Case Study 1: "Back Against the Wall" Cage the Elephant

Hello everyone, today I'm going to be running you through the technical and creative processes that have been used in one of my all time favourite songs to deliver a certain type of aesthetic or desired effect. However, we're not looking at this song purely because it's one of my favourites, we're going to be looking at it because it's very similar to some of the elements that can be seen in Lippia's material (the band I'm recording currently) and this investigation is going to help me ten fold with the technical and creative processes I can use in the upcoming recording sessions.

So let's have a listen to the song and get started!

Firstly, let's talk quickly about the band. Cage the Elephant are a Rock band from Kentucky in the United States that formed in 2006. They have seen major success with many of their albums and are widely known for their songs Aint' No Rest For The Wicked, In One Ear and Cold Cold Cold. Their iconic "we don't care what you think" attitude is prominent throughout all of their music and is considered b many as one of their most appealing characteristics. Cage the Elephant's usual configuration is as a five piece consisting of drums, bass, rhythm and lead guitars as well as vocals.

Next I'd like to talk about the characteristics of the songs structure and compositional attributes. The song is played at a speed of 110bpm, uses a time signature of 4/4 and is written in the key of F#. What's really interesting about this song is the structure and the chord progression, but let's start with the structure - I've mapped it out for you below.

As you can see, the song goes; intro, verse, pre-chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, solo, chorus. What interests me is the build up towards a chorus with the first pre-chorus, but it never eventuating into one. In fact the first time I listened to this song I actually remember feeling robbed. I was like "where the hell did the chorus go!".. However it just makes the impact of the actual first chorus so much more intense and satisfying.

The other thing I mentioned before as interesting in regards to the song structure is the chord progression heard in the intro and throughout the verses. The progression goes G#, F#, F#7, C#7 and finally B7. As a guitarist, I found the use of the F# and the F#7 one octave higher sequential to each other was a really cool idea that I hadn't encountered before. Have a listen to it if you're interested!

Now let's talk about the instruments that we can hear throughout the song and what characteristics do they have that may give an indication as to how and consequently why they were recorded that way.

Let's start with the drums. The most obvious statement about the drums is that they are real drums and definitely not samples - this genre is all about real instruments, especially thick juicy drums and fills that a computer simply couldn't do justice.

Firstly let's talk about the kick. In my opinion the kick sounds really good, there's a nice relationship between it and the bass as well as between it and the snare - You can hear it beating away throughout the whole song and it never get's lost too overpowered. To me it seems very natural and doesn't appear to have been processed very much as it seems to occupy the 95-170hz frequency range and doesn't appear to inhibit any unnaturally low frequencies for a real kick drum like below 60hz. Additionally, when listen closely I get the feeling that I can hear an airy characteristic - I believe that this is the air being forced out of the kick hole and past the microphone. This suggests that the engineer placed a microphone at the opening of the hole. Good microphones for this application would include the AKG D112 or a similar 'egg shape' style of microphone.

Naturally, next comes the snare. In my opinion the snare is the weakest part of the kit in this case. I mean, when I listen to the song I don't instantly think "Wow, that snare really sucks." But when I listen closely I begin to start thinking "That snare does sound a little thin though." The snare just seems a bit too high frequency heavy making it a bit too sizzley and a little less punchy than what it needs to be. Regardless, because of the slight sizzle I definitely think the snare was miked on both the top and bottom - I can't really tell what microphones were used but hey, there was probably a 57 in there somewhere. In regards to balance though the snare fits perfectly, cutting through the rhythm sections to really strengthen the groove and backbone of the song. The kick snare combination and relationship work really well and suits the genre almost perfectly.

Let's finish off talking about the kit by discussing the overheads. The level and balance of the overheads has been executed really nicely - They are still a collective of the drums but they just poke up about the guitars and add really nice accents to the song. In relation to how they were shaped into this sound, I definitely think that there is some EQ'ing going on. In my opinion the engineer gave the overheads a boost around the 10-15khz range to give them that sparkly and shiny sound. The only negate point I can raise about the hats is that try stereo spread of them does;t seem very wide - they almost seem to be panned 50% to wither side instead of hard left and hard right.

So let's cut right to the chase with the bass (the rhyme was a complete coincidence I swear) - It's probably my favourite element of this song. The way that it blends with the guitars in the quiet intro and creates a thick, perfectly sculpted trio of guitar tones is truly admirable. In my opinion the bass is extremely clear, is sculpted to groove with the kick nicely and doesn't contain any muddiness. I think this may be a combination of a DI signal for the crispness and clarity but an amp as well to provide some of the warmth that is present. If this is the case I also believe i can hear some light-moderate compression (something analogue) to glue the sounds together and give it a bit more thickness.

What's next? Well the rhythm guitar of course. If I was to describe the tone and characteristics of this guitar briefly I would say that it's slightly warm and doesn't have a very sharp and acute tone, rather more smooth and flat. This tone really compliments the lead guitar as they work together to deliver a strong middle frequency to sit just above the drums but below the overheads. Additionally, I think it's worth bringing up that I have a slight feeling the guitars have been compressed due to how loud the string slide sounds are. This may sound a little strange at first but I've had personal experiences where compressing guitars brought the little accentuations like that up level with main guitar sound - rather than more distant and in the background.

