What's the first point of approach you take when a band is coming in?
I'll ask them how they prefer to record, asking questions such as whether or not they want to all record at the same time, or one by one. Usually it's more than just one instrument, but then the question is, "Are you going to keep everything, or are certain things supposed to be scratch tracks?" I had this one band talking about doing scratch drums... I was like, "Okay... so what are you going to keep, then?" They realized maybe it wasn't a good idea. More often than not, for a "rock" recording, it's just drums, the whole band, or drums/scratch guitar. Vocals are almost always overdubbed. Alternately, I do a lot of live improv recordings. In those cases, I'll often set everything up in the live room all at once as if it's a show or practice. Maybe I'll gobo off some amps, or something like a saxophone. Once we figure out an approach, I'll also ask whether we're going analog or straight digital. Then it's setting up mics and going from there.
For most bands the experience of being in a studio doesn't feel like playing live.
It's completely different. There's a different weight to the performance.
When do you deal with figuring out how a band wants to record?
I'll try to get it sorted out before they come in, but lots of times people will say they're going to make these decisions when they come in. For people who don't really know, I'll make a suggestion based on the type of music it is, and the type of recording they're trying to do. If it's just a demo and it needs to be done as quickly as possible, then speed is the priority. But if it's something they've been working on for years, and they want everything to be just right, I may suggest a more piecemeal way of doing it. If it's someone I've seen live and I know they're a killer live band, I know they should probably at least try to record live, even if they don't think they want to. But I really do want to leave it up to them. I want to make sure the band feels very comfortable. That's almost more important than getting a good sounding recording. For instance, usually the sound isn't as precise if you have everyone set up in the same room — you'll have bleed, and you can't turn the amps to whatever volume you want because they have to work with the drums. But if I get the sense that it would really work for the band — dealing with headphones can be a distraction for instance — then I may suggest that approach anyway, because getting a good performance of the material is more important than how any one instrument sounds.
Is that more likely to make them feel confident about the decisions they'll be making later on in the control room?
Exactly. They'll be able to pay attention to the mixing, because they won't be worried about their performance. That said, let's take tuning drums: most drummers don't know how to tune their drums, so I'll offer to help. That's something I can do to get a better recording that doesn't require them to change or follow a different process. That goes for amp settings as well. Maybe you're used to setting your amp a certain way in your practice space, or at a show. But when there's a microphone a half-inch away from the speaker it might not translate. Maybe you don't want the bass on ten, you only really want it on six.
Is there a particular impression you're always going to leave on the recordings you work on?
That's the kind of thing that's more subconscious, or a cumulative result of the equipment I use, but it's not something that happens on purpose. I have some things I tend to do, such as give a recording a more "organic" sound, particularly in the world of metal. Metal's usually treated with a more "inorganic" approach.
Tell me a little bit more of what organic means to you and why it's important.
For me, it's trying to encourage people to get performances that aren't too chopped up or edited. If you can do the whole thing live, just go in there and play together because that's usually going to sound the best. Once you start taking a particular instrument's parts piecemeal, you start losing a sense of the forest, of the way things are interacting. This can get lost once you're focusing on perfecting every single little element separately. I try to encourage people to have a sense of the bigger picture of what's going on and not to focus too much on their own perfection. It's okay to leave a few mistakes. I'll give an honest opinion when someone asks, "Do you think that was a good take?" But my opinion tends to be very accommodating. As long as it's not a train wreck and the feel is good, that's more important than having something perfect.
Then what?
Then it's making sure the mixes aren't too sterile. I like them to have a sense of the space that they were recorded in. That can be something as basic as simply having a room mic. Starting with the idea that I want the sounds to be as true to the source as they can be usually ends with a fuller sounding recording, because it's less tweaked and obsessed over. But there are times when it's good to have something sound unnatural, or not necessarily stick to exactly what was going on in the room. Maybe the organic approach is a good representation of the band and the way they play, but it's not the material that they're trying to present. So there are changes you may make to place the music in its most ideal setting. It's a bit of a balancing act.
With a lot of metal recordings, it doesn't start with how the band sounds in the room.
There is a really broad spectrum of different approaches in metal — there isn't just one common way of doing it. But over-producing and overdoing it in the studio is something that's always objectionable to me. What's special about recording music that's played by people? To me it's that it's played by people. Not all music has to sound like that. I like a lot of 20th century electronic music, where it's all programmed. But if it's a rock band and that's what they're doing, then I want to retain some of that on the recording. Usually the recordings I like best have that.
Do you feel your recording techniques have changed a lot over time?
I've tended to have the same basic approach the whole time that I've been recording bands, but I do feel like I'm always learning, and I never quite have it together. I never go in and think, "Oh yeah, no sweat. This is going to be the best sounding thing ever." So, in that sense, I always feel like I could have done a better job. I'll get the recording back a couple of months later and I'll be really happy with it for a second, and then I'll start to pick apart the things I don't like. It's like learning guitar — you get better faster in the first few years, and then the pace of learning slows down.
How about mixing?
I feel like my mixing has gotten better in the past two or three years from doing more of it. I think when I was learning, I was more sensitive to overworking the mix and over-EQ'ing. I was very militant: "I can't put too much treble; I can't put too much bass." My approach to EQ'ing was to find a couple of frequencies I didn't like, notching them out, and trying to leave things as untouched as possible. More recently I've been a little more willing to mess around. I'll grab the high shelf EQ, start moving it around, and be surprised, "Oh, it sounds cool there." I'm trusting my sense of what sounds good a little bit more, rather than trying to keep everything as pure as to the way it was tracked. I think that's made me let things sound a little more dramatic. I'll have mixes where the instruments all have more of their own space. It used to be that they were a lot more squished together in one range.
When you say space, do you mean where they sit in the stereo field, or roominess?
Spectral space, more than anything else; but also roominess. I've gotten more comfortable with some things getting drier than I used to think sounded good. Other times, things sounding "wetter" than I used to like. I still don't like artificial reverb on drums; some things won't ever change. But, on certain things, I've come to enjoy using plate reverb — I do that more on vocals now, which I never used to do. I've let myself expand the sounds that I'm comfortable using. It's the same with microphones or choices of gear: I've tended to use the same mics and the same gear, over and over again, and I think that's been helpful for me understanding what stuff actually does. Now I feel like I can say, "I can try something different." I'll have a sense of how it's going to be different from the usual approach. I'm getting to the point where I think I want to get different drum overheads. I've been using the same Neumann KM 184s on almost every single recording I've ever done, and I've never really liked the cymbal sound I've gotten. But it's useful to have the experience of years of recording and mixing with a particular setup. If I try a stereo ribbon pair, I'll be able to say, "Ah! That's the difference." I never used to use dynamic microphones on amps, which is funny, because that's what everyone is "supposed" to do. It's the default for distorted guitars. But on the last few recordings, I've been using less condensers and ribbon mics.
What mic have you been using on guitars?
