What do bands like Red Red Meat, Califone, Souled American, Fruit Bats, Drumhead, Orso, Cash Money, Chris Mills, Modest Mouse and Ugly Casanova have in common? Producer/engineer Brian Deck for one. Classically trained in percussion, Brian learned engineering by assisting at some of Chicago's landmark studios, as well as building a few of his own. We caught up with Brian coming off tour with Ugly Casanova and slammed with work at Engine Studios in Chicago.
So what have you been up to? What's happening at Engine Studios?
Well, what's happening here right now is that another studio in town got both of their music studios locked out for two months straight by Billy Corgan — so we're getting all their business. Which is totally awesome, we're having very solvent months. [laughs] Honestly, I'm doing a little bit of nothing right now because I spent a lot of the summer on tour with Ugly Casanova. I have been doing some work with John Cale, which is totally awesome and fun. I did a new record for the Fruit Bats. They used to be on Perishable Records in Chicago, now they're on Sub Pop. I also did another one for a band from Florida called Hollow Paw that's coming out on Sub Pop. I think they're fairly previously unheard of and the singer in that band is the other singer in Ugly Casanova.
How long have you been working out of Chicago?
Since about 1986. I moved here fresh out of college. I went to music school and got a degree in playing drumes, which is incredibly worthless. [laughs] [I] moved here and started looking for a job in a recording studio with no technical training at all. It took me a while to learn things since I did it without school.
Did you dial in at a certain studio?
I landed at Chicago Trax recording studios, which was sort of the birthplace of Chicago house. I worked there for a year and I think I saw real drums mic'ed up once. It was all really early house music with like [Emu] Drumulators, SP12s and CZ101s and, um, bad divas. It drove me insane, so I left there in a rage one day after about year of working and never went back. I ended up after that at CRC [Chicago Recording Company] where I was an assistant — which probably sounds like a drag, but I learned a ton doing that. I mic'ed up 30-piece orchestras made up of CSO players, every kind of woodwind and brass instrument you can think of, lots and lots of rock 'n' roll rhythm sections. It was really beneficial, but I'm not good at working for a boss, so that didn't last either. [laughs]
When did the whole Clava Studio thing figure in? [pronounced Clay-va]
A little bit later on. Brad Wood and I went to music school together and we both worked at CRC together and we left there to start Idful Music, which was our first studio. We recorded a lot of really good music, but we had to record a lot of not- so-good music as well and I just kind of burned out on that and left after four years to concentrate more on playing. I was in the band Red Red Meat, and we had just [signed] with Sub Pop. I spent the next five years doing that pretty intensely. Touring constantly. I'm trying to remember the chronology of how things went, but eventually RRM sort of disintegrated and a lot of the members re- assembled in another band called Califone. Me and the guys in Califone basically ended up getting a studio together and reactivating the label we had originally had for our first RRM single [Perishable] and we built the studio more or less to be the house studio for Perishable Records. We did most of the entire roster of records at Clava. Orso, Drumhead, Fireshow, Fruit Bats — a lot of good stuff was done there. And that's where the Modest Mouse record was done — almost 100 percent inside of Pro Tools too! [laughter] Very naughty.
Are you using Pro Tools now?
I use Pro Tools here at Engine and we also have 2" 24- track.
How long have you been at Engine and how did you get the gig?
Just about a year now. Engine was the studio that Brad built when he closed Idful Music. Then he moved to L.A. and Engine sort of felt they needed a house producer here to handle sessions and also to help sell the place. Brad wasn't able to do that, so they asked if I would be interested and we figured it out. This is a really wonderful studio, just the depth of our microphone collection and vintage gear — it's really sort of a wonderland to be able to do stuff here. We have an SSL 4000 with mostly E series EQ.
Are you pretty down with the automation on the SSL? Do you use Pro Tools or both?
I kind of do both. If it's automation, I think it's really convenient to draw lines on top of waveforms. I've done it enough that I've got a really good feel for what that waveform actually means and what my line needs to look like. I don't have to shuttle tape and I don't have to rehearse it a billion times.
