The Hives, The Strokes.......The Kinks

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chadsxe

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Im going to record a band who has the same feel as The Hives and The Strokes,. Opinions on this type of music are not what im looking for. The vocals in these bands seem to me distorted but in a natural analog way. Im guessing high compression is a must but as far as the overdriven part of it I need help. The band its self sounds very open room. Kinda of like the way the kinks sounded. They sounded like it was lack of good equipment. Which is kinda of what im going for. the reverb is has a garage feel 2 it. If you heard these bands you know what im talking about. As you can see I now nothing. Im just looking for opinions. Thanks
 
what format are you recording to? what kind of mics are you gonna use, what kind of space?

i have done some stuff like this before... i might be able to help...

you are right about the room, it helps. you need a semi-live room at least. i have tried to pull this shit off in 7 foot deadened practice space ceiling basements and it doesnt go well. had to basically give up in terms of getting the drums right. ok. you can do the strokes thing in a small dead space, but i would aim for the KINKS not the STROKES. pretty different sounds really.

i would hope that the band itself has the right gear in terms of the instruments. make sure they start off on the right foot. Fender bassman, vox ac30s, that sort of stuff for amps. silvertone. if they dont have that- you are gonna have trouble with the guitar tones. of course, you can pull these sorts of tones out a lot of different gear, but if those dudes dont know what they are doing, it is better to set them up with something more idiot proof.

the room that works well with drums for this sort of stuff is a mediumish liveish to live sort of room. 10' ceilings+ 20'x30' or so would be nice, but you could go smaller.

you'll have to see what ends up happening, but i would arm yourself with some omni dynamics, ev 635as, beyer m55s that sort of thing. for drums and acoustic guitar.

ribbon mics are always nice for guitar, voice... drums.. everything.

as far as distortion goes, the strokes vocals always bug me to pieces. i love distorted vocals, but i hate "distortion pedal" sounding vocals. i like more of an overdrive feel, where the distortion changes depending on input level more.

oh and try to get the singer to cut down on the "british" vocal affectation. that bugs the shit out of me as well. i little fake british is cool, but too much... ahhh. it sucks.
 
The vocals in the hives are what im aiming for. Its an overdrivin sound. Like you said the distortion depends on the input level. As for as the room feel sound. What about mix placement. Do you think back the mics off as far as distance goes would help in aiding that sound. I really love the way the Kinks sound.
 
yea, for drums you want some distant micing. i would get the drums in a nice place in the room, and have some treatment materials around. ghetto materials will work fine. a bass trap or two and some shipping blankets to control HF. if you have some diffusion materials those would be nice too.

the trick is to get the drums sounding good from the perspective of the room before you even put up the mics.

some useful tricks: bass trap the corners, blanket up the ceiling in parts to control the cymbal brightness. sometimes i find throwing a roll of insulation somewhere right in front of the bass drum out a few feet helps a bit.

i would start micing them with some darkish mic or mics, either in OH or out in front position. then spot mic where needed to fill in spaces.

what kinda mics do you have
?
 
I guess what I am really having troubles with is the vocals. When I try things it just sounds to aparent what I tried to do. I want to be able to overdrive the vocals as the input level gets higher. Instead it just sounds fake.
 
chadsxe said:
I guess what I am really having troubles with is the vocals. When I try things it just sounds to aparent what I tried to do. I want to be able to overdrive the vocals as the input level gets higher. Instead it just sounds fake.
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Run the vocals through a guitar amp and mic it. You can mix that back in with the dry vocals to get the right balance of grunge.
 
well, if you are set on the vocal sound i would do it on the front end (big point of debate could insue here). i feel like it is easier to do this sort of thing in the real world, and it is nice for the performer to hear what is going on as it happens... as in, it is nice for them to hear the saturation kick in with dynamics, and they can modify their performance to suit the effect. (just enough to saturate a little during verses, nail it on the chorus or whatnot)

what do you have gearwise. you can do this sort of thing in a million ways... you could use a 4 track cassette machine.. you could just hit any old tape machine really hard, a tube mic, tube pre, ss pre, some sort of saturation processor, a plug in.... and so on....
 
