Stephin Merritt

Stephin Merritt is the mastermind behind the music of The Magnetic Fields, the 6ths, the Gothic Archies and Future Bible Heroes. He is also one of the most important and influential songwriters in recent history. His lyrical confidence is apparent, strolling with ease from pop to cabaret to jazz to dance to electronica. Mr. Merritt garnered much press with his most recent Magnetic Fields triple-CD box set 69 Love Songs. It was hailed as one of the best collections of songs in years by critics and fans alike, landing him on the cover of the Village Voice and a spread in the New York Times magazine.

But it's more than just 69 Love Songs that makes Stephin Merritt an icon. His unique song crafting abilities combine wit, intellect and skills that are second to none. While the songs tend to get written in bars, the music itself is produced and recorded in his home in New York City. I was lucky enough to work with him on the most recent Three Terrors performance (yet another of his side projects, featuring cohorts LD Beghtol and Dudley Klute) where I learned first hand of his amazing skill as a writer and arranger. I was honored to sit down with him (and his mighty chihuahua Irving) for a few hours and talk about the making of his records. He didn't whisper and reveal the secrets of his craft to me (which would have been nice) but we talked about everything — why he only uses Shure SM 57s and 58s, why his latest favorite sounding record is a bunch of elephants in the jungle and how the next Magnetic Fields record is going to be soft rock and sung in a California accent.

When did you decide that this was something you wanted to do in your house?

I've never decided to have a home studio — I gradually built one up. Without a recording studio my life would be very awkward. I also use outside studios for drums and such. Whenever I go to other people's studios I realize they don't have all these instruments! If I'm going to change one instrument's part I have to go home and get it.

Can you take me through what you have?

Well, this is a Mackie 24-channel board and this is an ADAT 24-track hard drive recorder, this is a Macintosh G4 for editing from the 24-channel hard drive recorder. And on top of the computer is the removable, easily transportable very large hard drive, I don't remember how much.

How did you come to these Camden speakers?

Everyone else seems to have the Yamaha NS10s, I think, which to me sound really tinny. But at this point I'm not really going to be mixing here anymore, not mixing alone anymore, because my hearing is shot. I recently had my right ear diagnosed with a significant amount of hearing loss around 8 kHz. Meniere's Syndrome, which causes buzzing in the ears, runs in my family. I can't even go out to amplified shows anymore because my left ear distorts. I have to go in for an MRI soon. I don't really like mixing very much so I'm not really disappointed.

What do you like about ADAT?

I like the remote control. The big remote controller, the BRC. It's a very convenient way of recording yourself. And when you're recording yourself you can't really have to cross the room every time you start and stop the tape. I know the ADAT BRC well, Claudia [Gonson, manager and collaborator] knows it well, and it's quiet and intuitive.

Do you ever get digital problems?

Ever? Yes. Not so far with this ADAT HD24. It's been very good. The manual is not really as thorough as I'd like it to be and the little hard drives are not as available as I'd want them to be. They record on IDE hard drives, which seems like a doomed format. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this as a long-term strategy. I imagine I'll be recording directly onto a computer in the next few years, which is how I started out. The first several Magnetic Fields albums were recorded onto a computer.

What are you using on your computer?

I've been using Digital Performer, the MIDI Sequencing software, since the mid '80s. What I like about it is the shallow learning curve. That's why I go with it rather than Pro Tools. I'm so tired of having to learn new technologies every two years. It's a huge waste of time for me. I'm not primarily a recording engineer, I'm primarily a songwriter. Even in song writing I don't like having to learn the new technologies once and a while. I started writing on my Palm Pilot with the keyboard adapter and it was ridiculous because I couldn't see the whole page at the same time. It's just as portable as a little notebook. And it can be uploaded into the computer without more typing. And it's easy to keep track of where things are. But the fact that you can't see the whole page at the same time makes it eventually useless for me.

A lot of this has to do with manipulation of sound. When you are recording a ukulele are there things that you tend to do to it? EQ it in a certain way? Add a certain reverb to it?

