Push it.

[Ciaccona]

Hi Butch!

Absolutely fantastic to be able to ask you a question!

"Push it" was one of the reasons I started getting interested in recordings back in 98. I was so amazed by its energy after going crazy to it in the clubs a lot of times.
I remember spending a lot of time analyzing the sounds and trying to recreate that kind of sound which really brought me further in that perspective.

It would be great if you could elaborate on that song a bit!

just some ideas:

-how you got that huge thick bass sound (mix with synth?)

-I love that snare. I just love it! (Are these and the kick mostly samples? many layers?

-the crunchy guitar in the verse (which guitar, which amp?)

-all these sounds, the scratchy guitars etc. (were these mostly samples/loops that you tried out or were they completely created for that context?)

This is one of the songs I'd kill to hear these tracks on their own.

thanks a lot, so much appreciated!

[ButchVig]

Originally Posted by Ciaccona

Hi Butch!

Absolutely fantastic to be able to ask you a question!

"Push it" was one of the reasons I started getting interested in recordings back in 98. I was so amazed by its energy after going crazy to it in the clubs a lot of times.
I remember spending a lot of time analyzing the sounds and trying to recreate that kind of sound which really brought me further in that perspective.

It would be great if you could elaborate on that song a bit!

just some ideas:

-how you got that huge thick bass sound (mix with synth?)

-I love that snare. I just love it! (Are these and the kick mostly samples? many layers?

-the crunchy guitar in the verse (which guitar, which amp?)

-all these sounds, the scratchy guitars etc. (were these mostly samples/loops that you tried out or were they completely created for that context?)

This is one of the songs I'd kill to hear these tracks on their own.

thanks a lot, so much appreciated!

The bass on Push It was played by Daniel Shulman, a Fender into an SVT.
I added a bit of synth sub in spots, but it's almost all amp.

The snare is a composite of 3 sources...one of them was my Yahaha "Gish" snare, don't remember where I got the others but they we're processed quite a bit.

Oh yeah, Billy and I recorded some drums at an old warehouse on Willy St near Smart, The Madison Candy Company...it was getting ready to be torn down. We spent all day setting up drums, and after I did one take, the cops showed up and gave us cease and desist orders. I pleaded with them to give me another 20 minutes, and they looked the other way...so I did a couple takes on Push It, and Paranoid...and we used some of those drums on the songs. I also used samples from that recording in my DDrum live, especially the toms, which you can hear at the end of Paranoid.

There are some crazy guitars on the song, by both Duke and Steve...man that was a hard one to mix! But I LOVE that song..Shirl's vocal is amazing. It's also my favorite video!

[thenoiseflower]

I love this song as well.I love the vocal, LOVE the vocal.

Instrumentation wise, everything is a compliment to every other elelment, the lazy HPF tambs that drive the verses and that snare/hat syncop thing that happens on the right side in the pre-chorus. too the guitar panning leading the changes, never mind all the other stunts... its all so well done, that song must have been a real bear to mix considering all the different things sprinkled about. You guys killed the mix on that one, no question, I can hear just about everything, (I think )

How did you get the crash sound coming into the chorus? its sounds like a small little splash cymbal but has huge impact on the track. do you remember anything about that sound?

Im pretty psyched billy bush came around too, I'm not fogetting about you billy, you prolly have more influence in the way I hear sounds than you would care to know.

[Chris Lago]

Originally Posted by ButchVig

The bass on Push It was played by Daniel Shulman, a Fender into an SVT.
I added a bit of synth sub in spots, but it's almost all amp.

The snare is a composite of 3 sources...one of them was my Yahaha "Gish" snare, don't remember where I got the others but they we're processed quite a bit.

Oh yeah, Billy and I recorded some drums at an old warehouse on Willy St near Smart, The Madison Candy Company...it was getting ready to be torn down. We spent all day setting up drums, and after I did one take, the cops showed up and gave us cease and desist orders. I pleaded with them to give me another 20 minutes, and they looked the other way...so I did a couple takes on Push It, and Paranoid...and we used some of those drums on the songs. I also used samples from that recording in my DDrum live, especially the toms, which you can hear at the end of Paranoid.

