This week has been defiantly full on and is posing some challenges regarding time management and productions. However I wanted to knock this out. Next week myself and a team of people with diverse recording experience will be challenging ourselves to record a desert rock band called The Dark Moon Society.
My role in the project is to be live room director. This is something I do feel quite comfortable with as I have been involved with setting up lives rooms for the past year now. I also have the role along with another live room tech to choose the microphones we are going to use and how we are going to use them. I figured that I would need to know the intricate sounds or the genre desert rock in order to make some of these creative decisions. I have watched some documentaries about desert rock in the past as I used to be a massive fan of bands such as Kyuss which happens to be one of the reference bands for this recording. So, with out further ado here is some specific analysis of desert rock!
Desert rock originates from California in the 90's around the Palm Desert. The genre is heavily based around psychedelic rock. 'The wall of sound' is a great description for the over all tone of this genre. This term although created by a 60's producer Phil Spector is a very great way to describe how this genre is played and produced. There was a few very impressionable bands that made up the genre in the 90's. The bands would take out there huge amps into the Californian desert where there was not many people around so they could play very loudly. The genre was largely influence by Josh Homme of successful band Queens of the Stone Age. He set up a recording studio in Palm Desert in 1997 where 'Desert Sessions' would be recorded for decades. Homme set this up as a place where musicians could come and collaborate and jam and take drugs. There is a lot of relation between this genre and drug use mostly psychedelics. The genre is all about droning guitars, heavy riffs, and loud drums. Here is a great visual and audio example of on the the legendary bands of desert rock - Kyuss.
The defining points of this genre are heavily to do with the guitars. Desert rock guitarists play heavy and loud. Mostly in a lower tuning. One of the sounds that was created for the guitars in the desert rock scene was the Big Muff. A fuzz pedal that was like no other. Made in the USA by Electro Harmonics this pedal is able to produce a range of fuzz tones (Wolfert, 2014). This pedal is the classic sound of desert rock guitars back bone it has a beefy low end, heaps of gain and the ability to adjust the tone. Here is an example of the tone of the Big Muff pedal. This guitarist plays in a desert rock style demonstrating riffs with the different tones of the Big Muff.
This pedal paired with a guitar with hum buckers such as a Gibson SG was a classic combination for bands such as Queens of the Stone Age and any one trying to replicate their sound. The use of hum buckers is a critical part of the guitar tone as the use of single coils would change the tone to crunchier rather than fat sounding. It also depends on what amp the guitar and pedals are played through. Desert rock is partial to being connected to amp's such as Marshal stack amps and Orange amps. Both these brand of amps have been popular in rock and metal music for decades before desert rock. Josh Homme is one of the biggest influences on this genre and I was able to find a lot of information about the gear he has used. Although changing his gear the outcome of the production side was all the same. During Homme's time playing with Kyuss he relied mostly on his Marshal amp stack to do a lot of tonal work for the recordings of the guitar tone - the louder it was the more tone it had (Wolfet 2015).
The way in which the guitars are played in desert rock tend to be heavy and hard for the rhythm section. The lead guitar plays long droning riffs on the lower strings. The key is usually minor and along with the dropped tunings of the guitars they almost have a doomy feel. This is the back bone of the genre how the guitars are played with the effects they were is such an icon of the desert scene in general (Wolfert, 2014).
How the guitars are recored is also an essential part of replicating this wall of sound that desert rock produces. There must be a range of microphones picking up the different tones of the amp to get the full spectrum of the fuzz and distortion tone. Engineer and producer of 'Queens of the Stone Age' Joe Barresi has shared some of the techniques he used to record their debut album in 1998. Barresi used 6 way guitar splitter to be able to record the signal out of the guitar into multiple amps and a DI. This is how the guitars sound do huge. He used a range of amps some small ones turned all the way up and some speakers for different tones. He used SM57's and MD421's placed right where the edge of the cone is pointing in ward (Tingen, 2005). Depending how much brightness wanted he would place them right in the centre of the cone to make the sound more bright.
This is the quote I got the prior information from but I thought it would be good to put it in also. I sourced this from Sound on sound. Here is a great example of this fuzz tone from Queens of the Stone Age debut album.
Another defining point of this genre is how the vocals are performed and processed. There tends to be a lot of grit in the vocal cords like the vocalist is straining their voice. This can be enhanced with distortion in the production phases of recording (Tingen 2005). The distortion tends to be fuzz like also like the guitars. Queens of the Stone Age's producer Joe Barresi says "[He] never knows what mic he is going to use the he goes into the studio". The use of mic shoot outs is a bug thing for this genre as there is a few different types of vocal sounds. For example some songs are cleaner on the vocals and need that pristine sounds rather than something dirty (Tingen, 2015).