A solo ukulele? If I'm recording a ukulele that I want to sound like a pleasant ukulele I will take most of the very high end off because the ukulele tends to make unpleasant scraping sounds. And I'll use a felt pick, which takes off some of the more obnoxious brittleness. Keep the mic far enough from the ukulele so that it's not too focused. The ukulele is more or less one point of sound. It's not like a guitar where different parts of the instrument are making different sounds. The sound of the ukulele is coming out from the same place where the picking is happening. Which makes it hard to EQ problems away. I'll tune the ukulele obsessively and it still won't sound in tune in the end, but if it sounded in tune you wouldn't know it was a ukulele. And I would never record vocals at the same time as a ukulele unless I wanted a really unnatural ukulele sound. It's done with one mic. Otherwise you're going to be getting phasing problems because it's too small to have three feet distance between mics. Unless it's a really loud ukulele. I have recorded room tone with another mic but I wouldn't do that in here. In my old studio in Brooklyn I had the resonator ukulele, which is very loud, loud enough to have another mic ten feet away recording the uke. I don't know if I ended up using the room tone but I did put it on the tape. I've gotten some beautiful sounding ukulele, vocal demos for a musical I was doing, recorded in my bathroom in my old apartment. With just that and a stereo microphone. And the stereo mic is good for piano, too. As long as you're not playing the upper and bottom parts of a piano. If you stick it in the middle it's a good way of recording the piano.

69 Love Songs had a lot less "sonic trickery" than your other records...

The focus had to be on the songs rather than on the production for 69 Love Songs, so most of the world would find 69 Love Songs under-produced. Like Carol King's Tapestry, it's a little painfully under produced. Not that I'm comparing their production styles but I find Tapestry shockingly badly recorded. But I guess that was the style, the post White Album "under produced album". As The Beatles' reaction against Sgt. Pepper... and such.

I read that you thought the last great studio album was The Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy?

I think I said that that was the last important record in rock.

Why that one?

It was the last new idea in rock production. What's a newer idea in rock production. No one has ever been able to counter this. [laughter] That was 1986. What's new in rock production? My thesis is that rock has become a dead language, so that if there is a new idea it isn't rock.

Do you think you're adding anything new?

Not all of what I do is rock anyway. A lot of it is rock. Some of it is disco, electro pop, cabaret, Irish balladeering. 69 Love Songs was an orgy of non-rock numbers. But the new Magnetic Fields record is soft rock. A little light jazz, mostly soft rock.

How do you keep yourself interested in it, especially if the studio is in the room next to you.

Well, when I'm not interested I procrastinate. In fact whether I'm interested or not I procrastinate a great deal. The thing I do is I get to switch between writing songs and recording and I'm almost never not interested in writing songs. I spend a lot more time writing than I do recording.

Is the song finished when you bring it in to record it?

I always have the song finished before I start recording it. Once every five years or so I'll change something in a song in the middle of the recording process. A problem I have is that I write songs that seem very complete to me only to discover that they are a minute and a half long when I time them. And I'll end up with a recording of thirty one minute songs or something and that I wouldn't find very aesthetically satisfying. So I have to discard a lot of songs that I like 'cause I don't just want to fill them up with extra verses or such things.

Is there a vocal mic that you find yourself using a lot?

From playing live I'm so used to the sound of Shure SM 57s and 58s. I feel like I know them as well as I know my ears. So I feel like I know what I'm going to hear before I hear it through those. But often I'm not looking for realism. I don't have any special, interesting mics. My voice doesn't really sound good through a condenser mic. Claudia's probably would. I'm just as happy with a mic simulator, these computer plug-ins that simulate various mics. Tell it what mic you wish you used and what mic you really used and it will create the EQ curve of the mic you wish you used. Unfortunately, if you've already compressed, it it's not going to be realistic, but again I'm rarely going for realism. And when I am going for realism I'll often use something fake that sounds more realistic anyway.

