How to get that punk sound?

[Workingman Hero]

First, I have to say I don't talk about Sum41 or Blink 182's sound...I don't want to start a thread about what is and what is not punk.
I think about Rancid, Dropkick Murphys, Lars and the Bastards...
How to get this king of sound?
I mostly ask for the bass sound...and voice, choirs.
Guitars and drums are not so hard to set.
Thanx for all replies.

[barefoot]

I’ve never recorded punk, but it seems to me the sound is "live" and sort of "garage".

I would try recording everything, bass included, in a fairly reverberant "boxy" sounding room with the microphones maybe placed a little further away than normal.

barefoot

[barefoot]

Also, the microphones sometimes sound vintage to my ears, like mics from the 40’s or 50’s???

barefoot

[OstiaMan]

dont use a click

[LongWaveStudio]

just worked with a punk band for 2 weeks solid. i dont want to work with punk ever again!

[Uladine]

I don't really listen to punk, but from what I've heard, it sounds like you'd get best results from recording everything at once, so the band can jive together. With metal and other tighter forms of music you can get away with recording drums to a click track and dubbing the rest of the band afterwards, but I think with punk you have to capture the band jamming as a whole to capture the energy.

[LongWaveStudio]

mate,

here's what i did. bear in mind thugh, these guys are punk rock, not regular punk.


Had the drummer in the drum booth, bassist, guitars and vocals were setup to go through drummer's headphones too. I recorded everything, including DI's of bass and guitars. Then, i re-did the bass, guitars,etc as normal. i did two versions of the vocal. one with him infront of a studio condensor mic, and another with an SM58 and a guitar slung on his shoulder so i had options for the mix.

basically, it's important to speak to the band before hand, or in the studio and talk to them and ask if they have any strong views on how they want it captured. if they dont, do it how you want. ask them for a cd of bands they listen to, it may help you know where yuo're meant to be going, mix wise.

by the way, you asked about bass and voice. record the bass fairly bright. you can always make it dull later but a lot of punk music uses that heavy treble sound. new strings are definitely called for. get a DI and get an amp DI or mic signal too.

for vocals, i had a TC Triple C set to a peak limiter because i figured this guy might have bad mic technique or do some phrases loud. sure enough, the TC came in handy. on mixdown, the song will dictate this, but i ended up compressing the voice to feck, so it sounded very breathy and full of energy. backing vocal wise, i tracked about 3-4 different bits and edited in PT later. i pulled out quite abit of the mids from the B-vocals and backed off the hi's a bit so the main vocal came out more.

the track will dictate what you're going to do recording/mixing wise, but i hope that helps in some way.

[darnold]

Ok...i have recorded a few punk bands, soft core and mid core, and a little hardcore (no, non like blink 182 and sum41). First of all, i dont see how you can say that the drums are easy because they are by far the hardest to get. This is true in a most cases of any type of music. Getting the drums to come through the loud bass, guitar, and vocals is extremely hard. Even though you are not asking for tips on this, im giving them to you . First of all, the kick is probably one of the hardest to get to come through. Head off, extremely padded, quarter on beater, and mic right up to the head and maybe pointed up to the edge of the beater will help give you a dry snappy sound. I usually end up squashing the kick with compression, and even a sonic maximizer at times to bring this out. Usually i also need to EQ the kick like mad. Its important the highs are coming through for the click. I usually boost at 3-6k around 3-6DBs although i have gone as far 9-12DB (im going to try and avoid that with mic placement next time). The kick should be 3-12k dominant in sound, but with a bit of oomph still around the 90k.

The snare i find is usually not high frequency dominant, but usually mid dominant. I usually get this by dampanening the highs out a bit level a dry snap and punch in the mid. Dont dampen all the highs out, but i believe its definately 2-6 dominant like the kick.

Toms are usually not problem, but again are 2-6k dominant. I dampen the toms alot to give alot of click again. (BTW, i usually try and make the kick just sound like a punchy low tom, giving them the same kind of sound).

Overheads - i usually try to get mainly cymbals with overheads, although its nearly impossible. The overheads usually give too much roominess and doesnt let the drumset come out infront like it should in punk recordings so get them close to the cymbals and right above. Maybe low cut at 250 if you are getting too much drum presense. I really generally do not like the sound of the room in overhead punk drums. Keep them dry and punchy. Generally i will cut around 2k to take out the harsh cymbal sounds and make them a little more wet sounding, but this is personal preference.

Compress only if you have too, but i will bet you will have to compress the kick for it to come through the mix.

