You've found some success recording in the classical world.
It's becoming my niche. I went to a summit in Nashville in November, and I was there as the token one young classical person. They were like, "We need the odd duck to balance this out." It's a funny, weird, little insular world. Forever, it was three old dudes sitting in a room saying, "This year we will make five records with this orchestra, five records with this pianist, and that's what we will release." Now, the label system is adrift, especially in the classical world. There are a lot of these smaller players: PARMA [Recordings], Bridge [Records], and Delos [Productions]. They're doing a lot of great work, but it's not so A&R-driven anymore. It's more artists going out, picking their rep, and then deciding, "It's time to make a record." So, it means there are a lot more of us random engineers popping up and filling in the gap where we can.
Did you grow up on classical music?
Not even close. My family is not musical at all. I come from a family of pilots. I am forever a disappointment, because I don't want to learn to fly! [laughter] I grew up wanting to learn to play the violin, but my parents said, "You have to take a couple of years of piano first because it's cheaper and easier." We had a piano at home. I took a couple of years of piano, and then they asked, "Are you ready to switch?” I said, "I have to fucking tune this thing. I'm not tuning my own instrument," so I stayed with the piano. I was dabbling back and forth between learning to improvise, while also studying classical piano. I had a couple weird little stints playing in some big bands as a teenager. I oddly ended up in audio because I wanted to get a piano degree. My piano teacher called me before my audition at The Hartt School in Hartford, Connecticut, which is where I ended up going for undergrad. He said, "I don't think you're good enough to get in for piano performance, but you have good SAT scores. Maybe you should try to get in for engineering and take piano lessons on the side." I put in for audio engineering and the interview went well. They said, "You can do a double major if you can figure out the credits." I got shoehorned into audio, and this is so much more fun than playing the piano! I'm not isolated for six to eight hours a day. I don't have to be extroverted, but I don't have to be alone. The classical thing happened because I could read scores. If you're a pianist, you're used to reading more than one line of music at a time. Being able to read orchestra or opera score, you have no other choice. The opportunities kept coming. I still dabble. I do singer/songwriter and acoustic pop music, but 80 to 90 percent of what I do is classical now.
What did you grow up listening to?
I mostly grew up in rural Arkansas, listening to country music and classic rock. I was not a kid who walked into a conservatory being able to name off my Köchel numbers – the Mozart cataloging system.
I assume that's not an expectation for your job.
Previously, there was an expectation that sound technicians were often classical musicians who were able to hit some buttons and push some faders. One of my closest mentors, Tim Martin, was a Juilliard pianist. He puts me to shame. When we work together, mostly on the New Jersey Symphony, it's humbling for sure.
How did you end up in Connecticut from Arkansas?
I was looking to get out of Arkansas. I was looking to be closer to some of the bigger East Coast cities. So, I applied to Berklee [School of Music] in Boston. I applied to NYU and Hartt. Hartford was a great spot; it's three hours to New York or Boston. I could pop out and see and hear different music and stay busy. Moving from a farm in Arkansas to New York City would have been incredibly overwhelming. It ended up being the right place, at the right time.
Is Hartt a conservatory? Is it a university? Is it both?
It used to be a conservatory, the Hartt School. Then it was absorbed into the University of Hartford; a conservatory within this larger university. For audio, you end up bouncing over into some university electronics and math. They have one of the best acoustics programs in the country. That was fun to get to do a semester of acoustics and walk into an anechoic chamber. The whole concept of that undergrad program was learning how to be a performer, even if you're not a performance major, while also doing all the audio on the side.
Do other classical engineers come out of that program?
There have been a few. When I was there, it was run by Justin Kurtz who still teaches there. He's a wonderful teacher. There are a couple other teachers who are more into rock and pop styles. More rock engineers should know how to read music and communicate clearly musically. I've done some rock records, and I love pop music.
It's nice to have some basic sight reading.
