In 1981, MTV really kicked off, it was actually around but cable TV was seen as a luxury so not everyone had it. After MTV really started off, their first song that was aired on this channel was “Radio Killed The Radio Star”, alongside many others like “Sledgehammer – Peter Gabriel”, which actually earned him his first ever number 1 song. Michael Jackson’s hit song “Thriller” was also released around this time and was broadcasted on MTV. Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” was so huge because he was the first one to create a stop-motion-animated music video, this music video influenced many other people to use stop-motion-animation. The song also used gated drums which were huge in the 80’s!
Gated drums are basically when you get that “punchy and thick” drum sound. It was created when you surpass the threshold and add big reverb on the snare. This sound became the centre of 80’s music. This sound was so new and incredibly revolutionary because before, they used to have echo chambers for their reverb. An echo chamber was when there was a loud speaker in one corner of the room and a mic in the other, this was obviously a lot so when gated drums came around, it was revolutionary because it was so easy yet such a new sound.
Non-linear reverb and Linear reverb. Non-linear reverb is when it gets louder, it’s fake reverb. Linear reverb, however, is proper so it decays naturally.
Prince loved the sound of gated drums and because many other artists used gated drums, it just became super popular and when included in almost every song. However, by the end of the decade, people got tired of the sound and went back to using just regular sounding dry drums.