"The Cave" - Mumford & Sons Song Analysis

Today we'll take look at Mumford & Son's "The Cave," a song that's currently #1 on the iTunes Alternative Songs chart. "The Cave" is from their Sigh No More album which recently won a Brit Award for Best British Album of 2011, and is certainly one of the more interesting song analysis done here. As always, the song is broken down into four components - the song itself, the arrangement, the sound and the performance.

The Song - "The Cave" is typical of most folk songs in that it's just a verse and a chorus form. The form looks like this:

Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Chorus, Chorus, Chorus

The Arrangement - This song is the one of the best examples of dynamics that I've seen in a long time. Listen to how the song breathes in volume from the quiet intro to the roar of the chorus, then back again. Then in the outro choruses, the first one is quiet, and each one builds to a climax at the end. It's proof that even a fairly simple song form in any genre of music can be made interesting with only the addition of dynamics.

The song develops thanks to the introduction of electric banjo harmonics in the second half of the first verse, a piano on the second verse, the introduction of harmony vocals and what sounds like a violin in the second chorus, and what sounds like a recorder counter line in the last chorus.

Here are the arrangement elements:

   * The Foundation - The song uses the hard strumming of the guitar, the bass and simple foot stomps as the foundation. No drums here which is not only unusual, but almost amazing how they pull it off so well.

  * The Pad - The accordion and what sounds like a violin in the chorus acts as a pad.

  * The Rhythm - The rhythm element principally comes from the picking of the electric banjo in the chorus.

  * The Lead - The lead vocal.

  * The Fills - Banjo and piano in the verse, and something that sounds like a recorder in the last chorus playing a counter line.

The Sound - The mix is a bit muddy in that it's sometimes difficult to pick out some of the instruments in the chorus, but it could've been intentionally mixed that way as well. All the instruments sound natural without a trace of over-compression. There's also a very nice short reverb with a timed short pre-delay that just about disappears into the track.

The Performance - Any time you get this level of dynamics from a group of players you have a tremendous performance, since it takes a great deal of concentration to do it both smoothly and in sync with the all the players. Of course, it's just this characteristic that makes Mumford & Sons who they are.

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Electric Guitar Miking 101

To many guitar players and engineers, there's only one way to mike an electric guitar amplifier and that's to shove a mic right against the grill cloth of the speaker cabinet. That works, but there's so much more to getting a great guitar sound than such a simple approach.

Here's an excerpt from The Ultimate Guitar Tone Handbook that I wrote with Rich Tozzoli that explains how to make that guitar sound bigger than you thought it could sound.
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A common recording process has an engineer EQing, compressing, and adding multiple mics in trying to capture a sound, yet never taking into account what the sound in the room at the source is like. That’s why it’s imperative that every engineer use the following steps in any serious microphone placement:

1. Go out into the room, stand in front of the amp or acoustic guitar player, and listen to them play the part from the song you’re about to record. Playing the song is important because you might be deceived if it’s another song or just random playing. Listen for the tonal balance from the amp or instrument as well as the way the room responds. Listening to the amp or acoustic guitar in the room will give you a reference point to the way it really sounds so you have a better idea of what you’re trying to capture. 

2. Find the sweet spot. There are several ways to find the sweet spot.

• To place an omnidirectional mic, cover one ear and listen with the other. Move around the mic or player until you find the spot that sounds best. That’s where to place the mic to begin.

• To place a cardioid mic, cup your hand behind your ear (instead of covering it) and move around the player or amp until you find the place that sounds best.

• To place a stereo mic or stereo pair, cup both ears and move around the player or amp until you find the place that sounds best.

• As an alternate method, crank the amp until it’s noisy, then put on headphones and listen to the mic as you move it around until the noise has the best combination of highs and lows.

3. You can’t place the mic by sight. The best mic position must always be found, not predicted. It’s okay to have a starting place, but it’s usually never what ends up being the best spot.

4. Change the mic position instead of reaching for the EQ. Chances are that you can adjust the quality of the sound enough by simply moving the mic in order to avoid using any equalization. The EQ will add a least a small amount of phase shift at some frequency and can’t be undone later. Moving the mic (which amounts to an acoustic EQ) will usually sound smoother and more pleasing to the ear.

