You went to Berklee College of Music, right?
Yeah, I was self-taught on guitar for about a year or two before I started taking lessons, sight reading, and stuff. Then I did drums. I was mostly self-taught as a kid. I started taking lessons as an adult here and there. I went to Berklee after that. I did a lot of lessons to get ready to audition to go there.
Did you graduate?
I did. I have a music business degree from Berklee, and guitar was the major. But because I was in the music business major program, I only had to get to level four out of eight. If you're in pro music, you have a lot more guitar classes you have to take. I realized, in my first couple days there, that I was not going to be a guitar player. The kids there are unbelievable, so I started hiding in my production.
Is that when you first got into production?
No, I started making beats when I was 14 years old. My dad got me a [Sony] PlayStation game called MTV Music Generator. It was basically an [Apple] GarageBand format, where there were a ton of loops and different genres all in the same key and tempo – you could mix drum loops, bass loops, and sax loops. That was the first time I sequenced stuff, which was different than me playing guitar or anything else I did up to that point. Then I got a demo version of [Image-Line] FruityLoops. I would use [Apple] Logic in the media center of my high school. Once I showed my parents that I was serious about it, I ended up getting a laptop and my own DAW. Then I got an [Akai] MPC as my first tool, and I learned how to use an MPC early on. I then went back to trying to learn FruityLoops and Logic. It was a weird zigzag.
At some point you moved over to Ableton Live?
Yeah. I've been in Ableton for the last decade, but I was in Logic for probably ten years before that. I thought I was going to be a Logic guy forever. When I started making dance music and more electronic music, all the automation and all the techie stuff that went along with those genres was much easier to do in Ableton.
But you're using [Avid] Pro Tools now?
Yeah, I use it with Ableton now. Ableton for MIDI. Ableton to warp. Ableton to get something out fast. But I'm pretty much full-time Pro Tools now.
How old were you when you graduated Berklee?
I was 21. By the time I graduated Berklee, I'd already produced for Kendrick Lamar, Mac Miller, ScHoolboy Q, and a few other signed artists. I wasn't making a ton of money, but I was starting to get my name on the blogs, on SoundCloud, and I was building up a small amount of followers. I was in an electronic duo with a friend, and we had started making stuff that was getting us shows before I graduated. I actually had an apartment in Los Angeles that I got six months before I graduated while I was on my “internship.” By then, I was already living in L.A., playing shows, selling beats online, and trying to get myself ready to get out of school before I was even graduating.
You're one of the people working in music who actually graduated from Berklee.
Yeah! They used to say that if you didn't drop out, you didn't make it! [laughter] I actually know a lot of people from USC, Clive Davis [Institute of Recorded Music] at NYU, or some of these other music programs who are killing it. I'm more peered up with people from these small programs that produced a lot of successful musicians, writers, and producers, whereas at Berklee there's a wide range of majors. I only have a couple of friends who went there at the time I did that are still in my orbit.
You've ended up doing a lot of education online via your YouTube channel and Splice. How did that come about?
I was lucky enough to start getting invited to speak at a few schools before the pandemic happened. I spoke at NYU. I spoke at USC. I've been lucky to have certain videos and things I said online get more traction than I thought they would about my path in the music business and, in general, the music industry and production. Some of those things caught on. I would get asked to talk about how my career worked out at different schools and then the pandemic happened. Organically, we started this huge online community because I started streaming a popular YouTube show at the time that also had a big following. Once I started streaming, a lot of people were looking for a place to go, and also a place to be seen during Covid, especially young producers, writers, and musicians. On this channel, I would host beat battles, give away free stuff, and I would bring on other people and try to get them to talk about their story and how they make stuff. My Discord became the second biggest Discord in all of music. I was the number one music streamer on Twitch the first two years that I started. Content was never something I planned on doing, but it ended up being something that fed back into my opportunities, my music career, and was also helping people indirectly. Somehow, we were teaching people; we were getting people opportunities. There are people out of the beat battles on my Twitch channel that have gotten major publishing deals, major placements, and major collaborations. We love to think that we are part of their rise, or are helping them get their first couple thousand followers. We've seen these people turn it into something. I've never wanted to sign producers. I've never wanted to have any kind of publishing company or anything like that. But we try to help out. We try to be honest, because I'm very gracious for where I'm at. I'm going to share everything I've learned, if I can.
You seem to enjoy collaborating with people.
Big time. It's the whole point, especially as a producer.
Making things by yourself is fun, but making things with other people is more fun.
