Something in the Way - Nirvana cover challenge

[paulman]

Finally got the time I needed to do this. I tracked everything yesterday, except I wasn't happy with my attempt to do the Ebow guitars on the Line6 so I retracked those today with the amp and mics. The reason I tried to use the Line6 is because my new godawful studio space doesn't do any favors for a cranked Marshall. I managed to rig up a blanket around the mics and cabinet. Not sure how much it did cause those tracks are meant to be noisy as fuck anyway, so it was good enough for this recording but the jury is still out on anything else.

I didn't find a way to fit banjo into this, mainly because I just don't know that many ways to play banjo and the slow pace of this song stumped me as far as any kind of fingerpicking pattern. Stylistically I guess this doesn't essentially depart from the original as I'd originally intended. It just sounds like a different rock band playing it. I just tried to amp up the crazy. I guess one thing that's fitting is that I'm about as good at harmonica solos as Kurt was at guitar solos.

My ears are absolutely shot right now. For mastering I just slapped Ozone on it and went with what the AI decided it needed. I'm in no condition to tweak anything else today.

Latest Mix:

Something in the Way_AI master.mp3

Old Mix:

Something in the Way master.mp3

[vomitHatSteve]

Yeah, this is pretty great!

You start with a real similar guitar vibe, but then the harmonica immediately takes it an entirely different direction. That buzzy sub-bass vocal is cool.

The loud guitars are very in line with Nirvana's usual modus operandi.

Nice work.

[Lt. Bob]

Loving it actually .... like all this stuff I've never heard the original so as far as I'm concerned this is the original.

What'd you do with the vocal .... almost an autotune sounding thing ........... and the Ebow is freakin' awesome! Maybe I need one.

This is great mang! I like it a lot

Nice work monsieur

[paulman]

Thanks guys! @Lt. Bob The vocal is just me singing three different parts. Well, two at first but then the high one comes in. I did tune the bass vocal so that it was more definite. Other than that I just compressed the shit out of all of it to get an excited, airy sound.

I've had my Ebow for decades and I love it. Haven't used it in ages, but when thinking of what to do in place of the cello, the "electronic bow" is what came to mind.

[rayc]

Cool Neil Young intro.
The drums seem to lean to the left - well the snare specifically.
There're some aggressive sibilant/plosive things here n there.
What's that sound at 2.43?
Nice eBow work. They're a cool thing but take more time to get right than I expected so i don't get it right I just get what I can from it.
COOOL version.

[Bubba]

Hi, Paulman.

I'll say firstly, that there is a lot to like about this track. The performances, choice of instrumentation, the arrangement, the ebowed and feeding-back guitars, the harmonica playing... All great.

I do think that the mix sounds very crushed, the dynamics have been all but eliminated. What I can't get past, I'm afraid, is the vocal tuning and treatment. It's a personal foible but I literally can hardly stand it for more than a few seconds. Despite that, I listened through completely three times. Through my earbuds, which are quite spiky and loud, the sound of everything was pretty difficult to listen to. Through my sweet and forgiving Beyerdynamic DT990 pro headphones, everything but the vocals sounded good, except for the aforementioned crushing and tuning. Through my monitors (Yamaha HS 8s) it sounded ok. Is this what a "Modern" mix is supposed to sound like? I only ask, because my son's band recently went down this production route and I really didn't like it, but he assured me that it was characteristic of modern production to sound like that. They sought out that sound deliberately.

I've never felt so old.

[JD01]

The acoustic sounds good, quite dark, but good.
Don't mind the tuned, bass vocal - that sounds quite cool. Don't like the tuned lead though - you can sing well enough, give it another crack.

Love the way you've arranged it and your choices.

I also don't like the way you've mastered it. Its almost like there's a perceived drop in volume when the drums come in. It feels really crushed.

I've also used Ozone 10 and I think its pretty good - maybe you're just abusing it bit! Just to check, when you press to do its AI thing, make sure you really are on the loudest part of your track - say from 2:30 - 2:50. Tee that bit up before you press the magic button. That would be my hunch... that you ran the mastering AI on a verse which has caused the chorus to become crushed to death.

Or, it might be that you just need to spend a bit more time on the mix getting it worked out before you press the magic button. When I use it (it can be really good) I always get the mix to where I want it in Reaper with ReaEQ, Event Horizon (limiter) and a loudness meter on my master buss... work with that until I think its done, then I turn event horizon off, select the loudest part of my mix and press Ozone's magic button.

You might already know all this and you just need to spend more time on the mix 'cos you rushed it

Great arrangement anyway, I'm really impressed with what you've done with it so I'd love you to spend more time getting it sorted.

[Alison]

Great job on this! I had thought of doing this one also but, I think you did a better job of it. Well done!