Can you give me an example of that?

Well, half the world records guitars through SansAmps at this point cause they sound more like amplifiers than amplifiers do. And if I were using condenser mics, people use condenser mics to produce the sound of older recordings, which sound less realistic than, less transparent, than newer recordings. There are advantages to that, they also sound more gentle, fewer spikes, fewer transients. Or I have a Beyerdynamic mic that seems to take louder volumes better, even better, I should say. I only have one of those so I don't use it in stereo.

Do you know what the instruments are going to be when you go in to record it?

Well, I have the song done — I don't necessarily have the arrangement done. Before I start recording I have a set of basic tracks in my head or on music paper. At this point usually on music paper. Sometimes very beginnings and endings will change. I'm always making the mistake of having dull intros, which are just the chord cycle that you're going to hear when the vocals start. And a whole record of that is really boring.

Are there any recent records that you think are really nice sounding and therefore you would take something from it?

I really like the Thai Elephant Orchestra record from a few years ago where they were recording these elephants in the jungle. Elephants are so loud and they are whacking these xylophones and stuff with their trunks. Have you seen this record? It's a field recording but it sounds really good. I think it's because the sound sources are so loud that even though it was recorded in the jungle with birds tweeting and such, it's very, I want to say pretty, it's not pretty, the recording is pretty. I like the last Free Design record, sonically it sounds like a continuation of the other Free Design records if you've heard them. They were produced by Enoch Light in an incredibly crisp, high fidelity sound circa 1969. They sound ridiculously expensive. I'm sure they weren't. But Enoch Light was a major producer of the advent of stereo high fidelity recordings. He made a lot of records that were used as test records in stores to showcase the fidelity of the playback.

Do you think you're affecting how other records sound?

I doubt it. My production style gets a lot of really bad press. I think I may have inadvertently contributed to the marginalizing of distortion so that distortion is now only used in heavy metal records. I like distortion. Oh, I really love the new re-mastering of the ABBA, Pet Shop Boys, Human League records. But that's re-mastering, that doesn't count. There's more clarity in low and high end and you actually tell what ABBA is saying which has always been a problem. But weirdly you can hear their accents more. Oh, I love the production of Tom Wait's Alice. It also sounds like him on Bone Machine ten years ago. Bone Machine is one of my favorite productions.

How did you come to understand all your old keyboards so well?

Well, I grew up with analog synthesizers. They haven't done new things to synthesizers since the Moog and Buchla. They all work in pretty much the same way. I generally hate other people's production styles so that's all I can come up with for the last few years. People make boring sounding records.

Are there production themes on records of yours that you go for? That you're aware of?

My first record was Distant Plastic Trees by The Magnetic Fields, recorded in somebody else's studio in a week, and I was very underwhelmed by their ability to record two or three instruments that I brought in. And there was distortion on the vocal, which drives me nuts, unintentional distortion on the vocals and that put me off recording in other people's studios for years. I think most engineers are macho potheads. And there's nothing inherently wrong with macho potheads but they don't tend to get along with me 'cause they don't tend to listen to what I'm saying. Probably because I speak too slowly for them and because I'm short and not macho and quiet. That's why I like Charles from Mother West [www.motherwest.com]. Charles may be something of a pothead but he's as quiet as I am. And actually listens to what I'm saying, rare quality in an engineer.

Do you master your own records?

No. I don't even go. The only time I did I was too horrified by the changes in the sound as they were happening so I think it's a better idea if I'm not there and I respond later when the changes are complete. I can always ask them to redo things I don't like.

How has other production work on other records influenced the recording of your albums?

I think I made The Charm of the Highway Strip under the heavy influence of Tom Wait's Bone Machine and particularly the drum sounds. On Bone Machine he had a lot of outdoor recording of drum sounds so not only is there no room tone there's sort of negative room tone. So I banged thunder sheets and such and had twenty snare drums going at the same time. I made up a model of doing this, I called it "The Composite Snare" where the snare sound is heavily flammed and made up of twenty different instruments, gated separately and together. It was a really complicated process actually. And it's a drum sound that most people would definitely not want and highly inappropriate for country. Which is why I'm astounded when people think that it's a country album. Just because the lyrics are country doesn't mean it's a country album. It's not even country, it's road songs.

