So what do you do when the band you're interviewing asks you to chop up the tape, splice it back together and print it just like that. You do it of course! Well, if you have gleaned anything from chatting with The Olivia Tremor Control for an hour, you probably can't resist the idea of running home and fucking around with some tape. Home recordists extrordinaire, their early EPs and the dense soundscapes and songs of Music from the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk At Cubist Castle, Black Foliage, Volume One, and the splicey collaboration with the Black Swan Network are testaments to the endless possibilities presented by a microphone and a tape machine. And any old microphone and tape machine will do, thank you. OTC is Bill Doss, Pete Erchick, John Fernandes, Eric Harris and Will Cullen Hart. After Thanksgiving dinner and a round of Spanish coffees, we talked about recording with what you have available at any given moment.
And then I hacked them to pieces...
John: ...take a mix of a song, take it home and work with it, sculpting bits to be layered onto it or either coming up with...like I would take a version of "Sleepy Company" home, layer some violins and some clarinets for a part, and then like the sound of THAT recording of it and didn't want to try and redo it because my son would be singing along with me in the background while I was playing or something like that. So Eric was the sync master. He would set the 4-track up and then sync the tracks that I had done to the 8-track tape without syncing what I was playing along with. He would have the drums of one mix in one speaker, the mix of the drums on tape in the other speaker and would do it enough that he learned the response time of each...
Bill: We use an [Shure] SM57 a lot. Because it's such a versatile mic and its real cheap. And it's easy to use, it always works. And then that CAD E-200 we use that a lot. Then we did some stuff in Denver on Black Foliage with one of those Rode mics the NT2 or whatever it was called. [laughing] I forget now...
Will: I have no idea. SM57? I did most of mine on an SM57, but a couple had pretty good...
Bill: There's that one that Robert...
Will: Yeah, Neumann style things. It sounded pretty good. It picks up traffic from like 6 miles away...
Bill: ...layering as many tracks as possible and have them be heard. And not turn to mush, that's a problem sometimes.
Will: I think that's the biggest problem because we'll have ideas to have these 6 things happening for about 4 bars and then have these 8 things happen and totally shift...
Yeah, well that makes it fast.
Will: Not only is it fast, you can do crazy splices that I personally haven't learned to do and we would have to call some professional in to do these insane splices. I mean INSANE. That we did, that we were actually able to pull off on digital. You know, because none of us are that amazing with precise half second splices...
Bill: You can do a mix of it onto one track and then you have three other tracks to go home with and...
Will: And it's cool. Because it's not 16 tracks, and you...
John: ...in your environment...
Will: ...weird, glassy, on and off effects... John: ...getting the feel of the room that you like to be in when you add your part.
Do you guys have any habits when you're bouncing tracks? Do you always put certain instruments together on the same track?
Bill: I always keep drums and bass separate on their own tracks and then bounce everything else together. And keep vocals separate. Because those are the three things that whenever I'm making a mix, I mean everyone's got their own thing, just me personally, drums, bass, and vocals you always want to be able to...
John: ...and the realization of that's only come over time because there's mixes that we wanted to use for Black Foliage of a song from a long time ago where the vocal track is already mixed in with everything else and if you wanted to change them you would just have to dump a bunch of vocals on top of it, hopefully it overpowers the one that you didn't want there...
Will: At least we all have a 4-track cassette, a pair of headphones, and a mic at all times if not a little bit more. You know sometimes shit breaks and that's what you're left with.
Bill: Every musician should have a 4-track. You know at least just one of those bottom of the line Fostex things for like 150 bucks. It's so great to be able to throw ideas down when you have them.
So if you could only keep one thing...
Will: 4-track cassette for me. Mine's broken right now but I'm getting one as soon as I can. That was my first tool and it's gonna be the last tool, I hope they make them forever because...
Bill: They probably will...
Will: ...it just doesn't matter how far I go... Bill: They're making them cheaper and cheaper...
Will: ...into the recording world, I'm always satisfied with the quality. It feels really real and natural and maybe it's just because I've always worked on it but..
It would have been impossible to fix.
Will: Yeah, that's exciting.
