The Black Keys - Mind eraser - v1.0

One of my favorite band discoveries while playing Rocksmith and learning the guitar was The Black Keys. This song in particular I found very unique sounding. Recreating it was also pivotal in realizing that I need to work more on timing because here everything is a bit out of sync.

Vocals

Reproducing the scratchy twangy tone was out of my reach at the time of recording so I relied heavily on mixing to make the recording sound closer to the original.

Lead & rhythm guitars

The guitar lines aren't complicated but being on-time is a challenge. I did my best. I also realized that the intonation of my assembled guitar ("Santana", dark red) is bad so I AutoTune-d the track.

Bass

It's a more complicated bass line that I didn't want to spend too much time to learn. So instead of following a tab, I recorded it while playing Rocksmith with the tone cable coming out of my Helix and the sound of Helix getting recorded in Reaper. I might use the same technique for other bass lines of songs from Rocksmith.

Drums

My old Yamaha DTX-900 kit is now gone and replaced with a beefed-up Roland TD-27kv. It has a different feel (I do like it more) and the camera angle had to change too.

Of course, the recording is still MIDI but I changed the synthesis software to Superior Drummer 3.

Recording, mixing, mastering

Mixing and mastering are now fairly standardized for me using Izotope Nectar, Neutron and Ozone. While I'm still learning them, their wizards offer solid baselines that result in a way better sound that I could obtain by stitching together various VSTs.

Recording guitars and bass was an improvement by recording dry tracks (no effects) and applying Helix Native (a VST) on them. This feels optimal as I can tweak the tones to my liking in post-recording.

Misc

I had the privilege of getting feedback on this recording from Rick Beato. He is a well-known producer and youtuber (this is his channel). He's a pro and I'm an amateur so you can imagine that he had lots of observations which however he conveyed in a very constructive manner. These made me identify opportunities for improvement (the recording sheets have more details) so I restarted guitar lessons (rhythm guitar this time) and vocals and working on a few other things for improving the overall timing.