We both started with analog tape at the beginning. I know when you were engineering D'Angelo, it was all about working old school.
Well, yeah. I started interning in 1986. Pro Tools wasn't even a thought at that time. Then I worked my way up from interning, to assisting, to engineering and eventually I went out on my own. But back then, when I was assisting, I'd put the calibration – tones up, and align the tape machines. I’d “zero” the board, make sure the patchbay was clean, and be ready for the engineer to come. I'd be responsible for recalling mixes, so I'd be documenting all the settings in the outboard gear and console used. It was a whole different world. When digital first started coming in, Pro Tools specifically, it was when I was working on [D'Angelo's album] Voodoo. But I was still trying to master analog, so there was no way I was going to switch suddenly to digital; besides the fact that the first Pro Tools system sounded like shit. [Alesis] ADAT or [Tascam] DA-88 converters sounded way better. I wasn't about to switch. It became my thing. I thought, “You guys are fooling yourselves.” The workflow was different – looking at a screen versus being more intuitive and done by ear. I'm all about analog. I grew up on vinyl, collecting and listening to albums. Vinyl still rules, as far as sounds.
I get irritated with it. We finish a record, and then I'm listening to the test pressing and there are all these clicks and pops.
It pisses me off, too. It's more prevalent nowadays. I'm a stickler. I need to listen to the test pressings before we give the okay. Absolutely. If I'm working on the album, I try to make it to the vinyl stage. But if I can't make it, sometimes I'm disappointed in the way it turns out, as far as surface noise or the quality of the pressing. Most of the time I have been lucky, but I have found moments on a couple of albums that wasn't up to par.
It's frustrating.
It's very frustrating. Even on older sessions. I worked on an album by Common, Like Water For Chocolate. When they pressed it, the CD had more of what I liked in my original mixes than how it got transferred to vinyl. It's disappointing. The quality control isn't how it was when vinyl was flourishing.
How are you working now? Are you able to do a lot of sessions on tape still?
It varies from year to year. Sometimes it'll be 50-50, but it's never 100 percent working on tape. Like Animal Collective, for instance: I was ecstatic when they said that they would want to try to do everything to tape. I said, "Yeah, let's go." Unfortunately, the budgets are the worst these days. Some people have a problem spending the extra money to budget to use tape, or even to print to tape. Luckily, with most of my clients, if I say, "I think this would benefit from printing it to 1/2-inch tape," they usually will go with my direction. I guess most of the people that ask me to work with them probably want me to do tape in the beginning. I'm lucky. I've carved a deep niche.
But sticking with it to any degree, through this era, takes a bit of a bit of work.
Yes, that's a good point. My manager at the time was telling me, “You should do your own Pro Tools studio.” Everybody was doing it. I wasn't getting any work, and there was this period where Pro Tools became the default and the standard. Clients were leaning towards people that were doing it in the box because it seemed like that's where everything was going in the industry, and they didn’t have to book a studio anymore. For a three or four year period, I was not that busy at all. I'm glad I stuck it through. I was still not willing to do a Pro Tools studio. But I eventually had to do my own...
