Guitars

Most of the guitars on this track were cut with one mic on the guitar cab, and one mic in the room. Usually this is done to provide some mixing options - close and distant. However on this song I was able to use both tracks effectively.

For example, on the "tapping" guitar part that starts the song I could have only used one track, and panned it. However by using both tracks, I can get the sound to be a little larger. And due to either careful planning or sheer luck, the sounds are nicely out-of-phase - not too much, but enough to push the sounds out to the edges of the stereo image. So the effect is that the part is balanced, but not mono.

The sound from this guitar was pretty muddly, mainly from the close-miked amp cabinet. I used a bass cut on that track @ 160 Hz and a treble boost out around 2600 Hz to bring up the angry distortion. The distant mic was much closer to the desired sound and just needed a little cut around 160 Hz to eliminate any unwanted noise in the track. I set up a delay line on one of the effects buses and pumped a little of these guitars into it, to get them bouncing around a little.The processed sound is thinner and floats a little in the track. This is actually the primary guitar part for the verses.

On the choruses, we add in a cool phaser guitar that was run through a stompbox. It was recorded perfectly for the track and needed no processing. It was also recorded with a close and room mic, and has the same useful phasing effect that the "tapping" part has.Listen to the track and note how stereoized it is.

There were a couple of cool extra guitar parts that were used on this song. On the choruses, Rob had cut an incredibly distorted, wobbling single-note line to punch out the chord changes. It's a great production effect. I was able to make great use of this track by thinning it out with a little EQ (a cut @ 250 Hz combined with a 5 dB boost @ 2600 Hz provided the needed edge) and running it through a Waves MondoMod. What a great effect. MondoMod combines a frequency modulator (chorus) with a panning and amplitude modulator. It can really make a track move around in the mix without sounding too chorused (chorsued distorted guitars start to sound like keyboards quickly). I also took the track and piped a little of it into the delay line I had already set up for the "tapping" guitars. The processed track floats out over the choruses and adds both attack and ambience.

Rob had also provided some cool, clean single-note lines for the bridge. These came across as piano-like guitar harmonics and needed no EQ at all. On these notes I wanted a chorused sound, so I used an Ultrafunk Modulator to get a real wet chorused sound. I also ran some of these into the delay line to add a long decay. The processed sound spreads out over the stereo space in the bridge and adds a lot of ambience to that section of the song.

Finally, for the ending, Rob had cut a killer stabbing guitar part. It really makes the ending. The chords are thick as a brick and I wanted no EQ on them at all. I wanted them heavy-sounding. One of the tracks, however, was recorded with delay, which I didn't like. The only thing I did to them was add a Waves C1 gate to de-emphasize the bleed (one channel of these had a serious amount of bleed) as well as tightening up the delay. That way, they come and go almost like someone hit a switch. BLAM! and they're out. Listen to the before and after samples and you'll hear that the tone isn't changed, but the processed sound is more "sudden".

Keyboards

On the choruses we had a nice, almost classical styled piano part that added just a little movement and thickness to the mix. I left it completely uneffected and placed it low in the mix. If you specifically listen for it, it's there, but really it just serves to add some midrange and roundness to the choruses.

The team had also recorded a really cool keyboard sound that is impossible to describe. It sounds like a guitar plugged into a fried amp. You'll notice on the uneffected track that there is a lot of bass content in this sound. I used a hard bass cut at 500 Hz, a +10 boost at 1400 Hz and a +15 dB high shelf at 2300 Hz to dramatically reshape the sound of this keyboard.

The dry track was very mono and up-the-middle, so I used a MondoMod on this track to spread it out into the stereo field. I also fed a little signal into the guitar delay line to make it bounce around some. The processed track is really cool and ambient. This sound plays around during the verses and choruses, but it's during the bridge that it makes an important difference.

The marimba track without processing was simply too dull to cut through the wall of distortion this song throws forward. And, really, what was useful and interesting about the marimba part was not the tone of the marimba, but rather its wood-block attack. Again, a radical EQ was the trick, with a -18 dB low shelf combined with a +10 boost @ 6000 to sharpen the attack. The processed track is evident during the verses, where it provides a percussive feel.

Wah Stick

When I first heard this bell-like instrument, I thought, "cool!" But the unprocessed wah stick, like the marimba, just couldn't make an appearance under the crushing weight of the other instruments in the mix. EQ wasn't the solution - with EQ, the wah stick turns into a bad-sounding glockenspiel. Definitely not the right sound for this song. So, in keeping with the theme of the song, I ran the wah stick though an Amp Sim cranked all the way up. Combined with a little delay, the Amp Sim turned the wah stick into something that really sounded like the feedback from a wailing solo guitar. The processed sound adds a great edge to the beginning verses of the song.

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