Bill Schnee: Serve the Music

How did you get into music and recording?

I started a band [The L.A. Teens] my senior year of high school, and we began writing songs. We went to a local studio for six dollars an hour, and made a demo of three of our songs in 1964.

What studio?

I couldn’t tell you the name. It was better than the barn we rehearsed in, where I had been recording our songs on my TEAC 2-track. One kids’ mother knew somebody who knew someone in the music business. That somebody was Gary Usher. He was friends with the Wilson family, and had wanted to be in The Beach Boys. They chose Al Jardine instead, but Gary did write “409” and “In My Room” with Brian Wilson. We sent him the demos cold, and he called and said he wanted to meet us. He had just made a production deal with Decca Records and he signed us. In those days you would go in and cut four sides; if one of them hit you’d run back in and cut six more to make an album. Sadly, The L.A. Teens only recorded the four sides, but on the second tracking day, he brought in an incredible guitar player, Richie Podolor, to augment the band. After the session, Richie told us he was building his own studio in the [San Fernando] Valley. When Decca dropped us, I went to see Richie at his studio [American Recording Company] and told him we’d been dropped. He had a relationship with Mike Curb, who was just starting out, and, based solely on Richie’s recommendation, Curb signed us. We had recorded with Gary Usher at Capitol Studios’ Studio B and Western [Recorders’ Studio] 3, two of the best studios in Hollywood at the time – still even today. So, we went to Podolor’s American Recording and cut the first track. When I came back into the control room and he hit play on the Ampex 4-track, I looked up at those Altec 604 speakers and was blown away at what I was hearing. I felt something from the sound of our band that I had never felt in those other great studios. I realized right then how much recorded sound could augment the emotional content of music. I turned to Richie right then, pointed at all the equipment and asked, “Can you teach me how to do all this?” He said, “No. I’m teaching Bill Cooper. Now go out and do another take.” “Yes, sir.” But that was the “aha” moment for me.

Where did that thought lead you?

I found a studio near where I was living with my parents. It was minimally professional, with only two condenser mics and egg cartons on the walls for sound absorption. No EQ, just a little mixer for the 2-track recorder. I told the owner if he’d teach me how to operate the equipment, I’d sweep the floor and help him with sessions. He went for it, and within six months I was recording all of his sessions. A while later, he brought in a homemade 4-track, and commissioned Toby Foster to build us a small console. Toby soon got a job at Whitney Recording Studios and became my first mentor. I was back in college and would go in after school and barrage him with questions about how everything worked. Toby was very patient and taught me all the basics. All of my aptitude in school was in math and science, and learning engineering came pretty easily for me. About two and a half years after having my “aha” moment, I heard Richie’s other engineer at the studio was quitting. I started pleading with Richie to hire me. After two months of begging, he finally said, “Okay, there’s a publishing demo tomorrow morning. Come and do that.” I went in, did it, and called him that afternoon and asked, “What’d they say?” “They said you were great.” “Okay, what’s next?” He said, “Come in tomorrow. There’s a Warner Bros. demo session and you can do that one.” I went in, did it, and called again in the afternoon to see what they thought. Richie said they also said I’d done great. “Okay, now what?” “Why don’t you come in tomorrow night and cut a track with Three Dog Night.” “All right… what?” Gabriel Mekler, the producer for Three Dog Night and Steppenwolf, was Richie’s biggest client. Why in the world would he stick a young, wet-nosed kid in with his main client? What did he hope for? If I had fallen on my face, he would have looked like a horse’s ass. I cut a track, and called in the next morning, “What’d Gabriel say?” “He said it went very well.” “So?” “Come in tonight and do it again.” I went back and cut another track. Same question for Richie the next morning, same answer. However, on night three they wanted some effect on the guitar I couldn’t do. I had to call Richie, and he and Bill [Cooper] came down and took over the session. That was the end of me tracking, but I did do some overdubs later on. I got thrown in the deep end of the pool very early on and managed to swim.

But you were also prepared. You were musically knowledgeable and knew about engineering.