5. Give the mic some distance. Remember, distance creates depth. The guitar and amp will sound a lot more natural than using artificial ambience. If possible, leave just enough distance between the mic and the source to get a bit of room reflection to it.

6. Be careful miking multi-speaker cabinets. 4x12 cabinets like the typical Marshall 1960 pose a special challenge in that at a certain distance you have phase anomalies from the multiple speakers that you really don’t want to capture. The cabinet will sound fine when close miked from right against the grill cloth to approximately three inches away from the best sounding speaker in the cabinet, but until you get to a distance of 18 inches where the sound of all the speakers converge, you may be capturing some speaker interaction that’s not all that pleasant sounding. That distance varies with the make and model of speaker cabinet.

To read more about the book, go to The Ultimate Guitar Tone Handbook page on my website.

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Win A Copy Of The Studio Builder's Handbook

It's time for a new giveaway.

This time it's The Studio Builder's Handbook, a book about how to improve the sound of your home or commercial studio on virtually any budget.

You can enter the contest here.

"I Want The One I Can't Have"- The Smiths Song Analysis

Reader Chris Hernandez asked for a song analysis of The Smith's "I Want The One I Can't Have" from their 1985 Meat Is Murder album. This was the second album by the band and their only one to hit #1 in the UK (it made it to only 110 on the US charts). Let's take a look.

The Song - "I Want The One I Can't Have" has a strange form, as do many of The Smith's and Morrissey's songs. It's made up of just verses and choruses, but the choruses are twice as long as the verses, so there are actually two parts to it. It looks something like this.

Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Verse (solo), Chorus, 4 bar outro

The song does have a surprising melody that goes to unexpected places, always a plus in songwriting.

The Arrangement - There's not very much to the arrangement of this song, and virtually no production. The only thing that really changes is Johnny Marr's guitar, which goes to big whole note strums in the chorus, with different guitar fills throughout the song.

The arrangement elements look like this:

   * The Foundation - Bass and drums, which rarely waver from their parts

   * The Pad - There's no traditional pad, but the whole note guitar strums in the chorus almost qualify

   * The Rhythm - The rhythm guitar

   * The Lead - The Lead vocal

   * The Fills - The various guitar fills throughout the song

The Sound - In general, not that great. The overall sound is very small with not much low end. The vocals have a lot of so-so sounding reverb, and are pushed way out in front, thereby taking away virtually any punch from the band.

The Performance - Johnny Marr is the king of clean guitar sounds. It sounded like there were about 4 lead/fill parts each with slightly different sounds, which could have been intentional, but maybe not. The vocal is pretty mediocre in that there are a lot of badly out-of-tune notes throughout the song. Since Marr and Morrissey produced the album, it sounds like the effort of a studio neophyte who doesn't know how to get the best performances and isn't even aware when they're unacceptable.

OK, I've ragged on this song enough. The fact of the matter is that this album was a big hit for the band and it goes to show that if you have great songs, the production, sound and performances don't have to be great to touch people. Songs are always the secret ingredient.

As always, email me if you have any song analysis requests.

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The In's And Outs Of Direct Boxes

I built my first direct box when I was a kid way back in the 70's. DI's (which stands for "direct injection") were a pretty new thing back then, and I was lucky enough to see an article in Recording Engineer/Producer magazine (boy, what a great mag that was!) that had a direct box schematic, so I built a couple. I heard somewhere that you could use a little cheap transformer from Radio Shack as the heart of the unit, so I used that. The boxes sounded pretty bad (the transformer was crap), but you couldn't buy one anywhere since they weren't commercially available, so my homebuilt ones were like gold.

Before you knew it, every band and solo singer/guitarist in a two state area wanted one and I was inundated with orders. At the time I was gigging almost every night, and these boxes were pretty labor intensive (mostly because of hand drilling the metal boxes), so after making about 20 units or so, I decided that I didn't want to be in the manufacturing business and killed what could have been a promising side business.

I bring this up because Radial Engineering built essentially that same box, but used the excellent Dean Jensen JT-DB-EPC transformer to make one of the best passive (it doesn't need power) DI's on the market today.

