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My Led Zeppelin Drum-along!


Mr. Hudson

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Hey guys :)

I'm Ash from England, if you don't know me already and I'm a drummer and a huge, HUGE Led Zeppelin fan and John Bonham will always be my biggest inspiration and so it will remain....

I recently entered one of the practice rooms of a friend of mine who owns his own studio called Planet Sounds, based in Southampton, England. How to describe this studio.... Hmm, it's basically a dungeon. It's underneath a very old, preserved bridge called the Itchen bridge, and the rooms in there are absolutely massive. Some are great for drum sound, and some others not so much because there's a very particular curvature to the ceiling in a few of the rooms, but the room I landed in was just gigantically proportioned.

But anyway, I ramble on. The idea was to go into that room and play along to some of my favourite Zeppelin songs and record it just for pure pleasure, and the results aren't amazing, but I'll explain why. Other than that though, I'm quite happy and felt I should share it with other Zepheads regardless!

Basically, the drum kit in this room is by no means professional, I think the brand is 'CB drums', but I'm not entirely sure. Everything else I owned though, from the kick pedal, to the snare, and the cymbals. The kit itself is pretty standard sized, 20; maybe 21 inch bass drum, with 16 inch rack tom and 18 inch floor tom. Before I even properly laid hands on the kit, I set up the cymbals away from it, tuned my snare up (which is a 1980's gold tinted/brass Ludwig stadium rock snare, with coated emperor for the batter and hazy ambassador for the bottom), and when I finally did touch the kit, it was dead. I don't know who tuned it before hand, but my god, I could have gotten immediately a better tone out of pots and pans! So I tuned that up too, and spent a good 10 minutes on the bass drum alone - removed a massive pillow and gave it to a homeless person, and then, I was away!

I rigged my music player into the P.A monitors and turned them up as loud as they could go without destroying themselves, and then I was ready to play, and I have some results here for you:

Since I've been Loving You
https://soundcloud.com/ashley-dean-hudson-1/since-ive-been-loving-you

This one I LOVE to play, but unfortunately(I gave up near the end haha) I got the same issue on each and every song I played and that was that the drums, even if I played more lightly simply overpowered the monitors in that room, and so I could barely hear myself on the louder parts of the song. You'll notice sometimes in the recordings my timing ebbs & flows slightly as Bonham's naturally did, but more so because I can't hear anything sometimes. So forgive me, they were one-take-wonders Zepheads! :/

Stairway to Heaven
https://soundcloud.com/ashley-dean-hudson-1/stairway-to-heaven

Same issues here with this one. Timing was a bit all over the place trying to hear the song, and so I sound a lot worse than I actually am haha! Again forgive me...

Thank You
https://soundcloud.com/ashley-dean-hudson-1/thank-you

This last one is the one I feel I pulled off the cleanest, although forgetting a few fills here and there, it's a lot smoother than the rest overall and mainly because the track had a lot more clarity with more hi-hat usage, so I could hear better.

Regardless, the point of this exercise was not to show you I can play drums reasonably well, but was more about showing people that with the right room and a regular kit, that you can achieve pretty much close to that huge Bonham sound. You just have to know how to tune it, roughly, and for his own personal feel... tap into who he was and really study him and let him become your mentor. I hope you enjoy them for what they are anyway! :)

Pick away ;)

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Sounds good man! I'm a drummer myself and you did a nice job with the tempo when you couldn't hear the music. That's also a pretty beefy kick sound for a 20! I've got a 20 and 22 and it's really hard to get a 20 to sound like that without sounding baggy. Nice job!

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Hey, thanks man :)

I appreciate that you think I did a decent job with the tempo, haha, even though I gave up on SIBLY :P Most gracious of you. Literally all I did with the kick drum was remove that damn pillow, replaced the resonant side skin, and tuned it up quite high on the front. Then for the batter side, I tuned it up slightly less so. It sounds like something is being absorbed inside of the kick drum, but there really is nothing in there! It's as hollow as Hitler's heart! :P

Do you have any covers yourself, or examples of your drum sound?

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I'll have to give that a go with my little 20! I've got a youtube page myself but it's just my carpeted basement and a few mics :P On my most recent covers I have 4 mics (overhead, kick, snare, and toms) but on some of my older ones its just the audio the camera picks up itself. I think I have my youtube link in my bio and I'll go double check right now! Thanks for your interest, man. It'd be nice to have somewhere decent to record my drums! ;)

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But you have 4 mics man, where I have none! You're far ahead of me :P And that's no problem. I'm always interested in hearing other drummer's styles and particular sound, especially if they've have a bit of Bonham's influence in them ;) I'll take a look at your link now, mate :D

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Cool, thanks a bunch man! :peace: Have you ever heard of the website BandHub? It's an online collaboration site with others all over the world and tons of people do covers of stuff like Zep and many others. That would be great to see you and a bunch of other great musicians work on a Zep cover. :D I've got a page their myself and it's pretty fun! Highly recommend checking it out if you're interested man

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