I was still planning on being an artist back then, and I thought of engineering as an adjunct to writing songs.

Were there any publications or books you were able to learn from at the time?

Toby made me read the oldRecording Engineer’s Handbook.Years later I lent it to one of my assistants I was training, and never got it back.

Do you remember the new tape deck track counts coming in? Was it like, “Holy crap, we’ve got eight more tracks!”?

When I started engineering at Richie’s, he had just gone to eight tracks. Coming from 4-track, that felt to me like a ton of flexibility and it was very exciting. No longer did we have to lock in a balance of the rhythm section on one or, at most, two tracks. When I started my first sessions, mixing everything in stereo at that local studio, I was forced to make all the decisions on the session, since everything was live. With no EQ, getting sounds was all about mic’ing, and with only two condenser mics that was a challenge. When I got to Richie’s, he and Bill taught me the first order was definitely mics and mic’ing. But their board did have the 251 EQs.

The Langevins?

Yes! The little passive ones. Gorgeous! Actually, they only sound as good as the recovery amp you put behind them to make up gain.

How did you fall in with Doug Sax?

One of the clients I worked with at American was a duo of producers from ABC/Dunhill Records; Steve Barri and Joel Sill. They had started an album with a group called Smith. Bill Cooper had been engineering them but handed them off to me once I got going at the studio. They had a great single called “Baby It’s You.” After I did the mono mix of the single, I asked Richie, “What do I do now?” He said, “Go to 6033 Hollywood Boulevard, and hand it to Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab. He’ll know what to do.” I went there, and when he put it on, he thought it sounded great, though that was mostly due to Bill Cooper’s great recording. That’s where it all started for Doug and I; we went on to become very close friends. I refer to Richie as my second mentor, and Doug as my “graduate” mentor. Doug’s brother, Sherwood, had built all the equipment at The Mastering Lab; the speakers, the power amp, the amplifiers for the console, tape machine, and the cutting amp. When he opened, all he had was a UA [Universal Audio] 2-band equalizer, and [Teletronix] LA-2As that were highly modified by Sherwood; the lowest distortion compressor I’ve ever heard.Doug would go on to teach me that in analog less is more, meaning the less electronics the signal goes through, the better – or more natural – the sound you’re going to get. There are plenty of boxes or plug-ins today to make something sounddifferent, but there’s no box or plug-in that will make something sound more natural. That principle would go on to be the concept for building the console for my studio [Bill Schnee Studios, now part of Larrabee Sound Studios].

You continued working at American Recording?