[paulman]

Thanks guys. I'm working on some tweaks, but I think my ears are still shot and my lack of sleep the last couple of nights probably isn't helping. I did a new mix and master, listened to it on different systems, compared it to some of my other recent recordings. When all my stuff sounded good on my AirPods, I knew my ears were still tired from recording and mixing this. I've never been happy with any mix on AirPods. So I'm going to give it a couple of days and then revisit, and return with the updated mix and comments.

[paulman]

Ok, I was going to try some other stuff with this before posting but maybe I should just post it where it's at now. I made some tweaks a few days ago after @Bubba and @JD01 commented, but I didn't trust my ears enough to go any further.

First things first, the tuning on the vocal wasn't for pitch correction, it was for effect. I wanted an inhuman sound. I actually forgot I had put it on the lead vocal, was thinking I only had it on the bass vocal. I took it off the lead for this new mix, and it gets a better effect I think. The lead now sounds human and vulnerable, with the tuned bass vocal giving off inhuman demonic vibes and the high vocal giving it a manic edge. Kind of a multiple personality thing. And best of all, now it doesn't sound like that Disturbed dude singing "The Sound of Silence".

JD, I did the AI analysis on the loudest part to begin with. I honestly don't hear the smashing you're talking about on the whole thing in general, just on the vocals. That being said, the waveform LOOKS smashed, so I don't know... That's one of the things I plan on checking out further, but I wanted to post this with the vocal changes and see what ya'll think before I look at actually changing the mastering. The only thing I heard getting lower when the band kicks in was the lead vocal, and that was because I had all three vocals being smashed in a vocal buss, and when the high vocal came in at the same time as the band, it took some bandwidth from the lead vocal. I fixed that. The vocals are all still pretty compressed separately in the new mix, but I didn't squish them together.

I also brightened up the acoustic guitar some. I tracked it both plugged in through my pedalboard direct to the interface, and natural with mics (two different performances). I didn't change the direct track, but I brought out the miked track a little more.

So I'm interested to hear what ya'll think so far before I do anything else.

Something in the Way_AI master.mp3

[Lt. Bob]

well .... hmmmm, I liked the original version .... I like this mix also .... really like that deranged thing right at the end.

I dunno ..... personally unless a mix has something bad in it, I don't get much into the minutiae of one mix versus another .... you can mix something 20 different ways and all of them sound great though different.

But I like this mix quite a bit

[vomitHatSteve]

Yeah, I like the version without heavy tuning on the lead vox better.

[Armistice]

Hey paulman, listened to the first version and didn't comment as something happened at the time. Liking the second version without the tuning, better though.

I think @Bubba breaks into hives when he comes into the presence of autotune... you've sent him to bed for a week.

[paulman]

I think @Bubba breaks into hives when he comes into the presence of autotune... you've sent him to bed for a week.

[Bubba]

Hey paulman, listened to the first version and didn't comment as something happened at the time. Liking the second version without the tuning, better though.

I think @Bubba breaks into hives when he comes into the presence of autotune... you've sent him to bed for a week.

This is very, very true.

[musicturtle]

@paulman man I really like the new mix.

What do you use for drums? They sound great to me.

Love the acoustic too, cuts through but not too bright.

[Tadpui]

Sorry to be coming in so late on this. Listening to the latest mix. That harmonica sounds great. And holy crap, the drums sound great as well. that's better than I ever got SD3 to sound. Love the overall feel to this reimagining. It sounds 90s yet up-to-date. I think you knocked it out of the park, man!

[paulman]

What do you use for drums? They sound great to me.

Thanks man! I use SD3 and a Roland kit. This was a preset that I used, I believe it's called "Levee" but whatever it's called it's clearly meant to reproduce John Bonham's "When The Levee Breaks" sound. Bonham actually played that part with a delay on the drums while tracking (I don't remember if it was just on the kick and snare, or on the whole kit). Some of the hits you hear in that beat are not strokes, but delay. So he had to play it just right in order to make it work, without the benefit of a click. This preset has the delay on each track in the drum mixer, but I turned it off on everything except the kick and snare. I also changed it so that the delay was in tempo with this song (105) instead of the stock delay setting. I'm no Bonham, but when you have a click to play to it makes performing with that delay much more manageable.

When I hear Cobain sing this song I imagine him living in a cave, caressing his pet rats and licking moisture from the walls. Thus the caveman drums on my version.

[paulman]

Sorry to be coming in so late on this. Listening to the latest mix. That harmonica sounds great. And holy crap, the drums sound great as well. that's better than I ever got SD3 to sound. Love the overall feel to this reimagining. It sounds 90s yet up-to-date. I think you knocked it out of the park, man!

Thanks Tad! As described above, it was mostly a preset in SD3. The only thing I changed in SD3 was the delay, and then I mapped the drums to separate tracks in Reaper. I don't remember what further processing I did on those tracks, but it was definitely minimal. That drum sound is like 93% preset.

[JD01]

When I hear Cobain sing this song I imagine him living in a cave, caressing his pet rats and licking moisture from the walls.

haha, great description.