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First Impressions - brand new eyes


kwik-silva
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For me, the rawness comes from AWKIF's simplicity; the sonic space is MUCH sparser in AWKIF when compared to the other two. The band is yet to learn stuff about augmenting the chords with octaves and basically harmonizing the crap out of everything, and you know those type of things make the guitar sound much bigger. I'm pretty much the same as moDROsS since I can't say EXACTLY why I hear it the way I do, either. Now that I think of it (and listen to it), it sounds like EVERYTHING is more forward in the mix. Maybe you can shed some light into it, Harry?

 

Less polished would be the cliche of the day right now, but it's exactly what I think. :/

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Hang on, I'm lost.

Are you saying the guitars are smaller on AKWIF or bigger? Bear with me, because I've been awake for close to 22 and a half hours now. I'm sure you mean bigger though.

I don't know what was used on AWKIF guitar wise, but my ears tell me it's a Marshall due to a strong upper mid presence.

Definitely a sound that cuts through well and has a more immediate up front up sound to it, whereas compare directly to Riot!, which was tracked with Dual Rectos for many of the distorted rhythm parts.

My ears are so horribly tuned into guitar sound I knew it was Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifers before anyone even told me lol.

Seriously, listen to Riot! and perhaps, Colors by BTBAM which was also Recto and while they obviously don't sound exactly the same due to the genre differences, the general tonality is there, that strong lower mid presence, with a scooped upper mids.

This lends itself well to leaving more space for a vocalist of course, as well as being more metal sounding I guess (since Recto and modern metal seem to go hand in hand these days, as well as Peavey 6505 and metal, which is also lower mid heavy.

I'd definitely say the use of the Rectos led to a more "commericial" vibe, as they were kinda pushed back compared to the AWKIF guitars.

And I MUCH preferred it that way, because it allowed the drums to breathe much better.

 

Listen to the Riot! snare vs AWKIF snare on your studio monitors, Pekka (or anyone else here if you've got em , well really, any reasonable hi fi system with at least a 6 inch main driver should do)

David Bendeth himself said the Riot! snare was the closest thing to a metal snare in pop rock at the time and he wasn't fucking kidding.

That is a fucking brutal snare with heaps of snap and clarity and just punches forward.

The AWKIF snare is not being helped by the guitar dominating the affair either and I always felt that was a weak point in the mixing process.

 

The overall low end content of Riot! is bigger too, no doubt helped by the low mids of the Recto guitar tones working with precision with the kick drums and bass guitar quite effectively.

 

But then whip out Brand New Eyes and honestly, when it comes to sonics production wise, BNE just beats both of them hands down.

It just breathes better, punches harder and feels even more alive.

Guitars were clearly no longer Dual Rectifiers, it has that Marshall upper mid range bark rather than the ""growl" of a Recto.

 

Cymbals are softer and more pushed back in BNE, but the snare drum is EVEN MORE forward this time, and is quite frankly, one of the most fucking awesome snares I've heard.

I can definitely hear the sample replacement going on in the snares to achieve such a huge sound, but I'm not a purist elitist cock sucking fuck, and as long as it sounds good, it sounds good, regardless of the method used to get there and in this case, Chris Lord-Alges snare samples are absolutely fucking monstrous.

 

Due to the Marshall amps, the lower mids of the overall mix is less pronounced because there is less lower mids for the bass guitar to work with in synch, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing IMO since the name of the game is alternative rock and not extreme metal.

Overall, I feel Brand New Eyes is sonically the most aggressive of their albums, which on a sub conscious level helps to bring out the slightly more moody feel of the album.

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Deliverance

Thrown back at me

 

Deliverance

Laughing at me

 

 

...

 

...ANYWAY

 

I hear AWKIF's guitars as more up front, but I had no idea it could be just up to the amplifier and it's characteristics. I'm not sure how to say this, I didn't mean that the guitars sound bigger in AWKIF, but more piercing. I hear the guitars being more in one spot in the mix rather than filling every hole there is and that's the bigness of guitar sound I was talking about in reference to Riot and BNE. I thought a bit of it was due to the arrangement, but the overall piercing sound is there even in AWKIF's more BNEish moments, so the amp thing makes sense.