There are some crazy guitars on the song, by both Duke and Steve...man that was a hard one to mix! But I LOVE that song..Shirl's vocal is amazing. It's also my favorite video!

I have to agree, the video for the song is amazing. I have the Absolute Garbage DVD and I'm still amazed at that video in general. It must have been pretty expensive to shoot the video. How many days did it take to shoot it? Did you push any creative ideas for the video or was it all thought out by the director?

[Ciaccona]

good story!

thanks a lot!

[Billy Bush]

Originally Posted by ButchVig

The bass on Push It was played by Daniel Shulman, a Fender into an SVT.
I added a bit of synth sub in spots, but it's almost all amp.

The snare is a composite of 3 sources...one of them was my Yahaha "Gish" snare, don't remember where I got the others but they we're processed quite a bit.

Oh yeah, Billy and I recorded some drums at an old warehouse on Willy St near Smart, The Madison Candy Company...it was getting ready to be torn down. We spent all day setting up drums, and after I did one take, the cops showed up and gave us cease and desist orders. I pleaded with them to give me another 20 minutes, and they looked the other way...so I did a couple takes on Push It, and Paranoid...and we used some of those drums on the songs. I also used samples from that recording in my DDrum live, especially the toms, which you can hear at the end of Paranoid.

There are some crazy guitars on the song, by both Duke and Steve...man that was a hard one to mix! But I LOVE that song..Shirl's vocal is amazing. It's also my favorite video!

The bass was a Music Man Stingray into a Ampeg B-15 and a Sansamp. U47Fet. I think we had the Lang PEQ-2 on it during the mix..

That song had about 160 tracks in total. Practically everything was layered to an incredible degree. Every time we ran out of tracks, we'd bounce all the drums down to stereo, the keys and sound effects to stereo and then start adding more and more.

For the guitars, pretty much every part was doubled and then done again with a different sound. There's probably about 50 tracks of guitars on it.

At one point during the process when we were having some serious sync and crashing issues with Pro Tools, we flew out some of the Digidesign programmers and VP's to try to solve it.. I remember they came in saying "I don't know why you're having so many problems.. people are making records with this every day..." then they sat behind the screen and said "Oh. Wow. Well, we never anticipated anyone using it like this." I think they were looking at 48 tracks of drums and percussion where every single drum beat was cut and quantized and faded.. something like 25000 edits and cross fades.. I think they had only tested it with 2500 edits and fades.

When the band decided it was going to be the first single, they knew it had to be something pretty incredible. They really worked on trying to make something that nobody had heard before.

It was one hell of an experiment of what the new technology had made possible in 1998.

[ButchVig]

Originally Posted by Billy Bush

The bass was a Music Man Stingray into a Ampeg B-15 and a Sansamp. U47Fet. I think we had the Lang PEQ-2 on it during the mix..

That song had about 160 tracks in total. Practically everything was layered to an incredible degree. Every time we ran out of tracks, we'd bounce all the drums down to stereo, the keys and sound effects to stereo and then start adding more and more.

For the guitars, pretty much every part was doubled and then done again with a different sound. There's probably about 50 tracks of guitars on it.

At one point during the process when we were having some serious sync and crashing issues with Pro Tools, we flew out some of the Digidesign programmers and VP's to try to solve it.. I remember they came in saying "I don't know why you're having so many problems.. people are making records with this every day..." then they sat behind the screen and said "Oh. Wow. Well, we never anticipated anyone using it like this." I think they were looking at 48 tracks of drums and percussion where every single drum beat was cut and quantized and faded.. something like 25000 edits and cross fades.. I think they had only tested it with 2500 edits and fades.

When the band decided it was going to be the first single, they knew it had to be something pretty incredible. They really worked on trying to make something that nobody had heard before.

