Still think this is stellar - I A/B'd against a pristine version of the original Floyd mix and I think yours trumps it... modernized and more vital (both the performance of it and the sound). A cover song is "dialogic" and when you cover it you are engaging with all your experiences of it, and by extension engaging with your audience's experience of the song.... it can have an incredible emotional weight to it because of this. This one has weight for sure.

DogsoverLava, post: 447103, member: 48175 wrote: Still think this is stellar - I A/B'd against a pristine version of the original Floyd mix and I think yours trumps it... modernized and more vital (both the performance of it and the sound). A cover song is "dialogic" and when you cover it you are engaging with all your experiences of it, and by extension engaging with your audience's experience of the song.... it can have an incredible emotional weight to it because of this. This one has weight for sure.

Dogs, definitely didn't think I would go from getting crushing reviews from you on my earlier material to being rated ABOVE Pink Floyd! Really glad to have met your standard, and thanks for the mixing advice along the way. Your initial assessment of the guitars "sounding like they're on a different sonic plane from the rest of the track" haunted me for weeks. I was in denial and tried to rationalize the tone as "raw" or whatever, but you were totally right. I experimented with tones and amps until I found a tone of proper fidelity and meat (mixing stereo takes also helped).

Very apt observations on the "art of the cover". I intended my Animals recording project to be a purely technical endeavor, but it's inevitably a creative endeavor too....the tracks have a very specific sound in my head, and like you said, are reflections of my relationship with the originals. Pigs is a heavy, black-humor funk-rock track and I tried to make it so with emphasizing the guitars and anger in the vox.

Hey Stevie - you are Stephan yes? Guitars and vocals on this? Can you share how you programed your drums. They sound really good to me very "real" in terms of feel etc... Any insights on programing there ? Did you work from a drum score? How'd you build the track? Did you start with drums and scratch parts? I'd love to know more about the project as a whole process wise. Also - what's next? Where will see see light?

Here's a gear rundown:

Interesting you say that about the drums, they are actually done via EZDrummer using a few canned beats that I hand-tweaked (mainly for the fills). It's honestly some of the simplest drum programming I've done, mainly 'cause Pigs conveniently has an insanely straightforward drum track. I used pretty "dry" room settings for the overall kit. I routed kicks to its own bus with a 90Hz boost and some moderate/heavy compression. The hats/hits were split into another bus with light compression.

---Vox---

Mainly double-take dubs (sometimes triple dubs for emphasis) with the main vocal panned center and a slight offset pan for the secondary vocals. Moderate compression, chorus effect, and SLIGHT reverb.

----Guitars------
Fender American Standard Strat
Sennheiser e609 mic (vocals and guitars)

Rhythm Guitar (crunch)- Stereo takes on a single mic Orange amp with slight post-gain tube compression, all in Amplitube3 (bridge pup)

Rhythm Guitar (clean jam)- Chorusy JC-10 Jazz amp in Amplitube3 (bridge-mid pup)

Lead Guitars - BossGT-10 Overdriven tube preamp mic'd through a real Peavey Classic (acting as the cab). The "talkbox" effect uses same setup but with a heavy phaser (GT-10) and additional gain. Varying levels of reverb and delay. All bridge pups.
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We're actually covering the entire Animals album. "Dogs" and "Pigs On The Wing pt2" are VERY close to being done. "Sheep" is about 50% done. "Pigs on the Wing Pt.1" is done, check it out here: [MEDIA=soundcloud]stephan-mathos/pigs-on-the-wing-pt1-c