As mentioned in the post ‘Mixing Bass Guitar (LO4)’, much of the production of certain instruments was done before and during recording. This means that when it comes to mixing the guitar, which I’m starting today, I have a clear idea of how things should be set out in terms of placement, volumes and plug-ins used.

The first key piece of information is that when I recorded the guitar I did so with 3 microphones on the guitar amp at all times. Two SM57s on each speaker of the 2×12 cabinet and then an AKG C414 slightly further back. I decided that the C414 upon listening as part of a mix will not be used in the final product but both SM57 tracks will be in most circumstances. This is to create a richer tone where necessary, as each mic recorded different aspects of the tone I was trying to achieve on each track. Combined, they sound closer to the desired tone than either alone so for me it was an easy choice to use both. As shown in the picture below, when recording ‘Origin of Symmetry’ and possibly Showbiz and Absolution as well, John Leckie/Rich Costey and Matt Bellamy used several mics on different parts of the amplifiers, to capture different tones. The picture also shows that they predominantly recorded using Shure SM57s, which I chose to use when recording my guitars.

Another technique that is obvious throughout Muse’s early catalogue is the use of double-tracking guitar parts. Other than on solos and key riffs (see Plug-In Baby, Stockholme Syndrome (intro only) and Micro Cuts), the guitar parts on all of Showbiz, Origin of Symmetry and Absolution seem to be mostly double-tracked. Again, this is important in creating a stereo image for a band with only 3 members, particularly when many songs are simply guitar-bass-drums-and vocals. For more information on this see my posts titled ‘Muse’s Minimalism (LO5)’ and ‘Use of space on Absolution (LO3)’ I recorded most of my guitar parts for my EP twice in order to replicate the technique used by Muse but also by Rage Against the Machine on Renegades (see tracks such as Microphone Fiend and Renegades of Funk). The fact that for the majority of guitar parts I have two different takes and each take was recorded with two different microphones means that I have a lot of choice when it comes to colouring the tone to replicate guitar sounds in the mix. It also means that the guitar, while only ever playing one part (apart from a few tiny sections), is capable of being spread widely across a stereo field. Examples of the double-tracking of guitars on the Muse records include Time Is Running Out, Hysteria, the choruses of Plug-In Baby, Muscle Museum, New Born, Hyper Music and Thoughts of a Dying Atheist.

The guitar parts on Origin of Symmetry in particular that were not double-tracked, such as the outro of Micro Cuts (see 3:18) are interesting in terms of panning because they move from left to right in the stereo image. This is both to create space where there isn’t much, and also to create a slightly disorientating effect in the listener’s head. I’ll be using this technique on several sections of my EP to create movement in the stereo field in the more minimal areas of the tracks. Other than this, the prominent guitar riffs such as Plug-In Baby are mostly completely central in the mix.

In Muse’s first three albums and indeed in Renegades by Rage Against the Machine, quite a minimal amount of reverb has been used on the guitar parts. This makes for quite a dry sounding record and up until Absolution, where Muse became a little more liberal with reverb and delay-based effects, there is very little noticeable reverb to be found. Exceptions include the ‘clean’ section Citizen Erased, Megalomania, Muscle Museum and Unintended. With artists such as Muse and Rage Against the Machine, who have limited setups in terms of instrumentation, reverb is the kind of effect that is merely used to blend the guitars with the rest of the track rather than as a noticeable stylistic choice. In my EP I will attempt to use as little reverb on the guitars as possible in order to replicate the albums I’m studying. As mentioned, Absolution does feature a fair amount more ambience which I feel is a stylistic choice which was added to match the change in musical style. That said, the majority of Absolution is still quite dry in terms of reverb. Only one of my tracks, Alive, will feature noticeable amounts of reverb, which is mainly due to the fact that the song is more similar in style to Absolution than the others.

In terms of compression, it is hard to know for sure how much compression was used on any of the albums I’m researching but through listening I have determined that it has been used on guitars and in particular, the clean sections of tracks. See Citizen Erased for an example. In an article for Sound on Sound where he was discussing the recording of Foo Fighters’ ‘The Pretender’, Rich Costey is quoted saying ‘I tend not to compress distorted guitars very much when I’m mixing, because they’ve usually already been compressed. It’s strange, but to my ears, when you compress distorted electric guitars while you’re mixing, the whole mix starts to sound overcooked.’ Obviously this is an article regarding a track I’m not studying, it is interesting to find Costey’s philosophy on compressing distorted guitars. I therefore intend not to compress the distorted guitars I have recorded unless I feel it’s necessary.

In terms of EQ, there should not need to be much work as most of it was done while shaping the tone through the amplifier while recording guitars. That said I will need to EQ several parts of the guitars to get rid of some muddiness in places but also to make the double-tracked takes stand out from each other and peak in different areas of the frequency scale. One track I tried to replicate in terms of guitar tone is Muse’s ‘Micro Cuts’ from Origin of Symmetry. I wasn’t able to get enough high frequencies from the amp to replicate the tone and therefore I’ll need to add them through the EQ in Logic.

