Bash, I beg you: Head In The Sand

Bash This Recording
#1

Hi all,

Here I am again with another new original, hope y’all don’t get sick of me…! But I need a lot of help on this one, because it’s by far the most fuzzed out, loud, rough & ragged thing I’ve done. Those of you who work at higher gain than I usually do are especially welcome to weigh in…

The song is called Head In The Sand and my goal here is for a ragged, rough-edged feel and sound, with looseness bordering on being sloppy (sorry Patrick! @ptalbot), going for the vibe of a garage band, in order to go with the subject matter and point of view expressed in the lyrics. I am sure I need some advice on how to get all the distorted guitars to work well together-- hell everything except the drums is distorted and saturated, including the vox. It’s a simple lineup, drums, bass, one track of acoustic guitar and three of electric (one of which is my P90 Les Paul-- yes I know the single-coil buzz is audible right at first).

(It’s especially meaningful for me to get this completed, because the music for this has been mostly done for over a year. It was this song that I was struggling to find lyrics for on a completely different subject, and after a bunch of faffing around I finally just gave up on it. Seems clear I was just trying too hard to force something that wasn’t gonna work. So when I had the logjam finally break recently, I came up with a good way to use this for the story the singer is telling with these new lyrics.)

As always, thanks for listening!

V2 addressing some comments from @rjwillow Rich and @venuestudios Kent and @Jon-Jon .

V3: retracked vocal, timing fixes, high-freq eq changes.

V4: Significant EQ adjustments in low-mid area, releveling of vox, bass, kick.

V5: More EQ surgery in the low to low-mid area, plus releveling. Probably final.

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#2

3 super quick comments off the very top of my head after 1 quick listen

  1. with all those guitars, there is bound to be some slight overcrowding in the midrange. Maybe one of them could have been pushed back to be made very small yet still audible…as it would still fill a rhythmic hole even though it wouldnt be in your face

OR…make ALL the guitars proportionately smaller, drums slightly bigger

OR…make just ONE guitar be prominent and the others smaller. Its sort of guitar overload as it is

  1. vox dont really fit IMO. Either super distort them or go for a telephone voice or some gimmick

The singing style is still VERY clear…you can distort vocals by singing distorted lol. (imitate gargling sound etc up on top of the hard/soft palate… NOT by straining down in the vocal cords etc)

  1. Love to hear a version without vox just to hear the flow of the rhythm etc. I think we should ALL post versions of our songs without vox so people can really hear whats happening with the instruments etc

Cool track though. (Im jealous of course) One wants to hear the rhythmic interplay but its a bit sonically overbearing/overloading. Feels like getting hit by 3 trucks at once

1 Like
#3

Friken awesome!!!
I wish I didn’t read the description first, though. It had me looking for problems with the distorted gtrs.
It is actually fine as it is. I can hear everything (i think) clearly enough.
What I’m hearing is that the mix sounds pretty mono with bits and pieces poking out here and there.
if you were going for this, you nailed it! ANd I like that kinda stuff.
Almost all of the instruments and vocal seem to be coming from the same place. It’s not cluttered even though it would be really easy to have it go that way. So you did all the right moves there.
I’d like to hear a little depth and have some gtrs farther back and have the vocal be the only thing up front.
What are the drums on this? They are very good…
later
rich

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#4

another quick idea. On that distorted and rhythmically dense of a track, id rather hear somewhat minimalistic lyrics. In other words keep the phrases short and rhythmic

2 example songs came to mind…both of which I think are cool. Notice how sparse the singing is

1 Like
#5

Wow, thanks for the really quick replies!

I see there is a range of opinions on the guitars, so let’s see what others think… but yeah, like I said in the OP, I’m sure I need help of some sort on those.

One thing is for sure JJ @Jon-Jon, I am not changing the lyrics. I worked pretty hard on those and am very happy with them. So we’ll have to live with that. :wink: But doing something even more “treated” to the vox is absolutely fair game.

But @rjwillow Rich, yes indeed I was looking to have most stuff more or less up the middle with just a few things poking out-- not trying to be sophisticated at all, trying to capture what it might be like to have a four-piece bashing away about twenty feet in front of you.

#6

Whoops, forgot to answer this. My drums VST is Addictive Drums 2, using the “Studio Pop” kit, which consists of Sonor Designer kick, snare, and toms, and Sabian cymbals. The patterns I started from are from the Steve Ferrone package from Platinum Samples, significantly edited. I’m using Izotope Alloy 2 on the drum track in addition to the fx built in to AD2, plus I have the kick and snare routed as separate outs and have some EQ on those as well. Glad you like them!

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#7

Cool! then maybe think in terms of the drummer being 26 feet from you and the Bass 24 feet and the gtrs 21 feet… :slight_smile: Maybe the Acoustic player is off on the side smokin a cigarette… :slight_smile: A little depth separation will go a long way… even if it’s just varying attack settings.
Otherwise, print it… :beerbang:

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#8

Maybe take a 1dB or 1.5dB off the vocal and man you are good to go IMHO. Great tune, everything instrumentally sits nice. Not a lot of frequency issues I can hear.

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#9

Hey, thanks Kent! @venuestudios Much appreciated. I’m pleasantly surprised that I’m not a whole lot further off the mark…!

Rich, can you elaborate a bit? How would you recommend going about getting that depth-- reverb changes? Compression changes (judging from the “attack” comment)? I agree that I could pan a bit more creatively for sure, and I understand my options there pretty well. Thanks!