Here is an example from Queens of the Stone Age debut album that demonstrates the clean and clear vocal tone that is associated with this era of desert rock.
This sound was achieved with a lot of compression and using distresser (Tingen, 2015) as started by Barresi. He sent a compressor into another compressor and the on some songs from this album used a distresser to give them a different texture and make them pop out in the mix.
Here is an example of the other more gritty sounding vocal that is common in desert rock. Kyuss are one of the best know desert rock bands that shaped this genre. However, you can defiantly hear a difference in the performance and in the production of this later release (1993) compared to the Queens of the Stone Age album released later that decade. Both these vocal performance and production styles are common in this genre. This song also demonstrates the double tracking of vocals. This is something very noticeable in a lot of bands in this genre. Although it is not an essential element it is a very techniques used common.
More over the bass tones in desert rock tend to be a lot distorted like the guitars. Using fuzz on bass is an absolute must. Recording this can be hard. Baressi uses kick drum microphones to capture the roundness of the bottom end of the fuzz on the amp. But also takes a split signal and DI's the bass. That way he is then able to re amp the bass through a different amp to dirty up the tone. The bass tends to be in good sync with the kick in desert rock and the tone conflicts with the punchiness of the timing. Fuzz on bass can warp low frequencies and make the bass very muddy and hard to hear. This is why the timing is so rigid.
An element that is essential to the sound of desert rock is definitely in the drums. They are loud and for most of the time fast. The use of a double kick is common there for creating and fast paced solid beat that can sometimes be played through out most of the songs. There is a lot of hats and cow bell toned ride sounds. Snares have a lot of reverb and are generally quiet loud in the mix. The over all loudness needs to be constant there is not rest for the drummer in desert rock. Although the fast paced kick and constant hats and rides there is almost a laziness and groove in the way they are played. Compared to genres like heavy metal where the drums are rigid they are played in a way that is more sloppy. This compliments the long and loud guitar riffs and give the whole texture and pace of the genre a harmonious feel. "Homme said that the bottom-heavy sound of Stone Age, which adds repetitive, trance-like elements to the Kyuss concoction of power chords and sludgy grooves, reflects an exploratory ideal shared by the desert-rock-band community" (MTV, 1998). This is a quote taken from an MTV archive I found that reflected one of the ideals of desire rock shared between two of the most influential bands of the genre.
In contrast some genres that are similar to desert rock include stoner rock and psychedelic rock. Stoner rock is sometimes used interchangeably with desert rock. However the lyrical content is sometimes different. Stoner rock is purely about smoking weed where as desert rock has more lyrical content to it. Musically they are very similar however stoner rock tends to be a little more slow and drony on the guitars. Some aspects of psychedelic rock that desert rock takes from include guitar tones and vocal production. the use of flanger is huge is psychedelic rock and is used sometimes through out desert rock to. Some of the vocal production similarities is that the vocals of both genres tend to be the less focused part of the band. They are pushed back in the mix and then compressed.
Here is an example of stoner rock- this song demonstrates the droning guitars and the very distorted vocals which you don't tend to hear to this degree in desert rock.
So in conclusion there is a few elements that are absolutely critical for a band to fall under the category of desert rock. The scene was in its prime when it first began in the late 80's however there are many bands that take influences from this style of genre today. I think that real desert rock is defined by the bands in Plan Desert who created the genre and a lot of them such as Kyuss have since broken up. The progression of the genre is there for people recreating their original style so I believe that it will stay rather dormant regarding the musicality and production.
I am now getting really keen to recording this band on Thursday as I learnt a lot in the process of researching this and some of the techniques used by professional engineers that I can re create in the studio!
Stay tuned for the progression on this project!
References:
Tingen. (2014). Recording Queens Of The Stone Age |. Retrieved from https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recording-queens-stone-age
Lynskey, D. (2019). Kyuss: Kings of the stoner age. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/mar/25/kyuss-stoner-queens-stone-age
How to get that Stoner Rock Guitar Sound ?? - Home Recording forums. Retrieved from https://homerecording.com/bbs/equipment-forums/guitars-and-basses/how-get-stoner-rock-guitar-sound-87906/
Vanhorn, T. (1998). Queens Of The Stone Age At Home In Desert. Retrieved from http://www.mtv.com/news/503529/queens-of-the-stone-age-at-home-in-desert/
Kyuss - Kyuss (Welcome to Sky Valley) - Reviews - Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives. (2016). Retrieved from https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/Kyuss/Kyuss_(Welcome_to_Sky_Valley)/2613/
Wolfert, J. (2015). Tips for Heavier Stoner Tones. Retrieved from https://reverb.com/au/news/tips-for-heavier-stoner-tones
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