The song I chose as one of my favorites is "Sweet Child O' Mine," by Guns N' Roses. I listened to the audio using a pair of MDR-ZX100 Sony Studio (Stereo) headphones. .
Engineering.
Slash, the guitarist of the band, used a lot of reverb on lead guitar track in the initial recording, giving it thick sound. The reflections and ambience of the reverb sort of creates its own version of a delay sound. I don't think any actual delay was used on the lead guitar intro in this song, however it might seem that way due to the heavy reverb. He also used effects pedals I am sure, but am not certain what his settings were. The vocals, drums and bass also have a pretty heavy reverb on them as well. Because so much heavy reverb is used, the recoding as a whole is very wet sounding. This helps the instruments sit more back in the mix and blend together more nicely so that one isn't out front much more than the other. The engineers panned the different instrument tracks so that the song is more open and I can hear little guitar riffs come in on the left side and then the right side and from all different angles which is good for the listener. The drums are probably using the gated reverb effect because that's what was really popular in the 1980s. It is just a combination of a strong reverb and a noise gate. This allows the drums to sound more powerful and punchy, while keeping the overall mix clean, or transparent sounding. .
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Recording.
I like how the essence of the guitar sound is captured in the recording along with the sound of the drums, giving it an open feel. Although it is a high-energy rock song, it is not too beat into the ground. The instruments each seem to have their own space because I can hear them all separately. There must be a good amount of compression on the drums by how contained they are versus how hard they are being played. The recording atmosphere sounds like they recorded in a big room because of how hard the drums are being hit, yet it still not being too loud.