#10

When I listen to a song that someone else mixed, I don’t try to figure out how it differs from how I would mix it. I try to just listen to it as though it is on the radio and compare to other songs of that genre. I just don’t hear anything that takes away from the yumminess of the song itself. It is a well written song and the arrangement is tight and punchy. I would pay the buck or two on iTunes to own it.

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#11

Yup… I understand that you had a vision for the panning and achieved it…
And Yes, attack time on a compressor is what I’m talking about. A faster attack even with very light compression will move the source back in the mix. So having one gtr with a little faster attack than the other will get it off the others back so to speak. You only need a little.
I don’t use it much, but a transient shaper can do about the same thing. More attack comes forward and less goes back. But that can get a little drastic or un natural.
So in keeping your vision, that compression would be the easiest way to just unclog it a wee bit so it sounds like guys 20 feet from you and not "mixed to sound 20 feet from you… :slight_smile: Am I making sense?
have fun
rich

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#12

Totally. The two rhythm guitars are already displaced in their comp attack settings, however, so I will play around with those and other settings and see what I can come up with…

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#13

@venuestudios Kent, many thanks for the kind words!

I’ve put v2 in the OP. I worked on the compression of the guitars to follow Rich’s @rjwillow suggestion and have backed off the vox level per Kent’s suggestion, and raising the drums a bit per @Jon-Jon’s comment, with some other small adjustments. I think the separation has definitely improved, and the vox is not quite so hot now. The stronger drums seem to help too. Please let me know what you think! :crescent_moon:

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#14

V2 is waaaaaaaaayyyyyy better

Its sort of clear to me what I didnt like about V1. All of those staccato guitars made it all a bit herky jerky…like rhythmic overload

When you brought the drums up it brought the hi hat into focus which holds it all together much nicer

only slight niggle…it may be a titch strident on the piercing highs…specifically the lead

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#15

Beautiful!!! Nice and open. I think I’m detecting a resonance or resonant spike in there. It’s in the frequency of the lower end of the snare and vocal. But it’s probably “hot” in one of the gtrs.
The Frequency is the same as the bass accent right btwn 2:09 and 2:10. I don’t think it’s in the bass. But that’s the frequency that is pumping. Sorry if I’m sending you on a goose chase. But that bass note, while it is not a problem, it is a fairly open example of the frequency.
The real spikes are at 1:08 and1:10 but there’s too much going on to hear where it’s coming from.

This being said… if the offending frequency is 168hz or real close to that (which it might be). it might be more apparent on my speakers. They are my old monitors and I KNOW they are hot at 168.
So even if it’s not that hot on your end, it is an indication that it’s getting pretty darn close… :slight_smile:
everything else is SLAMMIN’ :beerbang:

2 Likes
#16

Cool Dave! You really are on an original roll - This one’s nice ‘n’ greasy.

You’ve made some really excellent progress here. About the only thing that I could add would be some production suggestions - without wanting to sound like a broken record, I think this one would also benefit from some vocal re-phrasing, just to alleviate that “rushing” sensation I hear on certain words and phrases. I was so impressed with how much you transformed the last track with a bit of re-think of the phrasing, I’m wondering if it would make a similar difference here…

But you’re obviously happy with where this is one, (and justifiably so) so feel free to ignore my nitpicking.

1 Like
#17

You are absolutely right about that JJ, the highs on the lead guitar are (deliberately) piercing-- but like I said in the open, I don’t work at high gain very often so this is good advice to dial that back some.

The low-mids always seem to trip me up, and even though I pay a lot of attention to that area, I almost always still need help to fix stuff in there. I will check it out and see if I can isolate what you’re hearing.

Well Andrew, please don’t ever not offer advice because you’ve offered it to me before! You know how I appreciate your help. I will absolutely consider re-tracking to modify the phrasing, although my goal on this piece is very different from on Love Songs Left-- I am trying to get across a sense of urgency, a few steps this side of panic. For this number I kinda wish I had a much raspier, more hoarse voice, it would fit the material. That’s why I dosed up the vox with as much saturation as I have.

In my re-listens I will think of how it could be re-phrased, and if I can find something that works I’ll give it a try… and just to be clear, when I said above that I’m not changing the lyrics, that doesn’t mean I won’t consider changing how the lyrics are delivered. I’m just keepin’ them words. :grin:

Guys, thanks for the close listens! Much appreciated.

1 Like
#18

Sounding good man, really good. I would say for me that i appreciate the loose feel but i think with in the first minute it is verging on sloppy. I would suggest tightening the timing up for the first 30 sec and then let it loosen as the song goes on, partly because it gets tighter as the song goes on and partly because it just doesn’t jump out as much. That is my 5 cents. Thanks for sharing and i am really happy to hear you cranking this stuff out. It is inspirational.

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#19

Wow, now you’re rockin’ Dave! Looks like you’re on a creative roll! (see what I did here? ;))
Cool one, quite different from your usual style.
Gritty guitars sound good and cool vocals, although I agree that some urgency would help here, how about really screaming your head out… go and get into a bar fight and come back to sing that one!
One thing I’m not sold on is the drums sound. The cymbals sound bright and over compressed, they have a kind of swishy quality to them that doesn’t sound natural to me. Any way you could address that in AD or outside of it? Is there too much/too fast compression on the room mics by any chance?

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#20

Very nice mate !

Sounds very clear, and well leveld to me!
It seems to me that the crowdedness (not so much in the chorus) comes more from an arangement point of view. I’m currious how it souns live. But maybe with some more stereo effect, you can hear every guitar part better. Now I find it kinda hard to focus on one line of guitars. The second line that gets added. But ofcourse it depends on what kind of effect you’re after.

But I mean, Nice mate !

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