2 in 1 studio: House of Faith/Guerilla Recording

Bart Thurber, once described by a record reviewer as the punk rock Phil Spector, has a favorite expression — "An engineer drives a train — I'm a recording guy". He's a West Coast legend to the 1,800 plus rock bands (including a Minor Forest, Diesel Queens, and J Church) plastered on the walls of his control room at House of Faith studios. Bart's studio partner, Myles Boisen, is no slouch either. He's engineered and/or mastered hundreds of pop, blues, and jazz recordings, as well as dozens of avant-garde musicians from around the world, like Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Eugene Chadbourne, John Tchicai and the Rova Saxophone Quartet. He's also regarded as an authority on vintage mics and microphone testing, with numerous articles published in Electronic Musician magazine and Mix Books publications. When Myles is at the board, the studio changes monikers to Guerilla Recording. He also teaches audio engineering at Guerilla (in 1979 he began teaching one of the country's first university-level recording studio programs). Here begins the story behind three tracking rooms and a sky-lit control room in a unassuming part of Oakland, California.

Do you use different mics and gear depending on the type of music?

MB: I've actually done research on blues recording at Chess in Chicago, and Rudy Van Gelder, his style of recording jazz for Blue Note and Riverside — things like that. I think it's a good place to start if you're doing music that has a historical precedent. Start there and see how it works. Don't be afraid to be old fashioned! People who were recording in the '40s, '50s and '60s really knew what they were doing. Feedback from the musicians is a really important part of it. The more specific they can be about the sound, the better. When they say everything sounds good right off the bat, I wonder if they're really paying attention.

BT: Most of the music I record is pretty much in the same genre — fast and loud. A lot of dynamic mics and crushing guitars, maybe one room mic for the drums, depending how fast the song is, because if it's really fast then it's just going to get all muddy. I can't use as many older condensers as I'd like because it won't sound right or historically accurate. They want it to be in your face, they want it to be punchy, and that leaves out a lot of equipment sometimes.

Do you ever have bands telling you you're doing something wrong, something counter to what so and so does?

BT: Not as much as you might think. I'm kind of surprised. They're all pretty well-versed in the recording process now, but I think that a lot of bands realize that recording at home — with 4-tracks or 8-tracks or whatever — and coming into the studio are completely different things. The best thing for them creatively is to let me run this whole end and tell them when they're fucking up or whatever. And the best thing on their end is to play the song and try to be comfortable. Leave this part up to me. I do think it's really important to get the trust of the band in the first 15 minutes.

MB: That's hard to do. There are a lot of engineers out there who maybe don't have a lot of social skills. They may be great at engineering but they may not be so good at addressing the various psychological aspects of having a band in the studio.

Especially if the band is feuding! Make my bass part louder versus you're stealing all my guitar frequencies!

MB: And the engineer is the only person really hearing the music!

BT: I think a lot of the bands who come in here expect you to give them some feedback. You know, "We went to this other studio and the guy didn't say anything!" Never be shy about giving the bands feedback. If they think you're full of shit they'll let you know, and if they like it, they're totally going to like you. Once you realize that they do like the suggestions that you're making, you can figure out what they really want.

Do you guys have any favorite guitar amp micing techniques?

BT: I like to use a good old SM57 and any kind of Sennheiser, like a 421ora441,whichiskindofahi- fi 421. Then you find the best speaker on the amp — on any 4x12 cabinet there is one speaker that will sound better than the others. They don't even have to play. If the guy has any noise or static coming out of the amp then you can tell right away.

MB: So you listen for the brightest speaker? 

BT: Mainly one that seems like it has the most tone, the widest range. So you get the two mics, cross them over each other like an x-y pattern, but right on top of each other. I put them half way between the cone and the outside of the speaker — it usually has the most tone right there — then I'll compress the 57 with a LA-3 or an LA-4. The LA-3 is a lot nicer but most people don't have that kind of thing, so any kind of compressor will work. The 57 is aimed more at the center of the speaker, the 441 towards the outer edge of the cone because usually the Sennheisers are a lot brighter. So compress the 57 and print them to different tracks — that way you've got a lot of range from those two mics, and they're always phase coherent so it's really punchy.

Yeah, your guitar sounds are consistently monstrous!

BT: To tell you the truth I don't really do anything — it's usually that setup, or if I run out of microphones, a 57 right on the cone. People come in and say, "What if we put a mic back in the room a bit?" and a lot of times it just doesn't work. It washes out the guitar sound — it can work if you can find the right mics to do it — so we'll try things for about and hour and it turns out the guitar sound they wanted was a 57 right up in the cone.

MB: I never use 57s for anything. 

BT: See, he's the hi-fi guy! [laughter] 

MB: Not that I'm against them. I think the Beta 58 is a great mic, I just have other mics I like to use on guitars. It just goes to show that there are no rules.