Yes, but there was tremendous pressure from my Jewish doctor father to be a doctor. In fact, by the time he died I had three Grammy nominations and ten gold records, and he said, “Billy, when are you going to get a real job?” [laughter] I told him itwasmy real job, that I seemed to be good at it, and that I loved doing it. None of that seemed to matter to him. I’m sure if I end up on a psychiatrist’s couch, we’ll start there. Podolor took over producing Three Dog Night and Steppenwolf, and I couldn’t get into his studio to work. So, with his blessing, I took the clients I had been working with at American and went independent. I believe I was one of the first independent engineers in Los Angeles, but I had a terrible time getting the same sonic results I had gotten at American. I didn’t know that different electronics, proper monitoring, and room acoustics could all make a huge difference in a recording. Podolor’s studio had all these nailed, and I couldn’t figure out why what I was now doing wasn’t working. When I took records in for Doug to master, he was quick to point out how I wasn’t getting anything close to what I had been bringing in from American. It was embarrassing! One of the clients I took from American got a job in A&R at Mercury Records. He believed in me, and he said if I had an artist I liked that he would sign them and I could produce them. I came across a Black gospel group [New Glory] I liked, and, as promised, he signed them. This was the first time anyone ever gave me money to produce a record. I mixed the single at Whitney Recording Studios in Glendale, where Toby was now working. They had the first Neve console on the West Coast, before RCA [Studios] bought three. I knew I wasn’t getting it right; it didn’t sound bad, but certainly wasn’t great either. It wasn’t moving me. I told Toby I hadn’t been happy ever since I left American. He listened to my mix and said it was pretty darn good, and that I was being too hard on myself. “Ninety-nine percent of the people don’t know the difference.” I went, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Knowing I wasn’t happy with it, I didn’t take it to Doug to master, and had Toby master it there at Whitney. Ten days later, Mercury called and said test pressings of the single were in. I excitedly drove down to Mercury’s office, picked one up, came home and put it on my little KLH system. When it got through the first chorus, I got really ticked. I picked the arm off the record and said to myself, “Iknow the difference.” That was the next “aha” moment in my career, where I decided I was going to do whatever it took to learn how to control every aspect of what I was doing, and I wasn’t going to look back. Funnily enough, that’s when Doug Sax became my third mentor. I looked at him as “grad school,” because I now knew how to record but I still had a lot to learn. After a year of independent engineering things had been going good, but not great. The one thing I’d produced, New Glory, didn’t hit. I was about to register for the fall semester of law school. I was mixing at a studio one day when the woman up front buzzed in and said, “Bill, Clive Davis on line 1 for you.” I nervously picked up the phone and said, “Hello?” “Hi, Bill. Clive Davis. How are you?” “I’m fine.” “Joel tells me you’re a very talented musician and engineer.” “Uh, thank you.” Clive said, “What do you want to do with your life?” I answered, “I think I’m going to go back to law school.” “No, you don’t want to go to law school. If you’ve got music in your blood, you know that’s what you want to do.” I said, “Well, I would love to, but…” He took out the “buts,” and gave me a shot. He signed me as an independent producer/engineer at CBS [Records]. The first band I did there was Sweathog. We had a Top 30 hit [“Hallelujah”], and that got the ball rolling.

You’re known for having a great collection of vintage tube mics. How did that start?

When I was headed to CBS, Toby said to be sure and check out the tube mics they had. None of the studios I worked in – except American – had any of them. Back in those days, as soon as the [solid state Neumann] U 87 came out, no one wanted the [tube Neumann] U 67. As soon as the [AKG C]414 came out, no one wanted the [AKG] C12. But Columbia [CBS] still had a bunch of those old mics, and Toby said to try the 67s, C12s, and [Neumann] M 49s. I loved them instantly, and I started buying them right away. Because so many studios wanted the new transistor [solid state] models, I could buy the old tube ones for next to nothing. I never spent more than $500 for a Telefunken [ELA M] 251 until 1980, when I bought my last pair; my eighth and ninth. I paid $2,500 for the pair and complained about it for six months. I just turned down $25,000 for one. F. Reid Shippen [Tape Op#125] told me that may still be too cheap, because mine have a rich history. Everyone talks about the Jeff PorcaroInstructional Drumvideo [I recorded], where there are 251s on the toms. I had Toby internally pad three of them for toms, and they were only allowed on a very few drummers I knew I could trust. I went on to also collect many of the Neumann nickel series: M 50s, KM 53s, KM 54s, KM 56s, and so on. When Doug decided to get into making better electronics for Sheffield [Lab Recordings], he started by thinking through the concept of making a line level microphone. That’s what a Sheffield mic is; it’s a Sherwood Sax tube amplifier in the microphone. So the microphone is driving a line level signal in, which is better than driving a mic level signal long distances. Doug knew of my love for the 251, and so he bought CK 12 capsules OEM [original equipment manufacturer] from AKG in Austria and built what I think is the cleanest 251 anyone’s ever heard. Transformers are both good and bad. The good is that they prevent many problems in circuits, and they add character to the sound. But the bad is that they’re slow. They don’t let the signal get through quite as pristinely as without one. If that’s what you want – something to mush up and get fatness and character – transformers are great. That’s what old Neves and all their iron are known for. It won’t be fast, but it’ll be thick and rich. I don’t know exactly how many Sheffield mics Doug made, but aren’t there two of them here at Blackbird?

At least one.