What do you think about the analog versus Pro Tools debate?
I don't care what I use as long as it sounds cool. Period. So I don't get all upset about that. I use ProTools-Iusetape-Iusetheboard.WhenI was at Clava, I mixed probably 30 records using nothing but Pro Tools and the Pro Tools mix bus. I think they sound three-dimensional. The bands always liked them. They got written about — I mean, people like the way the Califone record sounds. I just think if you're careful and you use a good list of best practices, it really comes down to 'What is the music? How was it played? Can you hear it?' Totally. I think the whole analog/digital debate is a bunch of shite. Go write a song. Pro Tools won't do that for you and neither will tape. Write a really good song.
What do you mix to? 1/2" or 1/4" tape? Or are you mixing digitally?
Here at Engine I mix to 1/2" analog tape at 30 ips on our particular machine. When I was at Clava — the people who are anti- Pro Tools are going to be incensed at this — I bounced to disk. Wow, can you say that again, real loud? I HAVE BOUNCED TO DISK. [laughs]
So as far as the Ugly Casanova stuff goes, how did that come about?
I was working with him [Isaac Brock] on the Modest Mouse record. We really enjoy working together — it's a really good partnership. If I remember right, he was coming through town on a Modest Mouse tour and we saw each other that night and he was just like, "I'm doing this record with Sub Pop and I'd like to do it with you." What he really wanted to do was to get a good studio situation set up at his house. And that's what we did — I helped him choose some of the gear. He picked some really nice mics — a Neumann M149, Royer stereo ribbon mic, he already had a pair of [AKG] 414s, some 57s and 58s. He got a DBX 160S, which is a kick ass box, and then he bought the Digi001. So the whole thing was recorded on the 001 through those converters and then we brought it here to the studio and mixed it. It was fun. I'd fly out there and work at his house for a week and a half and then come home and he'd spruce up the tracks and I'd go back out there. There was always someone coming through town that was working on it. Tim [Rutili, from Califone] came out there with me once and did some work. It was a really fun project.
So what do you think of the use of the glockenspiel in pop music?
I use it all the time. One of my favorite things to do is harmonize it down a few octaves and make a bass line with it. It's got an amazing timbre when you do that. Take it seriously down like two octaves at least. I have the option of doing it with Serato Pitch 'n Time or with the Digi AudioSuite plug-in. Serato is really stable, so when it shifts the pitch down you get a long, sustained, nice note that's very stable. When you use Digi to shift it down it's real squirrelly and the pitch is warbling all over the place. I really like that, it sounds like an old Victrola playing a record that couldn't possibly have come from back then.
So are you pretty happy with the state of recording?
Yeah. One of the things that I'm really psyched about is that manufacturers are making good equipment again. You don't have to find a U47 that's been sitting in the broom closet of some radio station for 30 years and has to be completely rebuilt. You can go out and buy a brand new, good tube mic with a warranty. And that wasn't the case for a long time. There are really good mic pres and compressors again. I enjoy that. I am really sick of taking care of vintage gear.
Do you do any tweaky stuff like reamping?
I reamp a lot. Not for the sake of getting the ultimate guitar sound, but usually for the sake of getting that sort of texture, either a combination of the texture that the amp gives you and the texture that having moving air in a room gets you. I'm usually doing it on percussion or on vocals. I'll do it on bass if I want to gnarl that up a little bit. Occasionally I'll just bus the whole mix out to the room, set up two fairly similar guitar amps and mic it out in the room just to give the overall mix some space. I actually do that on almost every record. Did a lot of that on the Ugly Casanova record and a lot of that on the Califone record. It helps the believability of the sound stage when the thing was all built up from your click track, then your acoustic guitar and then a scratch vocal overdub... when it's all layered one thing at time like that I really like to sew it back together with some sort of acoustic space in common with most instruments on the track.
