USE ALL THE FUZZ! Song w/ Rust Bunny and Swamp Comp + more of my DIY designs

[midwayfair]

I wrote two bluegrass songs for my first two FAWM songs and missed my electric guitar, which apparently means I want to use a bunch of fuzz pedals:

[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/jon-patton-3/dry-town[/soundcloud]

Here's what's on there:

-My Sheraton through the Rust Bunny (all knobs at noon) and then through the Tap Tempo Cardinal (low depth) is doing the main riff.
-One of the lead guitars is the Sheraton through a Bearhug into the Rust Bunny into the Snow Day, which means it's a total of three compressors plus a fuzz by the time it's mixed down.
-The other lead guitar is my red telecaster (on the middle pickup, which is a broadcaster neck pup) through the bearhug, then through a Fuzz Face with the gain backed off, a MOSFET booster, and the Snow Day.
-The bass is using the Swamp Comp after a Bearhug with the fuzz blend at noon, the compression at 2:00, and the treble set low (it might have been 0ed out). It might be hard to hear with everything else going on, but isolated it sounds massive even though ...

All the guitars and the bass were recorded through the Sakura. The guitars are through the lead channel and the bass is through the "clean" channel.

The only mic I used was the MK4. So versatile.

[mgwhit]

Wow!  Great song and great sounds!  Very cool.

[Luke51411]

Aww shoot... I pressed reply in the middle of the song and the sound went away. I was enjoying listening to it! Great sound!!!

[thesameage]

Love this!

Question, what's the benefit of using more than one comp on a track?

[midwayfair]

Question, what's the benefit of using more than one comp on a track?

You can compress a little at a time with different parameters, which smooths things out and makes everything more consistent, especially when you're looking for peak limiting rather than long sustain. It's similar to the benefits of stacking gain pedals. For instance, on the bass here, I ran it through the Bearhug on the short setting with the comp around noon first, which gives it some "spring" (more like an upright), then I slammed it a little harder in the Swamp Comp so I didn't overdrive the amp or the microphone. The Swamp Comp has a longer attack, though, so you still get some bounce and string noise. For the compressor in the software, I used an extremely short attack and a short decay, so again, more like a limiter, but with a very low ratio -- at that point, I'm just squaring off the highest peaks.

This maybe isn't the sort of thing that would work well live; it's more of a way to give a recording a sense of high volume. Despite going through an amp, the bass was recorded at essentially conversation level. When we listen to music at a high volume, we perceive it as much more compressed, and not just because the equipment might be clipping. I just think that staging compression does a better job of imitating how it sounds in real life.

Mastering does something similar to an entire track ... you might have two or three compressors of various sorts (including a tape head plug in, which is clipping) to raise the minimum volume a little at a time before you get to the brick wall limiter. For the final mixdown, I usually use the tape delay plugin on 0 delay/0 feedback and a wet/dry mix to fake the tape head, plus a multipressor and limiter, but I skipped the tape delay this time because there was enough distortion on the individual tracks.

EDIT: I need to pull the Sheraton lead down a little before the solo.

[micromegas]

I dig this one a lot! It has some Tom Waits vibes...

[thesameage]

Question, what's the benefit of using more than one comp on a track?

You can compress a little at a time with different parameters, which smooths things out and makes everything more consistent, especially when you're looking for peak limiting rather than long sustain. It's similar to the benefits of stacking gain pedals. For instance, on the bass here, I ran it through the Bearhug on the short setting with the comp around noon first, which gives it some "spring" (more like an upright), then I slammed it a little harder in the Swamp Comp so I didn't overdrive the amp or the microphone. The Swamp Comp has a longer attack, though, so you still get some bounce and string noise. For the compressor in the software, I used an extremely short attack and a short decay, so again, more like a limiter, but with a very low ratio -- at that point, I'm just squaring off the highest peaks.

This maybe isn't the sort of thing that would work well live; it's more of a way to give a recording a sense of high volume. Despite going through an amp, the bass was recorded at essentially conversation level. When we listen to music at a high volume, we perceive it as much more compressed, and not just because the equipment might be clipping. I just think that staging compression does a better job of imitating how it sounds in real life.

Mastering does something similar to an entire track ... you might have two or three compressors of various sorts (including a tape head plug in, which is clipping) to raise the minimum volume a little at a time before you get to the brick wall limiter. For the final mixdown, I usually use the tape delay plugin on 0 delay/0 feedback and a wet/dry mix to fake the tape head, plus a multipressor and limiter, but I skipped the tape delay this time because there was enough distortion on the individual tracks.

EDIT: I need to pull the Sheraton lead down a little before the solo.

You're on a whole other level with your use of compression. 

[selfdestroyer]

Great track Jon, I like the production of it and the fuzzy goodness.

Cody

[cooder]

Very cool indeed!