It's funny, because some of the old-school guys can't read scores. It’s a crazy range where we have Juilliard guys and these guys. When we send them edits, we have to send them with timecode because they can't read the score. Now, it's expected that you can at least read through a vocal score or such. I'm working on something right now that's these crazy études, and it's super fast. To make some of these edits, I'm playing it back at 50 percent and thinking, "Did I lose the 16th note?"
When you were at The Hartt School, what type of classical engineering were you taught?
I look at like my time at Hartt as trying as many things as I could to see where I'd fit. Different projects were coming through, and it'd be at this certain skill level. There was quite a bit of having to record bands, which was good for me because it was not easy. There was all the classic conservatory study, theory or training, stacked with electrical engineering, acoustics, and music history. The closest I got to having a fun commercial music history was we had one course that was talking about the history of recorded music – going through from wire recording all the way forward. That got me started, but I didn't flesh out more of that history of recording knowledge until after I finished grad school.
What did you find challenging about recording rock bands when you'd been learning more acoustic and classical engineering?
Maybe this is a controversial opinion, but I think classical recording is not actually that hard. It is making a perfect document, but there's less of that direct creativity where you're making something out of nothing. The group exists or the performer exists, the instrument exists, the space exists, and you're trying to capture it and then enhance it. I always say my ideal classical recording is like the greatest concert you’ve ever been to, where you're sitting in a perfect seat. If I get the placement right, if it's a good instrument, if it's a good space, and if it's a good performer, then it's good. With rock music, you [need] that initial spark of creativity to get a tight and unique drum sound and an emblematic guitar and bass blend. Arrangement is such a huge part of it; it's a lot more instant pressure. Every band is different: Some of them come in and say, "We want you to give us information. What are you hearing?" Some of them say, "We came in, and this is how we always performed it." It's a totally different artist psychology. When you’re in college, you're recording college kids. None of us really knew what we were doing, and we were all pretending to be adults in that scenario. It was challenging.
How do you find the perfect place for a microphone?
I teach a recording class at The New School. I teach them that the further from the instrument, the less important the choice is. Choosing a good performer and a good instrument, especially piano, you have to find one that sounds good and is well tuned and well maintained. But next is the microphone and where it is. From there, choose the preamp, converter, and DAW. All these choices make a little bit of a difference. If you get down to arguing between if it's better to track in Pro Tools or [Merging Technologies] Pyramix, that's a tenth of a percent of what the sound is going to be. There are some guys out there that would probably bite my head off for saying that.
If you picked one thing as an engineer, what would you say is your most important job?
Microphone placement is the big thing.
Are there secrets in the classical world that a rock engineer wouldn't know?
There's a lot more reverb.
I meant with mic choices.
It's different, right? Because there are less directional mics. We're going for all these crazy omnis. For a lot of guys, their dream is to have a matched trio of [Neumann] M 50s and do old-style Decca [Tree mic array]. I think it's less about the microphone itself, and it's more about putting it in the place that's most complementary to the instrument.
How do you approach that?
I use my ears. Nobody showed me this until I got to grad school. One of our teachers there said, "Walk around this piano and put your head all over the place. Put your head under the instrument, put your head over the instrument, go to the tail, and go to the performance perspective." We each had a pair of microphones. It was eight people in a class; small enough that we could do that. Everyone put a pair of microphones where they thought it sounded good. We learned eight perspectives on a piano. That's still how I do mic'ing, especially for instruments that I don't know at all. Jess [Tsang], for example, will bring me the most ridiculous world percussion instruments. She'll ask, "How do you mic this?" I'll say, "Make it make a sound, and we'll figure it out." It really is that simple. The microphone is a dumb ear; it doesn't have a brain attached to it. So, put your ears where it's good. Sometimes you have to put it where they want it. I recorded cimbalom for the first time in November. It's a Hungarian hammered dulcimer that's got a little table and mallets. I listened to him play, and I guessed where the microphone should go. He said, “No, it should go over here.” I said, “Okay. I've never done this. We'll put it where you want it.” It worked. It's so fucking loud.