Reid [ShippenTape Op#125] has one, and I have six, including one that I use for vocals which has a [Neumann] 47 capsule in it. They are all the most colorless microphones there are. To my thinking, and Doug’s, they give you more of what a vocalist really sounds like. That’s not to say that you might not like the sound better with some extra character, like a regular 251 with a different preamp and its transformer. Those Sheffield mics also have painstakingly hand-selected capacitors. We spent many, many hours over the years listening to capacitors, which are the bane of colorless sound. I don’t know if I’ve ever talked to you about Bravura; my live record company that I’m looking for funding? For all the gorgeous recordings I’m doing live at 24/192, I use the Sheffields on the overheads, piano, and the lead vocal. They are spectacular mics.

Speaking of Sheffield Lab, doing the direct-to-disc sessions must have been exciting!

Yeah! Producer’s Workshop [now occupied by Boulevard Recording] was the studio right behind The Mastering Lab; they even shared the same bathrooms. When I left American and was having trouble getting great sounds, Doug told me the tracks he heard from there all sounded quite good. I tried it out, and it became my studio of choice. That’s where I did [Steely Dan’s]Ajaand many other sessions. Doug did the first direct to disc recordings there in 1969, with his partner Lincoln Mayorga. They did it to show off the quality of their mastering; to get the business going. They did a second one in 1971, and a third in ’73 that I engineered. That was the most pressure-filled time I’d ever had in a studio. In three days, we had recorded, mixed, and mastered an album. Going back to normal recording was like working in slow motion. That’s what got me thinking. I soon went to Doug and said I wanted to do a direct to disc album and use a vocalist. It took me two weeks to talk him into it, and it took him two months to talk Lincoln into it. Lincoln argued that Sheffield wasn’t a real record company – it was just for him and his music, and if they were going to do a record like that, why would they trust a “kid” with their money? Lincoln finally agreed, but I had to jump through a ton of hoops to calm his fears. When I did Thelma Houston’sI’ve Got the Music in Me, the studio didn’t have enough inputs. They built a vocal booth in the back for Thelma and the six background singers, and they added eight inputs; making it 32, which still wasn’t enough. We had an assistant out in the studio who would switch [between] the keyboard inputs for the different songs.

When people talk about you, they often talk about seeing you mix, and how it was like a ballet; very choreographed.

On a console, with a zillion things going on, I’m very fluid and can move lightning fast. Other than that, I’m a complete klutz! Back in the day, I mixed for a performance. I rarely mixed in edits, the way some engineers did. I would work out what I wanted to do in different sections of the song, but I would mostly go from the top to the end in one movement. In fact, when moving fader automation came in, I had to learn to let it “help me.” I fought it for quite a while. I finally gave in, and now with Pro Tools I definitely count on it to help me. You have to, with 90 or more tracks!

I’m going to throw some instrument names at you, and ask you tell me favorite techniques or microphones. What’s your favorite mic or chain for bass drum these days?

It’s varied over time, and it also changes a bit from situation to situation. My desert island mic would be an [AKG] D112. I love the speaker sub against the outer head. I have a nice collection of older dynamic and ribbon mics that I got in England decades ago. They come up with quite interesting bass drum sounds, a bit on the vintage side, but they can be quite cool in the right situation. Normally, I might have a condenser a foot or two in front of the bass drum. What a lot of people use a [Neumann U] 47fet for.

Acoustic guitar and mandolin?

I did an album [Collaboration] in the mid ‘80s at Power Station [NYC] with George Benson and Earl Klugh. On Earl’s acoustic, I accidentally fell into something that I have grown to love. He was in a booth, so isolation wasn’t a problem. I had already come to realize that quite often I liked a [Neumann] KM 53 very close to the guitar, especially if I was worried about leakage. Because it’s an omnidirectional mic, if it’s very close it’s not going to hear much more than the guitar and there’s no proximity effect. There was a 53 and a 54 in his room for me to pick from; I accidentally had them both up, and I loved it [panned] left and right.

Which is on the left and which is right?

Doesn’t matter. The only thing it’s about is which one goes where. The 53 almost always goes near the hole.

So, the 53’s close to the hole, and the 54 is closer to the neck or the body?

