Don't Take Your Guns to Town - Johnny Cash Cover

So the other day I had the house to myself and thought I'd take the opportunity to record some acoustic guitar + vox while the noise levels were low (my upstairs neighbors are very noisy and I'm kind of shy about my voice). I also wanted to get at least one mic'd song done before I tore my whole rig down before moving my studio. I thought long and hard about my dozens upon dozens of acoustic covers and decided on one of my favorite Johnny Cash songs, Don't Take Your Guns to Town. I think the moral of this song is as true today as when it was written if not more so. Just a great tune.

So I used my crappy mic's and my crappy guitar with crappy old strings and my crappy old out of practice voice and did a bunch of takes and laid down the tracks (I did the beds singing and playing at the same time to a click and then rerecorded both separately). Today I spent some time EQ'ing and whatever. Just playing around with some of the tools in X2 (got to use R-Mix for the first time which was GREAT because there was a ton of hiss from the room due to fans and just general house noise). I was kind of going for an old timey feel and I think I kind of got it but I'm not happy with how the guitar turned out but whatever... I need to start learning about proper EQing techniques and stuff now that I can operate Sonar reasonably well. This was more done for fun and and to get some more experience. I might send it to my mom because she likes JC and figured I'd post it here so you guys could get a glimpse at another side of me. I'm not just a metal lunatic... I'm a well rounded lunatic.

It is certainly not perfect but I hope you enjoy it anyway. Suggestions are welcome but this is kind of a one off for fun so I'm not too concerned about tightening it up. Cheers.

http://soundcloud.com/use...take-your-guns-to-town

I am very glad you like it Mr. Daryl. You and I... we should do some stuff. Cheers!

Well I've been a guest CHCer a couple times now. I'm usually up for most things. Gonna be out of commission for at least a few weeks though as I make the transition to my new room. Very excited about that.

Cheers.

Thank you, kind sir. :-)

Awesome, kev. :-)

I used my old Samson C01s for this. On the guitar I had one pointed at the bridge and the other at the neck. I EQ'd out most of the bottom end on both then cloned the body track and EQd it so it was mostly bottom end but kept that track lower in the mix. All that was sent to a bus which I did some slight EQing on as well and then I added the Breverb module, set it to room, brought down the Wet fader a bit and fiddled with the other knobs. All tracks and the bus had the PC2A Limiting compressor on them which I tweaked individually. 

The vox were again my C01s, covered with socks (like actual socks I wear on my feet because I don't own a pop screen lol). One I sang directly into and the other was slightly further away. Again liberal use of the PC2A and the PC EQ as well as a healthy dose of the Softube Sat knob. Both tracks were sent to a bus... and I can't remember but I may have used a very light application of Breverb... maybe not. 

All tracks and busses had the PC Console Emu on them set to N-Type and the drive knobs set to default (12 o clock).

I exported to a stereo track then imported it to a new session where I tweaked it all with the LP64 EQ and the LP64 multiband compressor and again tossed the PC2A Leveing Comp at the end.

Purely guesswork and tweaking things until they sounded okay. I really have no idea what the heck I'm doing. lol...

Thanks for checking it out and the kind words.  

Thanks, Mike. I won't say it's a "rare" JC song but it's definitely not one of his better known ones. It is very old. An ex of mine made me a massive taped collection of JC stuff and it was buried amongst the other gems. Man... I should find and digitize that tape. Hope I still have it.

Here's the original with his band...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlBzre4-Krc

He's either using a capo or they are tuned up a semi tone. I did mine in standard tuning. I might try to add some percussion, bass and electric guit at some point. It'll be a good test of BFD and TH2 to see if I can make them sound vintage.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks, dude. :-)

Heh. Thanks, Lynn. Yeah I'm pretty spazzy still when working but it's a severe lack of knowledge so I just throw everything I can at stuff until I get something passable. I think it's time for me to shift from my crash course in Sonar and start learning proper audio techniques. Thank goodness there is a ton of that type of knowledge on this site. I'm probably going to spend the next 6 months going through as many threads in the Techniques forum as I can. Cheers, dude.

I really liked your information of how this song was made although I found it a little poor - what was the color of your sock and was it used right before? 

Anyway your voice isn't as deep as JC but whose voice is such deep? You have a similar voice that sounds good on this and your ability's on the guitar  worked out well a little to much compression for me but as you said its only for fun so no general nits - good work - I liked it 

Thanks, sharke. Yeah... I'm hoping my new room is going to be super soundproof. It's supposed to be because it's supposedly got proper firewalls between the next units but I won't know until I actually get in there. This is a fairly quiet tune vocally but some stuff I do requires me to really open up. It's been so long since I've sang on a regular basis it's gonna be pretty nasty if anyone ends up having to endure it.

@eko... lol. I had one white sock and one black sock... both laundered because otherwise I wouldn't be able to get close enough to the mics due to stinkiness. As far as the compression goes... yeah I might have gone a little overboard with the LP64 Multiband but it sounded cool and the dry recording was a little "blah". However a lot of what you are hearing might be the Sat knob. I kind of pushed the limits a bit with that one but it really added that old school sound to the track. Thanks for checking it out.

@notnat... After hearing what you are capable I take that as very high praise. Thanks... and yeah. Johnny rules (RIP). I think he transcends borders though and could very much be considered and international treasure. Us Canuckers love him. Cheers.

Thanks, dude. Probably a little better than the CHC groans I've sent you. I've been performing this tune for a looong time. ;-)

@JDavis... Heheh... I think I might buy some argyle socks next time... yanno to color the sound. ;-p

As far as the timing goes it was weird doing this tune to a click track. I've always played it sort of free time and sped it up slightly for each verse then bring it right back down again for the final chorus. That works well live but on tape it's a little... well odd sounding and would have been tricky to nail considering I did this on two separate tracks. The other thing is the chorus part sounds like it is dropping any semblance of the original meter but in fact it doesn't. If you listen to the original the intro part is slightly sped up but once it kicks in you can tap a steady beat throughout the whole song (including the chorus). However the way the chorus sits in that meter is quite wacky and was very hard to get consistent each time with the click track. The first few takes, even though everything was in time, I was either dropping or adding a couple beats. After practicing it a few times I got it though and laid a bed track down and followed that. That odd way they hit that chorus part vocally and on the guitar was likely tripping Johnny and Luther up a bit because although it is in time it drifts ever so slightly from the meter like there is a hesitation. The song might have been freshly written at the time of the recording and those guys were... well back on a lot of booze and pills from what I understand.

Anyway... there is some more insight into how obsessive compulsive I can be even on what SHOULD be a very simple song. I probably need my brain looked at to find all the loose screws. lol

Thanks for checking it out and the kind words. ;-)