hey chris liepe here with special guest barrett jones who is the producer
and mix engineer on the nirvana song we are reviewing today oh the guilt
and you did a couple more that are on this compilation as well right curmudgeon curmudgeon
and um return of the rat it was they were all slated for different things this was early in 1992
the studio was my first house in seattle which was not a studio it was a basement that was had
no separation no treatments no nothing it was just a little teeny room with a six and a half foot
ceiling so nuts um and i had just gotten my half inch eight track sent to me shipped to me from my
dad shipped it on a pallet with all you know had a little mixer and my very rudimentary stuff like
hardly anything but you were on the ground floor of what would become like an entire movement
it's pretty awesome yeah i mean it was it was pretty awesome so so we were talking about what
songs that that you were there for that that kurt recorded and which songs you'd like to talk about
from a vocal perspective and you thought oh the guilt would be pretty yeah especially for your
style where you're teaching screaming and between notes and screaming and kurt was
a master yeah i mean his his pitch was so good and at the same time his screaming was so good
yeah and even when he was like off it didn't sound off right right yeah because he always
knew when to come back to the note so this song in particular is a really good um uh presentation
of that style like the verses are the melody is totally there and then the chorus is just
crazy screaming but still has the note that you want and it's worth you know touching a
little bit on the way it was recorded like you said you hardly had anything but what we're
hearing i mean it still sounds so good even though it was this very rudimentary recording
may i just say that the drums the drum sound is just incredible for being in your i mean yeah in
a teeny room with you know no real condenser mics or anything it was probably just 57s
if i even i don't even think i probably had overheads in there but
it was probably a 57 on the toms and the snare and and probably even in the kick i
don't even think i had a real kick mic then um yeah but part of it a lot of just the way
that dave hit the drums drum sounds are 95 the way the drummer plays yeah yeah so nuts
not even any doubled vocals at this point no no no not at all i mean it was an eight-track so yeah
you know he didn't have much um the thing that kurt was so great about was repeating repetitive
lines oh yeah um you know not just not just lyrically but melodically and you know he starts
off with the she every line just changes like one or two things per per line yeah in the writing
you you develop this sense of familiarity right away exactly because he's he's constantly singing
in hooks exactly yeah that's a really good point and there are like it's not perfect
pitch i mean it's but because of his attitude it almost makes the pitch better well kurt was
really good at having showing the attitude but his pitch was actually really spot on you'd be
if you graphed that it would be like he he would get there eventually on it i mean he sort of moves
around it but the notes are always there when they need to be um when he wants them to be
yeah you hear the note it's it's a perfectly on pitch note behind that beautiful grit he
cracks above and below it uh-huh i mean that is just finding that note and pushing as hard
as you can where it just cracks and goes either way and he was the master at that
and he wasn't afraid to crack and i've talked about that a lot on the channel right there's
there's these little things if you listen really carefully that most vocalists would shy away from
entirely right if they were just to lean into a scream like this and then you know
oh those little like weird cracks in there they they wouldn't lean into that and then they'd miss
the opportunity but he's combine he has the the unique ability which we can all hone but to to
lean into those imperfections and embrace them and then put masterful pitch control behind it
right there that yeah but i love that he has it like that guy he's letting his bow and his
voice bounce and then he lets his voice even crack completely up into head voices
yeah but then he layers it
then he lets his voice do that yeah which would
be completely inappropriate if the attitude wasn't there
she
and what a great line she likes to go yeah right i don't even think he had all the lyrics for this
i mean they pretty much wrote these songs that day we did the three songs that day
and they were just you know they just came and kind of jammed them out and recorded them
and you know he just has the the the phrasing and it just kind of changes the word here and
there every time and then he adds the chorus and it makes a hook it makes a yeah it's a good song
i've talked about this on the channel too where his part what makes his screaming so good is the
fact that it's abandoned and slightly desperate sounding as opposed to powerful and confident
i mean there is confidence there but that's not the first word you think about it yeah yeah it is
and so if you're if you're going at something and you were actually coaching me through this uh in
the studio with my screaming the other day this idea that you can have a scream that's like yeah
and there's there's like a consistency about it yeah but you were trying to actually get me to be
more like this where there's desperation on either side where you're you're almost you're you're
pursuing the vulnerability even more so it's almost like you you've got this note like he has
and then letting it fall apart and i've talked about this fall apart aspect
but one thing i've been more in tune with since you were coaching me through some things
the other day uh was being more on the edge of vulnerability so you you get more of that abandon
where it's okay to let it go back and forth a little bit
and pursue that balance as opposed to just going you know either all scream or all note right
yeah there's the note right the notes there falls apart
straight into the totally crazy fall apart solo yeah it's like the vibe is so perfect
for that the solo is is falling apart and he's doing almost like this
and it's totally okay
that tone right there she sees yeah there's there's that like compression
sound that he's got but his face you can yeah he's just totally deadpan
so there's this aggression it's the ultimate in slacker the essence of the slacker
movement you hear this pent-up attitude behind it that that i think it's not just you know
i'm gonna i'm gonna lay down and be completely detached and aloof this is not aloof no this is
angry slacker yeah because of the compressions it's cynical ah yeah yeah
you notice more because there's less production here
it's like a live recording and then there's not the doubling
uh but you can you can hear better than a typical live recording because it was mixed too right
there's a remarkable consistency though
in the midst of all of that abandon yeah which is what i think that's what made them so great yeah
and even when there's not consistency sorry to stop it again so much even when there is the
the cracks and stuff like that because the the support and the band and the totally uh on it
there's just a riff basically they're all doing the same thing yeah and it's so tight and you know
all the sounds are cool the energy is undeniable and i think that makes those cracks his voice
the energy is undeniable as well and so those cracks aren't aren't a big deal they almost help
so good yeah so in the very beginning of the song you'll hear
kurt with the lighter going oh that was that was yeah so that's all that was fun um and uh you know
his guitar tone on this is pretty he always had a really um interesting guitar rig set up that
was he had a tube um preamp uh mesa tube preamp of rack mount one okay that he ran through a uh
a solid state uh pa amp oh really yeah okay like the you know rack mount yeah head
yeah into into 412 cabinets so it was really interesting combo of you know front end
tubes but the all the power was totally transistor yeah so it's really sharp
um okay that comes through here and then his the you know the ds one or whatever the orange
yeah distortion yeah favorite of all time that was his distortion you know huh that's all he
had was that distortion and a small stone phaser thank you so much for going through this this
is absolutely incredible to to go through a curt song with the guy who recorded it really awesome