I play with it, but usually the body. That’s what I did on the Michael Feinstein record [Gershwin Country] with [acoustic guitarist] Bryan Sutton, here [at Blackbird] in Studio D. That guy is an unbelievable musician! The album is all Gershwin songs, and you have to be able to play all of those chord changes on a guitar. He’s all over it.

It’s gorgeous, for sure. How do you to record acoustic bass?

The acoustic bass is the easiest, or the hardest, instrument in the world to record. It all depends on the instrument and the player! If you’ve got a great box, you’ve got a lot of latitude and several things might work. If you’ve got a bad box, you can spend all day and still not be happy with the sound. It’s an amazing instrument that way. My go-to is a [Neumann] U 47 or two. Pretty standard “Al Schmitt” [technique]. If it’s a bass player I don’t know, I walk out in the room and listen all around the instrument while they play. It always starts with listening. Early on I was trying to decide, “Do I want things to sound real?” Then it became, “What is real? What does a drum kit sound like 10 feet away?” That’s about as close as you want to be to a kit. If you put two mics out there and put it on a record, it won’t work, so we know we’re going to have to get a bit closer. Where do you mic a piano to make it sound real? Same thing. Five feet away, ten feet or more, like in a piano concert situation? What about putting your head in the piano, where engineers were mic’ing it all that time? What kind of realism is that? So, as I was formulating my ideas about sound early on. It occurred to me that what I was really going to be doing was making more of a “cartoon” than a lifelike video. I decided to do whatever it takes for the sound to come out of the speakers and move you emotionally.

You’ve worked with so many producers. Who are the best? What did you learn from them, and what might you have learned from others who weren’t as good?

Richard Perry would unarguably be one of the very best. Was he fastidious? Yes. Was he sometimes overbearing? Yes. Did he ride musicians and singers hard? Yes. Did he go over budget? Yes. But was he talented? Yes, yes, and yes. And the facts stand up for themselves. Through the ‘70s, he had a huge string of important and successful albums. One of his main strengths was picking songs for artists like The Pointer Sisters. I mixed almost all of their records. He had a great run with them, especially towards the end, when there were five hit singles on one record [Break Out]. He was also great at getting vocals but would sometimes push the singers really hard. I’m all for trying to direct a singer to get a great vocal performance, but I won’t stand on them as much as he sometimes did. Tommy LiPuma was another great producer. He was more of a broad brushstroke producer, while Richard used very fine brushes. I’ve found there are a myriad of types of producers. On one end is a guy like Pharrell [Williams], who can write the song, arrange the song, produce the song, put the artist on it, and if it doesn’t work for them, he’ll sing it himself. To the right of that would be David Foster – he’ll do everything but sing it. Then you jump all the way to the other side, to what I call the “chemist” producer. They’ll figure out how to get the songs, figure out who should arrange them, who should play on them, who should engineer, and so on. They put all the ingredients together, shake it up, and out comes a record. This type usually has very little direct musical involvement in what’s going on. One type isn’t any more valid than another; it’s just what works for a particular artist. In the ‘50s and ‘60s there were many more “chemists” than there were Pharrells. Today, most everyone starting out as an artist has to be a producerandan engineer, for that matter.

While recordingRingowith Ringo Starr [produced by Richard Perry], you almost had a Beatles reunion, didn’t you?

Yes. I think that chapter seems to be one of many people’s favorites.It’s a long story – probably too long for this interview – but I did have John [Lennon], George [Harrison], and Ringo [Starr] playing together in the studio for the first and only time after the band’s breakup. Paul [McCartney] had been busted for drugs – only marijuana – and was not allowed in the U.S. for a certain amount of time. If he could have come over, there could well have been a reunion, since most of the agitation from the breakup was behind them. Paul did write a song for the album [“Six O’Clock,” with Linda McCartney], and we went to England to record it.

Who played bass with those three?

The fifth Beatle – although there is more than one – Klaus Voormann.

You get asked about those Steely Dan records a lot [AjaandGaucho]. Are there parts of those records that people miss asking you about?

