Tasteful Distortion in Punk and Hardcore recordings

[Matt C.]

I attached a link to a song (by a Bay Area band from a couple years ago called Look Back and Laugh), and I'm wondering whether anyone here has some insight into how to achieve the sort of little-bit-on-everything distortion on this recording. I really like the sound of it, how everything sounds so raw but still retains a lot of punch and clarity. What are some methods for distorting everything like that and still getting it to all fit so well together? If it helps, this was recorded by Dan Rathbun at Polymorph Studios.

http://soundcloud.com/matt-castore/02-m ... -wreck-nem

any insight would be great, thanks!

[dicko]

There's an interesting interview with Kurt Ballou in Tape Op 76 that touches on this.

TO: A lot of your records are pretty gnarly as far as mix distortion goes.

KB: It's the cumulative effect of a lot of things. It's the sound of the instruments themselves, a little bit of the mic pre, the compressor and driving things hard in the mix. Sometimes it's compression on the mix, sometimes it's going to tape too hot. It also happens in mastering but I feel like it sounds more natural when it happens at a lot of small stages."

[KennyLusk]

I attached a link to a song (by a Bay Area band from a couple years ago called Look Back and Laugh), and I'm wondering whether anyone here has some insight into how to achieve the sort of little-bit-on-everything distortion on this recording. I really like the sound of it, how everything sounds so raw but still retains a lot of punch and clarity. What are some methods for distorting everything like that and still getting it to all fit so well together? If it helps, this was recorded by Dan Rathbun at Polymorph Studios.

http://soundcloud.com/matt-castore/02-m ... -wreck-nem

any insight would be great, thanks!

I'm not saying this is the answer, there are many answers; but Stillwell's Bad Buss Mojo plug kick a$$ at making this happen. You can keep it clean, dirty it up a bit or outright f up you signal - it's so much fun. Use it on a channel or use it across the mix buss - it's up to the user.

http://www.stillwellaudio.com/?page_id=19

[palinilap]

Like dicko pointed out, probably every stage that can impart some pleasant harmonic distortions are being utilized, i.e. source, pres, compressors, tape machine, maybe plug-ins. Also sounds like they're using plenty of HPF-ing to retain the clarity.

[Bro Shark]

Dan is a bit of a genius at recording heavy stuff. He takes it very seriously. I agree that track sounds killer.

[Matt C.]

Yeah, Dan has recorded two of my favorite sounding modern hardcore records (one being that Look Back and Laugh record i linked to, the other being Tragedy - Vengeance). He does great work. I remember his old tape op interview being pretty informative, but I don't think he talked much about this style of mix distortion.

[sound for sandwiches]

Nice to see LBAL and tragedy getting some love here.

My feeling on the trend towards overall distortion in a lot of recent punk/HC/garage records, is that it can either feel gratuitous and gimmicky, or, like in the example you posted, it can be an attempt to make the record feel as much like the live show as possible. Having seen LBAL live a bunch, I'd say they're after the latter and they nail it.

one trick I've seen done recording this style of music: have the vocalist use a cheap PA, live with the band, and mic the speakers. Can add distortion, but this may not be the only reason for the technique.

david

[Brett Siler]

Another method could be adding a distoortion unit to an Aux or Buss and sned little bits to your desired instruments. I've been really into this lately.

[A.David.MacKinnon]

[Bro Shark]

[MoreSpaceEcho]

hahahahahahahaha

[Marc Alan Goodman]

Yeah, Dan is totally awesome. Nice track.

Personally I have a couple pieces of outboard I use mainly for distortion. Distortion is essentially just really hard limiting, and some units do a better job of it than others. My personal favorites are limiters designed for aeronautics or the military, situations where intelligibility is by far the most important thing. They tend to chop some of the top and bottom off and limit the hell out of the most important parts of the human voice. Examples would be the Brauer-made-famous Dept of Commerce limiter, and a number of other pieces spec'd as "Federal" or "FAA". (plug: lots of good pictures of this stuff up on our website in the gallery section)

However there's nothing wrong with just putting a fuzz pedal on an aux. I do that pretty often too. Isn't Tchad Blake attributed with the whole SansAmp on the drum bus thing?

With that particular mix it sounds like a lot of distortion on the sources, but there's still a bit of headroom on the mix bus. Prob something in parallel.

[GussyLoveridge]

attempt to make the record feel as much like the live show as possible.

This to me is such a huge part of what I like in this kind of music. I've tried micing a clean vocal split and run through a PA and either close micing a shitty distorting PA speaker or recording that sound back in the room. That works and you could probably do that over with whatever other instruments too I suppose. To me that's how I can get the closest to that almost overpowering your ears sound that you get at an all-ages punkrock/hardcore show.