Pavement Range Life Cover

  • Thread starter Thread starter 4tracker
  • Start date Start date
There is nothing wrong with the guitars, but they are a little dark. Bus them to a sub group and throw a high shelf at around 8k to brighten them up.

That snare drum is a little too up front. Try using more overhead and less direct. If there is a mic on the bottom of the snare, bring it way back because the strainer is flapping something awful.

Your version seems to be a touch slower than the original.
 
Farview said:
There is nothing wrong with the guitars, but they are a little dark. Bus them to a sub group and throw a high shelf at around 8k to brighten them up.

That snare drum is a little too up front. Try using more overhead and less direct. If there is a mic on the bottom of the snare, bring it way back because the strainer is flapping something awful.

Your version seems to be a touch slower than the original.
Click to expand...

You're the best. I noticed that snare this morning and turned it down, but not enough.

Once it's complete I'll speed it up a couple bmp and see how it sounds. I agree it feels a little slower, but i'm not sure if that's the missing vocal and a slightly different guitar vibe. The length on both are just about the same so if it's off I'm thinking it's fixable.
 
I played it along with the real song. The real song is either faster, or it wasn't done to a click and just some parts are faster.
 
Farview said:
I played it along with the real song. The real song is either faster, or it wasn't done to a click and just some parts are faster.
Click to expand...

I think what happened is that, on the original song, the verse is slightly faster than the chorus (the part that changes to C#m-F#m-Bm). I think their drummer slows down naturally there due to the feel of those chords. I think it's small, like maybe a few bpm. Since I played along to a tempo track, mine is the same tempo throughout. I'm not sure what I can do about that at this point because I don't want to redo it. Is there any fix in the software? If not, I'll just stick with it and chalk it up to another valuable learning lesson about drums there. I didn't think how the feel of those minor chords would slow things down for a human drummer.

I've been trying to work on achieving a more human/lifelike drum feel, and things like this will be a good learning lesson.
 
He could have done it on purpose. They could still be playing to a click, they may have just tempo mapped it to be faster in the verse.

Don't worry so much about making the drums 'human'. Make the song good and the rest will take care of itself.

A lot of people are convinced that randomness, speed fluctuations and inconsistency is what make live drums sound good. That isn't it. But it also isn't magic either.

If youtube was around when I was learning all this, I would have searched out the isolated drum parts to songs with the feel I'm looking for, popped them into my daw, place them against the grid and figured out what was going on. I would even line my midi hits up with the real ones in the other performance to make it right.

Even if you do that, you will find that the overall feel also comes from the interaction with the rest of the instruments. Everyone needs to groove along.
 
Interesting choise! :) Pavement is one of the old favorites.

I think the general sound feels right even though a bit too subtle; it sounds more like something from Slanted rather than Crooked. I would like it to sound a little bigger.

The snare needs some work (as already stated) and where is the kick?

The biggest challenge will be to replicate Malmus iconic vox though ;)

Looking forward to hear the progression!
 
I'm not hearing anything that sounds bad. It's hard to say what is too loud or not loud enough until you have the vocals in place.
 
Great cover choice. One of my favourite songs from one of my favourite albums.

Guitar tone sounds really close - they have quite a thin lead sound on that song, and so I think that although the piano line is quite low in the mix, it's important to fill out some body. I don't know if you're planning on tracking a piano line or even how you'd work out what they're playing on that fairly quiet part, but I think it would be a good addition if possible.

Your version is quite a bit darker than Pavement's - the bass is more prominent and the snare is darker. I'd turn the bass down and a couple of notches and address the snare. For a bunch of lo-fi slackers, their low end is pretty tight on this song.

All sounding like you're heading in the right direction though and dialing some nice authentic tones. Look forward to hearing it with some vocals on.
 
Sounds pretty good to me. Maybe the guitars are a little dark, and maybe the drums are little too up front in the mix, but other than that, I wouldn't really change much at all.
 
Great feedback, thanks. I agree with everything, actually. I grew up listening to lo-fi music and recording on 4-tracks, and I think to a degree this has biased my ear toward muddy sounds. I tried to clean this up a bit. Remix upcoming.
 
Last edited:
The snare does sound better. All you need to do is brighten up the top snare mic to get the crack out of it again. On the Pavement version, there was more snare in the overhead/room mics that you might have thought was the bottom snare mic. It's also what gave the snare the length, which is probably why you picked that slushy snare sample instead of a tighter one, like Pavement used. If your drum program has room mics and/or snare bleed in the overheads, compressing the room and/or the overheads can bring more of the snare sound you are looking for and tame the ride cymbal a bit.

You may have to route each drum to a track. No sense obsessing about the drum sound without giving yourself the control you need to make it what you want.
 
Farview said:
The snare does sound better. All you need to do is brighten up the top snare mic to get the crack out of it again. On the Pavement version, there was more snare in the overhead/room mics that you might have thought was the bottom snare mic. It's also what gave the snare the length, which is probably why you picked that slushy snare sample instead of a tighter one, like Pavement used. If your drum program has room mics and/or snare bleed in the overheads, compressing the room and/or the overheads can bring more of the snare sound you are looking for and tame the ride cymbal a bit.

You may have to route each drum to a track. No sense obsessing about the drum sound without giving yourself the control you need to make it what you want.
Click to expand...

Haha, you read the post before I deleted. Darn. Well, I agree with everything you're saying. What I decided is to mess with it more once the vocal is in there. So we're doing that today.

Is it common for bands to use the OH mic as their snare? I kind of like it...and maybe just a few DB of the direct snare.
 
It's common for bands of this type to use the overheads and room mics as the main drum sound, filling in with the close mics as needed. There are plenty of classic albums that were recorded with just a kick mic and some overheads...like the Led Zeppelin catalog.
 
To me the guitars are really sounding good, my friend. The snare does sound a little bit in front of everything in the mix...but sometimes thats what you went for.

But overall I loved the mix...I liked how it sounded kinda lo-fi.
 
crap i can't sing that high without choppin' off a testicle i think it needs a girl
 
I had to use my girlfriend for the vocal because Nola couldn't sing that high. He's on the bridge part screaming/straining.
 
Last edited:
I think the vocals suits the style. The mix is sounding clearer. Her voice shouldnt be IN YOUR FACE...I dont think it will suit the style...cause its a really delicate, fragile kind of vocal, IMO.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top