Yeah. One of the reasons I produced – and didn't take my own songwriting and stuff further when I was younger – was because I'm a white kid from Connecticut who has always worked in, and been interested in, black music and things that I'm not particularly authentic to. Things that I love and am interested in because they're probably so far from what I know. When I work in music, it's always trying to be the biggest helper I can be. I'm never trying to tell people how to do their thing. I'm always trying to be around someone who I think is this unbelievable talent and just foster it and be helpful. That's how I ended up doing engineering on top of playing instruments, on top of making beats, on top of introducing people to directors and getting them new managers and doing a million other things that aren't just production or beat-making. It was because I wanted to be useful for people that were talented and sometimes didn't need my help in the area I wanted to help in. My career has always been about collaboration and about how can I get next to the things that I can't believe I'm in the room with. That's when I dig the deepest and make my best stuff within it.
I have to imagine that comes back to you. There's a certain karma of helping people out that feeds back in a positive way.
Yeah, definitely. It's in all the chatter and different people being evangelists for things in my career because they might have learned something, or seen something helpful, or won something free in the chat that I was hosting or whatever. Those people go and they spread love for your brand. I sold merch for a lot of years. I had a brand called Don't Over Think Shit. [D.O.T.S.] It was also the sign on my YouTube show; everybody rapped in front of this neon sign. D.O.T.S was something that people supported in an unbelievable way. At Berklee, as a music business student and as a producer, I was taught that you might get your points on a record. You might even end up playing in a band or playing some shows, but there wasn't this path carved out for selling your drum sounds, or your merchandise, or streaming, or content, or these other types of income when I came out of school. I wanted to be a producer, and my managers are my best friends – they're smart and they helped brand me and put me in these different areas. They let me just talk my shit and tell my story and bring my friends on with their other artists. When the content and all that stuff started feeding back into it, there was a lot of good karma that came from it. The more honest I was on there, the more opportunities I had. I used to be scared to be on camera. I thought it was lame. I thought I would look like a vlogger or something and I wanted to be taken seriously as a musician. Then some of the funny content I made got the attention of the artists I dreamed of working with! I took everything too seriously, but the more I was myself, the more artists reached out. Definitely, we try to help out as much as we can because of how much support we've had. For me to be able to sell my own merchandise as a producer – and my own concert tickets and all these kinds of things – it's very rare and I don't take it lightly. So, I better give back, you know?
You say we a lot. Who is we?
My best friend, Mike [Michael Power], is my manager. Dylan [Johnson], who you met, is my day-to-day manager. My other best friend, Jon [Tanners], is my other manager, and these are very close relationships. All the years where I ran a lot of content and merchandise, all those things, my friend, Dom [Glover], was the creative director. My friend, Aris [Chatman], filmed and edited everything. My friend, Drew [Pulig] did all the animations, as well as all the tech packs for the merch. We had a group of a bunch of our friends who were all putting work into my producer career, much in the same way most artists have creative direction and get linked with directors and business managers. Sometimes producers might have their manager and their lawyer, but I was afforded people who took me seriously even before I was financially viable enough to pay all of these people. They let me pay them a couple hundred here, a couple hundred there. But it came to a point where I would produce a full project for an artist and then say, "I've got this idea for the creative. This guy can film it and we've been taping all the beats along the way. Then you can come be on our show on YouTube. Our last episode we got a hundred thousand views in a couple of days." I was moving like an artist moves, because I had that help and that was something that my team masterminded. I was sitting there, thinking, "How can I make better songs? How can I keep working with this artist, or get this artist to come to the studio?" I never considered all these things. People see my brand, and all these things I've done, and they think it's me masterminding that, but I'm only thinking about the music. My team is smart with how they position me and the things we've built together. So, it's always a “we” thing.
Two artists you've worked with, IDLES and Geese, both have unique, unconventional vocalists. Is that something that attracts you to an artist?
I guess so. Those were both first time, first listen, instantaneous fan people for me. Cameron [Winter, Geese] and Joe [Talbot] of IDLES; the second I heard them, it became this fever panic of, "How can I help them? Can I even help them? Maybe I just want to hang with them." They are people I would see and think, "Oh my god. Nothing's as interesting to me as this is." I've felt that way about both of those bands, at different points in my life; just blinders, immediately. I'd hear a song and realize I don't care about working on anything else. Yeah, Joe is one in a fucking trillion, and so is Cameron. Joe's an elder statesman, at this point. He's selling out shows and they've become one of the biggest live acts in the world. For Cameron, what a year for him! He's seeing it all for the first time, in this new way. They're both so different in my mind that I wouldn't even consider grouping them as a certain kind of frontman, or a certain kind of vocalist. To me, it's apples and oranges, but I guess I am attracted to authenticity.
They have their own very unique, characteristic style. With many rock bands, the vocals can be pretty cookie-cutter.
I like freaks. I like weirdos. I'm not interested in someone who comes in here in their running shoes after they went to Equinox [Sports Club] and then they do their ginger shot at 3 p.m. I want people who are living their art, and it shouldn't be this thing where it's easy for them to make it. Everybody I work with, they put everything they have into it. Both those guys, when you hear their music and it feels so singular, it's because it's taken them a long time to get to the point where they've become themselves in their songwriting. Cameron's just finding it at a young age.
