Recording Eddie Money's 'I Wanna Go Back:'

Guitars are almost finished. Getting ready to track vocals.

I created my own patch in Steinberg Amp Rack VST simulation which is based on a 50 watt Marshall, a 4x12 cabinet, a SD421/SM57 microphone combo and a pedalboard patterned after the pedalboard I actually use live.

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Hey, Guys...

I thought it would be fun to just throw this recording out for you guys (and gals) to listen to and not tell you all the techniques and settings that were used up front. Once you folks have had a chance to listen, I will share all the settings and background on the project.

Here's my humble tribute to Eddie Money:

Quintessential 80s Eddie Money... and the full-on guitar subbing for the sax just adds to the original "good times" spirit of the song... Again, hats off, Robert!!
 
How's the overall mix???? I tend to make the guitars overtly loud, so I will likely remaster this song. This experiment is more to help hone my skills as a producer and engineer than just create a cool cover.
 
The overall mix sounds good to me in general. Asides from a little tweaking of the voice vs guitar level mix throughout the whole song, I would maybe just process the voices a little further with a little plate rev and run them through a 1073 neve preamp for the final mix.
 
So, on this song, I really wanted to do something a little different, so I decided to see how creative I could be.


A few months back, we recorded several live shows through the PA and mixer, along with (separate) ambient room mikes over the bar and seating area and over the dance floor, all running into separate channels. We performed and recorded this song and the response was really overwhelming. I had no idea (at the time) how much people of all ages and genres loved and identified with this song.


The problem was that there was a lot of bleedover on those recordings from the sheer volume level in the room at the time, so the ambient room tracks were not really clear enough to use. However, the response from the people in attendance was really something that shocked me and I wanted to somehow try and replicate the reaction from that night.


I found some ambient crowd files that are free for use in the public domain. This includes the seating (dinner area) and the bar/dance floor areas. Using this files - and using the original ambinet room files, I copied and pasted the ambient tracks then mapped out the live crowd's reaction to certain parts of the song and reproduced their reactions as best I could.

The drum tracks were recorded in Burbank and I laid the bass tracks down simultaneously.

All other parts were recorded in my home studio.

The saxophone parts are played on YelloStrat direct into my Blackstar ID-Core 100watt with only a 50ms delay. That's it.

Rhythm guitar was played on YelloStrat with a 20ms delay. Same settings used throughout.

Vocals were recorded on my Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 with a 10ms delay and some light reverb.

I sang my own backup vocals in the same way I backed up our singer live, so it's at least an average club performance.

Hope you enjoyed it!!! It was a fun cover to make.
 
The overall mix sounds good to me in general. Asides from a little tweaking of the voice vs guitar level mix throughout the whole song, I would maybe just process the voices a little further with a little plate rev and run them through a 1073 neve preamp for the final mix.

Good suggestions...

I'm trying to see what I can do with only my home studio gear, so there are some limitations in that approach...
 
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