What I think is interesting about your saga is that it doesn't embrace the usual pecking order of spurious conduct. Sure, the A&R person is a moron, but to different extents so are people in the band — at the studio, and in the control room. Everyone has their own foibles.
Well, being the narrator of this epic session, I'm usually all too happy to display everyone's foibles, supposedly even my own. After all, it's these shortcomings that greatly affect and hinder our progress. In all honesty, as much as I make the band out to be a grotesque bunch of egotistical losers, they are victims of the system. Being required to write hundreds of songs over the course of two years after being bid on like they were the next Beatles? That's just cruel and unusual punishment, no matter how deserved.
You have gone to great pains with Bitch Slap to create a working environment physically as well as in other ways. How can you get a band feeling relaxed in what is often a sterile environment?
Keeping a band happy and relaxed is, without a doubt, the most crucial part of the recording process. As much as I bitch about these guys, I do keep them happy and relaxed. Well, maybe not Eyore, the guy's usually three sheets to the wind, so he's basically a lost cause as far as getting decent readings from the Happyometer. I get along fine with each of them on a personal level. It's how they interact with each other that is problematic. Every crowd has a personality. If you go to a play, a movie, or comedy club, you might notice that the crowd has a definite quality to it. Whether that be subdued, lively, giddy, angry, whatever. That's because each person brings a certain energy to the room. Those individual energies are trapped in the room, and start to react and interact, manifesting into one greater energy. This energy starts to affect us as individuals, and we begin to react within the parameters of the greater energy. The same holds true for small groups, even for couples. Our energies interact, and certain aspects of our personalities are brought out. Ever have one particular friend that brings out the devilish side of you? It's no secret that this band's energies don't react well. That's why on one of the segments, I asked, "Is it me?" In other words, is my energy the one that's fucking the whole thing up? Sadly, in my true evaluation of this, and regardless of some of my open ponderings in the Diary, my presence tends to improve the band's relationship. If my presence didn't improve the energy, I'd be out of there in a flash. What I do to try and improve the energy, is bring comic relief. I try to be as up, and as fun as possible, without losing focus on the task at hand. Yes, I often times hang up tapestries, put up lava lamps, candles, special lights, much like many other engineers in L.A. And that improves the physical sterility of a room. But those tools are no replacement for a lacking in positive human vibe. It's important to try to maintain a positive vibe in a session. I have to admit, I'm not always successful, but that's what I strive for.
Orson Welles already had a promising career before the War of the Worlds broadcast catapulted him to fame. How do you feel about the Mixerman identify competing with its alter ego? I mean, there are even T-shirts.
Here's the crux of the matter. Mixerman is an entertainer that knows something about engineering. My alter-ego is an engineer that knows something about entertaining.
And of course War of the Worlds was fake. That's what's so funny about this, it's all too absurd to be fake.
Indeed!
A lot of time was spent on getting drum sounds. Both you and the producer thought that you captured really good drum sounds. Please disclose your drum mics and mic'ing technique that you used on the Bitch Slap sessions.
I can't quite understand how my mic selections could mean anything when the product isn't available to listen to. And even if it were, one of the most important points of the Diary thus-far is that once the song is painstakingly recorded, the system is set-up to stomp the life out of the recording. Today, Mastering Engineers default automatically to "loud." Labels want the records to have absolutely no dynamics, and want the records to average digital overs. I got one Mastering job back last year that clipped every time there was a kick drum. Let's think about that for a moment. The kick is clipping on what is meant to be a sensitive song and your readers would like to know what I used to get that sound? Go talk to the putz that doesn't have enough musicality to whistle "Yankee Doodle" and is now a Mastering Engineer. He's the one that knows how to get that sound, not me (although, I have my suspicions). Then let's consider how many of your readers don't have access to the mics that I have access to. What are they to do? Are they SOL? Certainly not! These days a home studio with modest gear can actually compete sonically with the over-quantized, excessively tuned, over- compressed, hyper-limited, 2-dimensional, uninspiring load of crap that the major labels are spending $500,000 to make. The major labels have unwittingly leveled the playing field so that a record that has a 4 figure budget can compete sonically with a 6 figure budget. So, forget about the mics I use, use the mics YOU use, and try to make your recordings sound good. In other words, DON'T mimic what the majors are doing.
Someone on one of those boards asked why you only cut the drums to 6 channels. I'd love to hear why and what track allocation would be.