There's a lot of music that feels fairly derivative, and seems like it is just hitting certain standards and marks, but both those artists are very unique.
Cam from Geese, the first day we ever met in person, said, "It's easy to be a good band right now, because no one's trying."
We have the tools now to make safe music fairly easily, but it's become homogenous and boring a lot of the time. It seems harder to make great music.
That's why education and helping people out is something that will always be important to me. There is a bit of magic that's being lost when you hear something and three weeks later it's on some YouTube show and they're breaking down how they did it. Instead of creating this lore and myth in your head about what was happening in the studio – or how they did it, or what they used, or whatever – once you know it's this kick drum from this website, this Serum [synth] patch, and this mic through this preamp, and you can do it yourself. It doesn't feel the same when you listen to those records. It's a weird point in my career, where I want to help and I want to share. But I also don't want the records I work on to be piecemealed out and every magic moment on them gets explained, because I want the magic trick to still work.
I heard somewhere that you pursued doing the Geese record.
They had another producer and the studio booked already.
Really? You talked them out of it?
There was no option for me. [laughter] I was doing the record. That's it.
You've also done two records with IDLES.
Yeah, I did Crawler myself. And then I did Tangk with Nigel Godrich. That one got three Grammy noms, and Crawler got two.
How was working at Real World Studios with IDLES?
It was a few years ago. When I think of it now, it's how I think of my high school; you see it as an adult, and it looks so small. Real World has the biggest control room in the world, but when I went there, they said, "We're going to track 20 mics of drums straight to a Studer tape machine," and that was day one. I was thinking, "Oh, I'm out of my depth." I'd never done a band like that, and I'd never done a band at that scale and at such a competent studio. They have the best kids from the Oxford recording program as the interns. The most base-level person at Real World is a top-of-the-line engineer and usually a musician, as well as a whole bunch of other things. When I went to Real World, it was a very intimidating thing. Also, the week I got there I found out my dad had cancer for the first time. Then we made this record that's one of the most important things to me ever. That studio is an old water mill in the middle of nowhere in the U.K. and I got there in the middle of a world pandemic, while my dad got cancer, to make this thing with this band. It was in a super volatile place. Real World, to me, has this scary, holy feeling. Everything about it adds to what I think about the control room. There's a 96-channel board in there, us standing in the middle of it, and the band saying, "Kenny, how are you going to make our drums sound better than Geoff Barrow was going to?" All these storied rock producers that worked with IDLES had worked there, and I was sitting there looking at this board with the pond in front, with all the geese in it, just thinking, "What am I going to do?" But I couldn't have learned more. There was an engineer there named Holly. There were actually two engineers named Holly, and there was a tech on site as well who was unbelievable. The way I'm running my studio now, I'm using the same headphone amp, with the touchscreen live mix system in the control room. I built a tech shop here where we fix the gear. The second the capsule is broken, the second the tape machine stops working, we fix it onsite. There were so many things I picked up from Real World that I had in the back of my mind when I built this studio and had my own space. There's a certain efficiency here I haven't seen anywhere else. At Real World, the level of what they're able to do, even with only a few people there, it's pretty staggering; like when you go to the top A list studios in Los Angeles, New York, or in London. There's something about it being in the countryside and how much work Peter Gabriel put into it. It’s one of the most impressive and capable places you could ever go.
After you did Crawler, you did Tangk with Nigel Godrich. Did you do that at your studio here?
No, we did that at La Fabrique in the south of France. I've been to that studio a few times now with Nigel and the band. We did Tangk there, that was my first time going there. Nigel had done Radiohead's last record [A Moon Shaped Pool] there, from what I understand, and they use it for the Mix With the Masters classes. I'd seen it on videos, but going there was pretty unbelievable.
You've worked with Nigel on a couple different projects now?
Yeah, Nigel and I have worked together quite a bit. After we did the Geese record, Nigel brought back [his live in the studio] From the Basement for one episode, just to do Geese, doing songs from Getting Killed. It meant the world to me, which he knew. Even on other stuff I'm working on, Nigel couldn't be more supportive and has turned into one of my greatest friends and mentors I've met in music, honestly. I have an everlasting plan to keep making music with Nigel.
How does that collaboration play out in the studio? How do you guys parcel out the workload?
