Dinosaur Jr -- Tarpit (Cover)

[Nola]

Hey guys,

Can I get your ears on this one? Anything wildly off? Hear any arrangement ideas I can make (was considering an organ, but the original doesn't have one so I nixed it). Curious to hear any ideas.

https://soundcloud.com/suicidevan/tarpit

Thanks in advance!

 

[Robus]

Hey Nola. Panning seems a bit odd, with the guitar on the right. The drums seem left of center--is that an auditory illusion? To be honest, the whole thing strikes me as lacking in energy. The drums don't vary much, that droning guitar on the right gets old, and the vocal delivery seems kind of sleepy. Maybe the original is like that, dunno. Mixwise, the vocal is getting masked. If there is a bass, I'm not hearing it.

 

[TripleM]

The drums seem a little left of center to me as well. Snare and kick sound centered, but the overheads seem to lean to the left. Which is a little odd. Drums sound very distant. Like they were recorded down at the far end of a hallway.

Heard some tasteful use of a flanger. I thought that was good. Maybe you used it a little too long.

The guitar on the right was really low fi. But I sort of liked it.

The vocal is really dry compared to everything else. Some pitchiness.

The bass is getting dominated by the kick. It could come way up.

 

[Nola]

Thanks, guys. This is the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnaMpzgHMn8

You can see the bass is pretty low and the kick pretty loud. It's an odd mix.

I put the bass where if you remove it you notice but otherwise you don't hear it much. After the intro/modulation, the song is mostly a G to C progression so I felt the bass wouldn't contribute much in terms of defined notes. J definitely sings with a bit more energy/strain than I am, but that's how I sing this song so I went with it. I get the impression you guys don't like the mix or performance which is totally fine -- I appreciate the constructive feedback. I'll look into all of those things more closely and see if they make sense for this particular song. If you listen to the original, the end is a huge wall of sound. I feel like I need to make that more raucous but not really sure what to add or how they did that (is it just really thin wahs overdubbed?). Their mix is thin and abrasive and I really like it -- I actually feel like I have too much bass compared to that... haha.

 

[Bulls Hit]

Don't know this one but it does sound like dinosaur Jr - with Lou Reed doing guest vocals haha Drums sound like they were recorded with just one mic...It does have a lofi quality which was kind of disconcerting at the start but by the end I'm used to it and enjoying the tune

 

[GONZO-X]

this mix is a bit of a mess.
everything sounds like it was recorded in a garage with a boombox.

the vocal just sits on top of everything as if it is all by itself,
there is no connection to the band.

call it a demo for a song your planning on recording, and your good!

 

[Nola]

Don't know this one but it does sound like dinosaur Jr - with Lou Reed doing guest vocals haha

Lol. Oh man I will never escape the Lou thing.

Gonzo, there is almost anger in your post. The mix is meh I agree but I think it can come together. I think what I need to do is get rid of the amp simps and use my real amp and real pedals. That tends to open things up. I did this late at night and hoped I could get away with the sim, but for me sims never work.

 

[Steenamaroo]

Hey Nola,
Everything feels very distant and separate to me. The drums in particular sound like a room mic.

Maybe you're going for that as a thing like Mazzy Star do, or something, but if that's the case I think the vocal would need to match in.
Right now it just sits out.

I'd want something to balance out the guitar on the other side, and the drums, for me, would need to be closer and brighter.

How did you record the drums?

 

[Nola]

Hey Nola,
Everything feels very distant and separate to me. The drums in particular sound like a room mic.

Maybe you're going for that as a thing like Mazzy Star do, or something, but if that's the case I think the vocal would need to match in.
Right now it just sits out.

I'd want something to balance out the guitar on the other side, and the drums, for me, would need to be closer and brighter.

How did you record the drums?

Thanks, Steen. I hear what you mean.

The drums are just samples and they're down the middle. It's an OH but also a close mic on each.

The strange thing is the left guitar is like 2 or 3db lower than the right, yet when I raise the left guitar to come close in volume, the mix sounded very odd to me (like even though it was technically balanced in dbs it felt very unbalanced). I think it was due to the effects on the amp sims. That's why I'll try to redo it with either a reamp box or live through the amp. I have a feeling that will open up the mix. For whatever reason every time I use sims they seem to get claustrophobic. To me the guitars sound like they're engulfing the vocal in this mix. That's bothering me.

 

[RFR]

That was never in the catalogs of any thing Lou Reed did either with VU or solo.

 

[GONZO-X]

Lol. Oh man I will never escape the Lou thing.

Gonzo, there is almost anger in your post.

no way, dude....
i'm just trying to help you get to that next level.

if you think i'm wrong in my assessment, that's fine.