Would you change the microphone when something like that happens?
Sometimes – if I get to know a particular performer's style, the instrument, or the hall – I'll change microphone selection to enhance or suppress sounds that are attractive or unattractive.
What would be an example?
Some violinists play bright instruments. If it's a super bright instrument and a super bright hall, I'm not going to put a DPA 4011 over the bridge because that's the brightest point, unless the performer wants it. There are some performers who play super bright who love that sound. I might try putting a pair of Royer mics out. I might aim more for backplate sound instead of over the bridge sound, so that it's warmer and rounder. Front plate is the top, and back plate is the under part. For that, I'm putting microphones down lower and aiming up. I stole that idea from somebody else. We're all just stealing from each other!
How does placement change as an ensemble gets bigger?
It depends on the situation, budget, time, and manpower. If I'm recording an orchestra, I want no fewer than 24 mics. The ideal is that – using your ears – one could put two to four microphones out and get a pretty good sound. I did a lot of that experimentation in undergrad, where nobody else wanted to do orchestra most of the time. I didn't have as much competition to take those concerts on. The conductor did not want to see mics. If I can only add three or four spot mics, where do I put them to make it a little bit better?
Did you start with three overhead omnis? What was the bare minimum?
I joined the recording studio staff there, which they offered to students at different points in their learning journey. We were doing archival capture of recitals and concerts. Their archival capture was two omni mics behind the conductor, and that was that. I started with that, and then I thought, "This doesn't sound like what I want."
How far did they space them?
Around two and a half feet. That's pretty normal. Sometimes I'm going out further, and especially if I have a center mic, I can go really wide. Center mics are notoriously difficult to put out for concerts because they're right in the middle of where the strings are. The conductor gets mad if we can't hang the mic, and we couldn't hang mics for this. I started out by adding outriggers to fill in that string sound – with collegiate players, a lot of times brass is plenty loud. You won't need spots back there!
Those were still omnis?
I go back and forth. I ended up doing cardioids out there in the end. If it's not an amazing hall, I'll do sub-cardioids because they focus a little bit more in on strings. I find that if I have eight channels to record an orchestra, I'll use four mics across the front. Bass spot [mics] make a huge difference, because it adds that definition that we're used to hearing on CDs. If I can put a pair over woodwinds, that's awesome. If I can put a mic over the timpani, that's pretty excellent. Those eight channels will get me 80 percent of the way there. The spot mics are a lot of cardioids. I'm very content with [Sennheiser] MK 4s or [Neumann KM] 184s on woodwinds. I'm not pushing them super crazy hard, unless the orchestra is really bad or the hall is bad.
Was there a particular preamp you learned on, or did you develop preferences?
At the top, they're all quite similarly good. Because we're usually going in and building a studio into a space for a week to do a concert, it’s whatever travels well, is easy to troubleshoot, and has a lot of headroom. I've used a lot of Grace m802s. I want to bring Millennia preamps around, but they're fragile. They do not like being bumped around, and if they break that's an expensive fix. I wish I had an eight-channel Millennia [HV-3D preamp] with a Dante card in the back – that would be so slick. But, right now, I've got a Grace for all my mains and a couple of RME 12Mics. It's a newer unit that RME makes.
Is it also transformerless?
Yes. It's a good one. I have happily used the Merging Technologies gear, like the HAPI interface and Horus preamp. Those are also all super clean.
Coming from a rock background, I use transformerless preamps very little.
Yeah, which makes sense, because the transformer sounds like something. Our goal is to have it sound like nothing. I will be honest; I do a little bit of mastering and often I'll get something that's stupid clean. It's all DPA [mics] through Grace [preamps] into Pyramix and then pristinely edited. I’ll have to dirty it up a little bit to make it sound more real. I’ll throw an SSL transformer into the mastering chain. It's not verboten to have transformers.
