Butch Vig: Garbage and Smart Studios

Butch Vig has created a big name for himself in the recording world. In 1984 he and Steve Marker founded Smart Studios in Madison , Wisconsin , and started working with tons of indie bands (like Killdozer , L7 , Urge Overkill ), including quite a few albums for records labels like Touch and Go , Slash and Sub Pop . As time went by his reputation got bigger, leading to work with Smashing Pumpkins , Nine Inch Nails , Nirvana ( Nevermind ) and Sonic Youth ( Dirty ). Then, as if this wasn't enough, he and Steve put a band together with Shirley Manson and Duke Erickson and called it Garbage . When we got the opportunity to inter- view Butch, it was originally going to be in San Francisco . After some contemplation, John Vanderslice of Tiny Telephone studio and M K Ultra (himself a former Tape Op interview victim) came to mind. John runs a very analog orientated studio, so I figured with him chatting up Butch, who works extensively in Pro Tools , we'd get some sparks flying. And what happens? They got along like peas in a pod...

You started Smart Studios (in Madison, WI) a while ago, and you used to record a lot. Do you miss engineering as much as you used to when you first started Smart?

Yeah, I guess I do. Even though we made Garbage's Version 2. 0 , our guitar tech, Billy Bush, by default became the engineer and he handled a lot of the technical aspects, particularly because this is the first time we jumped into using the full-on Pro Tools System. But, I still get behind the board all the time and even now as I'm talking to you, I've got my laptop and a Kurzweil, a little keyboard, and this Yamaha speaker set-up 'cause we're working on some b- sides and we spent most of yesterday pro- gramming some loops and things. I like to tinker with stuff. I was never really classi- cally trained as an engineer; never went to any of those schools. I always just did it by the seat of my pants. I still like to get a new piece of gear and just plug it in and fool around with it; see what you can do with it.I'm also not a good manual reader.

Did you start Smart to record your own band? What was the reason behind starting it?

Steve and I met in film school and he had a four-track in his basement at the time. I was recording electronic ambient things for a fellow film student's soundtracks.

Yeah, your already un-watchable films.

Exactly, they were very un-watchable. But, some of the soundtracks were pretty interesting. They were very inspired by John Cage and even more accessible stuff like Brian Eno's solo things, or Stockausen. I can't even remember what I was listening to back then. I was really into it, and at the time also playing in bands and we couldn't afford to go into proper studios. So, we started doing little demo things in Steve's basement and when I finished college, Steve and I had the idea that we could make a go of this, so we rented a space in a warehouse and bought an eight-track. We had very little gear. I think we had a spring reverb unit, we had a handful of mics, all 57s or even cheaper stuff than that; that was the most expensive mic we had.We had one DBX-160 compressor that we bought used for fifty bucks.

You probably used that on everything.

On every single thing. And we had a Roland Space Echo. The first board we had was an Allen and Heath. It was all kinda' to record our own stuff. We knew a lot of other musicians from the local scene, so we were like, "If you guys can go out and buy the tape, we'll charge five bucks an hour just so we can get fifty bucks for the night so we can get some money to pay our rent here. We got a lot of work off of that.Everything that we started making we put back into the studio. It was like, "We need to get a better monitor system, we need to get more reverbs, we need to get more compressors, we need to get better mikes," and the list, of course, if you own a studio never stops. Everything we made we pretty much plowed back in. Over a period of time, we went to a more sophisticated eight-track to a sixteen-track to a 24 to a 48, to now a full-on Pro Tools System. It was a slow evolution. There were a lot of bands and albums between all those steps.

I checked out your website and I couldn't believe all the bands you had recorded. It was absolutely phenomenal! You have a Studer deck, an A827, were you syncing up two of those and doing Pro Tools on the new record?

Yeah, we recorded most of the tracks into Pro Tools, then we would edit or process or whatever we ended up doing, which we do actually a lot, and then when it came time to mix the rhythm tracks, stuff was all transferred to the Studers; the drums, bass, some of the guitar and vocals. Any of the weird little sound effect things, if we were to use them, we would leave them in ProTools so we use Microlynx to lock them up, so we had the two 48-track Pro Tools and the 48-track Studers.