 

[Nola]

no way, dude....
i'm just trying to help you get to that next level.

if you think i'm wrong in my assessment, that's fine.

Cool, Gonzo, no problem. You just seemed kind of mad but context is totally lost in writing.

 

[RFR]

I personally like the drums in this tune. Not familiar with the original, but kind of like the drums 'off center' They not only sound off to the left but back a bit.
It's a taste thing, and for this tune I think it's cool.

Oh, and I'm all for ditching the amp sims. Good for writing and scratch tracks (in my opinion).

 

[Nola]

Oh, and I'm all for ditching the amp sims. Good for writing and scratch tracks (in my opinion).

Exactly.

I've done both amps and amp sims now and I notice each time I use sims (especially distorted sims) the mixes get claustrophobic quickly. It could be me not knowing what I'm doing. But when I use a real amp the mixes open up nicely. I'm not sure why that would be.

I notice another thing with sims is the guitar's pickup has a large effect on the final result of the sim recording. E.g. Jazzmaster pickups record much better through sims than Strats or my Gretsch. Gibsons/humbuckers and P90s seem to record best of all. I don't see much talk about that online but it's something I noticed. My guess is the natural darkness of the humbucker/p90 and even Jazzmaster (on the rhythm circuit at least) absorb and tame some of those brittle "ice pick" frequencies the sims naturally have.

I dunno...that's off topic anecdote but hopefully can help someone who uses sims.

 

[RFR]

I've found the opposite to be true. A sim kills the subtleties of different pickups. Whereas a good tube amp really lets me hear the sonic differences and tones of the guitar and pickup combination.

I don't know for sure, but I think the sims kill the harmonic overtones of the guitar. When you actually have a guitar plugged into an amp, there is a huge amount of things happening in that signal chain that the mic is picking up. With a sim, you are just inputting a voltage into a digital algorithm that is processed. Not the same.

 

[Nola]

A question for you guys who say the vocal is being masked:

How do you fix that? Is it a matter of cutting the guitars in the 2-6k range somewhere and then letting the vocal sit in that spot better?

 

[Robus]

I just lower the guitars.

 

[chrisharris]

A question for you guys who say the vocal is being masked:

How do you fix that? Is it a matter of cutting the guitars in the 2-6k range somewhere and then letting the vocal sit in that spot better?

I never lower the guitars, personally. Guitars only go up. And I'm not really being too silly about this...let me do my best to explain.

First, I'm familiar with the original, so I can appreciate the mix oddities. I like the use of the phaser/flanger. If it's distracting, you're doing it right.

The drums are definitely lo fi in the original, but they're not back in the mix. The kick in the original is oppressive! I actually like that you didn't go all "white noise" at the end.

But I think the thing that's missing is just use of EQ. A vocal shouldn't be louder than a guitar. Here, your vocal is definitely sitting on top. But I'm sure when you mix the vocal at the same level as the guitars, the vocal disappears. That's an EQ thing.

Depending on the genre, I will DEFINITELY sacrifice the lows and low mids of a vocal to save meaty guitars. And it doesn't matter if the guitars are acoustic or electric. You want them to have body. So what I do is I basically get a sound I like out of an amp. Mix the drums and bass/guitars by themselves totally.

Then I get the vocal where it's basically the same volume as the guitars - you can do this visually with the meters, but without EQ, it'll probably be lost. I cut everything off of the vocal below 150Hz, right off the bat. And I'll usually notch some out in the 315Hz area (mud). The vocal will sound thin if you do this on an acoustic singer/songwriter track, but it works pretty well for full mixes. When you make those cuts, your meters likely will go down, because you've taken some sonic energy out of the vocal. You can turn it up until it sits. If it still doesn't, you may have to cut some mids out of the guitars, but that's the last thing I do.

Anyway, I like your taste in music. I think you could improve this a lot with some fairly simple EQ adjustments.

 

[chrisharris]

Also, if I just wrote 8 paragraphs telling you shit you already know, I apologize. I don't really know where you are in the mixing journey.

You have to use your ears, but cutting a guitar starting at around 2.5KHz will usually make the vocal pop out more. That's a starting point.

 

[Nola]

hey thanks chris that was highly detailed. that's cool you know the original and that you appreciate the unorthodox approach to that mix and this one.

i know i need to get this vocal to sit better, and i think it is an EQ issue. i have everything high passed at 125 except kick and bass which are lower (like 40 and 80hz). that part is easy for me, but getting the eq in the mud zone and where the vocals and guitars overlap is harder for me, and those areas seem to make or break mixes. i'm going to redo the vocal with some more energy this weekend and remix it with all this in mind, thanks.