Bill: At the same time I like the idea of cutting tape because it is such a historical thing, know what I mean? It's traditional. You feel like you're part of something that... actually another thing we've done that works really well when we were recording to the 8-track, we've got a Fostex X26, like one of the old cassette 4-tracks that doesn't really work very well anymore. We use it as a preamp, like plug into that, then plug that into the board, so you can get 4- track fuzz that you can't really get any other way... They had that on earlier and I was just loving it. Everybody was making fun of it and I was thinking, "god I love it!"
I like ELO, I just want Jeff Lynne to stay away from everyone else.
Bill: He did a good job with the Beatles.
I like his vocals, I can't stand those drums!
Will: It's the big strings for me...
Bill: Yeah, the production's over the top — I like the songs. I wish he would come to our house and record on 4-track. I think it would be great! Will: Production comes and goes, I think. Know what I mean? He did great productions in the '60s with Idle Race and whatnot, but he was writing better songs in the '70s really, for some reason he decided to put the big strings...
Bill: ..."better production"
Will: Well better, bigger. I mean as it grew he was like, "Wow there's 68 billion tracks now, I'll put 50 thousand strings on that" It's just sickly sweet. It's like, strip that off, there's a great song...
Bill: ...all of a sudden I could hear underneath the hi-hat. Like between his foot, and where the hi-hat was, there was a sound in there, there was a space, it wasn't even a sound, it was a space. All of a sudden that sound seemed to be more influential than anything they were actually doing. It was almost like a sound that they weren't even listening for. They weren't trying to get it, they set up the mics, and they were focusing on one thing, but it was a byproduct of what they were doing. And that byproduct opened up a whole new world of sound...
Will: ...after a while it builds up hiss on real tape. If you want to record 150 pianos you could probably do it. I think digital has it's uses, but like I said, for songs, no way.
Bill: Especially in conjunction with certain things. Like we did some work at Dave Barbe's studio [Chase Park Transduction] and he's got these Distressors and I've never seen those before , they add this harmonic distortion, which is like a tape distortion, it's really weird. You can put something through it, It's got like 4 big knobs, it's real simple, and you set it just right and all of a sudden it sounds like it's coming off tape.
Will: ...boom boom boom boom boom ksh boom boom boom ksh. Done! And that happens a lot, which is cool.
How do you guys feel about working with outsiders?
Bill: Well we just started working with Dave Barbe, he's really cool. It helps if you get on with them really well...
Will: I think we know ourselves well enough now to do it. We didn't before...
Bill: Yeah that's the thing, we're a lot more confident than we were before. It's easier to bring someone in and say what do YOU think of this? Because we know what we think about it. When you're really unsure what you think about it , it's hard to trust someone else's opinion...
Will: I think we trust ourselves enough to not just say, "Well, okay...if you think it needs more reverb on the entire mix, great." We know what we want now so if some one says "I have this blah blah compressor" it's like, "Well okay, I've seen these five, he's got some new one, try it out, nope, it's not what I'm looking for..."
Bill: ...you read so many articles about their personal lives, their music and the conceptual thing behind the music, but it's really cool to hear somebody talk about the equipment they use. So you can hear that other bands use the same crappy equipment that you do...
What do you guys use for all those sound effects?
Will: Mostly pedals. We just try and record something and think of how many different ways we can tweak it in how many combinations. It's like if you have some piano track, maybe you wobble the tape as you're entering it, so it goes byeeowrrrr, then okay, now if I slap-back the first note, bumbum! Okay, push stop. Now put the slightest little bit of flange, rewind it, right after that slap-back thing happens, you pull the original signal out and just have that flange hit for one second. Stuff like that. It takes HOURS but it so interesting when you play it back it's like boompiluhluhluhluhluhluhkshhhh...
Bill: It's just hands on experimentation really. Will:...a lot of that stuff obviously wasn't based on pop songs. So the idea was to make a song swirl around, disintegrate, and then explode into the next song. And that was totally influenced by...
Who are you talking about?
Will: Stockhausen, it's an amazing work, I can't believe it was done on tape. I'ts just too crazy, I mean all the equalizations will shift and then it's like, when did that thing enter? I could see someone doing it on digital gear because you could really plan it all out, but to imagine someone doing that on a couple of 8-tracks in '65 is really amazing....
Are there things on other peoples recordings that really strike a chord with you, that you try to emulate?
