Yes! we already consider doing an english version for the EP, but I'm getting kind of stuck with the phrasing of the lyrics, wich is pretty tight in the original spanish, I think.

Ah yes the nerdy stuff we all love... it was all done with pretty affordable equipment and in a really minimal fashion, I think even the plugins used were more expensive than the microphones hehehe.

for VOCALS: RODE NT-1, the holly grail of argentinian basement rock . And after that a lot of of corrective eq to tame the nasty harshness this mic produces in almost every vocal. I think "Soothe" was one of the best investments I made regarding plugins, it helps dealing with that problem easily. Most of the "fun" part of mixing was done with Nebula and Acqua plugins (mostly Tim Petherick's libraries, Pink, Cream, and Water). In the case of the vocals I simulated a tracking chain with Tim P's 1176 > LA3A > PULTEC EQ (FF PROQ2 and Soothe before this chain for corrective eq)... That already sounded like I wanted but I eq'd and compress again on the VOCAL BUS to make them jump above everything else (WATER COMP + CREAM EQ).
On the high vocal there is a vocoder effect I made with Waves Morphoder wich I controlled through a midi keyboard to make chords (almost inaudible but it's there). There is also some light Soundtoys Microshift, some parallel distortion (Waves REDD 37.51 I think, I only use that shit for distortion and is great). All delays are Echoboy and all reverbs are Nebula (VNXT 140 plate on vocals, for example)

DRUMS are mono in case you didn't notice, recorded with just four mics: RODE NT-1 as mono overhead, SM57 on snare top, cheapo PG81 condenser on snare bottom and PG52 on Kick. We drain de life out of that drum with napkins on toms, heavily walleted snare and no front-head on the kick, and some gobos. The only reason it sounds stereo is because of reverb and also I triggered samples for the toms and panned them L and R (otherwise the toms practically wouldn't exist in the mix). Drum mix was done with crazy lots of sustractive EQ, heavy gating, light compression (Pink2 on individual channels and Cream on bus) and HEAVY clipping (Satin, Kclip, Nebula Tapes... yes, various clipping and saturation stages). Percussion, wich was partly programmed and partly played live, had a lot of that too. There is marching snares in the bridge that are played, there is a (virtual) CR78 drum machine that happens only in the intro and the first verse.

GUITARS: all recorded with just an sm57 for cab and SM58 for a sutil room sound. None of the amps are from known brands exept a Fender Superchamp XD or something, we use it just to reamp guitars with full wet effects.
For example, the weird and reverby lead guitar parts (at the intro and verses) was made by plugging direct to my interface and reamping live through a Fender '57 Twin clone. At the same time there were 2 version of what I was playing, "one octave up" and "two octaves up", being reamped to 2 more amps, passing through different delay, reverb and a vibrato. At mixing time I took those 3 sounds and did some panning automation. The delays were manipulated live by my bandmate and other friend, wich was very pretencious, I know, but we rehearsed it a few times and waited for little "accidents" to happen (they were pretty stoned so a lot of those happy accidents happened). That shit was FUN. I think I also used Microshift on all the guitars wich is a great thing I recently discovered by accident.

BASS: divided the direct recording in two bands at 200hz, corrective eq, squashed the hell out of both of them with Tim P.'s OPTO3a, only used amp sim and distortion (external cheap analog console cliping) on the upper band. Again some additive eq with Acustica Pink2.

I think the main thing that makes this mix (for right or wrong) is SHIT LOADS OF AUTOMATION. I mean there is not much more than 24 audio tracks, and some of them are just little vocal harmonies here and there. But there are like 80 fx buses and each has from 1 to 5 automation lanes, piling up little details, most of them not clearly detectable, that are moving all the time. So it might sound clean to some, but there is A LOT going on. I'm starting to like this way of mixing a lot. I actually made a much wetter version of the mix but it always fell apart when it was limited for mastering.

Also there is the fact that we played the song live with just drums and guitar (one ambient mic), and NO CLICK, and we extracted a TEMPO TRACK from that scratch version. Only then we started recording everything again to THAT CLICK. I think that makes the song sound much more alive. And this is the way we are now recording every song for our future EP.



*wow that ended up being too long, sorry

 

Last edited: Oct 9, 2018

hola, love your dynamic prod! love guitars and voices! yes image is a bit too wide....
gracias for share!

 

Man you made me laugh my ass off, now I have no ass, thanks.
It's kind of true what you said, it might be irritatingly positive, but it serves like kind of a trap, because all the other songs we are producing are pretty dark. Actually before we finished this track we had another one ready to be released as first single, but when we realized where this one was going, we thought it would be fun to release it first and kind of "fool" people into thinking this is "our style", wich is not remotely true.

 

Liked hearing about the liner notes / equipment used etcs, thx! Food for thought. I guess I don't rly have a problem w/ "wide" and placed instruments, I kinda try to make a "live" (stage) performance soundscape, especially w/ drums. It's prolly being ITB too much. I did think (on first listen) that one instrument (guitar) had too much weird vibrato, but couldn't locate it on later listens, so prolly just my imagination...

No, it's very positive, no irritation! Rly enjoyable! *puts on repeat while wiggling and singing badly* I think it would only get irritating if it actually was a TV theme song! Anyway, I guess it's cos it's very upbeat, rly hands-in-the-air catchy and the bass is a lil bit subdued / 8ve up that it reminded me of a TV show, for some reason. Well, those reasons, I guess!

(I'm prolly just too used to bass heavy music, like most ppl here, tho? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )