The Bends - cover

paulman77

Member
So the first mix I posted was my worst one, and now thanks to all the great input I've gotten here it's almost where it needs to be. I just have to wait until daylight to listen to it on my monitors to make sure my headphones didn't lead me astray tonight. The first song I recorded when I got my setup a few months back was a cover of The Bends, by Radiohead. I thought a good hard rocker would be good for learning how to use all this equipment and software. I've had a hell of a time tweaking it, but I think now it's pretty close. A lot better than the last one I posted, for sure. It may still be a little too strong on the highs, but I can't tell anymore whether I'm just being too picky with highs. Also, I deviated from my usual Mark IIc+ amp sound that I usually use for overdrive, and I'm not sure whether I like it or not. I really wanted to make this thing BIG. I used some kind of high octane shredder amp model for the lead/front rhythm guitar, I can't remember the name. All the other distorted guitars behind it are Mark IIc+. Anyway, here it is:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1q3bgtkYyakd3ZuWlN6OWZOdTg/view?usp=sharing
 
Saw Radiohead loads of times in the 90s and also used to play this live myself :)

First thought is that there is way too much gain on the guitars if you're trying to emulate the original. If you're not then that's cool. It does lead to another problem though, is that the guitars start to mush into each other, like they need something to make them a bit tighter - particularly on the lead section and the "live, breathe" section.

The main thing though is the Snare - its right in your face, particularly in the intro - don't know if you change your sample after this. But all the way through it sounds very out of place with the rest of the kit and the song - its also very typewriterish on the fills.

Those things aside, I enjoyed listening to it, your playing is tight and your singing is good. How did you record the vocal and what effects did you have on it.
 
Good playing and singing. Drum are lacking in girth. Snare is thin, not much kick. Needs more attention to the low end. Bass isn't cutting through. The guitars seem too loud and are crowding out pretty much everything else, vocal especially. That distorted guitar tone would blend better in the mix if you took it down a couple of decibels.
 
Yes, I want it to be heavier than the original. It's already a big song, uncharacteristically bombastic for Radiohead, and I wanted to make it even bigger. The song has always energized me. It was probably my favorite song to play when I had a band. The way I see it, I didn't do anything particularly creative with this cover, I just injected into it my enthusiasm for a song that Thom Yorke himself doesn't like. But yeah, I can see how the guitars may be a bit much relative to the other elements.

Okay, I had to open up the mix to see what I put on the vocal. It's been a few months since I did it, so I don't remember off the top of my head. It's a lot of plugins. This was the first thing I recorded, so figuring out how to get the sounds I wanted was pretty convoluted. I'd like to think I'm a little more efficient now. Here goes:

Logic noise gate
UAD Studer tape
Waves DeBreath
UAD Precision Channel Strip
Waves Abbey Road TG12345 console
Logic compressor
UAD 1176LN
UAD Pultec
UAD Precision De-Esser
Waves PuigChild 670 (I no longer use this since I got the UAD Fairchild)
UAD EMT 140 reverb


The snare has been by far my biggest struggle on this. At one point I had it so far processed from the original sound from trying to make it sit where I wanted that it had more plugins than the vocal. And still sounded terrible. Now it has barely anything on it. A Fairchild compressor, and maybe an EQ, and then I made a copy of it where I EQ'd it to bring out the snare rattle, and turned the copy down really low. It does sound typewritirish at times, and I think it's maybe because that sample set doesn't have as many velocity layers as some of my other sets, so almost everything plays at maximum velocity if I'm playing over 100 on the pads. That syncopated thing I played on the snare near the end, under the scratchy rhythm guitar, that doesn't have the dynamics that I actually played it with. Also, after the drum part was done, I ended up having to retrack that guitar that I had so closely fit the snare to, and now I don't think it's as tight a fit as it was originally. I played the drums in Reason, then bounced each drum separately to an audio file and put them in Logic, so I could process them separately. So I haven't been keen on the idea of going back into Reason to try to edit the snare. But as with the last song I posted, having other people tell me these things motivates me to do what I suspected needs to be done, bite the bullet and retrack or deep edit things. Until that happens I just hope I'm being too picky, which is sometimes the case. I may try a different drumset altogether.

Do you guys have any specific suggestions for the snare? Because I hear what you're saying, and it's not news to me. I just don't know what to do with it. Bringing up the bass and kick is easy enough. The snare is elusive for me.
 
Saw Radiohead loads of times in the 90s and also used to play this live myself :)

I would love to have seen them back then, when they were a rock band. I saw them twice after Kid A and Amnesiac came out. I was skeptical of how they would pull off the electronic stuff live, but it was amazing. But The Bends and OK Computer are the Radiohead that I have always been really passionate about.
 
With your drums in generally, do you have the same reverb on all of them? What tracks do you have for drums? Kick, Snare, Toms and Overheads?

Start by giving all of your drums the same reverb. You can normally do this in your DAW by sending all your individual drums tracks to a single track and adding the reverb here.

I saw them in Cardiff right after OK Computer was released - they pretty much played all of OK and The Bends along with a handful of Pablo. EDIT: Just checked - it was 97 the best time I saw them. Can't find a set-list though.
 
I have kick, snare, hi hat, a separate track for each tom (three, I think), and I believe cymbals rather than an overhead if I remember correctly. They all run into the same drum buss for reverb and I think maybe the TG12345 plugin with drum buss setting.