It's fascinating to me – how "dirtying it up a little" in the classical world is a transformer. [laughter]
Yes, exactly. Some guys will do exciters, and that's crazy.
I like the idea of, "Here's a transformer. That's just enough color to sound more like a recording."
It puts a little stamp on it, where it's like, "This was made by people."
Jumping back to your story, you ended up in grad school after that?
I worked through undergrad. For the first summer, I was lucky – I got to intern for a local mix engineer and guitarist, Jim Chapdelaine, who was doing a lot of PBS Austin City Limits-style recordings in the Connecticut and tri-state area. That was super fun. It gave me a little bit of idea of how to deal with broadcast. That, ironically, helped me the next year. I put in an application to go to the Banff Centre [For Arts and Creativity] for four months, which I really had no business doing. I was 20. I looked back at that time the other day [when] I was peeling through hard drives to get to an old project. I opened one that had the portfolio that I sent in for my application. They should not have let me in, but they let me in. I found out later it was because I had that radio and TV experience. They had just opened a radio station at the Banff Centre. I came in with all these other 25-to-40-year olds and, spent the summer following people around asking, "How do you do everything?" I was doing 5 a.m. calls for radio. It was learning as you go, and fixing things as you go. There were not a ton of technical people in the radio areas – it was a lot of producers. A lot of those people that I was there with had done the McGill Graduate Program [in Sound Recording]. I ended up meeting two of the profs at McGill who came to lecture over the summer: George Massenburg [Tape Op #54, #63] and Richard King.
Who is Richard King? I certainly know George.
The easiest way to sum it up is he's done every Yo-Yo Ma record for the past 15 years. He was brought in to replace Bud Graham, who was their big classical guy. Richard said, "You're 20. So, you're not looking at grad schools, but when you get there, you should keep in touch," which was super kind of him. After that, I developed a good relationship with the person who is running the audio program at Banff, and I ran into her the next year at AES. She said, "Well, what are you going to do now? You have two more years of school, and then what happens?" I was like, "I want to go try working at Tanglewood [Music Center] by the time I'm a senior." She said, "Why would you go as a senior? You could just go next year." She sent me off to go meet Tim Martyn, who was running the program there, and 30 minutes later I had a job for the summer. I did two summers there. I was working with different guys at McGill at the time, half of whom were like, "You should totally go do it," and half of whom were like, "You don't need to go do it." I got to the end of my undergrad, and it wasn't that I felt I couldn't work, but it was that I wanted to get much better. The program is structured where you go and you record your fucking ass off. You record day and night. You go to class during the day, and you record at night and you record on the weekends. There are always outside projects, and there's a ton of work to do. But then you come out of it and somehow you are supposed to know what you're doing. You're constantly working, and you're learning electronics with Robert-Eric [Gaskell] or studying recording with George [Massenburg]. Learning how to compress guitars with George was super cool. We were learning [Dolby] Atmos. We got to test a lot of 3D microphones. The grad school was like a playground; a really painful playground. [laughter]
Were you recording rock or classical?
All of it. In place of a thesis, each year I had to give them about 50 minutes of music that I had recorded and that was the grade. It had to be all different styles. Mine was super heavy with my classical work that I felt good about, but then I had to put in some rock, pop, and acoustic folk.
Is it a line of performers wanting to record for free? Like the way people get their haircut for cheap at a student salon.
It is sort of that vibe, because it's Montréal. There's an amazing music scene. And everybody knows about this program because it's an excellent studio space that they have. "How do I get into the studio? I don't care what poor sleep-deprived schmuck is behind the board."
Is it one studio that everyone shares?
They have a couple, but if you're going to do pop rock style there's one space that has all the amps, booths, and the fun outboard gear.
What's the console with that one?