So what mics do you guys reach for first for vocals?

BT: When I use the same thing over and over again, it doesn't sound good after a while. After a couple of weeks it just doesn't sound right anymore — your ears have adjusted and you have to try something else to get it back to right again. The one mic I really like is that Oktava — the square one.

MB: The 219? 

BT: Yeah. You can compress it hard, and it compresses really evenly if you have a vocalist who is loud, a screamy punk rock kinda vocalist. I've found the problem with some of the nicer mics — because I like to use that LA-4 for compression for vocals — is you're getting so much more bandwidth and dynamic range that they just don't compress down to a nice manageable level when you're trying to smash them into all these cranking guitars. When you use the Oktava it's really super smooth and it still sounds hi- fi, but you can get it so that it fits in the mix really well. Myles is lucky in that respect because he gets to use all the better mics!

How do you get the kick and the bass to be punchy and defined?

BT: That's funny because I totally agonize about the whole mixing process — is it good? Is it right? I'll be listening to it on headphones, those AKGs [pointing to AKG 240s] at some point. And I try to always make a cassette and listen to it on a little boombox which I trust, just to see if the mix is working. I'll walk down the hallway, about 20 feet from the speakers. It seems like the low end is always the hardest thing. I might just be lucky.

Do you compress the bass?

BT: One thing that I do that's a good trick, and I've read about this before so it's not really new, is to set up some output busses on the board when I'm mixing. I always have a bus that I put the kick and the snare into, and I'll run that through a compressor, compress it really heavily, and then I'll just kinda sneak that back into the mix a little bit. And every time the kick and the snare sound like they're getting lost or something I'll just give that thing a little boost. That way it gets really punchy, but it's not the dominant sound — it doesn't really sound compressed. It just kind of thickens it up. And that's something you can pretty much do on any mixer. I'll also do that with the bass guitar.

MB: The thing I find that really helps is to keep changing your perspective in listening to a mix. That's why we have 3 different pairs of speakers — Event 20/20s, Tannoy 6.5s and Optimus Pro 7s. Each pair of speakers might reveal something that the others didn't. And our hallway here is one of our best secret weapons. To get down there about 15 or 20 feet away and listen to it — at that point it's in mono, you're not hearing any kind of imaging. It's a real live hallway so it amplifies things in an interesting way. That's the only way I know if I have enough bass. Bass is so hard, and I would say that this control room is not the best for mixing bass. We've learned to deal with it over the years.

BT: I think you just come to terms with whatever room you're in. You get used to it. It's really hard to change rooms and then all of a sudden you're kind of floundering again. Where's the bass? Where's the bass!

MB: Listen at different levels, loud and quiet. Listen to different speakers. Try not to get in a place were everything is always sounding good. Sometimes I'll submix the bass and kick through the Anthony DeMaria ADL 1000 tube compressor — usually on a pop mix.

Any recording tricks?

BT: I always like reading about the tricks in Tape Op, so I've got about ten tricks: There's this stuff called Tascam stainless polish SP 2 that I think they still make. This is an old Craig Anderton trick — I read this back in 1980. You put this on your heads, the same way you would to clean your [analog tape] heads — dip your Q-tip in it, lightly rub it on your heads and tape guides. It puts a thin, invisible film over the tape head. And it has no effect on the frequency response of the head, but it stops the tape from wearing against the head all the time. I used the original heads for years on my Fostex B16 because of this stuff. Every three or four days just a little bit and your heads will last a lot longer. My second tip is this Realistic graphic equalizer — it's got one of those frequency display things, like a real time analyzer. When I first started out I would play my favorite CDs and just study this thing. It's really accurate. So I started playing my mixes through it. I had it wired into my board so I could look over and check it all the time while I was mixing, and it really helped me out as far as the bottom end. And it's totally cool if you're listening to CDs, and there is a guitar break — you can see exactly how the guitar is EQ'd! My third trick is try to listen to stuff really quietly when mixing. If it sounds good to you quiet, then it's going to sound so good when you turn it up. I do turn it up 'cause I can't help it, but I'll bring it back down after a while.

MB: That's another good way to get over the bass and kick problem. That's the main thing I listen for on these Optimus speakers — if you can hear the bass and the kick on those, you're home!

BT: The Fostex B16 is a great machine! You might not have quality control on tracks 1 and 16, but tracks 2 through 14 are going to be really good. And you can never have too many cassette decks. For making tapes at the end, if only one guy gets the rough mix everybody gets pissed off! What else — Sennheiser 604s!

MB: Those are really great tom mics! 

BT: And they're like $125! They're really small and lightweight, you can get them out of the way of the drumsticks really easy, they have a nice swivel and they sound really good.

You're a big Sennheiser fan.

BT: What's that kick drum mic we have? The Sennheiser 602 — that is a beefy kick drum mic. It's a good modern-sounding mic that has a lot of low end on it.