In general, do you use a lot of compression when you track?

It depends on what it is. I usually don't compress drums until they've been recorded. I do more compressing post. A lot of times if I'm looking for compression, I want something that really screws with them or over-pumps them or shreds them out. I always compress the bass and usually compress some acoustic things, like acoustic guitar, even piano sometimes we'll compress a little bit. Shirley's vocals, I always use a solid TLA-170. That's the stun. Whenever she starts singing it kicks down, even if it's quiet, it kicks down a -10 dB.

Do you mix a song differently if you know it's going to radio, or do you just let radio compression do its job?

Years ago I always used to use bus compression. I've got a Daking compressor that I've been using lately. I like it a lot. I'll put it across the bus sometimes just while we're tracking to make sure if something gets really loud, it's not going to blow the monitors up. I will occasionally do mixes with it, but I have a tendency to wait till mastering to do that. I always go to MasterDisk and I work with Scott Hall and Howie Weinburg. They're both really good and I always go to the sessions there so I can listen to the EQ and make suggestions, but let them do their thing. I'm well aware of how radio can affect it but I try and also compress it, so like Version 2. 0 sounds as loud as anything else, but there's still really strong dynamics. A lot of times you're doing things to trick the compression. Little frequency things or things that sound like they come in loud and then ease-off right before it comes back in 'till the next section of the song.

Do you like the sound of radio compression?

Yeah, sometimes I do. I don't like it when it's so severe; like when a song starts out with a vocal and an acoustic guitar and the band kicks in and the band sounds like they drop down 20 db or lower.

It's amazing how radio stations vary in how much compression they use. Alternative stations seem to use a lot of compression. Sometimes it sounds good and sometimes it just sounds really extreme. When you track, do you track with a mix in mind, like say Tchad Blake , or do you try to get good tones down onto tape?

We just try to get interesting sound on tape. Fortunately, we have no idea what the mix is going to sound like when we start and we have a tendency to record a lot of ideas. We constantly cut the song up and chop it up in Pro Tools. "This chorus sucks.Let's just erase it. Let's take this sound thing from this other song and transpose it to this key." We do a lot of really weird things and it isn't until the actual mixing process begins that we define how the songs are going to sound. The record took us a year and the mixing took about six weeks at the end of that. Four or five of the songs had over a hundred tracks by the time we mixed, so we had a huge puzzle. At that point, a lot of the things are kinda defined around your lyrics after we've gone through and we're happy with our vocal performance. No matter what we do sonically, it needs to work around Shirley because she's definitely the center. She's the mouthpiece for the band, so whether we make it noisier, more poppier, more organic, or weird layers going on, it somehow has to work with the songs and with Shirley's vocals.

When you're not in your own studio and you're recording another band, are you flexible about what gear is available or do you always bring your own racks with you?

I'm flexible, although there are a few things that I do like to have. I've got an API Lunchbox that I've used for a while that I really like a couple pieces of Summit gear, but the TLA- 170, I cannot live without. It's by far my favorite compressor. I like that Daking, that compressor, that Geoff Daking came out with a couple years ago. It's very simple to use but it sounds really good. I will occasionally use that on some tracking, but I like to leave it on the bus. The other thing I probably always use lately, is I have an old ELA-M, I think from 1957-that's an old tube mic. It sounds amazing,. It's one of these mic's that has this incredible high-end, "haaah" all the steam and crunch, that goes on the vocals.

What's the difference between a 250 and a 251?

I do not know.

My friend has a 251 and those are Telefunken mic's right? I don't think I've even seen one. Our highest end mic is a Neuman 67. What dynamic mics, maybe more esoteric dynamic mics, do you rely on for guitars or drums or other instruments?

I love a fat U-47, the big chunky mic. It's kinda dark sounding.

It's a solid state version of the U-47?