Well, the band told me that they were doing a record with Nigel Godrich, so I said, "Oh my god, good luck guys." We had just done Crawler together, and the guys in IDLES are truly some of my best friends. When they said that, I said, "More power to you guys. One of the greatest producers, ever. I can't wait to hear what you guys do." Then they said, "No, you're coming with us." I was thinking, "How's that going to work?” I didn't know how it would work, and I'm sure Nigel didn't either. When I first met Nigel – he always says this isn't true – but I was sure he hated me. It felt like everything I brought up that was exciting for me that we could try, he would say, "Yeah, I've done that 8 million times for 30 years." It felt like he was past my newfound excitement for band tracking, basically. [laughter] I had not yet started using my government name on any of my productions yet, so when the band said, "Kenny Beats is coming to dinner to meet about the record we're going to do together," I'm sure that was pretty jarring for Nigel. But we fell into our collaboration fairly quick, because Joe from IDLES and I have always recorded alone for multiple records now. We're working on our fourth record together now. Joe and I leave. Nigel does his thing, basically himself, and I try to be a fly on the wall and get these translucent moments of Joe. Nigel thought that was a great idea that Joe and I would leave to do our thing. He'll stick with the band, and we'll come back. Then he would have plenty of say about what we were doing with the vocals, and I would come in and have all types of questions about things going on with the band. But, a lot of days, he would leave me to Joe, and I would leave him to the guys. Joe would say, "Ah, fuck those drums. Fuck those guitars. I want this like this, or they don't get it or something." Then he’d be all pissed about something. He'd say, "Do something to the drums. Make it sound like jungle." Or, "Take the guitars and do that fucked up thing you do to the bass. Make it in my headphones how you know I want to hear it." Joe and I had references that we both listened to. I'm going, "Oh, I know what you're saying," and I'd just over-distort these basic stems of band stuff that Nigel was giving me. Or I would chop up the drums a little bit. Or I would compress things on Joe's vocal and do an echo throw. Or do a weird thing that I might do on a different genre, or on a different kind of vocal. I would bring the stuff back to Nigel and say, "Don't worry about what I did. I love your guitar tones. I love what we have. Joe just wanted to hear it like this for the vocal. I'll give you the vocal. We can take everything I did off." Nigel took my stems and said, "Give me everything." I was asking, "Why? I did some of that in Ableton. I know we're working in Pro Tools, and we want it to sound a certain way." He'd say, "Kenny, shut up and give me everything." So, I gave him everything. Nigel started working with what I thought were my demos, and he cut up rough things with the stems back into the songs. He would slowly get sick of all of us bickering and bantering and being idiots, and he would go to the computer, put his glasses on, and sit at Pro Tools. We called it "going full Nigel." We'd say, "He's going full Nige." He would take the reins without saying anything. He wouldn't say, "I'm going to try this. I'm going to do this." He would just go and try something. He would start cutting up feedback against notes of a [Sequential Circuits] Prophet [synthesizer] against something Mark played, and then moving him around, pitching him, and putting him in different parts of the songs. The first time he did that, my mind was blown. To see someone of his stature sit down, away from the engineer, take all of the stems, and mangle them in the most unique way that no one necessarily asked for, told him to do, or gave him the reference points for. After all he's done in his career, he's the guy in the room who does the most exciting thing. That was so amazing to see. When I did things, I thought he would think they were stupid, but that's what he was always the most excited about. It'd be the newest, weirdest thing I did, in a different program than what he was using. Every time I tried to talk about what I was excited about with mic placement, Nigel would just say, "Cool." [laughs] We found a language where we never stepped on each other's toes, and everything we were both doing was exciting the other one. He taught me so much in the process. I'm currently working on a record, and I was just thinking to myself the other day, "I'm doing seven things on one song that I'm stealing from Nigel's playbook." It's unbelievable that he's given me the chance to do that, because he didn't have to. It's been one of the most magical things for me.
You have a solo record out, Louie, that is about your dad. It reminds me of the first DJ Shadow record, Endtroducing, with all the samples and cool beats and grooves, but it also has this musicality that floats through the whole album.
That is a huge compliment! I started it at Real World during the IDLES sessions, because I found out my dad was sick. It started as a gift; I wanted to make him something. I wasn’t sure if I was going to lose him or not. He used to make cassette tapes for people. My dad went to school to be a radio DJ. He learned how to track his voice over a cassette tape, and he would give them out as gifts where there would be a song playing in the background with my dad saying, “Welcome to 103.6 FM. This is your host Ken Blume, and today we're reaching out to the people at Tape Op.” He would do these long segues. My family used to treasure those tapes. I thought, "I'm going to make my dad a tape the way he used to make them." It turned into this thing where Thundercat, Mac DeMarco [Tape Op #120], Dijon, Omar Apollo, Cory Henry, and all these people ended up playing on these songs. I would tell people why I was making it, and they would think about their parents. My dad and I had been through a lot of gnarly stuff. We don't have an all-peachy relationship, so the record wasn't just an, "I love you. I miss you" record. It was a bit like, "You've done a lot for me, and now I'm going to lose you and I love you" record. People felt something about the music. I was thinking, "Maybe this will be my first record." I played it for one person at XL Records, and we never even talked about if I was going to do it with them or with someone else. They just started asking me how to clear the samples and what they were. That was it.