Bass i find is more bass and low mid dominant with a bit of peak around 4k if it needs more cut. Compress this though to take out those harsh snaps you usually get. I think there is generally more low mids than bass in the bass ounds for punk but make sure theres enough for the bass to be heard.

One note before i keep going, as you have noticed, the things i have mentioned have all been 4k area dominant, you will need to worry about masking with this. I would kind of alternate these peaks. Generally i will boost the kick in around 6-9k, toms 2k, and bass if needed in the 6k. Not alot of seperation there but it can help. Expirement, but i think the kick comes first in those frequencies. Also, try and get this effect without actual EQ, and it iwll be much much better. But you will probably use the Eq for small peaks on a few times on somethings because its so hard to make drums cut through, and for me have always been the hardest thing.

The guitars should be 400h-2k dominant. One thing that can really help the the drums (specifically kick) is to cut or even roll off at 4-6k. This loud in your face guitar usually masks out everything in your mix, and doing that helps alot. There should be good warm low mid in this also, but generally roll off at 90h.

Vocals are usually easy from this point on if youve got the right mic. generally compress to come out in front, and something i hear on alot of helcat records is an extreme and compressed high boost in probably 12-16k. This makes it sound extremely bright.

Again, becarefull with masking in the 4k area. Everything is dominant in this frequency. Alternate or try to find the some effect in a different frequencies. Toms usually dont have a problem there, kick should definately get a boost there either by mic placement or EQ. Also, this is what ive found to be the most effective in my style of recording, but it might not be what your looking for.

Mixing, drums and vocals are the most important. They should be the ones in front most of the time, the guitar is usually recorded twice then panned hard left and right. Bass usually blends good with the guitars. It could help to have the bass panned hard left with a 5 second delay panned to the right to help with masking.

Just some tips from my own experience. I will be getting another band in to do some experimenting. They are good friends and so i can usually do some good experiementing but if i get time i will post how it turns out and what i do. I am planning on trying a few new things.

Darnold

[volltreffer]

High!

Quite interesting question.... I did some recordings yet with my punk rock band. Our earlier sound was 'real' punk (well maybe a little more of the melodic style...) and now it gets more and more commercial... What darnold said could be true... Maybe I had some major flaws in my recordings ... Anyway one thing I totally disagree with him: I compress everything (yeah really everything - except overheads, cymbals) rather hard. Punk rock is a rather dense kind of music, and I have the impression that it is quite hard to get this sonically dense sound, if your tracks are uncontrolled changing in volume.

BD: Level out (compression/limiting1) and give more punch (compression2)
snare: same thing
bass: same thing
voice: total need of rather heavy compression as otherwise your voice will hide everything and then dive away...
guitar: I even had to compress my rather heavily distorted guitar tracks, as the right hand muted parts of my guitarist created weird building up of frequencies in the low mids/lows that were a lot louder than open chords... Might have been the room... Nevertheless I have heard of this problerm in recording punk rock quite often. If you take away the frequencies that build up, you loose the power... Only compression of that distorted guitar track helped me deal with this.

EQing: (maybe here are my weak points?)
I gave the BD a lot of low end, the bass was pushed in the 400-600 Hz area. Guitars somewhere between 400Hz and 1.4kHz - depended. I always had the impression, that the additive EQing worked a lot more 'punkish' than subtractive one does. A subtractive EQing seems to create a much more 'natural' and 'open' sound that I did not like with my recordings. In contrast to that, the additive EQing seems to create a rather 'stressy', 'artificial' and 'closed' sound that I liked for that sound... Be careful not to push with a Q too low, as it gets hard to separate the instruments this way.

Ambience: as I still rather sing than shout, and dislike effects like distortion a.s.o. on whole songs, I feel some ambience is rather nice... BE CAREFUL WITH THE VERBS! I try to use early reflections and low volumed delays if necessary.

I totally agree with darnold in that it's damn hard to get the drums right... I use a setup with BD mic, SN mic, 1-2 OH ... Really simple. Our drummer de facto doesn't play toms so no tom mics needed - the few hits came somehow over the snare mic and oh... As I did not compress the OH, there was not too much room on the OH tracks... I threw an EL CHEAPO chinese mic into the bd and it worked quite nice, after some re-throwing it in...

For choir I think you'll need even more compression (applied to every single track!) to have proper blending of the voices and constant volumes... You might try to add a little of the uncompressed tracks to the compressed choirs - this adds 'freshness'.

