Original Version of "Do I Wanna Know"
Our Groups version of "Do I Wanna Know"
To match the version of Do I Wanna Know created by Alex Turner, James Ford and Co was a grand feet to embark on right from the get-go. Our group understood that although simple in arrangement and musical technicality, this song is extremely complex in its production and overall vibe.
The ultimate challenges we faced along the way were getting the guitar tones to replicate the boutique and quirky selection of guitar and amps Alex Turner had for this song, alongside the unique drum sounds created through Tchad Blake’s ingenious ingenuity.
Although we achieved what I believe to be a great guitar tone to replicate the Vox Starstream into a Selma Zodiac and Magnatone amp combo, I wouldn’t be comfortable in saying that ours and theirs are one and the same.
The instrumentation we selected for this song was as follows:
Guitar 1 (panned left in the mix) - Fender Mustang into a Vox AC15 with a Carl Martin distortion pedal, then doubled an octave up to replicate the 12 string sound on the original
Guitar 2 (panned left in the mix) - Tokai SG into a Marshall AVT
Bass - Ibanez sound gear into a fender rumble amp
Drums - Layered bass drum samples then run through a sansamp simulator
The performance and delivery overall were fantastic, aside from a few tuning issues with the lead vocal which were difficult to correct in post-production, I’m extremely happy with what we had in musicianship for this project.
In our final mix, the guitars are to faint in my opinion they needed to be more upfront at the beginning of the song with a more narrow stereo field. Another aspect of the Sonics in our final mix I was not happy with would definitely be the bass drum, we needed a bigger size bass drum to record and get in the same ballpark as the one on the original. Our bass drum was far too ‘tubby’ sounding and is quite fatiguing to listen to.
A couple things I thought turned out much like the original would definitely be the bass and the vocals.
In the mix, we ran the bass DI through the pro tools black op distortion to add the subby distortion sound in the second verse on the original. The vocals overall are awesome and add an immense amount of size and fullness to the choruses and outro.
In terms of effects, we ran the lead vocal through a small room reverb, the backing vocals were run through a plate reverb which in some parts is a bit too much. The right guitar has a 16th note delay even though you can’t really make this guitar out through most of the song.
In terms of dynamics, our song is much quieter in the verses and intro compared to the choruses and outro of the song. This adds somewhat of an excitement factor to the mix.
The overall vibe of both of the songs is much the same I believe, a bit sassy with some desert reminiscences throughout.
A good project evaluation Lewis, although I'm not sure what "a bit sassy with desert reminiscences" means exactly!