What is your headspace as you move between these projects that are a full band, like Geese or IDLES, and then working with solo artists where maybe you bring in some other players? Do you feel like you have to shift gears?
For years I treated it like it was all the same. I've always worked with all types of different artists. If I'm working in hip-hop, I can work with someone from Detroit, someone from New York, someone from Florida, someone from Texas, someone from L.A. Completely different beats, swing, tempo, and sound choice. When an artist came in, I was used to switching my style, my thought process with the engineering, with the production, with the playing, and everything. But when it became multi-genre all at the same time, at first I tried to just treat it all the same, but then I would pick up things in certain genres that weren't happening in other genres and it pissed me off because I thought there were things that could make life so much easier. "Why are we not doing this?" One of the first things I realized is that when you do a lot of session work, whether you're doing a bunch of first dates all the time, or you're working with groups of the same people in small turns here or there throughout the year, you make a lot of music. On any given year, when I'm just doing a session or two every day for most of the week, I'll make anywhere from 100 to 300 ideas or songs that I'll throw out. More sometimes. But bands usually have a touring schedule, they have to get everybody in the same room, they have to get everybody to the rehearsal space once the songs are written to practice before they can get in the studio, and they only get this small window every year – every year and a half, every two years – depending on how they work. Bands are also a lot less prolific than certain rappers or certain other artists I've worked with in other genres who can make a lot of music at a faster pace because all they need is an instrumental and their vocal. It's like the same way certain artists pull up to play shows with a big backline of instruments that they need. And some people pull up with a USB drive and plug into CDJs, but they both get paid the same money to play at the same festival! [laughs] I would start working with bands and think, "Man, if they got to work on more music all the time, and get in the rehearsal space more, and spend six months out of the year writing, and then pick out of that group of songs, what a difference that would make.” Rather than only having time between two long tours to write, and then whatever they write is what the next tour is going to be based on. That's a lot of pressure for bands, and that would frustrate me. I would go back to session work, and I'd be frustrated because everyone wants to write in the studio. Bands come to you, not only with a demo, but a pretty fleshed out idea of what every lyric is, what every part of the song is, who's playing what, and how it's going to go. I would start to ask people. I would get back from band sessions, or sessions with a ton of musicians, and I would ask people why they worked that way. For session work, what if they came to the studio with a bunch of stuff written? What if I sent the instrumentals early? What if the first time you're doing the vocal take isn't your first time saying the words? I could see the value in the practice and the pre-production, and all these things I would do with bands. At this point, I'm working completely differently than I ever have in my life since I built this studio. I'm in a different DAW, a different workflow, working through consoles, working with the tape machine, and all these things in different ways than I ever did before. A lot of the things that have happened with bands I'm applying to solo artists and solo sessions I work with. One of the main things is that I don't think the studio is always the best place to write your music. It's the best place to figure out the production, so you might write the lyrics to the song and then do them in ten different tempos, ten different keys, and ten different arrangements. You could do it flamenco, or you could do it hip-hop, or you could do it whatever-the-fuck. But have the lyrics ready, be feeling something about the song, and have these melodies or this idea about what you want to do. It takes a lot of the risk out of it. On a first date session, what are we going to come up with on the spot? Then the producer is writing half the lyrics. I have done that so much in my career that at this point I'm turned on when I get to dig into a song that's already there, instead of the first half of the session is, "What is the song?" And the second half is, "How do we record it and make it feel lived in?" When something's already been played 50 times, you can feel it in that first take.
What about the difference in having to manage one personality as opposed to managing five personalities?
Yes, I'm still getting used to it after a lot of band records and a lot of years doing it. It's much harder, obviously. But I started to find my way; I slowly figured it out, and then I learned from people who are better at it than I am.
Do you have a preference? Do you prefer working one-on-one, or do you like working with a group of people?
It just depends on the person or the group. Sometimes there are groups of people, like the guys from King Gizzard [& the Lizard Wizard, Tape Op #149], and they have more fun hanging out with each other than anyone could have so you don't want to pull them out of that environment. There are other guys who can't stand to be in the same room. There are some artists who, no matter what situation you put them in, they can be tough to deal with. One-on-one, and it's like you wish there were people there. But sometimes it's easy. It's always different.
Let's dig into some more technical questions. Do you mix any of your own projects or do you have other people mix them?