They used to have a big API, and they got rid of it right before I came in. Now, it's all in the box. I was mad. My wife, Noëlle Byer, did the same program two years after me, and she got all this fun gear that I'd asked for when I was there. Now it's an [Avid] S3 [control surface] in there. I was pissed. We had the Euphonix from three years before. I hated the initial unboxing and having to map everything. I have an S3 at home now. It's the tactility instead of going in and drawing something like a fader ride in with your mouse.
Is that for the pop music you do, or the classical?
All of it. I just mixed a violin concerto this morning with it.
So, for me – who doesn't mix violin concertos – if you're trying to capture it as naturally as possible, where's the fader ride coming in?
This gets into a whole debate. The very old school guys would be like, "You put five microphones in the front, set the levels of those microphones, and that is the performance." I was learning from a lot of the guys who pioneered what is affectionately, or maybe not, known as the "Big American Sound." It's sort of like putting everything on steroids; mic'ing a lot closer and putting this big, luscious, Bricasti reverb on it.
Did the Bricasti replace the Lexicon?
I think they're both still used. The Lexicon MX300 and 480L. I'm using a lot of the PCM plug-ins – they sound really good.
I didn't think you'd say that.
Yeah. You have to tweak it a lot. The fader rides come in when little solos or textures come in through the orchestra. I'm pushing it a little bit; not much, a couple of dB at the most. It's saying, "Oh, look at this. There's something cool going on with the bass clarinet, or there's a snare drum thing happening here."
In the continuum between the classic Decca sound and the Big American Sound, who chooses where it's going to fit in that range for a project?
I guess it's when they're picking the people. If they want something purist and very traditional – European third row of the concert hall vibe – they're going to go to those guys. Picking people who've studied with them, or people who came up through that system. If they want the other sound, they're going to come to the rest of us. I would put myself more in that camp, where it's adding more bells and whistles, and making it more exciting without betraying the essence of the music.
Are there times where you would lean towards less of that?
Yeah.
What shapes that decision?
The music itself; if it's something that is beautiful. There's a lot of contemporary music that is just texture. It's orchestrated so perfectly – they're putting instruments together in ways that you'd never think to do. I hear it and I'm thinking, "That's a whole other instrument." In those cases, I'll find a balance and I don't touch it, because the whole point is that you're in the space and you're feeling that balance. But this violin concerto I was working on has a very distinct set of melodies, motifs, and little things coming in and out here and there. I'm making it more obvious – I'm adding an auditory cue. That’s how I justify it to myself.
I don't think of it as justifying because that’s how a listener follows the piece.
Me and three other people are getting to sit through this performance, looking at a score, and knowing what's happening and what's coming. The audience often doesn't have that. If they're listening on the radio, they don't get to see it. I get to sit there and know what's coming. To be able to take them by the hand and say, "Listen for this cool trumpet part."
So, you've come to be a fan, even though you didn't grow up with classical music at all.
I do really love it. I don't think I was primed to, especially as a younger person. For better or for worse, we all have shorter attention spans now. I'm not quite young enough that I grew up with a screen in front of me the whole time. I got my first cell phone when I was 16. I'm right in the middle. We had access to media, and a lot of early internet. I don't think I was the perfect target audience, as a kid, to sit and learn how to listen to a symphony. But the older I get, and the more time I spend around this music, it's music that gives me back more as I put more into it. I find that not all music is that way. I do love pop music dearly. It's an incredible art form. But for most pop songs, after I listen to them the sixth or seventh time I don't want to hear it again. And every time I hear Beethoven's "Piano Concerto No. 4," I want to hear it again. It is so beautiful. It's so cool. I hear something new every time. There are records out there that are not classical that I feel that way about, but there are not very many. That's why I do what I do.
Did I get a George Massenburg story from you yet?