The lead guitar is much more crisp the rhythm guitar as can usually be expected. The lead guitar really cuts through just like it needs to to do it's job. For example, in the intro while the rhythm guitar is playing the G#, F#. F#7, C#7, B7 progression you can hear the lead appregiate what I think is a C# and it cuts through both the bass and the rhythm guitar because it's brighter and more prominent in the mix. Due to this brightness in the pre-choruses and choruses it sounds rougher, crunchier and sharper rather than mellow and fuller. This could have been achieved by EQ but with this level of quality I'd expect that most of the EQ'ing was done physically in the live room of the studio.

Last of the instrumentation are the vocals. The vocals in this song are super clear, forward and bright. The vocals in this song are clearly the star of the show and really promote the song as a commercial marketable product. In alignment with the genre, the vocals are mildly compressed - my rough estimate would be a quick attack and release with a ratio of around 3:1. However, the most interesting thing about these vocals is that because the track is quite bright is that the vocals have next to no reverb on them and no distinguishable delay. This keeps the mix dry and clean and can really help achieve a very tight track without the overuse of compression.

So let's talk about how the stereo field has been used to create a wide, stereo, industry standard mix. I used Flux's Stereo Tool V3 to investigate the stereo spread of the mix throughout different parts of the song. Here are some screenshots of the stereo spread during the intro, the pre-chorus and the chorus.

During the intro the stereo spread is rather thin. However, that's not necessarily a negative thing rather that its just the way that it is and it works well. It looks very mono in this section because the intro is made up of the bass (which is a central instrument) and both of the guitars (which are not played intensely but rather very softly in a revered fashion). Even thought he guitars ae panned hard left and right, the bass keeps the track from sounding too wide in this section which is actually a good thing - when the drums come in with intense, panned elements such as hats, and the guitars with heavier riffs it opens the mix up and creates a revelation effect.

This is the stereo spread of the first pre-chorus. As you can see it's much wider than the intro because it has elements such as the drums, overheads and the thicker, heavier guitar riffs as opposed to the gentle plucking of the chord progression we talked about before. Like I mentioned above, this step from thin to thicker is an excellent unintentional circumstance that creates dynamics in the stereo spread. However the edges of the spread still seem a bit (and I know I've overused this word but..) thin, or, lacking density. If you can't see what I'm talking about you sure will in a second.

Yep, there it is. The stereo imprint of a rock band from Kentucky playing a rock song which has a film clip centred around creepy garden gnomes with nothing less than malicious intentions. As you can see, when the song reaches is peak during the chorus and all instruments are playing at their full intensity the stereo field becomes thicker, wider and definitely denser. Something that I've learnt fro this is that the stereo field isn't a constant - as an instruments presence or level changes the stereo image becomes dynamic, it shifts and changes often unintentionally. This simply adds another element of interest and you don't even have to do anything other than mix your song regularly! Win, win if you ask me.

Now let's take a look at the dynamics of the song. What I really like about this track is that it has a lot of dynamic range - much like the stereo field it has less intense sections followed by rocking, intense sections. Firstly, the track hasn't been completely squashed like a great deal of material today but secondly it was also purposely composed in a very dynamic fashion. Let's take a look at the waveform.

As you can see, the track has very distinguishable quieter sections and then, as you would expect for a rock song, extremely loud sections. This noticeable difference between the level of the intro to the level of the verse and finally to the level of the pre-chorus and chorus gives this track a very genuine, honest and natural feel. I find it's wiser to not compress where you don't absolutely need too and this is a brilliant example of how that mindset is rewarded - with dynamic range!

But I've got one more little tool that I'd like to show you. Now this doesn't exactly pertain to the mix of this track but rather the mastering stage, but it can still give us some useful insights. The tool is called DRC meter created by a company called pitchtech and it measures how much a track was compressed during the mastering stage - essentially, we can start to get an idea of how much dynamic range was lost between the recording stage and the final product. Below is the rubric to understanding the results of the test.

Once I ran the song through the program, I cam back with a result of +3.5. This means that according to pitchtech's tool, during the production stages the song was compressed mildly. This concurs with my observation of the track not being completely squashed but rather only using compression where necessary. The song sounds pretty damn good so I'd say whatever compression the engineer used was necessary.

Last but not least, I'd like to talk about the spectral field of the track. When we are looking a the spectral field of a song we are investigating what frequencies the song occupies most. For example, if a song is bright it will occupy the high-mids and low high frequencies, if a trac is dull it will occupy mostly the lower mids, if a song is sparkly it will have a lot of high frequency information and if a song is warm it will have a lot of mid-range. The adjectives and frequency band combo's could go on forever so let's have a look at the song we are focussing on. Sadly I had to use Logics stock plugin for this application because blue cat was having issues.

So there a few conclusions we can draw from this. Firstly,the dos prominent low end frequency appears to be around 110hz - which aligns with my estimate of the kicks frequency occupation. Secondly, there's a little dip around 500hz - a little bit of space between the bass and the guitars is my guess. There's a peak just under 1khz, I'd wager that this is the crack of the snare. Finally, the chunk of peaks between 2khz and 4khz are the vocals. Overall the track looks pretty natural and consistent, but the dip around that 500hz mark and the peaks from 1khz upward tend to sway me in the direction of using the word bright.

There it is, all done. A brief investigation into the aesthetics of Cage the Elephant's Back Against the Wall and what techniques and procedure may have contributed to the end result. I definitely learnt a lot from this exercise and I hope that you also found it interesting. If there's anything that I missed or anything you see differently please don't hesitate to let me know!

Until Next Time,

Brandon Hayward.