No. There’s nothing that hasn’t been covered and recovered and covered again. But don’t let my dryness fool you –Aja’san incredible album, to be sure, and one of my favorites.

It must have been difficult to be part of such a painstaking process.

The odd thing is the tracking dates forAjaweren’t painstaking at all. It was a drug-free zone, at least for the tracking. They used the cream-of-the-crop professional musicians, which I don’t think they’d ever donequitethat much. We started at 2 p.m., and never went late into the night. Larry Carlton [guitar] did takedowns on all songs from the demos that they had made; they made great demos that were mostly piano and bass.

Jeffrey

What are “takedowns”?

Chord charts from the demos. The sessions were very relaxed. It was light and fun, and it flowed. Every night I’d get in the car and pop a cassette of the day’s work in, and go, “What in the world is this? It’s jazzy, but not jazz. It’s “rocky,” but not rock. Sometimes even bluesy. I don’t know what it is, but it’s definitely incredible.” I only did the basic tracks. They spent months working them over, but they absolutely retained the feel of the basics. When Gary Katz called me, he said they were going to have a revolving door of drummers, and I would be getting a new drum sound every few days. What doesn’t make sense is they loved [drummer] Jeff Porcaro. He had played on their two previous records, yet he wasn’t onAja. I wish I had asked why that was!

When you built your studio, had there been a studio there before?

No, it was four concrete walls. Through the ‘70s I had the dream, as every engineer does, of having my own studio. I’d had a couple of offers from people to back me on one, but they never worked out and I’m glad for that. By the end of the ‘70s, with the success I had as a producer, I had the money to build a studio. I did it with Toby Foster; that was our dream together. The concept of the studio was the best of the old and the best of the new. The idea was to have a great-sounding room, great mics, and a console with minimal electronics. By the time we started construction, I had the huge collection of tube mics, which we spoke about earlier. The concept we had – which I still believe in – was first of all we had to have a great-sounding recording room. I knew how important room acoustics are. I told the architect, Jack Edwards, who had built more studios than anyone, “The reason I’m building a studio is to get a room with a sound. I don’t know how to do it, but I’ll know it when we get it, and if we don’t get it the first time, I’m going to tear it out and do it again. You need to know that, Jack.” Unfortunately, he had fallen into the ‘70s mold of fabric-wrapped panels of [Owens Corning] 703 fiberglass, which I absolutely did not want. I called two top acoustical engineers and told them I wanted to build a studio like the ones built in the ‘50s and ‘60s. They started talking about the coefficient of this and the superlative of that. They were baffling me with stuff I didn’t understand, and it scared me. I ended up deciding to go with Celotex [fiberboard]. Many of the best old studios I’d been in, including American Recording, used Celotex for sound deadening. In addition, every radio studio I’d ever been in that used it didn’t feel anechoic, the way a room does with all fiberglass. When I finished the room, it was wonderful, except it was a little too boomy. There was no bass trapping anywhere. [Studio designer] George Augspurger came over and told me that there are two ways to do it, “An easy way and a more complicated way.” I said, “What is the easy way?” “Just throw some sound absorption up there on the ceiling and see if that works.” I did, and it sounded fabulous. I knew I was done. The console was taking longer to construct than the studio, so I rented a great-sounding 16-input Quantum [Audio Labs] console to shake down the room. I called Jeff [Porcaro] and asked him if he could bring the Toto guys over. They came over and set up. Everyone was thrilled with the sounds, especially the drum sound. We had a bottle of champagne and toasted the place. It was a great night.

What did you have for monitors?

The studio playbacks were [Altec] 604s with Mastering Lab crossovers and the extended woofer. The control room speakers were the speakers from the Mastering Lab, the ones that Sherwood built. Unfortunately, they only worked out to be halfway good ; they were great for resolution, but they weren’t built for super-high SPL [sound pressure levels]. I later had Allen Sides [Tape Op#106] come over and repurpose them, keeping the same speakers but going his route, with tri-amping and speaker EQ. Several years later, I started doing all my mixing on the speakers that I came up with, Tannoy SGMs [Super Gold Monitors] with Mastering Lab crossovers. Although not the most fun to listen to, they are quite resolute. I am still using them today.

