Recording the Cover for Youngest Daughter by Superheaven

This is one of my favourite songs within this genre, I think everyone involved in making the original track happen did an incredible job!

The original song was recorded at Studio 4 over in Philadelphia (my favourite sounding live room for drums! So many great snare sounds have come out from there. Shout out Will Yip!). While I didn't have any places where I could get that type of room sound, I did have access to a large concert hall (Phipps Concert Hall, University of Huddersfield).

For whatever reason, I set out to get this cover sounding as close as I can to the original. After studying what instruments the band plays, where it was recorded, the types of pedals and amps they might use, I tried to use whatever the closest match I had access to was.

Here's the kit I ended up using:

• Yamaha Recording Custom
• K Custom Dark cymbals
• Remo clear Pinstripes and Ambassadors for Toms
• Ludwig Black Beauty with Remo Controlled Sound Coated and Ambassador Clear for snare side

One thing I regret though, was that I tuned the snare just a little too low compared to the original, but it still had similar character, so I'm fairly happy with it.

For mics I went with:

• Spaced AKG C414 XLS pair for overheads
• M201 for snare top, SM57 for snare bottom
• For kick, D112 inside the sound hole, and a D6 inside the drum
• MD421s for Toms
• KM184 for Hat (though it ended up a little bright for this)

And then 6 room mics, positioned in a sort of SPMA (Speaker Position Microphone Array) across the room at varying heights (mostly for an immersive experiment I was doing), consisting of R121s, U87s and Line Audio CM4s (a bit random, but it's what I had left at the time haha). I actually ended up using the immersive array for the Atmos upmix of this song (check it out here!).

I think in the final mix, I used a combination of all the room mics, however the CM4s (furthest, at 2.40m) are the most prominent, though I wish I had a pair quite low to the floor too.

I also want to mention and shout out Tohma Sharroc for the amazing drum performance. Not only did he get the song down super quick, but he also had to put up with my never ending notes.

After shooting out a bunch of guitars, weirdly, the closest I got was a single-coil Mexican strat that I'm pretty sure had the older ceramic pickups. The single-coils had a bit more brightness than a humbucker, while still driving the mid-range quite nicely. I think I compared like 15 guitars before going with this one, although many others would've probably been fine too.

For guitars, my guess is that the original most likely used a HI-WATT DR103 Custom 100 (not sure about the Cab though), and got most of that fuzzy distortion quality through some sort of a Big Muff.

For this cover though, I used the clean channel on the NeuralDSP Archetype: Petrucci (probably a Mesa JP2C, which I think is based on the MkIIC+). I was originally planning to go with either a real Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier or a Vox AC30 (I didn't have access to a JCM800, that would've been ideal), but I came across the tone I was after while I was doing some testing with amp sims, so I figured I'd go with it. That said, I did find something interesting, and I don't know if this is an amp sim thing or not, but I used this Green Russian Big Muff NAM capture, and found that if I put a simple overdrive pedal with low drive after it (I think I used a NeuralDSP one from another sim), the distortion completely changed and the fuzz became so much more pleasant, I think this is where most of the guitar sound came from.

For bass I used an Ibanez ATK300, going through a BOSS ODB-3. I ended up running that into an Ampeg SVT-350H and what I'm pretty sure was an SVT 212AV cab. In the final mix it's a combination of the DI and the reamped signal.

Finally for vocals, I think Thomas James Neo-Forte (Taylor Royal) did a superb job! I'm still surprised by how close Thomas managed to get to the original vocal timbre. We first did a quick try-out session and it was immediately clear this would be so much easier with their vocals already being quite close.

For the higher harmonies, which, while a bit quieter, I think do a lot of the heavy lifting in the choruses, I ended up asking Mark Wendl and Max Mason to bless me with their voice, both of which absolutely nailed it. Mark is heard during the more intense screamy parts and Max's voice acts as a support layer. Seriously, I'm super happy with everyone's performance. All vocals were done with an SM7b, handheld, creating a little bit more of a relaxed atmosphere while recording.

Ultimately, I would not have been able to get this cover where I did if it wasn't for, of course, everyone involved, but also MetricAB and an unbelievable amount of EQ (genuinely, way too much EQ). Something I learned throughout this process is that while I can get things sounding fairly close by picking similar gear like pedals, guitars, effects, or a similar recording space, but unless I'm using the exact same gear used in the original session, exact same musicians on the exact same day at the exact same studio, the only way I'll be able to actually get close is if I rely heavily on EQ, trying to make something sound the way it doesn't on its own. I think sculpting everything around a reference might not have made the recording sound its best, but it did help get it close to the original, which was the goal for this. Great exercise though.

While it's not an exact replica level of close, it's close enough to a point where I'm satisfied, and I hope you'll enjoy listening to it!