get rid of some of the hi-hat,” says Baron, who first worked with the band on Theatre of Pain. “We put towels on the toms, hi-hat and cymbals, and then Tommy would play kick and snare because he wanted really good isolation on those. Then we'd do the opposite thing, where we'd pad up the kick and snare and he'd play the hi-hat, toms and cymbals to a click track. He's one of the few drummers who could really pull that off.”
The towel method worked. In addition, Baron incorporated drum samples for the first time with this record. “We were using a MIDI sequencer and programmed one hit at a time,” he recalls. “Then we would record it off the sequencer as opposed to triggering. We were trying to get rid of the delay between the triggers and the real snare.” They used an E-mu Emulator 12-bit sampler, operating at half-speed. “We realized that by using a half-speed sample and doubling up, you got a better bit rate,” says Baron.
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