 

I agree about BNE being the most aggressive sounding, even after all this time I've been talking about AWKIF being the rawest of the bunch. Take All I Wanted for an example. When the distorted guitars kick in, it's like a real slap in the face! You don't hear that in AWKIF, and in Riot! those moments are a bit mellower.

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Well of course it isn't ENTIRELY down to the amp, it's characteristics and how it's set, it could also be partly due to something as simple as the guitars being pushed forward via more gain levels on the faders in the DAW software but generally yes, the tonal characteristics of an amp do play a big part in how it will work and how it will sound in a mix.

 

I could go into post processing, but generally, in the professional realm guitar tones should have as little post processing as possible and rely pretty much on the source tone for the tone. Usually if you try to compensate for sub par tone in the mix via EQ, you can massively fuck things up and create phase issues and all sorts of bullshit that will ruin the mix entirely, which is why the tracking engineer has to do his bit, correctly set the amp up, mic it up properly etc.

Generally, you'd aim for nothing more than just a low and high pass filter on guitars and perhaps a saturation VST plug in/hardware saturation.

Saturation is a technique which has been used for ages to enhance the harmonic content of signals, usually by adding upper 3rd harmonics to the signal, which results in a nice pleasing sound which rounds off harsh highs (think of it as kinda like guitar tube amps and how they differ to solid state and you're sorta there) and add these nice frequencies that make things sound fuller.

I ALWAYS use saturation VST plugs in on my mixes and it makes stuff sound instantly that bit more professional and more pleasing to listen to.

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Okay, so edited my posts due to realizing I left out entire words and various grammar errors due to be awake for 24 hours non stop.

I didn't completely read Pekka's last post there properly either, so I went back and re read and can expand upon it further.

 

Just listening to some tracks off AWKIF (My Heart, Whoa, Pressure and Emergency being my current reference points for my post), I understand what you mean Pekka.

While the guitars are really dominating those upper mids, they aren't gluing as well to the bass guitar.

As a function of being Marshall amps (I'd haunt a guess they used a Marshall Dual Super Lead JCM2000), you cannot put the mids low on these things, or it sounds like fizzy fucking shit, so you've gotta bring the mids and that really enforces that upper mid content.

There's a bit of a hole in the lower mids that wasn't quite filled well enough, leading to a bit of a thinner sound that didn't quite fill the whole spectrum.

It doesn't help the guitars were so pushed forward that they caused the kick drums to be a tiny bit buried, which as a result reduces the perception of bass (below 100Hz) and sub bass (below 50Hz) content of the mix.

On the start of Whoa however, you can hear the rhythm section just kinda really happening, because the kick drum, the bass guitar and guitar are doing the same rhythmic thing, which is a common thing in metal to make things sound heavy.

You can hear how the mid range content is working with the lower mids and sub bass of the bass guitar and sub bass of the kick.

One thing that's important to remember with kick drums, a lot of their mid range is scooped out, leaving you most sub bass and attack.

 

Then put on Riot!

Fences and Crushcrush are my my main reference points here.

Listen to those stabbing chords that hit as soon as the chorus to Fences begins, it just sounds meaty, thick and full.

It can't do anything else really, because the lower mids of the guitars, the bass guitar and kick drum are just fucking working like they should be, and it's in robotic-ly perfect time, which makes it sound as heavy as it can.

People that are metal fans will really hear that.

The guitar tone is sometimes not just a guitar tone, but also due to the bass tone as well.

In the case of those stabbing chords, the guitar tone relies heavily on the bass guitar to achieve that fullness.

Guitars by their very nature have a very resonate and loose low end, which just results in mud if you try to use it to cover the bass region of the mix.

There is where the bass guitar comes in, to take the role of basically being an extension of the guitar's low end for the parts where the guitar and bass guitar are playing exactly the same thing (or at the least, the bass player will be playing the root notes of the root 5 chord the guitarists might be playing).

Never underestimate the bass player, because their role is far more integral to the overall sound than you might realize.

Going a little off topic, but when I first started audio engineering, well about 2 months in, my guitars sounded alright and my friends would say "yeah, sounds alright" and I realized what was holding back my guitar tones was the bad bass tone, because as I said the bass guitar is sometimes essential to good guitar tone.