When did Josh Florian [JCF Audio] come into the picture?

There were three electronic design geniuses that Doug found over the years. The first was Bud Wyatt. He was involved in all the early Sheffield gear. The second was Steve Haselton, who – along with Toby Foster – designed my console. The third one was Josh Florian. Josh was a P&E [Music Production and Engineering] major at Berklee. He came to the Mastering Lab in 2006, hung out with Steve, and learned a lot from him. Josh went on to do more designs for Doug, and ultimately for me.

Tape Machine D/A

You’re using his JCF Audio AD8 and DA8-T converters?

When we were no longer recording on tape, my second 24-track machine was put out into the studio. Josh had come by to visit, and when I left home for dinner, I said goodbye to him. When I came in the next morning, the second [engineer] told me that on his way out, Josh had stopped and stared at the 24-track for about five minutes before he left. Josh called me a few days later and said, “Bill, I was thinking… what does a tape machine do? It takes magnetized particles off the tape as a low-level analog signal and bumps them up to operating level so that you can manipulate them. What does a D/A [digital to analog] converter do? It takes ones and zeros, converts them to a low-level analog signal, and bumps them up to operating level so that you can manipulate them.” He then said, “The playback electronics in that [MCI] JH-16, (basically lifted from the [Ampex] AG-440 electronics) sound very good. If I can come up with the right 28-legged animals [integrated circuits] that convert the ones and zeros, I could put 24 of them in a little box that would sit on top of the head stack, plug it into where the playback head goes, take the tape compensation out of one of the speeds, and it would go through and use the tape playback electronics. The meters would jiggle, and it would come up on your monitor console where the tape always did. If I do it right, it’s going to sound great.” I told him to go for it. He took a couple of the machine’s playback cards and left. About two months later he came by, and I asked him whatever happened with his idea, “Did you ever try it?” He said, “Yeah!” “And?” He said, “I think it’s great.” “Well, can I hear it?” “No.” “What do you mean?” Josh said, “Doug tried my pie pan with your electronics cards, and he couldn’t find anything that sounded better. It sounded the best on every project he’s tried it on, over his other three D/As, so he’s using them now.” I said, “Well, those are my electronics. I would like them back!” Josh then built a little box that he affixed atop my head stack and plugged it in; it worked and sounded great. I used to love putting on a reel of tape when a client came in to hear a mix. They would see the tape going around and the meters jiggling and ask if I had transferred their Pro Tools session to tape!

What about analog to digital convertors?

When tape got unreliable, I mixed to an SACD recorder with an Ed Meitner [EMM Labs] 1-bit A/D converter. One day Doug suggested I go back to PCM, but at 192 kHz. At that time there weren’t very many converters for 192, and I wasn’t so keen on having to listen to converters anyway. I talked to Josh about it, and he came up with a converter specifically for 192, using an unusual topology. The next album I mixed, I did it to both one-bit and Josh’s 192. I took it to Doug’s, and we listened to the two “blindfolded.” We both picked the same one, every time. SACD sounded very good, but Josh’s 192 was “gooder.” Doug said, “To see how good it really is, take it in your studio and record some live musicians.” I brought in a group of live musicians from Sergio Mendes’ band, and when I went from input – through the glass – to the output of the digital, I could hear absolutely no difference! As far as I’m concerned, early digital at 16-bit, 44.1 kHz didn’t deliver what it promised, or even close. Now, for the first time, I was hearing sound I’d only ever achieved on the direct-to-disc records. That was the birth of Bravura Records. Then Josh decided to build the Latte. The Latte is two channels of that D/A and two channels of what is very close to my A/D. I have now added eight channels of tube D/A by Josh [DA8-V], that are really sweet. Over time, my studio and I did listening tests for many projects. At Martech, while Toby Foster was designing the pickups and electronics for their EMT 140 mod, Bud Wyatt was designing a new transformer that would become the heart of the Martech preamp [MSS-01], which is an outstanding unit. Bud would bring breadboards – with various incarnations of a transformer – for me to listen to. When the project was finally done, as a thank you for all my work, they gave me transformers for my 24 Mastering Lab preamps. Because of that I feel I have the best-sounding Mastering Lab preamps.