It's hard to bring it down to one story. I worked with him. Spending time with him, in that context, I had to hate him and love him at the same time because he is incredibly demanding and not afraid to tell you if he thinks you're a fuck up. I have been score reading for people and had him turn to the person who’s mixing and say, "You're driving a bulldozer. This isn't a fucking bulldozer. This is an orchestra." We've had webcasts where all the broadcasting software went down 30 minutes before the show, and he called the head of the company and said, “You better fucking fix it.” I'm thinking, "Only this man could do this."
No one's going to say no to George!
He lived in an apartment. He retired from McGill last year, but he lived in an apartment that was a 10-minute walk from the school, and I lived 20 minutes from the school. We had a lot of listening meetings with the different profs for our portfolio work, and he had a lot of us come over and play our work back on his system, which was nice, and easy, and chill. He’d always have a coffee, or, if it was after 10 o'clock, he'd have gin and tonics. [laughter] The first time of coming in and playing back a rock recording I did was obviously very scary. George kind of looked at me like, "It's this little twerp from the States who is super into orchestra and not much else. We're going to beat her into shape." I played it back for him. He stops and says, “Wow, the drums don't suck.” That was the start of our relationship. By the end, he had me over one more time and said, "You are proven, and you can do whatever you want. I'm happy to support you in whatever you want." That was like a huge whole circle moment, to think, "This guy does whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and he knows everybody. And he has taken the time to take care of people like me." It was a fantastic moment. There are stories where he's screaming unprintable things at somebody. I think it's a lot more fun to hear about George being a softy!
Is it in the moment versus not – like when he's kind of on set? Is he more intense?
He feels the pressure, like we all do, to perform in the moment. His brain works so much faster than the rest of us that he gets frustrated, understandably, when people are slower than him. I get it.
When you finished at McGill did you come straight to New York?
Yes. It was the spot I always wanted. I had been coming down here, and I'd been seeing somebody in New York off and on. I had a lot of friends down here. I had a hellacious start… Even now, I look at people that are moving down and starting – it's even harder, because there are even fewer studios. There's even less work, and everything's more expensive. I moved down, had three jobs, and was freelancing on the side. I got very lucky. I was working at Swan Studios. I still rent rooms to do mastering up there. It's a wonderful studio. We were doing reissue and archiving work. That was where I got my tape chops up quite a bit, plus a lot of noise removal and mastering. Andreas Meyer runs it – a big jack of all trades. He does a little bit of everything, which is what I like.
Did iZotope RX exist?
I think it was RX 2 when I started. We were using a lot of Cedar Audio Retouch and [Algorithmix] reNOVAtor. I still use both of those tools almost daily. Because iZotope does a lot of good stuff, but it can be a bit more heavy-handed. Sometimes I've got to be able to get in there and surgically remove that baby screaming in the tenth row. I was there probably 30 hours a week, and going up to Yale [in New Haven, CT] and working as a recording engineer on the weekends on their broadcast live streams, which was super fun. I'd commute up as early as I could on Friday, work all day Friday, go crash with somebody in Hartford, and then come back down. Do Saturday, then go back to the city after the concert on Saturday and get home at four in the morning. I didn't sleep for very long. The third job was pinch hitting for a gazillion different little concert organizations, going and recording their concerts. All sorts of chamber music, and occasionally choirs or chamber orchestras. I was running around in circles. I look back at it, and I was making no money. I was living in a pretty bad apartment, but I was so happy. There is something about finishing school, getting out, and going and doing the thing. I might have felt miserable physically, but I'd done it. New Haven lasted a little under a year. I was losing money; between the commute and the amount of work I was able to do up there. I left, ended up taking more hours at Swan, and I also got connected with the New Jersey Symphony. I began engineering over there while Tim Martin produced. This was, and still is, a really fun gig. They're wonderful people.
So, you were down to two jobs. Was the recording through a company, or was that all freelance?