MB: It kinda makes any kick drum sound the same, but it always sounds good.

BT: Another tip — this dbx compressor, the 166a. This is a really inexpensive way to get a brickwall mix to a DAT. The contour button makes it sort of a low budget multi-band compressor. It's like a cheap Aphex Dominator. For all the grindcore and punk rock bands that I do, this gets it really loud. I once read this thing about this English recording guy, Robin Miller, who did Everything But The Girl and a bunch of bands in the '80s. He's a good recording guy and he said if the mix isn't bright enough, instead of cranking all the high end up, try rolling the high end off of things that don't really need it. Then you don't have everything fighting for brightness. Now you've just got the overheads, which are going to be naturally bright, and you've got a little sibilance on the vocals which is naturally bright. But you don't have to boost the high end on the guitar at 10 k! In any kind of dense mix you're not going to hear that at all. I think a great engineer has to have a really big record collection, different types of music. I used to play in all kinds of bands — country bands, blues bands, all that kind of stuff. Oh, and make the bands send you the records after they come out so you can put them on the wall. Okay, now it's your turn.

MB: I guess the main thing I would say is to use your ears, and let them be your guide. Don't assume that anyone else knows more than you about what you want to hear. Take all the mics you've got, put them on whatever you can find and LISTEN to them. You will learn so much — it's amazing how different every mic can sound. BT: Mics are actually your EQ right there, you know. MB: I'll sometimes cut at 250 to 400 Hz, to scoop out some mud, but usually I try to focus on mic placement. 

BT: Well when you first start out recording you EQ everything! You EQ everything at the mic and then you re-EQ everything at the mix and everything is phase shifted to hell. And then hopefully as you go along you start EQing less and less and less. With drums, I always dump out some of the 400 Hz when I track the close mic'd stuff like the toms, and boost the low end just to get rid of that clumpy mid range. But I'm really trying to EQ less and less now.

MB: It's good to go in, put a finger in one ear and listen with the other ear — like a microphone does — to what the instrument sounds like in the room. Then go back to the control room and listen. If you want to try to recreate that acoustic sound, great. That's a good exercise for you. If you want to do something that's totally different, that's great too! But don't just settle for what you get. Don't put a mic where someone told you it was going to sound good. Really listen to the sound and then make a judgement based on that.

BT: One time some friends of mine were recording with Steve Albini [ Tape Op #87 ] in San Francisco. I went, and I didn't want him to think I was some recording guy looking over his shoulder, so I pretended to be their roadie, and moved all the stuff around. And then I just sat in the control room quietly, but I totally watched everything he did. I could hear everything he was doing, so the next time I had a session I tried everything I saw him do, you know. And it didn't work for me at all! I just couldn't get it to happen — it didn't sound right to me.

MB: It is good to compare your mixes to other people's while you're mixing. If I'm doing a rock thing I might put on one of Bart's recordings.

BT: To make sure it doesn't sound like it! [laughter] 

MB: You can learn so much doing that it may make you depressed. I mean, no one is the absolute authority on recording. There are so many things you can do, and so much creativity involved. Don't get stuck in a rut always using the same mic.

BT: I used to do speed mixes after the band left. I would set it up and try to mix it really fast, try to go for a really good gut mix. And that was great practice. A lot of times I was just being way too analytical about mixing. 

That's the great thing about digital — being able to do different automations.

MB: One of the few good things about digital. [laughter] 

BT: I think I've done about 1,800 projects now and 2 of them were on digital multi- tracks. And after the second one, I swore I'd never do it again. There's one thing I've noticed about modern music — it seems to me that everything is becoming really well-recorded. Ten or fifteen years ago people were taking a lot more chances, things were way more effected out. Recordings were way crazier. And now things are much better recorded, which I think Albini had a lot to do with. You can really hear the space that the band was recorded in, it's way more ambient and natural. But now, I'm finding that I like things that sound crazier again, like the Flaming Lips' new record. That record is great! I saw them a few months ago and everybody in the audience got these little headphones that transmitted from the mixing board! All those great recordings from the '70s and '80s have that wretched excess, which I kind of miss. Sometimes when a band is recorded really well and everything is recorded really dry it just kinda sits there. It doesn't really capture my attention or leap out and say, "Check this part out!"

Some people are trying to create a representation of a sonic reality and other people are painting with giant brush strokes.

BT: And I think that's a great idea! With this big explosion of affordable home multitrack recording hopefully people will start getting crazier.

MB: Recording is not about an objective reality, it's about defining a reality — it's an art form. I go out and listen to jazz gigs or free jazz and really try to listen to it as if I were listening to a recording. It's a good exercise, but I'm constantly reminded that recording music is not about this, it's not about experiencing music live. It's about creating this reality that maybe reminds you of something — it may be nostalgic or very expressionistic or whatever, but it's not about reality.