I'm starting to get deeper into the mix stage. There were so many years where I would send off instrumentals or vocals with everything printed, to a degree. Usually, I don't care if someone re-does a reverb. I don't care if someone has a different panning idea, but I would try to get all the texture pretty locked in. All my drums, all my instruments, and all my vocals before I would send it. Now I'm at the point – where based on some of the people I've worked with in the last two or three years and seeing how hands-on they are in the mix – it makes me want to be there to ask questions. I'm working with more mixers that let me be in the room, because I hate sending people a shit ton of notes from across an ocean or a time zone. Being in the room and being able to say, "What if we drop those mics? What if we look for another take, just for that word?" Instead of the moment I send it off, I can't ever manipulate it again. Tonight, for instance, we're pre-mixing the moment the band leaves. I'm here with a mixer I love [Ryan Nasci] tonight, going through what my idea is for how everything should sound. What all the references are, and what we've done so far that we can improve on. I don't want to lose what we already have. It's not the final mixing, but it’s having it in a place so when the band comes back to track any kind of overdub, final vocal, or whatever, they already can hear what they're supposed to hear. With a lot of production I was doing years before, when I was in control of the DAW and making everything myself, it was all up to me to try to get that mix to a place where, when I sent it off, it wasn't going to change too much. Now I'm reaching out for help more on some of the musician and band stuff to try to get these things to a place where all the mud, all the compression that I feel like I want to have, all the multiband processing is starting to get thought about early in the process, so whenever I give it to a mixer there's a lot less room for guessing and it's closer to what I want it to sound like.
I don't miss the all-hands-on-deck analog mixing through the console, which is how I started, but I do miss being in the room with people and making decisions on the spot and then being done. It's nice to see you making an investment in that.
Risk is what we're missing in every genre in the last ten years in general, so the more risk you can take during the performance, during the writing, during the mixing, the better. Then the more preparation you do, the easier it is to take those risks when you're in the middle of it. Whenever you pre-mix a track, you have it in a good place to start from. Maybe it wants to go in a completely different direction, or maybe I’m keeping it pretty close to what it is; but I already know what I’m going for and I can take some risks if I want to.
Why did you jump from Ableton to Pro Tools?
I started tracking so many mics and instruments at the same time that there was no easy work around for the latency in Ableton. Running 96 I/O, I'd have to build my own custom driver to run the amount of I/O I have in my studio with Ableton. It only goes up to 64. I'm basically at a point where the things I want to do have a ceiling on them if I work in the DAW, and people are having latency issues. I used to record duplicate tracks – one would have no plug-ins on it. It wouldn't go anywhere, so there was absolutely no latency. Then I would record them with a monitoring track. The second they were done recording, I would drop down the "no latency" track onto the track with the plug-ins. I've done every workaround I could possibly find. But when you get up to 32 inputs being tracked at the same time for a band performance, I can't afford to fuck up or fuck up someone's timing.
Pro Tools is still good at that.
Once you hit that little green light bulb, it's over. I don't use UAD, and I'm not interested in using my interface's software to bypass the latency. None of those things sound how I want them to sound. At this point, if we can start with a no click drum take through the board, through the tape machine, to Pro Tools, and it's already sounding close to how we want it, based on the tuning, based on the kit, and based on the performance, I can build off of that exactly the way that I want to. I also don't have the ability to work without a click in Ableton as well without tab-to-transient and certain little Pro Tools things that I've picked up. Every record (but one) I've done in the last year, eight or nine albums, are all completely off the grid. They're solely the timing of the band or the musicians, and I'm just finding it so much easier to navigate all my little nudges and performance fixes when I'm in Pro Tools. When I go back and try to work the same way in Ableton, I just don't have my fancy little multi-cursor.
When you're tracking with tape, you're going straight to the tape machine?
Yes, listening on input mode. I track the input mode to the computer, just in case. In the worst-case scenario, if the tape machine went down, or for any other reason, I'd still be hearing them through a little bit of the electronics. I could run all those mics back through the tape machine when we're back up and running, and it would have just one added generation of digital conversion.
You go back and transfer the tape in?
We usually dump drums straight away once we get the take, and then we build from there.
And just line those up? [The tape will have a delay because of the gap between the record and repro heads. -Ed.]
Yeah. I'm lucky with the machine that I have right now [MCI JH-16], and how it's functioning right now. Everything lines up pretty well. Even if we go back to do overdubs a day later, I'm not having too many issues once everything's in Pro Tools in getting everything to line up. We worked on some other machines this year, like an [Ampex] MM-1000 and a couple of others, where we didn't have the same luck. But with my machine so far it hasn't been too hard to jump on and off of it, even on different days, and be able to work on the same project. I'm not buying a new reel of tape every time I do a different album. I'm letting my tape get real dirty. I'm saving everything digitally, and dumping everything when I like the way it sounds.
You're not doing overdubs to the tape machine?