I can tell you from experience from using them and making my own that all DI's are not made equally. The passive boxes that are built around a transformer really depend on that transformer for the sound. Buy an inexpensive DI like a Behringer and it will work fine, but won't have the big bottom end that you need for a great bass guitar sound. Buy a Radial JDI or one from another brand that's built around that great Dean Jensen transformer, and you'll really hear what a bass should sound like.

If you can handle some tech talk, Radial's Peter Janus provides a great overview of the JDI and direct boxes in general.

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Flying With Your Gear

It's never been easy to take your gear with you when you flew to a gig, but it's gotten harder today thanks to the stringent requirements of the TSA. That being said, there are some tricks that can make you life a lot easier, and they're here in an excerpt from The Touring Musician's Handbook. By the way, one of them is to lock your cases and luggage with an official TSA lock like shown on the left.

You can read more excerpts from The Touring Musician's Handbook, as well as my other books, on my website.
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Musicians have a lot of confusion about flying with gear and well they should. Security is tighter than ever and all of the baggage rules have changed, but it’s still possible to fly with musical instruments as either carry-on or checked baggage. Here are some flying tips to keep your gear safe and the TSA happy.

• Many airlines will no longer allow a musical instrument in a gig bag to be a carry-on. This is actually a violation of the the agreement between the American Federation of Musicians and the TSA, which states that you can carry one musical instrument on with you providing it fits under the seat or in an overhead bin. Carry a copy of the American Federation of Musicians' correspondence with the TSA that you can download at this site; http://www.hornguys.com/TSALetter.pdf  Also, check out this article about carrying musical instruments on board at the TSA website (http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/assistant/editorial_1235.shtm. Make sure that your tour manager is aware of your intention and that the airline is contacted beforehand.

• All checked baggage must undergo at least one form of screening. Security screeners have the right to forcibly open locked baggage to complete the screening process, so leave your cases unlocked unless you want the locks broken. If a screener opens your checked baggage, they’ll place a notice telling you that they opened it, and will  then close it with a security seal. If you later find that something is missing, the TSA can be held responsible on a case by case basis, which is not much recourse if it’s something that you use every night. It’s always a good idea to be there when the screener opens up the case, if possible. There are now TSA approved locks available that can be easily opened by security screeners with a TSA master key, but appear as a traditional lock to everyone else [see the picture on the left].

TIP: If you can’t be there when a screen checks you baggage, include very clear and understandable written instructions for repacking and handling your instrument in a place where the screener will notice them.

• If you’re able to carry an instrument on the plane, be careful that you don’t store any prohibited items like scissors or wire clippers in your bag or case. These will be confiscated so they definitely need to be checked. Remember that you can only carry on one musical instrument, one carry-on bag, and one personal item, if they allow a music instrument.

• If you’re bringing extra batteries, keep them in their original packaging. They pose a very small risk of fire (very, very small) so the TSA prefers that their terminals not be able to touch anything and keeping them in the original packaging is the safest way.

• Since August of 2006, you can bring limited quantities of liquids, aerosols and gels in your carry-on bag, but you have to observe what they call the 3-1-1 rule. That is, a 3.4 ounce (1000 ml) or less bottle of liquid put into a 1 quart clear plastic bag, and only 1 bag per person put separately into the screening bin. If you have any doubts, put them in checked luggage.

For more about airport security, get it right from the source at tsatraveltips.us.

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"Rolling In The Deep" - Adele Song Analysis

Here's an analysis of Adele's "Rolling In The Deep," a song which topped the charts not only in the US, but in countries around the world. The song is from her top selling album 21. As always, we'll look at the basic elements of the song; the song itself, the arrangement, the sound and performance.

The Song - "Rolling In The Deep" is pop music at it's most basic in that it uses a bare bones form used by countless hit records. The form is:

Verse, B Section, Chorus | Verse, B Section, Chorus | Bridge, Verse, Chorus, Chorus, Chorus

This means the form is:

A, B, C, A, B, C, D, A, C, C, C

What makes this song bare bones is that there are no song intros, interludes or outros. In fact, the song ends pretty abruptly.

