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anonymous 7 May 2005

Has anyone been successful at recreating the Vx effects that were used on John Foreman's lead vocals in "Dare You to Move"? What's your best guess?

Thanks.

Dave

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anonymous Sat, 05/14/2005 - 15:20

Theres like a bagillion versions of that song, so I'll assume you mean "The Beautiful Letdown" album version.

Side note: have you heard the "rock radio friendly" mix of the song with heavy ultra compressed, ultra lame drums over the whole song!? ridiculous!

I'm listening now.. as I thought about it all that stuck out was like, a lot of compression, and a bit of reverb. And as I listen, yep, thats it. Delay added on the words "move" and "today".. reverb cuts out on "before", back in lightly for the second verse... delay on the word "is" in the 2nd verse, and back into the chorus.. same deal as before.

"maybe redemption" sounds like its got a light overdrive..pushing out the mids and sucking the extreme highs. You could do this by using a plugin like digitalfishphones blockfish and an eq, or with a tubescreamer pedal.

Going into the last chorus the vocals are now doubled. The double definately has overdrive on it... and comes forward in the mix on the higher notes.

Nothing too "effecty".. I think you're mainly hearing the dynamic vocal mixing, which is really, the best part of the mixing on this album, IMO. Also, it certainly sounds like he's using a very nice (but very hyped) mic in a fairly dead room with a shitload of compression, which is a big part of the sound.

Hope this helps!

Mike

anonymous Sat, 05/14/2005 - 16:53

it funny that you mention this song.

(now for my drawn out story)

Dare you to move debuted on Switchfoot's "Learning To Breathe" album. (fantastic album IMO) Great production with Charlie Peacock. I thought it was such an awesome song even back then. When they released "beautiful letdown" I thought, "Oh my freakin gosh, that sounds great!" (I'm a big Lord-alge fan)

Recently I read an article about how compression tires the ears and eventually shortens the lifespan of the song for the listener. Now the version of Dare you to move on The Beautiful Letdown is far superior to the one on Learning to Breathe. BUT, I hate the song now! I can't stand it. It was my favorite song for 2 1/2 years, but I really do think that the compression just squeezed all of the life out of everything and killed it for me. Not because I hate compression but that's just what over compression does.

Sorry for the long, drawn out story. I was just thinking out this song just the other day.

Oh, and i don't think that the vocal is doubled in the last chorus. I thought that at first, but the more i hear it, it sounds like the vocal doubler setting on the eventide h3000. Lord-Alge does that quite a bit on stuff (ala. Blink-182)

thanks for listening!

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