Right, but it takes a lot of level on bass and guitars and kick drums-it's thumpy. It's not as clear as other mic's. I've used that on a lot of things. We use Audio Technica 4050s, 57s and 421s and m88s on guitars sometimes. We have a couple of Colfax mics, but I'm not always a huge fan of those. They have a tendency to be back a ways. And if you want something recorded really closely, to me they don't sound quite as good and they can't handle a lot of pressure.

If a band was going to start a studio with a minimum amount of money, what would you advise that they spend most of their money on? EQ's, microphones? What do you think is a really essential link in the chain?

I guess if they're going to be recording bands with live instruments, you'd almost have to say it's the mics and the pre-amps. If you've got a good mic and a good pre-amp, and you move the mic around you're probably not going to have to EQ very much. Sometimes you can even go directly to tape on whatever you're recording on. I remember when we first started, we had really shitty mics and I had to EQ a lot. I just couldn't get things to sound good. You'd have to bottom-on, or high-in, or screw around with the mid-range, whether you're cutting it or boosting it. Going back to (Nirvana's) Nevermind , I don't think I've EQed a guitar going onto tape for 8 years now.

Do you usually brighten it up on the way back or do you usually tweak it all in the mix?

In the mix, but usually at that point, it has less to do with EQing, and what we call our processing point, where we take things and re-sample them and change the bits or change the field person, it might be some strange EQ or it just might be some effect that gets put on them that gives them a totally different timbre. I don't really EQ the bass when it gets recorded and I don't really EQ the guitars and the same with Shirley's vocals. I don't EQ those, I just go flat to whatever we're recording on.

Does the TLA-170 tend to brighten up vocals at all?

It seems to be fairly neutral. I think obviously any compression will bring out more sibalence, but that's just the nature of compression. But, this mic, as I said, has a really soft, nice smooth crunch to it when the tubes kind of overload on the high-end. We'll sample stuff on the Kurzweil 2500s and those get thrown in too. Then we'll process them into Pro Tools. We have a ton of programs to do processing, DSPs and things, plug-ins basically and filters and compressors and stuff. We'll use a lot of those on just about anything.

For all those people out there who have 8 and 16-tracks, which are probably the majority of the Tape Op readers, if you had four tracks to record drums, how would you mic and assign them?

Four-tracks, depending on what the band plays like, if it was a jazz band or something that was very quiet, I would probably put the kick on a separate track and then stereo mix the toms and snares and overhead into two tracks. If it was a rock thing where there's a lot of kick, snare and back-beat, where they were playing a lot of grooves, I'd put the snare on a separate track. Possibly take a top and bottom mic and run them together and then put the overheads on track 3 and 4. I used to do that a lot when we had our 8-track. I used to commit drums to stereo. I wouldn't even put the kick on a separate track back then.

That sharpens your skills too.

Well, sometimes in the mix early on you realize you should've had the kick a little louder or the kicks awful loud compared to the rest of the drums. But usually you can get it pretty close, once you've got the mix down and the band is playing together. You can listen to it with the bass and the guitar and the vocals. You're almost kinda listening to a slight rough mix at that point.

Our engineer Greg Williamson, showed us this trick when we were mixing down where he would just send the snare out through a speaker into a room and prop the speaker on top of the snare and get the snare to rattle and then he would just mic it and mix it during the mix and get this really nice separate bottom snare sound. So, that was like the coolest thing I've learned in the past year as far as mixing on drums. It's nice because you save yourself a mic and it's totally clear.

A couple times on Version 2. 0 , we would take a drum loop or some sort of groove thing, and run it through an old Auratone, that we've had since 1983, that's pretty blown up. So any low-end, it just distorts right away. We put a mic on top of that and run stuff onto it and re-mic it and send it back into Pro Tools and get these amazing crunchy mid- range drumloops.

Have you ever used a Shure Bros. Level Lock?

No.

It's like an old PA compressor that's really junky. Must've been like 20 dollars when it came out. The threshold is 6 inches, 12 inches and 18 inches, for the distance from the speaker to the mic. If you slam stuff through that, you get just absolutely bizarre distorted compression sounds. When you record do you always separate instruments from drums, or do you like bleed?