Well Im recording into a 1010lt. I have a DMP3 and I have a few diffrent mics but I read in an interview that The Hives did all the vocal traking with an SM57.
 
it seems like you are trying to get the by overdriving your preamps...and thats not going to get the sound you want. Like TexRoad Kill said, mic up a guitar amp with vocals gonig through it, and blend with the clean signal. Supposedly on the first strokes album they used a keyboard amp.

on a project i did a while ago, i used an old EV664, through an art tube pac. now, i would normally not use either of these for recording vocals, but in this case it was golden. nice and dirty sounding (but not distorted) and i used 2 or 3 comps in series, to really fatten it up.
 
TexRoadkill said:
Run the vocals through a guitar amp and mic it. You can mix that back in with the dry vocals to get the right balance of grunge.
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vocal_amp.jpg


The vocal setup from the last Leftover Crack record, recorded by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio. The vocal mic was an EV Pl-20, run through a direct box into the Fender amp. The mic inside the cup is some sort of Beyer, I believe. Maybe that's an idea to go with for you.
 
reamping is cool. definately try it.

but it is gonna sound more hives than kinks. the kinks vocal distortion happened at the pres i believe, or by overloading the mic. all day and all the night as a classic example. distortion all over that vocal in the chorus. but it doesnt sound reamped at all.

and looking at your gear list, you might have to do most of the distortion with plug-ins.
 
Well can someone one explain tech why micing vocals ran through an amp is going to get me the sound im looking for. I can understand its going to be a more dirty sound but as far as the overdriven sound when the line level increases i don't understand.
 
you can set the amp to overdrive...

if you set the amp clean, you will as you predict only get the benefit of the top and bottom rolled off, and some slight compression, and whatever strangeness an amp and speaker and a mic will add (which will be a lot).
 
Well yes this seems like it would help in aiding more of a Strokes sound. Reason being there is constant overdriven vocals. But what about The Hives. His voice is only overdrivien when he got louder (Higher Input Signal). The amount of overdrive is in proportion with the line level.
 
exactly. although you could set the amp just right, and get it to only saturate on loud passages.

but if you listen to kinks stuff, the saturation sounds more direct, like the board was overloading. pretty different sound.
 
If you just want it on the peaks you could gate the signal going to the amp or sim. That way it only sends it out when it reaches a certain volume. Then you can mix that in with the dry vocal.
 
Hi,

My band The Straydogs also have The Kinks and the Hives as a "model" for our kind of sound. Some of our vocal tracks was recorded through a Fender Twin amp and recently we used a POD with good results. The songs are being mixed at this very moment, check out www.straydogs.tk in a near future and click on 'sounds'.

Let me know how the recording went and maybe we could exchange some experiences. If you're using PC software to mix, I know some great vintage compression and reverb/tape delay plugins.

Good luck!

//Ponka
 
Ponka I PM'ed you . What are the plug-ins you are talking about?
 
Well, if you're looking for that vintage tape delay/echo vocal sound, you'll find some goodies at http://www.interruptor.ch/vst_overview.shtml. Otherwise you should check out PSP Vintage Warmer (http://www.pspaudioware.com), Blockfish (www.digitalfishphones.com), and tube amp (www.voxengo.com). For some of them you'll need some kind of host like Cakewalk Sonar 3 (which we are using), Cubase, Pro Tools and so on.

I live only a couple of miles from Fagersta (The Hives home town) in Sweden, and I think their sound on Vini Vidi Visious is awsome!

Our new recordigs with The Straydogs are soon finished (with those plugins used quite frequently). I'll let you know when they'll be able to download from our web site, so you can check 'em out if you want.

Rock on!

//Ponka
 
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