It was one hell of an experiment of what the new technology had made possible in 1998.

Well done Billy!!!
Yeah, there were some crazy sonic moments on Push It! I remember slide up into the the chorus we decided to add during the mix to exaggerate the dynamics, as well as that weird string swell in the breakdown....that was a tough one to mix, 4 days I think.

[alexamk]

Can you give us an idea what those 160 tracks consisted of? How many vocal, guitar, drum, efx, keys, etc.

[ButchVig]

Originally Posted by alexamk

Can you give us an idea what those 160 tracks consisted of? How many vocal, guitar, drum, efx, keys, etc.

If we can dig up a track sheet, maybe we could print it here!

[Billy Bush]

Originally Posted by ButchVig

If we can dig up a track sheet, maybe we could print it here!

I'll see what i can do next week - maybe a screenshot of the session?

[ButchVig]

Originally Posted by Billy Bush

I'll see what i can do next week - maybe a screenshot of the session?

Yes that would be cool!

[jammybastard]

Hey Butch...don't forget about playing Pete Best's cymbal!
You know how proud Jim is of the fact that you tracked that.


BTW - thanks for letting me shoot that show in Milwaukee in 2002...lead to many, many cool gigs.

[Hidraulico]

Hi Butch and Billy, thanks for your time,

(I try to explain the best I can, I`m not english native spoken) with 50 guitar tracks, How the band translate it to a live situation?, they dont care?, the only important is to sound amazing on the album? How do they prepare for live gigs after an album?

We are home producing a record and this thing really bother me, I like to go full of guns, but we have an eternal discussion about it.

I hope you understand my question ( it takes me 15 min. to write 7 lines of text )
Thank you in advance

Hidraulico
Buenos Aires - Argentina

(If I may add here, that is a common studio 'band discussion' - can we do that live? It's very important to some bands... Jules GS Admin)

[ButchVig]

Originally Posted by Hidraulico

Hi Butch and Billy, thanks for your time,

(I try to explain the best I can, I`m not english native spoken) with 50 guitar tracks, How the band translate it to a live situation?, they dont care?, the only important is to sound amazing on the album? How do they prepare for live gigs after an album?

We are home producing a record and this thing really bother me, I like to go full of guns, but we have an eternal discussion about it.

I hope you understand my question ( it takes me 15 min. to write 7 lines of text )
Thank you in advance

Hidraulico
Buenos Aires - Argentina

(If I may add here, that is a common studio 'band discussion' - can we do that live? It's very important to some bands... Jules GS Admin)

Jules hit the nail on the head...almost every band I work with wants to make sure the songs on an an album translate to a live show. Some artists like to work out songs on the road before recording them, then they know the arrangements will work in the studio and in concert. But these days, a lot of songs are written in the studio, so there's no way of knowing how it will translate live.
When we did the first Garbage album, we had no intention of touring, so it freed us up in a way, to experiment, and to produce the songs however in whatever direction we decided to go. Later, when we decided to do some gigs (and then ended up touring our asses off!) we drove ourselves crazy trying to figure out how to translate the songs to a live setting. We started using loops, triggering drums, sequencers, and backing pad tracks, all to replicate the sound of the album as close as possible. And although the first tour was OK, I don't think we ever felt that confident about how it sounded.
When we finished V 2.0, we decided to look at the live show and album as two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ANIMALS...and not worry if we couldn't duplicate the sound exactly. During rehearsals, we worked hard on what the core, or essential elements of each song were, drums, bass, the main guitar riffs, and Shirley's vocal. And we rehearsed for almost a month with just the 5 of us (Dan Shulman on bass) playing the songs in a very simple, organic style. Then the last two weeks, we started adding in the loops, sequencing, and efx that filled in the songs, but never bothered to worry that it didn't sound exactly like the album. And I think we sounded really, really good on that tour.

So I guess I still look at the two situations as completely different, but each band will have a different take on how much they want their album to translate to the live environment. There are no rules, really.