No. I mean the bleed is what makes stuff sound cool. When we started tracking on this record, we spent a month. We took a Pro Tools, a Mackie and all of our live gear and for a month we basically jammed and improvised and came up with some song ideas. It was set-up very loosely, not pristine at all. It was like a big parlor room. It had a pool table in the middle, amps were set-off to the side and the drum-kit was kinda off in the corner. Shirley could sit in the middle and then basically, we could run tape, record, and bounce around between the samplers and the keyboards and guitar and bass and drum-kit stuff. A lot of things came from that, that made it into the final mix. Might have been a drum loop or a guitar thing or a vocal that made it into the final mix. We're not particularly concerned with something matching or being pristine. Even vocal takes, if they sound different from day one to day two, we don't care that much. A lot of drum stuff, tons of drum things are mixed down to mono on this. It's like I didn't even want to bother with doing things, where I knew there might end up being 15 drum tracks on a song. I didn't want to have 15 tracks with separate bass drums and snares. So I just mixed drums down to mono in a lot of instances. They got filtered, EQed, in one or two or four or eight bar loops. It's basically just the grooves that work in the context of what we're recording and this is easier to deal with than a mix. A lot of times when we would mic them, you'd start putting on all these little things and I find that I use very little effects.I'll usually use something on Shirley's vocal if it was recorded dry. Use an Eventide harmonizer for a double effect. We'll use the 4000 sometimes for a reverb patch.We use the Roland Space Echoes for a lot of tape-slap type things. The mix is pretty dry. I remember when Billy and Mike had to do the recall on the first mix, I think we had three stereo effects on them. But, as I said, so many things are processed by the time you start throwing up all the faders, all these weird things are happening like ambient tracks. A lot of times if there's a main drum groove that would be down the center, which maybe has more of a live feel, I may take another two or three loops and just pan them all left and the other two or three loops pan them hard right. They all have different frequencies and play at different times in the songs, so you're constantly getting this pretty wide set of things coming from the spectrum. I guess getting back to your question, It depends on what we're recording. A lot of things I record flat, a lot of things we will process once we get them in there.

When you record, say piano, do you like things in stereo pairs or do you like having stuff in mono because it's so much easier to deal with and it also gives a solidity to the instrument.

Both, I think. For instance, rather than hearing a stereo guitar, I'd rather double track the guitar, left and right because they're two discrete things, and sound even wider when you pan them. I do have a Calrec Sound Field that sounds amazing. It's got an incredible stereo mic that works really good on drums. I ran piano on it, acoustic guitar. We've used it on a couple of vocal things, where Shirley's singing more ambiently. But, I have a tendency to record things on mono and not worry about them.

What records have you heard recently that you really, really like engineering wise, or sound wise?

I really love Massive Attack's new album, Mezzanine . The way they approached their arrangements, it's all moody and dark and very atmospheric. It's great, great late- night-turn-off-the-lights and play-it-really- loud music. I like this band Flick, I like the way their record sounds; like indie recorded, lo-fi fuzzy, power-pop. I like the songs and their singing. There's some elements of Big Star and even the Pumpkins' mellower songs. It's a really cool record. It's walking that line of trying to do it yourself in the indie-world and also just approaching greatness, to mix a timeless sounding record.

Who are your favorite engineers right now? And not necessarily ones that are active right now.

I like Tchad Blake a lot, I think his mixes always sound really interesting.I'm very partial to Flood's work. He's been acting more as a producer these days, but he's been an engineer. His recordssonically always have a great darkness to them. He always lets a lot of the room bleed into the tracks and that gives them a lot of character. I like the new PJ Harvey record that he did.

Of all the records that you've done, which one is closest to your true sonic vision?

God, I don't know.

Or the one that you put on and say, "Damn, that's the sound that I was going for?"

It would probably have to be Siamese Dream . I worked really hard on that record, as did Billy, as did the band. I knew what he kinda wanted to do going into that record, and I knewhe wanted to do a lot a layering. I knew because I worked with Gish on him.It was a really intense album to make because they were also under a lot of pressure internally and from outside sources. I particularly remember, when I finished it, I knew we made a good record.