When you think about the amount of time you spent with the Sax brothers and everybody else, the process of recording is really a series of comparison tests, right? Making a record is a process of sitting between speakers and deciding what’s better. How do you separate your subjectivity?

My esteemed colleague, Mr. [George] Massenburg [Tape Op#54,#63], teaches critical listening at McGill [University] and in his master classes at Berklee [College of Music]. He will tell you he learned a great deal of it from the same place that I did: Doug Sax. Doug started out as nothing more than a hi-fi nut and a trumpet player. He was very intelligent, and he learned on the go. By the time he was my “graduate” teacher, he was telling me how important resolution is throughout a monitoring chain. As I wrote in my book, you can’t design a better microphone, or anything else, if you can’thearthe differences. Let’s be honest: If you’re using your ears, it’s subjective by definition. If you’re using numbers and measurements, it’s completely objective. “This unit has .006% distortion, that one has .05, so the other one is cleaner.” Yes, but does itsoundbetter? Maybe, maybe not. Doug showed me early on that just because something measured better, it didn’t always sound better to the ear. Measurements are important, but ultimately measurements are not making music… our ears are. The funny thing is styles change over time. I spent the first 25 years of my career trying to get rid of distortion, and the last 25 deciding which plug-in distortion to use. What Doug came up with – and we used it over and over for testing capacitors, switches, or whatever – was a jig centered around a very high-quality silver switch. On one side of this A/B switch, we have a piece of this wonderful and hard-to-use solid core wire, and on the other side is what we’re testing. What we’re trying to do is get as close as we can to the sound ofnothing, which ostensibly is the side with the wire. That’s what you’re looking for. It’s pretty easy until you come to a place where is there is a change. Is it euphonic? In other words, if you can’t get it to sound like the wire, do you at least like what you’re hearingbetterthan the wire? With super high resolution and well-trained ears, most components – even passive pieces like a switch – can change the sound ever so slightly. If you hear something changing the sound and you don’t like it as well as the wire, keep looking.

That’s an awesome answer. Would you say you have a philosophy of recording?

Yeah. Serve the music. Both producing and engineering are servant’s roles. The producer’s there to serve the artist and their music. If it’s an artist with a concept, the producer is there to get that down so that it can be reproduced, and so that other people can hear it. The engineer is there to serve the producer in their goal of trying to do that, which ultimately is also serving the artist, as well as the musicians during a recording session. Try to make everything go as smoothly as possible. Stay out of the way. I’m always looking ahead. I’m following where the session is going, and I am always looking ahead as to what will make everyone’s job easier. That’s how I trained my seconds [second engineers]. I would tell them, “Keep alert to what’s going on, so that I don’t have to turn to you when someone asks me, ‘Can we do such-and-such?’ You should’ve already heard what they’re wanting and be out the door to do it.” Don’t try to keep up; stay ahead. Things may never go back to the way they were, but there’s a lot to be learned from the old school way of working.

What was it like writing a book about your career?

It was wonderful, a trip down memory lane. I’m blessed by the career I’ve had, and even more blessed that it’s still going! That’s the funny thing. I relocated to Nashville, and in the last ten years I have done two of the best records I’ve recorded and mixed. One that recently came out is by Mandy Barnett calledEvery Star Above. It was arranged by the (late) great Sammy Nestico, who was 94 years old! We recorded it at Ocean Way [Nashville Recording Studios] with a 57-piece orchestra, and this incredible songbird singing live. The other is with Michael Feinstein [Gershwin Country] and is George Gershwin songs done as duets with country music artists. It will be out in 2021. Both are marvelous. But I decided to write a book when a producer told me, “The ‘70s into the ‘80s was the golden era in pop music. A very short time, a very iconic time, and you were there.”

www.billschnee.com