Adam, could you begin by telling us, well, who you are?
I'm 27 [years old] — I was born in Toronto. I started working for Dan about five years ago. A [drummer] friend of mine named Victor Indrizzo was working on a record at Dan's studio. He was my roommate at the time and I wanted to get into recording. I thought I could go to a recording school or I could just hang out with Victor in the studio, so I thought I'd go straight to where it's happening. That was at the Teatro, Dan's studio in Oxnard [CA], and I worked there with Mark Howard for about a year. I started off making a hundred dollars a week — I tiled the bathroom, tarred the roof, got coffee and ended up just learning as much as I could from watching. I would sleep in the studio — it was an old theater so I would sleep down in the orchestra pit. At night after everybody went home I would look around the studio and memorize the names of microphones, the gear and just kind of figure out how everything worked.
That's dedication. So right now you're doing sound on Dan's tour...
Correct — front of house sound on the tour.
And you do everything else, basically, that involves Dan and his music and productions.
I recorded and mixed most of Dan's current record, Shine, and just started a record with Brian Blade a couple weeks ago. A couple of years ago I worked at the Sound Factory as an assistant engineer for Tchad Blake [Tape Op #16 & #133] and got to work on a bunch of records as a second engineer. So mainly studio work is where I like to be, but I enjoy being on the road — it's a very different and new thing to me. You gotta iron things out really quickly and it's a fresh set up every night, which is kind of fun.
It's a great situation you come from and are in.
I am very lucky that I got to learn my way under Dan and Mark and Tchad — I didn't have any sort of classical teaching where I thought that things had to be done a certain way. It leaves me more open to doing things any way — I'm not so precious about specifics — Tchad was like that — when I'd set up a mic for him as an assistant he'd say, "Whatever — put it anywhere" and he would work with whatever I'd set up and would get his sound based on that setup.
If the same kick drum sound sample is used on every Top 40 song, the blame definitely goes on the engineers and producers just as much as the consumers and record company weasels.
You can get good results with anything. Good music, good players, a lot of creativity thrown in — you can make a good record on anything.
So Dan's studio is in his house in Silverlake in L.A.
It's in Dan's living room. It started out in the basement but there's a nicer view from the living room. So we slowly started moving everything up. It consists of two small Neve consoles — little sidecars called Kelsos. They have a two band fixed EQ, two sends and that's it. Left and right stereo selectors so there's only hard panning. And that's what we mixed the record on. We got two of them daisy-chained together. Then a third Neve console, a Melbourne, we use to go to tape and a bunch of ribbon mics, a lot of Shure 57s and a couple Neumanns.
So during these past few years — you've been learning much about artists and their idiosyncrasies?
It's very psychological dealing with people and the setup to get a great performance. Just recently, on this Brian Blade record, we decided not to use headphones so the band would sit very close to each other. The best-sounding things were the rehearsals before the take — no headphones, huddled around each other, so we thought, 'Let's record it that way.' And you get a better tone out of the instrument because you're hearing the instrument instead of the boxed-in sound in your headphones and you're hearing the guys next to you instead of the mix, which won't always be right for everybody. You get a really beautiful sound that way.
I find people play more softly as well when separated and going through the headphones.
Right — especially with acoustic instruments, the player can't always get their instrument to speak as they do when they're sitting in their bedroom. And that follows the philosophy that the absolute most important thing in the studio is the sound before the microphone. The amount of talk that goes on about this kind of preamp, or recording on analog tape or whatever — if the guy is playing with a pick or not, it's going to change your sound far more drastically than any of those other variables.
I believe that 90% of someone's sound is in their hands, and the other 10% is the equipment — be it the guitar, pedal, amp or whatever.
Absolutely — Jimi Hendrix would have sounded great on anybody's guitar.
And keep striving for a sound, and getting the right mix until you feel it's done.
That's another thing — making decisions along the way. That's something that doesn't get done as much today because of the ability to keep every single thing. Sometimes out of limitations you get great results, which you clearly see in Hendrix's or The Beatles' work. And it's something we've found with our little studio — having two sends and fixed EQs — you have to make broad strokes. You have two effects — a lot of times we used only one effect — just a delay and you end up printing your effects. You get a kind of cohesiveness that you might not get if you have unlimited options. We were only working in 24 tracks, never had more than 24 — in fact, a lot were 16 or less. A couple of them were 6 tracks — the instrumentals. One of the instrumentals is mono — one track. Those kinds of limitations really help in focusing and giving your work a cohesiveness. Another philosophy that we follow in the studio is that of dedicating equipment — having one piece of gear do one job. Not using your console for your cue sends, and going to tape and listening back from tape. We only monitor on the main console, go to tape with different mic pres, out of another console if you have one, using another system again for cues. Therefore, you don't get locked into a certain mode and not having options available. You got all options available at all times. That's something that's very convenient.
You've been recording all the shows on this tour, obviously...
