Berserker - New VomitHatSteve original - Is this as big a mess as it seems to me?

  • Thread starter Thread starter VomitHatSteve
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Thanks offcenter. Most of the related threads at the bottom are other songs that I've posted here. You can also find more of my stuff on my band webpage or our YouTube channel (though that's all bootlegs right now).
 
Listened to mix 3 and mix 4. Again, dude... Love the chorus. Very creative. Mix 4 is much better than 3.. Got rid of a bunch of mud, and added a bit o' clarity. Catchy tune, dude. Glad I listened.
 
Yes sir VHS. This is sounding really damned good to me. You're crazy as hell with your writing, I love it. Sounding good! :D
 
Thanks PI and Trumpino!

"You must spread some reputation..." Sorry PI. No rep for you. :(
 
the third mix seems a bit more uncluttered... bass and drums are getting better... how were the drums tracked, can they be any more clearly defined? that hat sounds good and clear in the 4 on the floor part but to me the drums as a whole come across a bit muddy... one mic ?
 
The drums are:
D112 inside the kick.
SM-58 beneath the snare
Cheap tom mics beneath the toms.
Cheap SDC overheads (one is between the ride and high tom. One is 2 stick lengths above the snare. Both are pointed at the snare.)
On top of that, I have a sampled kick and snare doubling up those.
And procedurally-generated percussion. (As in the computer randomly-generated a beat using a series of wavs and looped that.)
 
Just wondering why you mic the snare from the bottom? If you put the 58 on the top you'll get less snare slap and more body
 
The snare sounds a little clearer, and I get less hi-hat bleed.
I suppose having less body would explain that.
 
randomly generated drums... i'm interested.... could you further explain? do you have actual control over what comes out and the waves are just randomized?
 
I wrote a plugin for Reaper. Basically, I give it 8 samples to use and a pattern to play (e.g. play on beats 1, 3, and 4 for two measure or play on every beat and offbeat for one measure, etc.), and each time the song plays, it takes some combination of its samples and plays them on the appropriate beats. Then it loops that measure or two. In any given recording, I have 3 to 5 ish of these loops switching on and off throughout.

The synthesizers are also randomized, but that's more like an arpeggiator with a randomized order.
 
this is a great song! only one thing that bugs me- the flappy snare. i do think that distracts. i would prolly take the level of that down by a fair amount-not completely thoigh. i think it fights too much with the guitars throughout the song, esp. in the intro. just my two cents.
 
You mean bring the snare level down entirely or try to make it less flappy? There's a lot of stuff happening in the mix, I wouldn't want to lose the core beat.
 
Miking the bottom of your snare and not the top is probably a big part of your snare sound problem. Now that you mention it, that's exactly what it sounds like. Miking the bottoms of the toms isn't a great idea either without the tops being mic'd. I hope you're at least flipping the phase on the upside down mics. This sounds like your usual offerings, although it's a bit messy. I don't understand your randomized drums concept, but that's probably not helping the drum sound either. I think you're putting the cart before the horse. Get a good, normal drum sound first, then go crazy with the weirdness. Another thing I notice in almost all of your songs is thin vocals. You obviously have a knack for writing wild lyrics and you rapid-fire perform them pretty well, but your vocal sound is always AM radio thin. I don't know what you're doing there, but keep that in mind in the future if it's something you wanna look into.
 
Super cool song. To me it sounds old, but doesn't have the lush and full sound of a lot of old recordings. I would step back to the drawing board and maybe try some conventional methods to recording sounds and then apply it to your own music. If you could get it more modern and polished sounding you might be on to something genius.
 
I actually only switched to bottom micing the drums in the last 2 or 3 songs.

I'm not flipping the phase because I didn't realize that was a thing you were supposed to do!

I get what people are saying about the thin, "AM" vocals. (Though, I don't think I've ever actually listened to AM radio...) A lot of that is probably the single-echo reverb that I use on them. I should probably use a different one, but I like this one; I programmed it myself! :D

Similar to the fizzy guitars in Dune, with this project, the randomized drums are kind of a necessity. In the live show, I have the random drums, random synths, the abomination (fizzy guitar/bass), and one vocal part.* Cutting any of those out of the recordings would seem disingenuous (I can't believe I spelled that right on the first try!) at best.

*Sometimes I have actual drums too, but that guy's in jail right now. :(
 
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