Once I started using other people's bass guitar clips with good bass tones, my guitar tones went from alright, to my friends telling me I was bordering on professional level guitar tones.

 

Back on topic.

You've got Hayley taking care of the upper mids, so you've got the whole frequency spectrum pretty much covered pretty well.

The result is a wonderful, full sounding mix.

 

Being able to achieve that full sound with clarity is an incredible talent in audio engineering. It's incredible easy to make things sounding muddy and cloudy in an effort to make it sound big and it's also easy to make it sound thin when trying to get clarity.

A pro mixing engineer, as I said, can get that clarity with that big, big sound.

 

Then of course, on BNE, it's simply got the clarity and bigness of Riot!, but yet with a more pushed forward guitar tone and slightly pushed back lower end content. And as you said Pekka, the guitars just sound big and take up the necessary room in the mix to sound great and of course, all the while avoiding the pitfalls of sounding muddy and cloudy.

Of course, BNE is more dense arrangement wise too, which helps.

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I would never want a guitar tone like the one at the beginning of ignorance. Sometimes adding too much "clarity" removes some of the warm characteristics of the sound. It really depends what your going for I guess but I would never want the tones that I hear on BNE. They don't do much in terms of intertwining multiple lead parts or have any really busy guitar work so this tone works for them.

 

When I did some cover songs of Paramore I had to way overdo the gain to get it to sound close. I think I got fairly close to their tone in this cover.

 

Here my cover of crushcrushcrush

http://tindeck.com/listen/lcdc

 

Oh and try and guess what amp I am playing out of while your at it.

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@Jon (or anyone else that wants to read it really:p) : Well admittedly, I'm not into "warm" at all, unless it's suited for the genre.

With something like Paramore, warm simply wouldn't fit.

Chris Lord-Alge (mix engineer) and Doug McKean (tracking engineer) are set an assignment, which is to make everything sound great.

"Warm" in this context would simply translate to muddy, muffled and wooly, which is not going to be an acceptable result for guys like Chris Lord-Alge and Doug McKean who are getting paid to deliver nothing less than the best results possible.

 

Do I dislike "warm" totally? Well, I'm a fan of Kyuss, Pelican, and sludge/doom metal bands, so that should tell you something. As I said, it's a sound that's genre specific.

Works great for stoner metal, some post metal, some doom metal and sludge metal, particularly for bands like Kyuss which were heavily based around the guitars and rhythm section anyway and that had the vocals as a secondary kinda thing, so they could afford to have masses of dirty, wonderful and sludgy lower mids happening.

 

With music where the vocals are up front, such as Paramore, you can't really do that, otherwise it's going to sound like complete dog shit.

Balanced, rather than being particularly bright or particularly warm, is the key here.

Same goes for a lot of metal, particularly in modern stuff where the guitar is quad tracked and things are tuned down/bands are using 8 string guitars and playing stuff almost an octave down below normal E standard, things can get messy really fast, so getting that balance right is essential.

As a 7 string guitarist myself, who sometimes tunes down to drop A ( as well as my bass guitar), I really understand how important it is that clarity is to be maintained even if it's at the expense of a little sub 100Hz content.

 

If you compare a lot of modern metal mixes very very closely to the last two Paramore records, especially Riot!, they'll sound kinda thin, and at the point, you wont take the the "warmer" sound of Riot! and BNE for granted.

Riot! especially has a lot of low end content going on as well as a nice lower mid with the bass guitar.

In fact, I remember the first time I started really comparing Riot! to many of my metal albums production wise (most of my collection is metal really, I don't have much music of a similar genre to Paramore to really compare to anyway to be honest), I was positively shocked at the amount of low end content, as well as how amazingly well the guitars were gluing to the bass.

 

I also thought it was cool that despite how loud BNE was mastered, there are no issues with the audio.

Transients are under control, but yet there is no lack of punch, and no problems with artifacts with the low end.

 

Post your clip up in the covers thread, I'll give it a fairly in depth critique and analysis there if you want, since I don't think this thread is really the place to discuss your Crushcrush cover.

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