“Hot For Teacher”

When you listen to certain music, you notice that it is timeless, as if separate from everything, and that it is always relevant and you don’t get tired of listening to it after listening many times.

So is the music of Van Halen’s band.

In the previous article, we introduced you to the history of the band. In the following article, we will tell you about the song we decided to recreate with our software. The song “Hot for Teacher” is from the sixth album which is called “1984”. This studio album is the last for the band with these members, because right after the next year the singer David Lee Roth quit the band to search for his new creativity in music.

Eddie Van Halen itself with the help of Donn Landee – their long time engineer put together a studio in Los Angeles’ home of Eddie which today we know under the name “5150”. I digress here- if you ever wondered what these numbers mean, well, this is California law code that gives police officers the authority to detain anyone who “as a result of a mental health disorder” are deemed to be “a danger to others, or to himself or herself”.

The recordings of the songs from this particular album testify to the band’s freedom and creativity, which was given the opportunity to record in their own studio. Even though it wasn’t fully equipped with a fancy gear studio, Eddie wanted it to show the potential of the band in a condition of not so much pressure. In his own studio, the guitar player turned his genius into another dimension and after he got it built and finished, the songs were immediately richer and more exciting in their arrangements. The inspiration was at its maximum!

With the previous album, the band sold millions of copies and after Eddie’s participation in Michael Jackson’ song “Beat it”, the album “1984” took these guys to new famous levels. They were on every radio station and toured worldwide. They were number one!

Whether the calmness they’ve got in their new music environment or The Studio 5150 inspired them to be more creative, the produced songs were definitely ahead of their time and can be called Peace of Art full of energy.

The fabulous song “Hot for Teacher ” with its groovy rhythm is popular to this day. Curious fact for the song is that Eddie recorded it with Gibson guitar Flying V from 1958. The unusual beginning of Alex Van Halen double bass drum performance and the extended guitar riffs of Eddie, together with the bassline and the spoken vocals of David Lee Roth proved once again that this band is brilliant.

Let’s say a few words about our newly released amp simulator Amplifikation VVV.

It’s our own rendition, based on deep research and careful analysis of the actual amplifiers. We are proud of the result and we must say: It’s spot on! The overall feeling and tone are faithful to the original without any flaws. A few details about each amp type from the manual could give you an overall picture of what to expect from them.

3 Amp Types:
- Type A, Mark I: Beautiful and rich clean channel, ideal for dreamy ballads or softer passage. Works great with PAF type pickups. Crazy good crunch channel and tight lead channel with 80s flavor.
- Type B, Mark II: Thick and full midrange with tight low end that delivers the famous brown sound. Great for crunchy and dynamic rhythm tones. 70’s British tones are the first sound that comes to mind.
- Type C, Mark III: Deep and aggressive with monstrous gain that will please all metalheads. On maximum gain, some will say that it’s out of control. A must for modern productions.

Recreating the tone of the song is all about the right amplifier and settings. As far as the overall sound goes, the amplifier should also have a decent amount of midrange. Don’t forget the huge amount of saturation – gain!

Type A, Mark I: Is what we need and will use. It’s one of the first revisions and most true to the old tone of his.

The chain starts with our chorus pedal, the Dimension One, with a lowered mix just to fatten up the tone.

Then there is the Amp, you can see the controls are almost maxed out and that’s all that matters to make the guitar cut through the mix. The 3th channel is saturated enough and there is no need for additional boost pedals or overdrives.

We are using just one cab and one classic 57 mic. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated.

And finally if you want to achieve the same effect, put our Efektor Reverb on a send channel. Pan the guitar on the left and then pan the send effect on the right side. Then you are right on the money!

The settings in Reaper DAW for the reverb FX on send.

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Here is the full chain in Amplifikation 360

The song “Hot for Teacher” is perhaps the breakthrough in the rock music where Eddie plays unheard before riffs, as well as the technique and where his brother Alex speeds up the rhythm to amazement. The vocals of David Lee Roth along with the back vocal of Antony fits just for the already fabulous song. The energetic feeling that brought this song to the world will be remembered years to come. Kudos to this band!!!

Here you can hear the tone. The guitar is an Ibanez RG320 with stock pickups.

Audio Sample:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IKgh3YD1t8B3rgdnzlgQyWuqaBcENHni/view?usp=sharing

Here you can download the preset and copy it to your presets folder:

Link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y8_VpHzKdEAcrjnfWCkenw0piqykIUAO/view?usp=sharing

The preset file for A360 looks like this: VH – Hot For.ka360p copy the file after extracting it from the zip file at:

Presets folder:

Windows:

C:\Users\[User Name]\Documents\Kuassa\Presets\Amplifikation360

Mac:

/Users/[User Name]/Music/Kuassa/Presets/Amplifikation360