How many albums have you produced for other people?
Twenty, I've only done it for other people's music in the last five years. I engineered for some other stuff before that, but I've only been hired since about '94.
Producer/engineers tend to approach recording from two different camps. The predominant one is the technical; i.e. "If we can just get the right mics for the drums and the best gear then we'll make the perfect record." The other camp focuses more on the environment... techniques that create a space that's comfortable with an emphasis on collaboration and performance. I'm curious what percent of your approach is technically focused and what is environmentally focused.
I'd say it's half-and-half. I'm very conscious of environment and I'm always working to make it better. By that I mean, either purposefully making it comfortable or uncomfortable to the point of tricking musicians into doing stuff that they actually want. Sometimes it's technical tricks, like someone could be singing, and I can sense that they are right at the point where their voice will break. If I think they can get the pitch, then maybe I'll change the pitch of the tape a hair, without telling them. They won't sense it but then they will be able to sing it. So instead of constantly telling them, "Oh you're singing flat. Oh you're singing sharp," when it's only a hair off, I change the tape speed. Or like with the last Stereolab record, there was this one tune that both Sean O'Hagan (from the High Llamas who was also doing work on the record) and I knew really needed some kind of ridiculous "hot" guitar lead. Well, Tim Gaine(the guitarist) is just not into stuff like that. Over the course of the first two months of tracking I would constantly be playing hot licks while we were working. And Tim was always like, "Stop that! Oh No!" You know... it was very funny. Eventually, bit by bit, over time, his hands started fidgeting and after about six weeks he started doing it himself. By then it was time for him to go in and track it. So it's just little psychological things to get people to do stuff that... not trying to force them to do things that they wouldn't do...but getting them to do what they want to do. On the Superchunk record, with Mac(McCaughan) and his vocals, I was working with him, actually in a way he said he hadn't done before, where we actually went over the lyrics and talked about different ways they could be interpreted through the vocal performance. We talked about what combination of voices the songs might need? Does it need harmonies here? Should we lay off the harmonies here? My favorite example (of this) was Mary from Stereolab. She had a song on the last record where she really had to sing out because the character was supposed to be this bigot. So she's singing it like she usually sings her back-up vocals. I thought that she really needed to step-up to this. She wouldn't do it. So I ran into the live room with a stick and chased her out into the street and then back into the room and immediately pushed record. When she sang the part again she was out of breath... she sang differently and it worked. So it can be anything really that works.
Did you have to do that with the Aluminum Group at all? They seem like they talk about music in that way.
We talked a lot about the implications about the way things would be done, mostly with the interpretation of the lyrics and how the performance would color the lyrics. But I tend to talk to bands about the lyrics a lot. It seems normal to some of them and for others it seems like they've never done that before...well, with engineers. But then most engineers don't seem too interested in the interpretation of the lyrics. That's up to the singer, there's a history of singers being more difficult to record than other instruments because it's more of a personal thing than playing an instrument. Most engineers shy away from that whole area.