I used a lot of mix compression, as I think punk rock needs it. It simply gives you the feeling of hearing the music too loud. Even some rather hefty tube sim on the mix may be quite nice...

Ciao,

aXel

[Badger]

[list=1][*]First get a group of angry teenagers....Social outcasts are the best[*]Teach them about Anarchy....Let them listen to Jello Biafra's lecture cd's...all of them[*]Teach them how to spell posuer....Very important[*]Teach them never to use the word "Posuer"....Also important[*]Let them see few punk movies to get the feel and the wardrobe down...SLC Punk, Suburbia, Sid and Nancy etc...[*]By now, they should be kicked out of thier homes...Find them an abandoned building to squat in. Give them som spraypait to decorate....Teach them the Circle-A, Square A, etc[*]Tell them they are going to be musicians....After being kicked out, at least one will have resorted to bad poetry....Thats your front man.[*]At least one will have resorted to mindless acts of destruction, thats the drummer...The rest dont matter so much.[*]Get them some cheap gear....any will do..[*]Oh, and teach them to steal cookie dough from 7-11, they can live on that and it will do wonders for thier stage presence[*]Oh, and cold ravioli out of a can......[*]Host partys with the band in locations that are likely to get shut down by the man...Does wonders for the attitude.[*]Give them a bunch of leather jackets to deface with band names like The exploited, the DK's, Bad religion, the cramps, Bad brains etc[*]And oxblood Docs...have them tell everyone they stole them off a group of skins....[*]If the singer starts to sound to good, a pack of gloves and no heat will do the trick....[*]If the GTR player sounds like he can play, adjust his truss rod for him.....[/list=1]

[fenix]

it helps to put a compressor on the distorted guitars with a slow attack setting. This will emphasize the palm mutting

[TexRoadkill]

In addition to Badgers recomendations I find that ambience is key. When I work with punk bands I'll usually puke in the kick drum and piss on the singer just to set the mood.

But seriously, isn't the punk sound simply lo fi? Room mics and live recordings are all you need.

[Badger]

If you train em right, Tex, They'll do it themselves....

[darnold]

I like all the comments on this page. But i definately see alot of stereotyping going on. Yes punk from the beginning has always had a very harsh and garage band sound. That is still the sound the alot of bands try and achieve today. But the reason for this is the fact that they were not commercially signed and had a million dollars for a recording. Most of these bands were doing there recording in there garage. But really, most punk bands really do care about there sound. Yes they like it loud and obnoxious and everything in your face (because thats what they are trying to prove).

But now adays there is a different sound to punk. No im not talking about the poser punks Blink 182 and Sum41. I am still amazed at the sound that Fat mike from Fat Wreck Chords produces his sounds. Still that punk in your face but VERY well recorded. I believe that getting the punk bands to sound good is a completely different technique because they are using different laws and physic in sound. Those being LOUD. I believe it takes a VERY good engineer to mix every one of those instruments and make it sound good.

I think what i am trying to say, is that there are alot of very good musicians that play punk. The drummers are usually some of the best ive seen (besides really good jazz players). They express there emotions just as good as any other type of music, which is the important part. recording a punk band would require you to "think" instead of using the same old techniques you would use for any other band. This is why i say it takes a very good engineer to mix it to sound good.

Maybe i a little far off on what real punks believe there sound should sound like. I dont really believe that punks originally started their music to sound like crap. Why would they, this is their music and their emotion. Its just something that happened and kinda stuck so now adays bands still try and get that sound. Nor am i pretending to be punk because i am not. Im more a rudy. Being rudy i end up hanging out with alot of punks anyway, because both believe in anti-government and stand for what you believe in but they express it in different ways. But i hang with both crouds and see what they try to express.

Anyway, i dont think i know where im goin with this anymore. Im just trying to get a stereo type of "Punk? Just make it sound like shit in a bag!"

Anyway back to the original subject.

Compression may definately be a good idea. But you gotta remember that (dont take this into offense) that most people dont know how to really use compression good enough to do something like that. If you dont know how to use it, use it very sparingly until you do know how to use it. Read manuals, read articles, read everything you can about compression. Its alot more to digest than you think so read it a couple times a week. Even still i get out my old compression manual and learn something new everytime.

The part about using a long release for palm mutes was a really good idea. Just remember not to compress the attacks completely out of the guitars because it is important.

i definately agree with heavy compression on vocals. Infact suck the dynamics completely out of the vocals.

