{"id":21088,"date":"2014-02-04T16:37:05","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T21:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=21088"},"modified":"2014-02-04T16:37:05","modified_gmt":"2014-02-04T21:37:05","slug":"is-there-a-drummer-in-the-house-whats-the-deal-with-the-drum-sound-in-van-halens-jump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/is-there-a-drummer-in-the-house-whats-the-deal-with-the-drum-sound-in-van-halens-jump\/","title":{"rendered":"Is There a Drummer in the House: What&#8217;s the Deal With the Drum Sound in Van Halen&#8217;s &#8220;Jump&#8221;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iKSyYGJHOGA?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p>What&#8217;s the deal with the drum sound in Van Halen&#8217;s &#8220;Jump&#8221;? Is it good? Does it serve the song\/fit in with the production? Does anyone else feel like I do, whenever they hear &#8220;Jump&#8221; on the car radio? I always think, &#8220;That&#8217;s a weirdly unaffected drum sound! What&#8217;s the deal? Where are my drummer friends when I need them riding shotgun?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Seriously, every time I hear this catchy VH song, not an entire verse goes by before I am reminded of how drums sound in a recording studio, at first playback, when the band has finished its take and loads in, with tremendous anticipation, to hear the engineer&#8217;s playback of the newly recorded rhythm track.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Is that how the drums are gonna sound,&#8221; one band member immediately speaks up, not necessarily the drummer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They sound kinda dull,&#8221; chimes in another.<\/p>\n<p>The engineer responds calmly, &#8220;Don&#8217;t worry. I&#8217;m playing it back flat. Nothing&#8217;s EQ&#8217;d yet. You&#8217;ll hear the top end and everything else you expect when we start mixing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It sounds to me like the engineer forgot to do anything with the EQ on the drums in &#8220;Jump,&#8221; as if they finished the other parts and left the drums flat, exactly as they were recorded to tape. I&#8217;m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but to my ears it&#8217;s a weird thing. It sounds like Alex Van Halen is playing in an earlier decade than his bandmates on this song.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s put aside the merits of Van Halen, the authenticity of David Lee Roth as a rock &#8216;n roll wildman, the song&#8217;s &#8220;I&#8217;ll show them I&#8217;m not some synth-playing wussy&#8221; guitar solo, and the surprisingly good cover of the song by <a title=\"Aztec Camera\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/we-could-blog-about-our-feelings\/\" target=\"_blank\">Aztec Camera<\/a>. Do you hear what I&#8217;m hearing? Drummers and would-be drummers, does Alex Van Halen&#8217;s drum sound make sense within the context of this song? Are the drums atypical of the drums in a usual VH song from this period, or are the drums the only thing typical in the mix?<\/p>\n<p>Isolated, the drums make more sense:<\/p>\n<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CNxe3oNHYTQ?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s the deal with the drum sound in Van Halen&#8217;s &#8220;Jump&#8221;? Is it good? Does it serve the song\/fit in with the production? Does anyone else feel like I do, whenever they hear &#8220;Jump&#8221; on the car radio? I always think, &#8220;That&#8217;s a weirdly unaffected drum sound! What&#8217;s the deal? Where are my drummer friends <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/is-there-a-drummer-in-the-house-whats-the-deal-with-the-drum-sound-in-van-halens-jump\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[146,187],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21088"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}