Too Much Time on My Hands - Styx cover

[John Bradley]

Too Much Time on My Hands

Yay, more '80s stuff!

Drums: Session Drummer 3. Kick/Snare/Toms send to a parallel 'crushing' compressor (BOZ Manic Compressor) for bigness, hat/crash/ride sent to a parallel 'smoothing' compressor (the ProChannel PC76). Ozone 8 Vintage Limiter on the master drum bus.

Bass: IKM's MODO BASS '60s P-bass model, DI out only (no amp/fx modelling) into Blue Cat's Axiom for amp and speaker modelling.

Synths: WA Production Babylon (deal!) doing the pitch sweep in the beginning, along with a reversed sample of same (distorted and delayed) coming in at the end of the intro. Two more instances of Babylon doing the riff that comes in next (and continues for the whole song, doubling the bass guitar) and the synth bass that only appears at the beginning (leaves at verse 1, never to return). An Arturia Prophet rounds out the collection, doing the filter sweep chords that appear periodically.

Percussion: Two instances of 2getheraudio's CL4P, set up slightly differently, to each play one half of the two-clap flourishes that appear in the chorus. They're panned to opposite sides, but alternate positions each time.

Guitars: One guitar doing power chords, another doing a clean, high 2-note chord thing starting in verse 2. (The second guitar is doubled by an Arturia Prophet doing a vaguely synthy/Rhodesy patch.) Third guitar for the lead, also doubling the signature hook in the verses. All guitars recorded dry, processed with Axiom. The lead features Blue Cat's Accoufiend feedback simulator, most evident at the end of the solo, though it's on all the time. That was probably recorded at 3am, without the neighbors or the wife even noticing. Technology is great.

Vocals: Single track lead vocals run through iZotope Nectar 2 for gate/compression/saturation/eq/de-essing/limiting, then into a Valhalla Delay set for as a subtle chorus, into a second Delay for a subtle 1/8th tempo delay, and a BREVERB for juicy goodness.

There are 2 tracks of backing vocals doing harmony during the first half of the choruses ("hard to believe such a calamity"). During the second half of the chorus there are three vocal lines, each of which is double tracked and panned left/right to varying degrees. Blue Cat Chorus and BREVERB on the bg vox bus.

Effects: Other than the normal ProChannel stuff per channel, there's a GW MixCentric on the master, followed by an Ozone 8 doing whatever it felt like doing.

[Lynn Wilson]

John, you are a hit machine.  I like your version better than the original.  In addition to creating great covers, you are a terrific singer.  You're dong a great job of showcasing your talents while reminding us of the good music from the 80s.

[DeeringAmps]

Man, you go into more detail that I do!
(I'm much impressed)

13 hours ago, John Bradley said:

vocals run through iZotope Nectar 2

Sounds good on this track. (frankly, I haven't bonded with Nectar, I don't know what it is, but it never sounds "better" to me...)

? Well done!

tom

[John Bradley]

13 hours ago, Lynn said:

John, you are a hit machine.  I like your version better than the original.  In addition to creating great covers, you are a terrific singer.  You're dong a great job of showcasing your talents while reminding us of the good music from the 80s.

Thanks Lynn, glad you liked it! But are you sure you didn't leave out an 's' in that first bit? ? Also, that's the first time I've seen "showcasing my talents" and "my dong" appear in the same phrase. Certainly not from the missus... ?

As for the singing, my microphone (and neighbors) would probably disagree. Let's just say I know how to use technology to carve what I've got into something reasonable-sounding. The Melodyne blobs and I are old friends at this point. (So glad I upgraded to Studio -- makes fixing harmonies much more pleasant when I can see and edit all the lines at once.)

Rock on!

[John Bradley]

6 hours ago, DeeringAmps said:

Sounds good on this track. (frankly, I haven't bonded with Nectar, I don't know what it is, but it never sounds "better" to me...)

I hear you on that. Didn't like any of their presets, eventually made a couple of my own that I reuse on everything. 

Find iZotope's EQ somewhat weird to operate compared to the EQ in the ProChannel, though having 8 bands to play with instead of 4+2 is nice. Rarely every use the FX/Delay/Reverb modules; limited versatility and they don't sound that good to me.

Mostly I use it for the gate, dual parallel compressors, de-esser, saturation, and limiter. It's nice having that chain of FX only take up one slot in the track strip, just from a screen-space perspective. Also, while not used on this track, I like the Harmonizer module. Often add on two unison voices, panned left/right and 10db behind the main, with a couple of percent of time/pitch variation to subtly (or not-so-subtly) fatten up a thin voice.

[Lynn Wilson]

11 hours ago, John Bradley said:

Thanks Lynn, glad you liked it! But are you sure you didn't leave out an 's' in that first bit? ? Also, that's the first time I've seen "showcasing my talents" and "my dong" appear in the same phrase. Certainly not from the missus... ?

As for the singing, my microphone (and neighbors) would probably disagree. Let's just say I know how to use technology to carve what I've got into something reasonable-sounding. The Melodyne blobs and I are old friends at this point. (So glad I upgraded to Studio -- makes fixing harmonies much more pleasant when I can see and edit all the lines at once.)

Rock on!

?  I'm gonna have to fire my proofreader!