The Arrangement - Once again, this is about as formulaic as you can get. That being said, take special note because it works!! It's a clinic on how to arrange a song without anything extra getting in the way.

The song begins with just the eighth note guitar and lead vocal, which is joined by the kick drum in the 2nd half of the verse. In the B section, simple piano triads, the bass, and rest of the drums enter. See the development?

In the chorus, an strumming acoustic guitar and piano eighth notes push the song along as well as the entrance from the background vocal answers.

In the second verse, the low piano octaves on the 'one and', then the background vocals enter in the 2nd  B section. See how the 2nd verse develops? In the second chorus the background vocals add a harmony to make that section different from the first.

The last verse and first out chorus breaks down to kick and fills (which seems to be happening in all the hits these days).

The arrangement elements look like this:

   * The Foundation - bass and drums

   * The Pad - there's not really a true pad, but in the B section, the piano playing whole note chords does it for a bit.

   * The Rhythm - the eighth note guitar in the verse, the strummed acoustic and eighth piano in the chorus

   * The Lead - the lead vocal

   * The Fills - the background vocals and occasional clean lead guitar

The Sound - Nothing special here. Like all Rick Rubin productions, this is not that far away from the sound of a demo. The vocal has a pretty good sound with a nicely shaped long reverb, but the eighth note guitar is so dry that it really does sound like it's played in someone's garage. The drums have a big natural ambience that works, but isn't particularly great sounding. The lead vocal is a little on the squashed side, and has a click at 21 seconds that I'm not sure is on the master or just this video.

The Performance - Nothing special here except for Adele's vocal, which is great, as it should be. All the parts of the song a very simple, but they're performed well.

Feel free to send you your suggestions for future song analysis.

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There's No Such Thing As A Demo

Once upon a time a demonstration recording, or demo, was pretty much required in order to get a record deal. Today in our Music 3.0 world, the idea of a demo has pretty much become passe. Here's an excerpt from the band improvement book How To Make Your Band Sound Great that explains why every recording should always be your best.

By way, the picture on the left is Coldplay's original demo tape.
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About the only thing that I would consider a “demo” is if you’re in a cover band and need a sample of the songs from your set list to prove to a promoter or club owner that you actually play acceptably well. If you record these songs too well (like in a professional studio), you run the risk of having the recording backfire on you, with the club owner thinking that you really don’t sound that good because everything was polished in the studio. That’s why I always felt that a controlled example of your set, like at a rehearsal, made a lot better sense for getting a gig. You don’t want to spend too much time or money on this, and luckily, you don’t have to.

If you’re recording some of your own songs, erase the word “demo” from your mind. A demo will always keep you in the “good enough” mindset. You have to approach each song as if it were a finished master because these days it’s easier than ever to  get some really excellent recordings without spending a huge amount of money. So forget about demos. They’re just an excuse for a recording that’s inadequate in some way.

The idea of the demo came out of practicality since up until about the year 2000, you just didn’t have the ability to make a record that sounded like a major release anywhere but in a real recording studio. Yes, it was done occasionally, but the vast majority of songs that you’d hear on the radio had real pros with real pro equipment involved. What would happen is that you’d make a “demo” that was just good enough to get a label or producer interested in taking you to the next level. Because studios were so expensive to record in (typically $100 to 250 an hour, plus engineer, tape, etc), it was usually impossible to spend enough time to make a recording that was up to snuff with a major label release. And if you weren’t located near a reasonably high-end studio, you were forced to use whatever was available, so as a result, almost everyone made a demo before moving on to a deal with a label where you got to make a real record in a real studio with some real pros who knew what to do.

Most of that has changed with the last few generations of affordable recording gear that are now readily available, and with the fact that the listening public doesn’t care as much about audio fidelity as they once did (maybe they never did but the record companies sure thought so).  So now it’s easy enough to record for not a lot of money and distribute it for next to nothing, people expect every recording to be as good as you can make it.

