My cover of a less known U2 song

[SustainerPlayer]

My take on this b-side song from their Wide Awake In America EP.

I always felt that the original sounded like an unfinished demo. As usual my take always ends up very synth pop-like.

I used my Warmoth hardtail strat into Axe Fx III, Addictive Drums and a handful of soft synths.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kyQy-5JNVE[/youtube]

Let me know what you think of it? 

 

[bagman67]

Well, if you're gonna make synth-pop, you should at least make it good synth-pop.  And this is good synth-pop.  Great job.

 

[SustainerPlayer]

Well, if you're gonna make synth-pop, you should at least make it good synth-pop.  And this is good synth-pop.  Great job.

Thanks man. Appreciate it. 

 

[rauchman]

Very very cool.  I really like this.

Some questions....

Addictive Drums - The drum lines sound really good.  Is this similar to EZ Drummer?  I'm running EZ D currently, and find the cymbals sound splashy.  The drums you're using don't have that.

What soft synth(s) are you running?  I'd like to use more of this element in my recordings.  For some songs, looking for less guitar focus and just focus on sounds.

Again, really cool.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

Wow, this is really good stuff. The execution of the song, the recording and the quality of the video are all very impressive. Great work!

 

[SustainerPlayer]

Very very cool.  I really like this.

Some questions....

Addictive Drums - The drum lines sound really good.  Is this similar to EZ Drummer?  I'm running EZ D currently, and find the cymbals sound splashy.  The drums you're using don't have that.

What soft synth(s) are you running?  I'd like to use more of this element in my recordings.  For some songs, looking for less guitar focus and just focus on sounds.

Again, really cool.

Thanks man. 

In Addictive Drums you can buy some add on kits - and my favorite kit there is the "Black Velvet" (I hope you can see this in the attachment)

I don't use the processing and effects in Addictive Drums but send the sounds "raw" to my DAW - where I send some individually to a reverb channel and all drums through a bus where I for this song have EQ'ed with the GEM EQ500 plugin / saturate with the Black Box HG-2 / and compress with the Lindel 354E plugin.

I have (too) many soft synths - but for this song I have used:

Two Carbon Electra instances for bass.
Arturia Oberheim Sem V for the intro arpeggio.
Synthmaster 1 and 2 and Arturia Pigments stacked for some of the "ambient" pad sounds.
Arturia Solina V for the stringer sound.
Roland System 8 and Air Vacuum Pro stacked for synth arpeggios.
And Arturia Yamaha DX 7 stacked with the main guitar theme.
All guitars tracked through the Fractal Audio Axe III
A reverb bus with Eventide SP2016 reverb (really killer for 80's sound)
A delay bus with Native Instruments Replika XT

The mix down is mastered through SlickEQ M, Kostelnikov GE (compressor) and Limiter 6 GE all from Tokyo Dawn which is my "go-to" mastering chain.

If you are looking for synths then I would highly recommend Arturia V Collection and their new Pigments wavetable synth (but wait until you can buy them on sale!)

And if you have some already - look into stacking different sounds to fatten up and keep the sound interesting by processing them further through eg. phaser, flanger, delay etc. Even "boring" synth sounds comes alive this way.

 

[SustainerPlayer]

Wow, this is really good stuff. The execution of the song, the recording and the quality of the video are all very impressive. Great work!

Thanks man. I'm humbled by your kind words.

 

[rauchman]

Very very cool.  I really like this.

Some questions....

Addictive Drums - The drum lines sound really good.  Is this similar to EZ Drummer?  I'm running EZ D currently, and find the cymbals sound splashy.  The drums you're using don't have that.

What soft synth(s) are you running?  I'd like to use more of this element in my recordings.  For some songs, looking for less guitar focus and just focus on sounds.

Again, really cool.

Thanks man. 

In Addictive Drums you can buy some add on kits - and my favorite kit there is the "Black Velvet" (I hope you can see this in the attachment)

I don't use the processing and effects in Addictive Drums but send the sounds "raw" to my DAW - where I send some individually to a reverb channel and all drums through a bus where I for this song have EQ'ed with the GEM EQ500 plugin / saturate with the Black Box HG-2 / and compress with the Lindel 354E plugin.

I have (too) many soft synths - but for this song I have used:

Two Carbon Electra instances for bass.
Arturia Oberheim Sem V for the intro arpeggio.
Synthmaster 1 and 2 and Arturia Pigments stacked for some of the "ambient" pad sounds.
Arturia Solina V for the stringer sound.
Roland System 8 and Air Vacuum Pro stacked for synth arpeggios.
And Arturia Yamaha DX 7 stacked with the main guitar theme.
All guitars tracked through the Fractal Audio Axe III
A reverb bus with Eventide SP2016 reverb (really killer for 80's sound)
A delay bus with Native Instruments Replika XT

The mix down is mastered through SlickEQ M, Kostelnikov GE (compressor) and Limiter 6 GE all from Tokyo Dawn which is my "go-to" mastering chain.

If you are looking for synths then I would highly recommend Arturia V Collection and their new Pigments wavetable synth (but wait until you can buy them on sale!)

And if you have some already - look into stacking different sounds to fatten up and keep the sound interesting by processing them further through eg. phaser, flanger, delay etc. Even "boring" synth sounds comes alive this way.

Very much appreciate the info.  My curiosity on the Addictive Drummer is piqued!  Any idea how it compares to EZ Drummer?

Also, thanks for the info on the synths.  Wow, I have a lot to learn!

 

[SustainerPlayer]

Very much appreciate the info.  My curiosity on the Addictive Drummer is piqued!  Any idea how it compares to EZ Drummer?

Also, thanks for the info on the synths.  Wow, I have a lot to learn!

No sorry - I haven't tried EZ Drummer. I've been an Addictive Drummer ... uhm ... addict since I came back to music in 2005/2006.

But maybe you should try and see if you can "tame" those cymbals with some careful processing first?

There are some things to learn. But there is a lot of info on youtube on how to produce. And like anything else you'll learn and get better when you start doing it.

 

[SustainerPlayer]

My curiosity on the Addictive Drummer is piqued!  Any idea how it compares to EZ Drummer?

I made two isolated drum tracks from the song - one with the RAW samples and one with final mix (but without the mastering). I tried as good as I can to volume match them (higher volume always sound better) - so you can get an idea of the sounds:

https://www.jottacloud.com/s/118f3994f8d8e314271b413c6c408390f80

 

[rauchman]

My curiosity on the Addictive Drummer is piqued!  Any idea how it compares to EZ Drummer?

I made two isolated drum tracks from the song - one with the RAW samples and one with final mix (but without the mastering). I tried as good as I can to volume match them (higher volume always sound better) - so you can get an idea of the sounds:

https://www.jottacloud.com/s/118f3994f8d8e314271b413c6c408390f80

Wow, thanks for doing that.  Very much appreciated.  I have to play more on the processing of the EZ Drummer then.