The track, ‘Alive’, from my EP is intended to replicate multiple guitar tones in Muse’s New Born from the same album. The first tone, heard at 1:24, is heavily distorted with a fuzz pedal and with a scoop in the mid frequencies. The second, heard at 1:36 (the two tones layer on top of each other), is prominent in higher frequencies. While I tried to capture these tones straight from the amp and pedals, there will need to be EQ’ing in order to replicate the guitar tones from New Born.

Effects such as delay are sporadically used on the guitar, in particular on Absolution. For more information on this see ‘Use of space on Absolution’. These effects will be added at the mixing stage as I found it difficult to get hold of pedals able to replicate the Echoplex. Another thing I will add during mixing is a bitcrusher on ‘Fame.’ On this track I attempted to create a tone reminiscent of that on Plug-In Baby by Muse, and while I think I got the amount and style of fuzz right, the sound isn’t yet saturated enough.

On Renegades, much of the same techniques used by Muse can be found, such as double-tracking and pitch-shifting. It seems to be more simplistic in nature however. I believe the tone I got straight from the amplifier when recording one of my tracks with a Tom Morell0-esque guitar tone was almost perfect and should not need much post-recording processing to complete.

With all of this in mind, I can begin to mix the guitars on my tracks to what, hopefully, will be an accurate representation of the guitars heard on the four albums I’m studying.

http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/secrets-mix-engineers-rich-costey

The next stage of my project is to mix the bass guitar. While most of the production on the bass (influenced by the bass on the four albums I’m studying) was done prior to and during the recording stage, I feel that the mixing is also a big part of achieving the bass guitar sounds I’m trying to replicate.

On Absolution, in the Sound on Sound interview I’ve linked below, Rich Costey noted that ‘as most arrangement decisions regarding the songs were made while recording, the overall modus operandi amounted to settling on a direction that would subsequently determine the nature of the overdubs and then the mix. This, in turn, ensured that the mixing process was relatively short and straightforward.’ While this is a philosophy I’ve tried to follow on all of the recording aspects of my project, there are a couple of highly characteristic pieces of production after the recording stages that make the bass guitar stand out.

The first, is the panning of certain bass tracks. Origin of Symmetry is strong evidence for this and in particular the track ‘Hyper Music’ (linked below) displays the way that the bass has been split and then panned to create a stereo image. As mentioned a lot throughout this blog, the band’s limited line-up instrumentally means that they have always tried to make the instruments they do have go further and by splitting the bass into three different tracks and then panning them, they successfully achieve this. I’ve followed a similar style so far in the mixing of my project and in three of the four tracks there are at least 3 different bass tracks, which will be panned accordingly. As mentioned in my other posts about bass guitar, one of these tracks will be entirely clean. This is because many distortion pedals lose some of their low-end when used with bass guitar. The Seymour Duncan link below goes further into this idea. Obviously as the bass’s primary job is to add low-end depth to a piece of music, adding a clean track underneath the distortions and then EQ’ing out frequencies over around 300Hz means that the bass retains it’s power in the low frequencies and the distortion tracks are free to create their tones which are generally more prominent in the mids and high-mids. This in turn creates a powerful set of bass tracks, able to dominate a piece of music where there’s a limited amount of other instruments.

The track in my EP with only two bass tracks, Antagonise, was intended to replicate the bass tone of Tim Commerford (Rage Against the Machine bassist) on Renegades. While the bass plays an important role on this album, it isn’t as dominating as the bass of Chris Wolstenholme on any of the Muse albums I’ve studied. That said, Rage Against the Machine are still a instrumentally limited band where all of the instruments are required to be heard in the mix. The track contains two bass tracks; the main, which is a clean recording of my bass amp with the bass set up to mimic a Commerford bass tone, and a track with a DI’d signal of the original recording which has been re-amped but this time with a Boss Bass Overdrive pedal added. The distorted bass sound on this album couldn’t be much more different to those used on the Muse records so when recording I left the EQ on the amp flat and tried to boost the lows on the Overdrive pedal. The bass tone on Renegades (best heard distorted on ‘Pistol Grip Pump’) is one that tries to boost the low-end tone of the bass, rather than adding a presence in the higher end of the EQ. This is unusual for a bass distortion track as often it’s an effect used to substitute for a second guitar, such as in Muse.

While there is some panning of the bass on this album, (see ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’), generally the bass guitar sits completely centre. For the track where I’m trying to replicate Commerford’s bass tone, I’ll therefore do the same.

In terms of compression, while I struggled to find concrete evidence of the type and amount of compression used by either Leckie or Costey on these four albums, I have found through listening that Costey seems to be more liberal than Leckie in terms of the amount of compression used on the bass guitar. See some of the bass tracks on Showbiz for evidence of this compared to the likes of ‘Hysteria’ from Absolution. I’ll be experimenting with compression in order to try and replicate what I can hear on these four albums.