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Properly Setting The Mix Buss Compressor

Hardly a mix goes by these days without the mixer placing a compressor across the mix buss, even if he's not sure exactly why he's doing it. Here's an excerpt from Mixing And Mastering With T-RackS; The Official Guide that explains both why a buss compressor is used, and how to properly set one up.
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Along with compressing the individual track of a song, many engineers place a stereo compressor across the mix buss to affect the entire mix as well. Originally this came about when artists began asking why their mixes sounded different in the studio from what they heard on the radio or when their record came from the pressing plant (it was still vinyl in those days). Indeed both the radio and record did sound different because an additional round (or two) of compression was added in both mastering and broadcast. In order to simulate what this would sound like, mixing engineers began to add a touch of compression across the mix buss. The problem was, everybody liked the sound so much that now the majority of records have at least a bit (a few dB’s) of compression added to the stereo mix despite the fact that it will probably be re-compressed again at mastering and yet again if played on the radio or television.

Why Use Buss Compression?

Generally you’ll find that most renowned mixers use the buss compressor to add a sort of “glue” to the track so the instruments fit together better, but that also means that they’ll actually use very little compression. In fact, sometimes only a dB or two of gain reduction at the most is added for the final mix. That being said, many mixers will also offer their clients (artists, band members, producers and label execs) a more compressed version to simulate what it will sound like after it’s mastered. This “client mix” is achieved by using a signal path across the mix buss that’s similar to what a mastering engineer would use, that is, a compressor that’s fed into limiter at the end of the chain to raise the level to a point similar to a mastered release (see Figure 5.1).

Because the clients get used to hearing the “client mix,” it’s so easy to let buss compression get out of hand. One of the problems with compressing too much is that it leaves the mastering engineer a lot less room to work, and in the case of a track that’s “hyper-compressed”, virtually eliminates the ability for the mastering engineer to be of much help at all (see chapter 10).

Setting The Compressor

In most modern music, compressors are used to make the sound “punchy” and in your face. The trick to getting the punch out of a compressor is to let the attacks through and play with the release to elongate the sound. Fast attack times are going to reduce the punchiness of a signal, while slow release times are going to make the compressor pump out of time with the music. 

Since the timing of the attack and release is so important, here are a few steps to help set it up. Assuming you have some kind of constant meter in the song, you can use the snare drum to set up the attack and release parameters. This method will work the same for individual instruments as well.

1) Start with the slowest attack and fastest release settings on the compressor.

2) Turn the attack faster until the instrument (snare) begins to dull. Stop at that point.

3) Adjust the release time so that after the snare hit, the volume is back to 90-100% normal by the next snare beat.  

4) Add the rest of the mix back in and listen. Make any slight adjustments to the attack and release times as needed.

The Idea Is To Make The Compressor “Breath” In Time With The Song.

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"What Hurts The Most" - Rascal Flatts Song Analysis

Firefly sent me an email asking why I didn't analyze any country music. For the life of me, I thought I remembered analyzing "What Hurts The Most" by Rascal Flatts, but couldn't find it after a search of the blog. Then it hit me - I had done an analysis of the song in one of my books - How To Make Your Band Sound Great. So here it is, only a little more fleshed out that what's in the book.

"What Hurts The Most" is a song written by Jeffrey Steele and Steve Robson that was cut three times before the Rascal Flatts version made it to #1 on the Billboard country charts and #6 on their Hot 100 chart. The song came from the band's 2006 Me And My Gang album, and was nominated for two Grammys. Let's take a look at it.

The Song - "What Hurts The Most" follows the traditional hit single form almost perfectly. It looks something like this:

Intro, Verse, Chorus, Interlude, Verse, Chorus, Solo/Bridge, Chorus, Outro.

The song has a great melody and a very catchy chorus that's well delivered performance-wise.

The Arrangement - The song is a glowing example of the "new" country music in that it closely resembles layered pop music except with the addition of traditional country instruments like fiddle, steel  guitar and banjo. As you would expect from a big budget act, this song has absolutely state-of-the-art arranging, which is needed for a song with a simple form.

What's especially cool is all the sections of the song that repeat but are slightly different the second or third time through. A good example is the line in the last bar of the first half of the intro, which is first played on acoustic guitar, then doubled with the fiddle the second time through. On the third pass there's a steel fill.

