The Knife - AndyR Original

[AndyR]

Another acoustic one from the vaults (21st December 1993).

Recorded 10-12 April 2010 on a BR1600.

"The Knife"
Words and music by A A J Russe

Time:

0:00

Volume:

50

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[chapperz66]

Another good one Andy.  Love the key changes which build on the drama brilliantly - and great clarity on the acoustic guitars.  I'm guessing that you used mics rather than DIing - what mics do you use?

A bit Uriah Heep in feel, I thought.  (Hope you aren't offended by comparisons with other artists.  Someone once got all indignant with me when I said - in genuine praise - that they reminded me of someone else.  If anybody wants to tell me I sound like Joe Satriani I promise I won't be offended at all!)

Paul

[lg]

I too hear a bit of Uriah Heep and a touch of Tom Jones vox.
This is a great song. Destined to be a favorite of mine!

LG

[Greeny]

I loved it from the opening guitar. Dramatic vocals, great lyrics, faultless production, and another absolutely top quality offering. The acoutsic guitar sounds so 'live'. Brilliant!!!!!!

[Bluesberry]

Thats the way to record acoustic guitar.  Please good sir, how did you record this guitar, all the gory details please.  Great song, really great song.  I am laughing at the Tom Jones vocal comment from our esteemed colleague LG, thats a good one.  I don't quite hear your vocals in that light, they are certainly dramatic and moving, thats for sure.  You want my comparision, seeing as the mind seeks out patterns and connections, I hear Wishbone Ash (Argus era), that is what I think.  Holy man that is sonme ending, snappy, poppy guitar.  You are a deadly guitarist.

[Geir]

This is another wonderful song Andy! You sure have the grip on the soncrafting !! Dramatic song with a great melody, the modulations, the powerful voice,  the fantastic production the excellent performance. .... ....  this one got it all !!

Is that a fake acoustic bass again? It sounds great !

And I love the acoustic sound here.

[AndyR]

Some quick secrets:

The "Double-Bass" is a Variax bass Guitar, which has a Double-bass model. Half the trick seems to be in figuring out how to play it like a double bass!!

It's got quite a bit of chorus on it, and a fair bit of compression. I was trying to get it to sound "natural", but to do that in the track (and pin down the bottom end at the same time) meant making it less natural... go figure

I want to use it again on the next one - I'm looking at something that has this acoustic, a resonator, (one part each, not layers), a dble-bass and drums, and a telecaster... Not sure yet...

The acoustics... yep, it's my new Godin "5th Avenue" archtop. Fantastic recording guitar, especially for those lead and harmony lines. I can't always play like that guys! For some reason this one just snaps and glides, even for an acoustic. However, I probably should have used a flat-top for the main rhythm parts, I was struggling to get that "big old strummy" sound for those.

All guitars and vocals were recorded with a Rodes (NT1000, I think) condenser mic. However, on the last one (Sleeping With The Ghost), some stuff was done with a rusty old SM58 as well - and to be honest, there's not a lot of difference, there's a bit more clarity I guess... For guitars, I'd be quite happy if I only had the SM58 (I'd use the condensor out of choice though), for the resonator I'll probably have to use the SM58, for vocals, I'd use the SM58 for a rock voice - that seems to get me there faster...

And actually, for this vocal, the SM58 was set up as a dummy mic for me to sing into - this enables me to put the condensor off to one side (one side of your mouth, the left in my case, produces more sibilants, so I put the mic on the right). If I don't use a dummy mic, I find myself following the other mic and singing into it, defeating the whole plan...

Uriah Heep... never really looked into them much, but I assume you mean the earlier stuff - I think I hear what you mean.

Tom Jones - class!
He is one of my favourite singers... I wasn't thinking Tom Jones when I was singing, but I think I know what you mean - I'll have to listen again when I get home.

Wishbone Ash - I am a bit fond of them, and yeah, I guess the guitar overdubs went that way... but the bare solo version isn't like them at all!

Actually, the song was ready Sunday, but I just couldn't get a mix going. One of the reasons was because it didn't have the punch and aggression, and sense of theatre, that you'd get if you sat in the room with me playing and singing it to you on one guitar.

I realised there were too many guitars smoothing things out. So I ditched a couple and backed off the reverbs on several of them. Then on the others I did "complementary" eq-ing - I took chunks of mids, but different frequencies, out of different guitars. This seemed to make it work better. One sub-mix even had a cut of -24dB on its mids!

Pretty much I got the layers of guitars and hardly audible percussion just about right, and then treated the vocal, bass, and main lead as solo instruments. I knew the main lead worked "as is" with some compression and lots of a nice dark "Room" reverb. So I played the vocal and bass against each other until they seemed to enjoy being together and then brought the guitars up to meet them.

I nearly redid the vocal - I couldn't hear the performance that I thought I'd captured on Saturday. But then last night, after a lot of eq fiddling (and compression) on this take, it suddenly jumped out at me... so I thought sod it, this is it. I got up early and mastered the last mix and posted it before going to work...

That involved taking a decision to omit backing vocals. I think this could go up a gear with backing vocals, but I think it lives without them. BVs would take quite a while to work out for this one, and might mean rethinking the guitars and bass again, so decided to go without and move on to the next thing... I might come back to it later when I've got some time.

[Tony W]

Intense Andy, very very intense (the production). The song is fantastic. I'm amazed by your quality on each post, though I should be accustomed to it by now.

This is a piepodder for sure.

[chapperz66]

Andy, it's pretty rare for me to do multiple listens to songs - but I've played this 4 or 5 times today.  Like it more each time.

Paul

[Ted]

Wonderful. Your archtop sounds great. I really admire the narrative style you have in songs like this one and Sleeping with the Ghost.  It's very literary, and does not come easily to me at all.