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.