Another great example is the last chorus where the song stops and the melody changes, then the background vocals enter right afterwards.

Also listen to how the 2nd verse develops with the entrance of fiddle and electric guitar. Then in the 2nd chorus the steel and banjo enter.

Let's look at the elements:

   * The Foundation - Bass and drums

   * The Pad - Steel and big electric guitar chords during the chorus

   * The Rhythm - The acoustic guitar in the verses and the banjo and shaker in the choruses

   * The Lead - Fiddle in the intro and interlude, lead vocal in the verses and choruses, and lead guitar in the solo

   *  Fills - There's a steel guitar answer in the interlude and background vocal answers in the last chorus.

The Sound - The sound of this record is great. It's very clean and not over-compressed. There's very little ambience that sticks out anywhere so everything is very in your face. The one thing that is a bit unusual is that the bass is mixed very loud and takes up a lot of space in the mix.

The Performance - Everything on this recording is so well executed, but I love Gary LeVox's lead vocal, especially on the last chorus where the melody changes over the stop time. Gives me chills! The other thing that stood out is the drum groove, especially the snare, which is very behind the beat. It's played almost like a blues record.

As always, send me your requests for songs to analyze.

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How To Make Acoustic Panels

Yesterday's post on how to improve the sound of your room received such a great response that I thought we'd continue on the subject today. In that post, I wrote about how you could substantially improve the sound of any room by building a reflection free zone (RFZ) around your listening position. This is most easily done by using acoustic panels, and today we'll show you just how to build one.

This is an excerpt from the DVD that accompanies The Studio Builder's Handbook (co-written with my buddy, engineer Dennis Moody). There are actually a few variations on how to build these panels, but you'll just see the basic one here.

To read excerpts from the book, go to the The Studio Builder's Handbook page on my website.

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How To Improve The Sound Of Any Room

My new book The Studio Builder's Handbook (written with Dennis Moody) has just been released and I want to share an important excerpt from it. Most of the time when people are setting up a home studio they tend to throw a computer and some gear into a corner and that's it. The last thing they think about is the room itself, and it make a huge difference in your final product. If you can't hear it, you can't record or mix it.

But contrary to popular believe, it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a lot of money to improve you sound in a big way. All it takes is a way to control the reflections in the listening area. The nice thing about The Studio Builder's Handbook is it shows you how to do that for less than $150. It won't be the Record Plant but it will be far better than you could ever have imagined. There's more to it than what you see below, but here's how to start.

By the way, if it seems like I have a lot of new books out all of a sudden, two different publishers seemed to have released books at a the same time.
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To improve the sound of your room you must first control the reflections in the room. It’s not too difficult to do this in the sweet spot of the playback position, but it starts to get expensive as that position is expanded to include more of the room. Regardless of the amount of money that you spend, many designers feel that you’re never going to widen the sweet spot all that much anyway, but in the world of small spaces and limited budgets, a small but much improved listening area works out fine.

Creating A Reflection Free Zone

The key to improving the sound of just about any room is the Reflection Free Zone, or RFZ (see Figure 6.4). As we outlined in Chapter 3, the RFZ absorbs the first reflections from the speakers so that all you hear is their direct sound.

Chapter 6.4 - The Reflection Free Zone

In order to determine the RFZ, sit in the listening position and have a friend move a mirror along the right wall. Anywhere that you can see the reflection of either speaker requires either wall treatment or a sound panel as we outlined in previous chapters. Do the same for the left wall. It’s advisable to treat a larger area than you can see with the mirror so you’ll have the freedom to move around in a larger area without being outside of the RFZ.

Although the ceiling might be more difficult to spot with a mirror, you can 

either hang panels directly over you just at your listening position, or in approximately the same area as the treatment on your side walls.

The floor of the RFZ can stay reflective with hardwood (which everyone likes because it’s easy to roll your chair around) as long as the ceiling is absorbent. Even if you have rug on the floor, you’re still better off to have the ceiling absorbent in the RFZ to eliminate any chance of early reflections from the speakers reflecting back onto the listening position.

You can read some additional excerpts on the Studio Builder's Handbook page on my website.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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