We do, sometimes. There are a couple of records this year where we have, but there's also a few records this year where we're doing all the guitars through my console, straight to the computer. No tape, because we want all that high end, and we want all those different kinds of 4K* for our stringed instruments. The drums are always to tape, dumped, and then that's the foundation. Sometimes we track the full band with people straight in the room, but we'll also track DIs for guitar, bass, keys, or whatever. They have software amps in their ears. We use a lot of Neural DSP software amps, so someone will hear a clean tone, a gained tone, or whatever, but there's no noise in the room. Once in a while, we'll get a great DI sound where it will lock in in a certain way. Then I have a DI that's hit tape and hit the console, so it's only making it sound better. We re-amp that for the tone we want, back in the same room, and that's been the sauce for a few things we're doing this year.
But by the time you get to mixing you're done with the tape machine?
Yeah, usually. I usually try to be done with the tape machine before we do anything else. That's the thing I want to get off my plate, because it's what I'm the least comfortable with even though now I've got this big handy remote and a great auto-locate. All the things you could want, but it's not a Studer, you know. It's still an old machine.
Your studio is different. It’s not just the space, but also that a lot of the gear is unique and customized.
I've put myself through hell building custom consoles with the Altec board – we call it the “Tubby” board – and the Spectra Sonics board, plus building custom built-in furniture in the studio. Our consoles are both custom designed with Jim Vollentine from Coil Audio, using a mix of vintage and newer components. We're using the original channel components, EQs, mic preamps, transformers, etc. and then building a new console around them. We added custom sends, pad selectors, phase switches, busses, and VU meters. We use parts of an old Altec line amp console – added busses, routing, EQs, VUs, and preamps. But the Spectra we built up from scratch, besides the VU bridge, which came from a Record Plant Studio B auction – including all the wood and metalwork for both boards – using vintage Spectra components and channels. Building custom keyboard stands with two tiers because I didn't want to use any of the ones I could find. We built an analog synthesizer with Leon Dewan [of Dewanatron], who built the Swarmatron for Trent Reznor. We built custom Fender Mustang guitars with Fender, and we did a Teenage Engineering Pocket Operator collab. We did a snare drum collab with A&F [Drum Co]. A custom synthesizer with Love Hultén. These are all things that we built to be in the studio. All of this is so that when artists walk in, this place works differently than what they might assume when they see it. It looks very vintage; it looks very much like of the '70s, but it works as 4K as anywhere. You can go any direction. There are so many things in classic studios, and so much old gear, that's indicative of a certain period that makes your mind go to certain artists. Whether it's like Les Pauls and Strats, or Neve boards and SSLs, or [Moog Minimoog] Model Ds and [Roland] JUNOs. The reason we built all these custom things, and why we continue to do that and try to find people to work with who can help us make “one of one” things, or things that we can bring to other people, is so that artists don't have a reference point. When artists come into the space to use one of the tools that we've made, or even a keyboard stand that goes under the tools, it doesn't pull their brain to referencing something from the past. It's this new space. It's a new synthesizer you've never used before that doesn't have the same markings on it that everything else does. Kimou Meyer, who I work with on all my design stuff, did custom logos for every single thing on our synthesizer that we built. You can see your basic ADSR controls but, beyond that, you have to figure out what you're doing with the synthesizer by touching it, moving it around, and listening to what happens. I like putting these things into the space, and I think it's important. I'm very inspired by people like Jack White [Tape Op #82]. I'm very inspired by hearing the Sound City story about how they ordered the Neve board custom and they could barely afford it, but it became part of their drum sound. I was so scared of being stuck in any one period, or any one sound. When we built the studio, that meant making two custom 16-channel boards. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. It was way too much money, but now we have a sound. People are feeling that in some of these records were doing here. I'm feeling it, and hopefully I'm not just biased because it put me in debt. [laughter] It's an important note that sometimes you don't have to just settle for the tools, even if it is harder to take the time to make it yourself, or get the design right, or go to all the different people you have to go to. I had to go to five different metal workers just to make the casing for all of the custom-etched circuit boards in the synthesizer. Some of this stuff is hard. But why have we stopped looking for new tools and everything is an emulation now? I use all the emulations, and I use as many of those great old tools as I can. But I'm still interested in putting a sound in a record that someone can't figure out right away. That's a big part of the mindset here.
That's an interesting aesthetic, because a lot of people can get locked into this idea of, “We're going to use that because The Beatles used it. We're going to use this because Fleetwood Mac used it.” Instead of copying things, you're trying something new.
What I've learned from some great people I've worked with in the last couple of years building this room is, "Okay, let's use the [AKG] D19 overhead and do a mono Beatles kind of drum sound, and then let's mic the B3 exactly like they would have in the '70s. But then let's play a fretless guitar with a rubber bridge mute through a mono synthesizer and run that through the plate, and then put that on top of everything." If there's one thing in that track that you can't read immediately, that doesn't just send you to a certain reference, it allows you so much more room to have those drum sounds and those guitar tones, as well as those old microphones and gear pieces in the mix, because there's something that's pulling people to think about something else. It's not purely stuck in one thing that you took from or five things that you meshed together. There's one new thing about it. For me, as long as something is pushing the boundary, you can be Ringo [Starr] all day behind that. We can do something that sounds just like the Miles [Davis] record you love. But give me something that isn't on that record and couldn't have been, and then we're talking.
