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Case Study 1 - Bron Y Aur Stomp

Fraser Williams
Jul 6, 2018
5 min read

This is a case study that will be relevant to my 3 track album I'm working on.

Bron Y Aur Stomp by Led Zeppelin

This is considered folk rock or country blues

Instruments: Vocals - Robert Plant Acoustic Guitar - Jimmy Page Drums and percussion - John Bonham Double Bass - John Paul Jones

This song was recorded in 1970 using the rolling stones mobile recording studio on the album Led Zeppelin 3 in the key of F at 109 bpm on the studio version.

This song starts out with a little guitar diddy that's very banjo-esque but eventually breaks into a more rock sounding blues song. I believe this song was recorded with drums and bass at the same time, then guitars, then vocals and other percussive elements seem added as an after thought. The song flows nicely, with the intro being without drums then into the verse and chorus, and the drums drop back after the chorus during an alternate verse in the middle giving room for another little guitar diddy to follow. The song then brings back the instruments for a final verse and chorus.

The lyrics for the song are about Robert Plant's dog strider who is a "blue eye'd merle"

After running the song through a mid side process I realised that the drums and bass guitar took up the majority of the side information, though some guitar and vocals came through also.

The guitar:

There are a few guitar tones that can be heard here. Firstly there's the nice warm body aswell as a bright high twang on the main guitar which to me suggests that there were multiple microphones used during the recording of the guitar. This may have just been the tone of the guitar because he used a Martin d24 which is a very expensive guitar. I would think that a smaller diaphragm microphone was used to get those nice bright tones. Secondly there are some harmony guitar parts strewn throughout the song probably just to make sure the harmonics were recorded correctly and purely.

The stereo image of the guitars is left of centre, though no matter how pretty the guitars sound there seems like a huge vacancy of bass content on the left side once the drums come in.

The drums and other percussion:

The drums have a very odd panning, the close mic'd hi hat is the first thing you hear bright and powerful taking up most of that left side of the stereo image. This sounds very strange on a pair of headphones, and even still sounds a little strange on speaker although it's less painful to listen to. The tone of the kick is loose and very natural sounding almost as if the drum could have used a little tighten. The kick is panned to the right, but with the spill coming through the cymbal which is panned hard left it sort of splits the low end to the right and the higher "thud" of the mallet hitting the skin over to the left.

The song also has hand claps and castanet's that do help offset the very strange panning towards the middle-end of the song by hard panning to the right. Towards the end of the song the hand claps and castanets also slowly increase the amount of reverb they're given. This seems to be a creative choice made by the artists but almost takes over the song towards the end.

The Double Bass

The double bass in this song encompasses 2 octaves, a low bass and also a higher low-mid range that gives a "woow" sound. This is played an octave above the bass note and is clearly heard in the mix. According to doublebassblog this could be down to the angle of a directional microphone, pointed upwards would increase the higher freq content. But could also be an omni directional mic that's picking up more higher freq due to a lack of proximity effect.

The vocals:

The vocals have a wonderful tone to them, in classic Robert Plant style reverb which sounds like the same reverb as the castanets and claps. The harmonies are blended roughly and appear to be on the right of the stereo image, harkening back to a time before auto-tune. The vocals appear to be off to the right of the stereo image also but during the side processing they pretty much disappear completely only leaving the reverb.

Soundstage:

There is no movement in the stereo stage as the instruments are given a place and that's where they stay. The intro guitars are slightly left of centre as shown above in the guitar section, then when the whole band comes in there is that unique drum panning that gives this picture on the goniometer in logic.

I have set the goniometer to hold the picture for 6 seconds. The picture shows a large kick hit off to the right in the foreground and lots of high hat hits in the back ground sprouting to the left. The kick hit can be seen here being very wide.

Spectral Analysis:

The first picture here shows the intro with the guitar only, it really shows how bright that high end is. Also showing a large dip in the 500 - 1k range quite possibly done due to the vocal range of Robert Plant during the verses as guitar often interferes with vocals.

This next picture shows a verse, and also the chorus is very similar due to the even playing and also lack of automation. You can really see the kick drum at ~80hz but also the high end keeps going all the way up to 20k though it is completely unnecessary.

This third picture shows the final chorus, and also shows how the claps and castanet reverb really boosts around 2k and 6 and 8k

Dynamics:

The song has a rigid marching step to it, playing the instruments relatively level throughout the song and only changes once the solo guitar breaks the later half of the song. Another thing that can clearly be seen here though is different content in each speaker, the right side clearly having more bass content while the left often appears louder due to the steady highhat. Towards the end of the song there is a crescendo due to that increase in reverb applied to the claps and castanets. During the guitar solo break you can see how the left content increases compared to the right.

Final thoughts:

The panning in this song is a little over the top excessive. But the 70's were a place for experimentation, and this song is definitely one that pushes the boundaries of where things should or could be panned. The right hand side is really loud compared to the left. The use of the reverb on the claps and castanets is also a pretty cool idea but takes a bit too much attention away from the rest of the song towards the end there.

This would have been all recorded on tape so any mistakes might have been cheaper to leave in instead of fix. Being on the album Led Zeppelin 3 this was at a time were their name was growing in recognition and just before their massive rock album led zeppelin 4.