It was freelancing. I took more work at Swan. I thought I was going to stay there for a long time, but the pay was not increasing in a way that made sense for me, so I was thinking about leaving. I still love the people there. The pandemic hit right as we were finishing Noëlle's immigration papers; she's Canadian. She had a fiancée visa, which came through March 2020. She was away at a cabin up in Québec and I was in a session at Swan. She called me, "My visa came through," and I said, "I think we better get you over the border. You're not going back to grad school." It was her final year at McGill. So, she was down here and couldn't work. Obviously, all the paperwork was screwed up with Trump in office and Covid. We got married in a hotel room in May that year, because we had to go to Yonkers to get a marriage license. They were the only city hall that was open to get marriage licenses. I had to make a job change, because I was not making enough money to pay for both of us. I stayed on at Swan, but I started to phase myself out a little bit and I started going more freelance. Officially, I left at the end of that year and put up my own shingle. I've been that way ever since. My wife's now one of two audio archivists [media preservation engineer] for the whole New York Public Library system. She's got a beautiful office under Lincoln Center, and – most importantly – health insurance and a pension, which means I can be as much of a freelance moron as I want.
What have the highlights been of the freelance years? What have the challenges been?
It's what you'd expect, challenge wise. It is kind of terrible to not know where your paycheck is coming from. I do live in constant fear that people will stop calling me. And it's ridiculous, because I had that fear coming back from Christmas, and then it exploded. I’m swamped. It's a bit of an unfounded fear. I'm learning how to manage my money, learning how to do taxes as a freelancer, and finding the resources to be able to share gear around and haul gear around in New York. I am lucky to have a lot of people around me who have been generous with their time and information sharing. It's a good community here. But that part of it is always a little bit fraught. It's also learning how to be in healthy competition with the people that you like, but not in a way that threatens anybody's livelihood or makes anybody feel lousy. I think there are people that are put off by someone my age and my gender walking in and taking jobs. What I'm doing is not particularly unique. It is an amalgamation of all these other people figuring this shit out and me thinking, "I like it. I'm going to do that." I'm good at what I do, I think, but I'm not the fucking messiah. The competition thing is weird because the classical room is very small. But if they find somebody else who fits what they're doing better, that is fine. There’s a lot of work. I don't plan to have kids, but I work with a lot of guys who do. There's a different pressure there.
Do you store your mobile rig in your apartment?
I store the expensive microphones and interfaces. All the stands and cables are in a storage unit with our camping gear.
Where do you do mixing and mastering?
A lot of it is done in the apartment. I converted the second bedroom into a studio. We have a mobile transfer unit there for her archival work as well. Because it's rented, we can't do a ton to it. I had a good friend who is a corporate acoustician come over and bring his fancy tools and measure the room. He told me where the problems were. The problems are all super low [frequencies]. I can comfortably sit with the fact that above 60 Hz, I'm in pretty good shape.
Do you check mixes with a spectrum analyzer or headphones?
I usually try and go check it somewhere else. That's where it's good to know people like the folks at Swan. There are a couple of other engineers in Manhattan that are generous with letting me pop in for 10 minutes and say, "Hey, is this messed up? Am I doing something crazy with the bass here?"
Do you always have some non-classical projects going on?
I always try to have one or two passion projects where I'll do it for less money and leave the timing way open. It might not be my highest priority if I have something high-paying come in, but I'm here and available. My work with Jess [Tsang] has been situations where the process will go on for a year or two years, but it all gets done and on her budget.
Where do you record something like Jess's percussion?
We've done that all over the place. Most notably, she has a duo record [party of one's self-titled release] out with a guitarist and steel player, Liz Faure. They wanted to make a record during Covid. Liz's parents have an apartment up in Portland, Maine. She said, "We'll all isolate for a week and then you can drive up. We'll build a studio into the top floor of the apartment. Then we'll make this record for a week and hang out in Portland." It was so much fun. The only downside was I had to RX out a lot of seagulls! There was one situation where Jess took her own mics, and a couple of my mics, and went down to Georgia. We'd discussed a general setup beforehand. She set them up, recorded something, walked to an internet café, and sent me the recording. I listened and I was like, "Lower these mics or move those ones over." She recorded for three days by herself. She came back and we edited it. It's kind of all over the place. It's where they can be if we can find somewhere with minimal noise and not-horrible acoustics. We're treating and processing a lot so it's a little bit more forgiving. It's not so naked!
