Yet another Cure cover...

[Blue Bear Sound]

To keep up my chops in between clients, I started doing "tracking and mixing exercises" where I select a song, try to mimic a majority of the production elements and essentially sharpen up production techniques by figuring out what they did and then emulating it... mind you, I'm not trying to copy it exactly - I used artistic license in a few areas!

My first such sample is a Cure cover tune and is posted at http://207.176.147.104/bbs.nsf?opendatabase .
One clip is my version, the other clip is the original Cure version. All noises on my version were done by me.... Also - for the Tone Snobs out there, anyone of you care to guess what the couple of lead bits were recorded with? (instruments/amp/whatever...)

If there is sufficient interest, and if I can figure out a way to distribute it, I will make the 24 tracks of this song available for others to practice mixing for themselves...

Bruce

[psmith66]

Cool. Always liked R. Smith's stuff - you've got the feel of it nailed.

Based on the way you posed the question, I'd guess you're using a pod.

How did you record the bass? Excellent bass tone IMO. I'm having a hell of a time getting a decent bass sound.....

[jgourd]

At first I thought "too mechanical" then I listened to the Cure version and realized it is supposed to sound that way.

I love the clapping.

You encode all the seperate tracks as VBR mp3s and let people convert them back to native files.

[Blue Bear Sound]

The bass sound was tough... although it doesn't sound like much in the original, it is actually quite a production, more complicated than it appears on the surface.

I tracked the part thru a Bass Sansamp... but it sounded too "live" compared to the original. I don't know for sure how they produced their own bass sound, but it definitely had some post-processing done to it - it has the same mechanical sound as the rest of the song, although they did track it without sequencing. I tried to acheive that consistent bass (as if it were sequenced) by gating the bass using the kick and snare as triggers (the bass would be cut out when there was no kick or snare occurring). This gave it the required "snappiness"... it seemed to work rather well - they may very well have done something similar on the original.

The guitar lead bits were recorded using my Strat thru a Yamaha combo (DG212-100) mic'd with a Beyer M160 mic. I was pleased with the sound.

Incidently, there were no sequenced parts other than the drums - all tracks were played live.

Thanks for listening guys...

Bruce

[Buck62]

Hey, Bruce.... not too shabby for a hairy beast with big claws!

Must be tough to play those keyboards, huh?

Seriously, though.... I thought you did a great job.
I would have brought the drums/percussion down just a hair, though.

Other than that, it's a stellar recording.

Buck

[Blue Bear Sound]

Heh-heh... thanks Buck...

I have extended size keyboards! and you should see the size of my guitars!!

As far as the drums... I should have also put up one of the trial mixes - the drums were down lower on it and it gave the whole track a "wimpy" balance... listening back to push mixes and trial mixes as you progress through the fine-tuning stages it's interesting to see how the mix takes shape....

Bruce

[sondriven]

Mr. Blue,

Sorry about the Senators last season, I was rooting for Toronto though, dumb devils, they got theirs in the end!

Anyway, just listened to your song Close to Me and have to say that its pretty good. I agree to that the percussion is a little to high and I dont think it would take anything away if they were lowered. Im a big Cure fan and am curious on what the heck they used to get that weird sound in the beginning of the song, sounds like a out of whack sax.
The vocals were done quite well (nice English accent).

All and all great job!

sondriven

[LI Slim]

Very cool; a lot of fun.

I also thought the accent drum beats were a bit too prominent. Maybe a little let volume but "sharper" so as not to sound "wimpy"??

[CyanJaguar]

for some reason I could not download the songs.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Cyan....

I dunno... it works fine from my end!

Bruce