The EQ part is going to be the hardest part. The first thing you need to decide is what (between bass and kick) is going dominate in which frequencies. Most commonely in punk is usually around the 4k, although a peak in 90hz sounds really cool if you got a good system in the car. Thinking about it, i guess the bass should be more 600-800hz dominate, but this really depends on how hard the music it. The bass freqs are where it confuses me in the kick and bass. I normally dont hear alot of bass in the bass but more mids but something needs to take care of that 20-90hz power. Maybe Kick 60-90hz and 6k-8k dominate, while the bass is 20-60hz and 600-800hz dominate?

I usually to not put any reverb on my punk mixes. It usually does the opposite of putting it in front for me. Infact, i hardly use any type of wetting effect. Maybe a little delay on guitars to fatten them up. But use minumum reverb.

Besides in some cases with the guitar, i think everything should be pretty dry. Again i believe ambience puts thing behind. And with everything that loud and trying to fit in the mix, ambience doesnt do anything but muddy it up.


If i think of more to say, i will say it later. Im in the middle of class right now.

Danny

[LongWaveStudio]

ive done a lot of punk bands, and like i said, i was with one for two weeks recently. darnold made a good point about reverb. when i was mixing the drums down for this punk band, i was using minimal reverb. i used a small room reverb from the mackie d8b and a very small plate sound for hi-hat/vocal. but these were set so slight, just so things didin't sound too dry.

[Badger]

Originally posted by darnold


Maybe i a little far off on what real punks believe there sound should sound like. I dont really believe that punks originally started their music to sound like crap. Why would they, this is their music and their emotion.

you woulda have to have been there...but yes it sounded like crap on purpose...

Its just something that happened and kinda stuck so now adays bands still try and get that sound. Nor am i pretending to be punk because i am not.

I am, er uh, was at one point anyway...Now I'm just old...and a sellout....I work for a defense contractor....I still have my docs, and my P38 I used to use to open the cold cans of ravioli, and I do still have all Jellos lectures on cd, and some DK and Badbrains on my Government sanctioned hard drive here at work, but alas, Punk is for the young...


Ok, maybe i can explain a bit....

Punk music(the best definition of punk music is that is music that punks listen to...if that one day becomes polka, that that will be punk) was started as a rebellion to the overly perfect conceptual artistic album rock that was around at the time...Punks found it pretentious, and felt that the music was much less important than the message...

Punk is a philosophy, a life style,(not a music style) and its about distancing yourself from a society that you see as corupt and so badly broken that you might as well throw it away and start over.

Punk music, hair style, and style of dress were originally designed to repel the normals, which is why it is particularly odious that many of these elements are "in style" now.

The music sucked, because that diferentiated it from the stuff that was played well and produced well. Many of the early punk musicians did know how to play, but chose not to. Many didnt, the Ramones and The Pistols come to mind.

It didnt matter. We like the fact that most people didnt get the joke, so to speak...It is still funny that people still dont....

[djc]

Get a bunch of punks and play with em.

[Brad]

Originally posted by Bdgr
...After being kicked out, at least one will have resorted to bad poetry....Thats your front man.

ROFL!!!

[TexRoadkill]

Originally posted by Bdgr
It didnt matter. We like the fact that most people didnt get the joke, so to speak...It is still funny that people still dont....

I always thought half the point of playing punk music recordings was that it was guaranteed to piss off people. I remember that tune by Flipper, 'BrainWash' I think, where it was the same few bars over and over.

You weren't supposed to listen to punk and enjoy the music. You listened to it to piss people off and give you a good soundtrack to break things to.

[shackrock]

Originally posted by Bdgr

Maybe a little delay on guitars to fatten them up.

i still fail to see/hear how delay helps mixes...ha esp. fattening...care to elaborate?

[fenix]

he's talking about a short and fast delay that is relatively loud (compared to the levels of your reverb, etc) on the guitars that will thicken it up. I do this to vocals and guitars, especially when I only have 2 guitars tracked in the song and the song sounds a bit empty, delay helps.

[matty_boy]

I think that a discussion of what Punk is and why is started is the biggest waste of time ever. Absolute bullshit. I have only ever listened to punk rock, and it is a very personal thing. All you can really talk about is what it means to You. I hate the word poseur. It is all an opinion. Whatever. Sorry to vent, it is just that people seem to have to prove how punk they are, or how they understand punk while everyone else doesn't. Crass and Blink 182 would both, in my opinion, fit under the umbrella of punk rock. I know that many people would disagree with this, and I applaud it. At least people are using their minds. At any rate, darnold, most of the best recordings from Epitaph and almost all of the Fat Wreck Chords records have been produced by Ryan Greene. He has a discussion board that he posts at himself at www.ryangreene.com and he answers most of the questions that people ask him. I have learned a lot there, and you may like to check it out.