I got to hear a good amount of OK Computer at their Stone Mountain show. I could have died happy when they played Exit Music.
 
Logic noise gate
UAD Studer tape
Waves DeBreath
UAD Precision Channel Strip
Waves Abbey Road TG12345 console
Logic compressor
UAD 1176LN
UAD Pultec
UAD Precision De-Esser
Waves PuigChild 670 (I no longer use this since I got the UAD Fairchild)
UAD EMT 140 reverb

:eek:
 
Has anyone told bubba, our resident Radiohead covers expert? :D

There's a high bar to jump over here paulman - go back a few pages on this forum and see what's come before...

I can't listen now but I'll give it a crack tomorrow. :thumbs up:
 
How did you record the vocal and what effects did you have on it.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I recorded it with two mics. An Avantone CV12, and an SM57 right next to it. The Avantone is the main vocal track, with the plugins. The 57 is mixed very low, and I think dry or very nearly so.

Or maybe it wasn't dry. I may have pitch shifted it slightly out of tune, and delayed it slightly. Automatic double tracking without an ADT plugin. I can't remember if I did that on this song or not.
 
I'm assuming that none of those effects are more than just touches on the original voice. Considering a list that long and several being compressors, the vocal sounds very natural. Still a bit of dynamics left and good tone.

Guitars are a bit mush, but that's covered. Bass and kick are weak and not cutting. A little humanizing on the drums in general would help. The ride cymbal on the left (two rides is fairly cool!) is so consistent and swirly it's almost painful. If that left ride is supposed to be a hat, you might look for a different sample...

Other than the drums, all the performances are quite good. Especially the vocal.
 
I'm assuming that none of those effects are more than just touches on the original voice. Considering a list that long and several being compressors, the vocal sounds very natural. Still a bit of dynamics left and good tone.

Guitars are a bit mush, but that's covered. Bass and kick are weak and not cutting. A little humanizing on the drums in general would help. The ride cymbal on the left (two rides is fairly cool!) is so consistent and swirly it's almost painful. If that left ride is supposed to be a hat, you might look for a different sample...

Other than the drums, all the performances are quite good. Especially the vocal.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm going to start by trying a different sample set with the current drum performance, and go from there. If I'm lucky, that's all that'll be needed other than level changes. I have a feeling that at best I'll have to edit some MIDI velocities, and at worst I'll have to play some of it over again. If the editing gets to be too much, I'd rather just play it again.

A lot of the plugins on the vocal are there to fix issues caused by other plugins. Just a result of not knowing what I was doing, and figuring things out by ear. I wouldn't do all that again on a vocal, but this one seems to sound pretty good and I don't think anyone has had any criticism of the vocal sound other than the number of plugins, so I can probably just leave it the way it is.

Now I really want to dig into this and fix the drums, but I'm on my way out of town for a couple of days. Early next week I should have some improvements made on this.
 
A lot of the plugins on the vocal are there to fix issues caused by other plugins.

Might want to rethink this. That is a lot of plugins. Have you considered stripping it back to the raw tracks? That's always good for perspective. The problem with so many plugins is that it becomes difficult to figure out what each one is really doing, and how they are interacting.
 
Has anyone told bubba, our resident Radiohead covers expert? :D

There's a high bar to jump over here paulman - go back a few pages on this forum and see what's come before...

I can't listen now but I'll give it a crack tomorrow. :thumbs up:

I found the Airbag cover. Really nice, especially those guitars.
 
Might want to rethink this. That is a lot of plugins. Have you considered stripping it back to the raw tracks? That's always good for perspective. The problem with so many plugins is that it becomes difficult to figure out what each one is really doing, and how they are interacting.

Well, the question there is, do you think the vocal needs reworking? If it's good the way it is, then what's done is done with the plugins even if the way I did it was convoluted. Lessons have been learned since then, and now I know how to do better with less. However, I do think maybe it's a bit too sharp sounding, a little too sibilant, which I figured out on the Mountains vocal was due to all the compressors and went down to just one compressor and a TG12345. No one has commented on that, so I thought maybe I'm just being too nitpicky. If you or anyone agrees that it could use reworking, I'll do it. I'm just trying to stop getting so far inside everything that I'm changing things for no good reason. Which is why I'm here, of course.
 
The Bends is my fav Head album.
I'm pretty sure most of their guitar noise goodness has tubes/valves as the source.
Not a bad cover but man you certainly like to overcook stuff. The FX on the vocal is more than I'd have on an entire project.
 
So I've changed the drum sample, and it's better in a way, since you can hear something closer to the dynamics that I played it with. The typewriter effect is gone from the snare drum. The problem is, it seems that the sample set (it's the John Bonham set in Reason Drum Kits) randomly skips an occasional note, or greatly reduces the velocity of it. I can tell it's not my playing, because if I look at the velocities it can show the same recorded velocity on two notes yet play two drastically different volumes. And it's different every time I play it in Reason. I bounced all the drums down and put them in Logic, and it just has those random occasional weak notes. Does anyone know anything about this? I know there aren't many people using Reason for this kind of music (I regret buying it myself, I could have spent the money on samples I can use in Logic), but the drum kits are really good other than this issue. I know that Reason Drum Kits are supposed to play random samples for the same note for the sake of realism, but what's happening isn't realistic, it just sounds bad. I mean, my drumming is human enough without help from a damn computer. I'm trying to see if there's any way to stop it from doing that, but I haven't found anything.
 
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