Sep30

Written by:Rip Rowan
Saturday, September 30, 2000 6:00 PM

More than any other song on this project, "Everything's a Lie" makes use of layered guitars and oddball noises. Most of the other songs on the CD, by comparison, are straightforward two-guitars-bass-and-drums arrangements.

The drums on this track were cut live, then cut into loops and reassembled into the final arrangement. The bass was cut live to the looped drum parts. Then the guitars were cut live, and either looped or used as-is.

Amplifier Approach

Paul played a Gibson Les Paul over a Vox amp with a variety of distortion effects. Faris played a late-50s vintage hollow-body Gibson over his Top Hat Club Royale amp, using nothing but natural amp distortion. The warmth of Faris' parts helps to offset the harsh, gritchy sound of the ultradistorted Vox.

We recorded the Vox amp with an AKG D1000E mic. This is a thin-sounding dynamic mic that is great for controlling overly bright or muddy guitar amps. I rarely have to use any EQ or compression on a guitar cab recorded with a D1000E, and it was perfect for knocking some of the Vox's brightness down a notch or two. We miked the Vox very close to the speaker - maybe six to twelve inches - to capture all the attack of his part. The Top Hat amp was miked with an SM57, in a room with a tile floor and wood walls. We backed the mic off the amp a couple of feet to minimize the proximity effect and to capture some of the reflections the room was putting off.

I had some questions about the last article regarding my preference for the D1000E. Most of the comments were to the effect that the D1000E is "thin" or "brittle". Other comments suggested that "everyone knows that a 57 is THE mic to use on guitars." To my ears, the D1000E complements the SM 57 perfectly - where the 57 tends to be a little bright and has a strong proximity effect, the D1000E tends to be midrangey and rolled off on top. So I usually will use both if I can, so that one guitar's color complements the other. But any time both mics are used, the D1000E tends to be a little more out front, since it's thinner-sounding and tends to cut through better.

Guitar Arrangements

The first guitars you hear in the song come in at the chorus. There are three guitars that make up the sound of the chorus.

First off, we had Paul play around with some heavily distorted parts until we found a part that worked, then we simply created a loop of that part and used it where necessary. The effect is a chopping, stabbing part that sounds mechanical. Paul also played a double of that driving loop with less distortion and with an orange MXL phaser. You can hear the overdistorted and the phaser guitars here.

On the first two choruses, Faris is playing "punctuation" parts that emphasize the chord changes. For the final choruses, we have the same arrangement as the previous choruses, except that now Faris is playing stabbing eight notes along with Paul to really kick the song into high gear.

In the second verse we have some seriously out-of-control crap. I had Paul plug his already-overdistorted guitar into a Vox wah-wah, and he just made strange noises and modulated the wah. This resulted in some great screams and squeals. The sound is teetering out of control, coming apart at the seams. These out-of-control guitars also make a reappearance after the bridge, before the final choruses.

Also in the second verse is a part that sounds like a sequencer, but is really a guitar run through a square wave tremelo. This kind of tremelo is either "on" or "off" and it sounds very staccato. I ran this part through a Waves Mondo Mod to make it bounce around between and outside the speakers. If you listen to this tremelo guitar track soloed you can hear the attack as Paul hits the notes on the guitar.

For the bridge, a number of guitars work together to produce the sound. Faris and Paul are both playing arpeggios through the chords, each on their own guitar rigs providing both warm and thin sounds. After the song had been recorded, we decided to bolster the guitars on the bridge by adding a pair of guitars that play the chunky chords at the end of each phrase. The result is big but doesn't sound overly layered.

Now we come to the end of the song. Here we have the same arrangement from the last chorus, plus we've added in another guitar. As before, we ran this guitar through a bunch of distortion boxes and finally a wah pedal. All it was capable of doing is feeding back. Paul just slowly rolled the wah from bass to treble, and the guitar just screamed higher and higher. We used a long delay and hall reverb to make it wash out over the mix and end the song. This wailing guitar track made the song's ending much more dramatic.

Mixing Guitars

We used absolutely no EQ or compression on any of the guitar parts. This is amazing, especially since my typical approach would be to start by rolling off at least SOME bass, and then seeing how much compression I can get away with. For this song, though, I just didn't think EQ or compression was necessary. I guess if you live long enough, you really do get to see everything once.

Maybe some explanation is in order. Let's start by tearing down the first assumption: to get a heavy, distorted guitar sound, you need a lot of distortion. FALSE! Fact is, a heavily distorted guitar amp can often LOSE aggression when recorded. It turns to mush. Even the ultradistorted sound of much of today's modern rock is created with amps that are probably playing less loud (or with less pedal / preamp distortion) than you'd guess. When you turn an amp up past its sweet spot, you lose attack, definition, and warmth. You start just getting white noise.

My preference is usually to find the LEAST amount of distortion required to make the part speak. Then I use compression to thicken the part up and make it denser. The result is warmer, thicker, and heavier than you get by turning the amp up. It has more tone and less garbage. Believe me, I love distortion. I love the high-end sparkle of a Marshall "shattering glass". But that high-end noise will absolutely step all over everything in the mix - and end up making the guitar thinner and wimpier. So, with distortion, less is more.

On this song, though, we broke ranks and got really distorted. In hindsight, too distorted, maybe. For example the looped chorus guitar doesn't have as much attack as I'd like. At any rate, after all the tracks were cut, I didn't hear anything about the guitars that suggested they needed EQ or compression. They mixed themselves.

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