You did the Sarah Rossy record, The Conclusion, as well.
That was really fun. She was at McGill the same time as me; she's a jazz singer and educator now. She got a grant to do a record exploring different feminist topics through her specific writing style. We had the money to rent a studio in Montréal for a week, and we ended up mixing and editing for another year.
What studio did you use?
It was the McGill studios, because we could get them for cheap. It was fun. There was definitely some straight-ahead jazz, plus wacky improv, and string trios. She tries a little bit of everything, which makes it more fun.
Do you use compression in classical mastering, or not much?
A little bit. I think we're not supposed to admit it.
Is there a compressor that can handle that better than most?
There are a few different ones. I frequently end up using FabFilter's Pro-L. So, I'm using the limiter. If you have the time, and you can do it, it's better to do manual compression. This is something I learned from George, that "the human brain is way smarter than a fucking compressor." His words, not mine! Go in and automate the level of the mix overall in in a way that you can't hear the volume changing. You can get three, four, five, six LUFS [loudness units relative to full scale] out of a mix without having to touch a limiter, which is nice.
Do you think in LUFS?
A lot of times. Because I'm sending a lot of this to radio.
Did you learn LUFS in school?
It became more of a thing towards the end of my undergrad. Then I started doing more for radio, and it became more of a thing. I do a few projects with PBS each year and they're crazy about it.
Do you find it helpful?
It's helpful overall. It's not an end-all-be-all for me. If I get a collection of mixes from somebody that are all going on the same record, I can check the LUFS levels and know immediately what is way too loud or what is super quiet. Previously, I would have had to listen through everything. The thing that I like about it is that now a lot of the streaming services have standardized their LUFS levels. If I know that Tidal is going to play back at -14 LUFS, and I have a classical piece that's quiet, like at -24. If I get it closer up to -18, then Tidal is not going to compress my shit to play it louder. I'd rather be doing that, in terms of what happens downstream. It's helpful for me in that way.
You've been nominated for Grammy awards.
Two nominations for Best Historical Album when I was working at Swan. This year, a project I worked on got nominated, but we only worked on one of the pieces on it.
What was the project for Best Historical?
The first one was the [Vladimir] Horowitz The Great Comeback [Horowitz At Carnegie Hall], which was really fun. Andreas and I worked on it together. We got all the old RCA Columbia tapes of Horowitz's rehearsals and performances for his comeback concert at Carnegie Hall [in 1965 and '66]. They produced an edited version of this back when it happened, and then it all got shelved. Our goal was to go through and take all the edited pieces out. We were taking all the pieces back out, recreating the rehearsals and the concert without edits. That was super special. It made me want to go back and play more. You're sitting there with one of the greats. The second Grammy nomination was for Marian Anderson [Beyond The Music - Her Complete RCA Victor Recordings], which was fun in a different way. I got to go back and transfer all the tapes for the Constitution Hall concert. It was supposed to be just the edited version, but we were playing it back and I was like, "This is the whole show with all the chit chat in between!" We got to put it together, and there were four or five songs that nobody had ever heard before. That made the situation very special.
Do you still play music?
A little bit. I had a performance injury, so I'm not a pianist by any stretch of the imagination. But Jess [Tsang] and I do a lot of improvising together.
Do you still play keyboards?
Yeah. I've got a few fun synths.
What's your favorite?
I got a Critter & Guitari Organelle last year. It's got the little wooden keys. It’s so cool because it's all open-source patching. It's tiny. That was a gift to myself after I finished a challenging project. "Half the paycheck's going to this!" 