To conclude I feel that with the research done on the bass guitar and the way it was produced in the albums I’m researching, I should be able to replicate the sound and style that the producers used.

http://www.musewiki.org/Rich_Costey:_Recording_Muse%27s_Absolution_(200312_Sound_on_Sound_article)

Unlocking The Secrets Of Bass Distortion

Through the production of my EP, I have been keen on trying to replicate the spaces, ambiences and reverbs used by Rich Costey when producing Absolution. My blog post on recording drums shows that I have researched and taken into account how the drums were recorded and therefore mixed to create the ambience that you hear on the album. I have since used the room microphone that I recorded with in all four of the tracks on my EP, which is a technique that Costey used on Absolution. Again, see my full post on recording drums for more information.

The article in ‘Sound on Sound’ (linked at the bottom of this entry) which I have used for research and inspiration throughout this project has been very important in influencing my decisions while recording. Extensive listening to the actual material recorded by Costey on Absolution has also been key. Costey makes clear that he feels ‘that mixing is an extension of the recording process, not necessarily a different thing.’ This meant that I aimed to get the right amount (or lack of) natural ambience and reverb while recording, as well as not recording something that was going to need excessive amounts of EQ.

While the majority of Absolution is relatively dry in terms of reverberation, several tracks such as Sing For Absolution, Falling Away With You, and Ruled By Secrecy feature the effect. Costey seems to show a preference for using delay, rather than reverb, as testified to on an interview about Muse’s follow-up album, which he also produced. ‘What I really like are tape delays and oilcan delays that can create a blur behind an instrument without you knowing what it is.’ Costey says in the Sound on Sound interview on Absolution that he is a big fan of the Echoplex delay unit and that ‘it’s hardly ever the case that something goes down without getting run through a [Maestro] Echoplex. I’m addicted to them.’ While I don’t personally own an Echoplex this is a useful insight into how Costey created space on the album. On ‘Sing for Absolution’ he notes that he “had the dry piano coming into the console and [I] then split the signal so that half of it went to tape and the other half went to a [Digitech] Whammy pedal. In fact, the Whammy pedal also got split, so that half of it went to — no surprise here — an Echoplex and the other half went to a [Lovetone] Doppelganger pedal. That achieved a fake stereo, with a dry attack front and centre, while the Doppelganger with the echo was on one side and the Whammy’s echo was on the other. Then we doubled it, so that it wasn’t even fake stereo any more; it was two performances, which made a lot more sense.” This shows the level of detail that went into creating a stereo image for just one instrument and, while Absolution is not an album I am paying close attention to in my LO5 (which relates to creating a full sound with minimal instruments), it is still indicative of the style of production which makes a limited amount of instruments particularly prominent.

A key example of the use of delay effects on Absolution can be heard on ‘Hysteria’ (linked at the bottom), during the guitar solo. The guitar in this section is panned lightly to the left channel, with the delay effect acting more dominantly on the right. This really helps to add image and depth to an otherwise simplistic recording where the double-tracking does not come into play until half-way through the solo. This again, can be related to LO5.

Another method that was used on the album to create space, and also used on Renegades, mixed by Rich Costey, is to closely double track guitar parts and then pan them hard left and right. This can be heard on ‘Time Is Running Out’ (linked at the bottom), particularly from the second verse. The guitar could have been recorded once through two different amps and then panned, achieving an identical guitar take. This is good for reducing the amount of takes used and therefore adds to the minimalism slightly, however it does sound limited as a stereo image. While the two tracks would be tonally different, the homogeneity in the actual take would mean that there is essentially just a stereo take of a guitar track. Recording the same take as closely as possible and then panning gives a richer sound, with imperfections not noticeable to the listener. This also limits possibilities of phasing issues. In my recordings of guitar I double tracked nearly everything apart from certain riffs and solos. This was both to enhance the texture of the songs but to create a dynamic in the guitar part that intensifies when the rest of the song does. I thought of it as layering. The majority of the guitar parts were also recorded in stereo, with an SM57 on speaker of the 2×12 cab. This wasn’t to create space but to capture a richer guitar tone that could be changed just by adjusting the volume of each track. I’ll talk more about this in my ‘Mixing Guitars (LO1)’ post. Another ‘bonus of hard panned rhythm guitars is that it makes space down the middle for featured tracks, like vocals.’ (Reverb.com, below)

Using these techniques I believe I’ll be able to mix my EP to sound at least some way to being influenced by the production techniques used by Rich Costey on Absolution.

http://www.musewiki.org/Rich_Costey:_Recording_Muse%27s_Absolution_(200312_Sound_on_Sound_article)

http://www.emusician.com/gear/1332/an-evening-with-rich-costey/37658

https://reverb.com/uk/news/how-to-double-track-guitars