I'm curious as to what the vocal chain is on the Geese record?
It's different, depending on which song. There are two to four songs that were a complete scratch take, which most of those would be an [Neumann] M 269. Probably just the preamps on our boards. Could have been the Spectra or the Altec, depending on the day. Then our TubeTech CL-1B. Nothing that fancy or that complicated. But there were other days where the [Shure] SM7B was the tracking vocal mic in the room, with no compression, and it’s just the take. That could stick also, even though it’s maybe not the mic I wanted or would want to keep. But it's the mic that got the take. It's all over the place. There were times where [Cameron] wanted to do 96 versions of something lyrically, melodically, or whatever. He has a few different mics that he borrows, bought, or was gifted. At this point, I’d have to ask him, per take, what he used. I had this dream that every vocal we had was going to be on the same exact duplicate setup, but that slowly became very far from reality!
It's consistent though. There's this quality of it being sort of squashed, almost distorted, but not quite.
Beatriz [Artola] is a genius. She's an amazing mixer. Cam was there for every mix. They had their system. Once they figured out what they wanted to do, and exactly how, and Cam was okay with how it was sounding, it was pretty consistent across the board. His vocal is not drenched in some plate here, then in a spring there, and then whatever. We're not going for something that's super effected, so it's easier to make it consistent.
The clamped down quality was more in the mix?
I think so. It's funny, when people heard Nigel's mix of the band on From the Basement, they were so excited to hear the album with more compression, and hear some of the drums, the guitars heavier, and have it bang more. But Beatriz and Cameron's mix is all extremely intentional. Nigel had way more mics on every guitar and every drum set if he wanted anything to be as heavy as possible, or as textural, or whatever he needed. A lot of times, where these intentional decisions that people are up in arms about, they'll go back and say, "Oh, this version of it sounds so good," and they don't realize that the compression is the biggest difference. What they played, and how many mics were used or not – it's all in the mix if you want it. But Cameron and Beatriz were very intentional at making left turns. It's something I'm the most proud of with this record: That it's jarring, in a lot of ways. When you listen to it, that's in the songwriting, that's in the production, and that's in the mixing. It's an unbelievable team of people who worked on it. You met my team here today; from Tovi [Schenk], to Daniel, to Dylan, and Mike. Everybody who works here, it's like we couldn't care about that band more. I wouldn't even let people around them if I don't think they have the right intentions. They're very important to us. We took that record seriously. We shot out unbelievable amounts of gear. For every question you might ask me about a vocal on the Geese record – a guitar part, an amp – it's going to be hard to identify this unifying technique because there's so much layering of so many different things that we tried. Cam might be only using a hallway mic on something that's layered with a take from a different day, of a different instrument playing that same thing, with a close mic. What mic is it? What guitar is it? I can't fully explain to you how many things are involved in any one sound on the record.
That’s one of the things I love about the album. There are so many layers, so I keep hearing weird little things that I didn't hear on a previous listen.
It's not like we're fucking working in Atmos or something. To do that now, things being legible is your friend, and that's what a lot of people notice about the Geese record. But what I don't see people talk about a lot is these guys are very chorus, distortion, reverb, and delay effects adverse. They're getting things out of the performances, and out of tones and their fingers, in their hands, and how they're playing stuff much more than on leaning on something in the rack or something on a pedalboard. The way they layer and the way they write is the interesting part. Those songs are interesting, produced a million ways.
Any last thoughts?
I’d love to mention our tech, Daniel [McNeill]. What is interesting is that I'm such a heavy engineer on the computer. Like when you got here, I was 30 minutes late because I needed to comp a vocal myself. I don't have an engineer who does those kinds of things for me. But because Dan’s such an unbelievable tech and has run analog studios for so many years, we're able to produce and engineer in a way that's much different than if you don't have someone here who's good with gear in that way. Anything with the studio, everything I'm doing right now, let's put a little light on Dan – he's a big part of how it functions here. He'll tape op on days whenever I run the computer and we do that double-tracking thing. Whenever we have an idea about tracking something, Dan's making sure everything's set on the console, the overheads are in phase, while I'm in the computer making sure everyone's headphone mix is good. It takes a village sometimes. Someone will ask for something different and Dan might say, “I’ll disconnect the speakers on the Wurli, and then we'll put another 67 on the inside so you can get more of the tines.” He'll do things most people won't do with their gear, because he's confident. He can bring it to the tech shop and put it back together. We get sounds sometimes that are risky because we're breaking shit and putting it back together. That Gibson amp you saw was broken 30 times.