Will: Yeah, we do that a lot actually. Like just the general feel or you think, "God , that drum sound is really nice." You try your best at getting...
Bill: And of course it sounds different, and you're happy. It just gives you someplace to shoot for.
Will: I'd say '66 through '72 we love the drum sounds of... we've put towels on the drums to get a compressed type sound, to make it real tight sounding. Or maybe a light shirt so it's just dead.
Like, thud, thud , not dooonnnnnggggg.... Bill: If you don't have the EQs or the compressors to make it sound right later you have to make it sound right then. If you want reverb on the vocals you sing in the bathtub...
What's your favorite thing that you have?
Bill: The Bellari stereo tube compressor. I love it. I just like to look at it...
Pete: I like to look at it because I don't know what it does.
Bill: Well it took me 2 years but I finally figured out how to use it.
Pete: I ran a bass through it once, set the threshold and all that crap, got it to sound the way I liked, then tried it without the compressor at all and liked it better.
Bill: Yeah, I can set it now and it sounds great. Vocals don't sound that good through it though...
Do you have any little tricks you've learned through trial and error?
Bill: Well nothing that no one else has ever done. Like slowing the tape down when you do backing vocals and speeding it back up so you're more in key when you sing. That kind of thing? [to Eric] You have a lot of recording tricks.
Eric: I have a message for the readers of TAPE OP. You can create great art on any equipment, don't get hung up on equipment. You can create great art on a piece of shit 4-track cassette...
Pete: You can even do great...
Eric: ...mono cassette...
Pete: Yeah!
John: The very first piece on the Bablicon album is recorded on handheld and it sounds great. There's perfect levels on everything. It takes a person with a good ear and an open mind to realize something like that can sound great back- to-back with something that was recorded on a 24-track.
Eric: That's exactly what I was trying to say. Will: ...it's all submixed, and later we go, "You know I don't quite like that. That snare sounds real doinky, how can we take that out?" Hit a carboard box and put it right in there with it. So a lot of times we end up with 2 or 3 drum tracks to balance out something that we mixed and thought was good at first, but then after we pile on other instruments it's like, "That boingi- ness doesn't bounce with the bass but I love the bass, so let's see what we can do to balance that..."
John: ...but we liked it like that, where it gave it this kind of loping slap-back effect to the things that we were syncing up. He did a lot of sound effects things where he would take a mix of a song home, sit there on the digital 4-track, chopping up little bits of sound using the pause button, because it would stop and start on a dime, chopping sound into sound into sound, to layer onto a certain part of a song.
Do painting and recording coincide at all? Do you approach things the same way?
Will: Yeah totally, in every way. I think both of us are like that. How can it not?
Bill: It's all the same thing.
How so?
Will: Well, like you're letting an effect run in the background while something is getting warmed up, or you're just wasting time, you've got the easel and you're fucking around, or drawing in a notebook or something, getting on that level it's all the same, you know what I mean? Just to kill time cause it's so boring in the studio sometimes. It's like, okay let's listen to that mix AGAIN and see what we can do. You might just be goofing around. Or, a lot of times, like if your doing soundscape material it's good cause you might be listening to a drone for 40 minutes that later you're going to play at twice the speed so it will be 20 minutes, and it's just going waaahhhhhhhhh for 40 minutes. Then you play it for 20 minutes and add the bubbles underneath that, and while you're doing it you're painting, and that's giving you ideas. That's the way I work, both at the same time.
Bill: I remember the other night we were putting this banjo down through his amp and it wasn't sounding right. So we tried like 3 or 4 different amps before we found one he liked. And I don't know what sound he wants, he knows. We'd pull one amp out, no. Another one, no. Finally he found it. And that's how you learn. Now I know if someone wants that particular banjo sound, I know which amp we used, I know which mic we used...
Will: ...Hunky Dory...certain rock sounds just knock me out.
Yeah, what records do you...
Will: Eno. The first 3 Eno records are the pinnacle of production for me.
Bill: The White Album. It's just a classic as far as production goes. Hunky Dory is really good, it's a weird one though. I mean you don't want to have every song sound like that. The Traffic record Mr. Fantasy...
Will: Amazing production.
Bill: We all live in a spaceship-like pod out in the middle of the forest. It's floating in a lake.