Matty

[Badger]

Originally posted by matty_boy
I think that a discussion of what Punk is and why is started is the biggest waste of time ever. Absolute bullshit. I have only ever listened to punk rock, and it is a very personal thing. All you can really talk about is what it means to You. I hate the word poseur. It is all an opinion. Whatever. Sorry to vent, it is just that people seem to have to prove how punk they are, or how they understand punk while everyone else doesn't. Crass and Blink 182 would both, in my opinion, fit under the umbrella of punk rock. I know that many people would disagree with this, and I applaud it. At least people are using their minds. At any rate, darnold, most of the best recordings from Epitaph and almost all of the Fat Wreck Chords records have been produced by Ryan Greene. He has a discussion board that he posts at himself at www.ryangreene.com and he answers most of the questions that people ask him. I have learned a lot there, and you may like to check it out.

Matty

Well...Punk (both the music, and the subculture) is whatever it evolves into, like I said, if Punks start listening into polka, then polka is now punk music. But the overall sound that people associate with punk was designed to drive people away and make fun of bands that actually took themselves seriously.

As to what is punk? I have know idea what it is now, as I am an old sellout, I can only speak to how it was a couple of decades ago, and even then only with authority on what it was like in my part of the world. But punk is not a style of music...music is/was a very small part of the whole.

I did get a chance to spend a couple a couple of hours talking to a 16 year old punk out in LA a few months back, we sat around exchanging stories, and I swear our stories were interchangable. His friends and mine would have fit right in with each other. The only differance between what was going on in his scene(man I hate that word), and ours back in the dark ages was the lack of harrasment by the police. Seems the cops, at least in LA, had gotten used to them, and didnt screw with them like they used to with us. He tried to get me to go to a show out there, but that would have been totally pathetic, an old man like myself hanging out with a bunch of kids trying to be anti-something or other after long day of solving a VPN problem at Northrop.

As for the P word, it should never be applied to an actual person. For instance, it was ok to say "I hate poseurs", but never ok to say "that guy is a poseur", unless the guy was being a total ass, and trying to put out the "I'm more punk than you" bullshit. Then it was pretty much open season.

[volltreffer]

Wow...

I'll never understand why it always ends up in these strange 'right attitude' discussions. On one of our concerts I heard a discussion that seemed to go on for some hours (!!) whether cell phones are 'ok' for a punk or not... Ridiculous...

Why do loads of punks take themselves so F***ing serious... Maybe that's why I insist on doing punk rock... I never took myself so serious... But I'm kinda too old, too (36) for punk rock - never mind I like it, and the kids seem to like that...

Darnold, your remarks were really nice - I found it is REALLY hard to mix punk rock... Nevertheless I'm trying to use ambience on my mixes. Mostly early reflections for the colour and a little L/R slap back delay fitting to the groove. Sometimes a gentle touch of verb tail. I find this somehow pens the song up a lot. It also helps in separating instruments. But you have to be damn careful as it muddens up everything VERY fast. This is one reason why I always end up in doing a multiband mix compression while mixing... The compression (that I feel to be necessary) keeps oon pushing the verb so much up that the result gets a lot muddier. I even tried to compress the dry mix only and add some uncompressed verbs to have the control over the verbs, but with my external triple c it seems to be much easier.

The thing is, a lot of people will probably think that I'm doing EVERYTHING wrong from my mixing process standpoint, but I did not get any mix I liked with reasonable efforts without this strange technique. I had to create dozens of mixes with different verb and EQ settings, the to 'master' and see what the result was... Really hated it.

What is really hard in punk rock or punk is the fact that you have to work a lot with different frequencies to give every instrument it's 'space'. It becomes very hard as all instruments (distorted guitar, bass voice and drums) have loads of possibilities to fight each other. But otoh, when I separated the instrument too good, suddenly the 'punk' feeling was gone as it became too transparent. And here's the thing where I think it becomes really hard: you have to know how to unmudden everything, but have to be able to hold yourself back from creating a 'chaotic mainstream' production - really hard to do.

Ciao

aXel

[chessrock]

Step 1: Hold saience and invoke spirit of Sid Vicious.

Step 2: Buy requisite Alkaline Trio T-shirt.

Step3: Black wired-rim glasses.

Rinse, Repeat as desired.