Is that still something you take into consideration when you make your records?

Well, on 69 Love Songs I was going for different genres of recording as well as different genres of songs and performances. So I intentionally used Charles's out of tune piano in his room, let him do his own mic'ing of that for a honky tonk cabaret style that I would normally never get at my house. I would tune the piano and I wouldn't have the 50 dollar piano he had in his studio.

How conscious are you of trying to make your records sound different from the one before it? Do you record it differently?

I don't think I have to decide to make a record different from the one before it 'cause I always do. It helps to have four different bands. Typically I'm not reacting against the record I had just made in that particular band — I'm reacting against the record I just made in whatever band I most recently released an album by. So right now I'm reacting against the Future Bible Heroes' Eternal Youth by making a soft rock record with no programming, no synthesizers so far, actually. A Fender Rhodes electric piano, a Wurlitzer, I'm going to be doing Farfisa this week but no synthesizers. Clavinet.

Do you think the sound of an instrument effects the song you are writing on it?

Not when I get done with them. Not necessarily. It may well not be identifiable as a Fender Rhodes by the time it's on tape let alone mixed. You remember the harmonium we were using during The Three Terrors? I have a harmonium on one song I've been doing which is ring modulated and you would never recognize it as a harmonium. A typical response to people hearing the solo is, "What the fuck is that?"

Do you ever look at your instruments some times and there's not a single thing you want to play?

Yeah, that's why I had to buy the Fender Rhodes this month. I was trying to do Roberta Flack and it just wasn't going to happen without a Fender Rhodes. I have a lot of synthesizers that have little Fender Rhodes patches but it doesn't convince anyone.

Are there musicians that you are impressed by because they seem to understand things so well?

Like Jimi Hendrix? Adrian Belew, John Cage — Brian Eno [ Tape Op #85 ] would be the opposite end, he allegedly didn't know what he was doing but at some point he obviously did know what he was doing. Kate Bush using the Fairlight [CMI], became a master of the Fairlight. It's an early high-end sampler/synthesizer/editing platform music computer from the '80s. She used it for alternative orchestral sounds and sound effects to her album Hounds of Love. It's like watching a movie.

I heard Jimi Hendrix thought he had a terrible voice and didn't want people around when he was doing his vocals.

Like me, like Claudia. Neither Claudia nor I will let the other one be within singing range when singing which makes Future Bible Heroes recording interesting. So in Future Bible Heroes, Chris records himself, I record myself and Claudia herself and we're never ever in the same studio at the same time. We sing better when we're not concerned about being embarrassed. Later, singing, it's a lot easier not to be embarrassed.

Do you consider recording a private event or do you take criticisms from others?

Well I've had John [Woo, guitar player for The Magnetic Fields] write some of his own parts for the record but it takes so long I don't know that I'll have him do any of that for the rest of this record because I do want to finish it soon. I'm quick at writing parts. I've been doing it for decades. It's nice to have the musicians bring something I wouldn't have thought of but there are other ways of bringing something that I wouldn't have thought of. For example, Chance Operations, put in a little [John] Cage.

Do you have advice for young recording musicians? Just got that 4-track from their uncle?

Start on computer? Don't overreach the limits of your technology. That sort of thing. Have rich parents. Be nice to your rich parents.

You said at some point that there hasn't been any new recording technology in a long, long time. Do you still feel that way?

Now there are a lot of plug-ins. The new technology was pretty trivial. You can do a lot more with filters now, very controllable filters. The new sonic technology in the last few years; the degree of control over filters, so it's not just periodic phase shifters and such things. Volume dependent, MIDI controllable, multiband filters, which for some reason people use primarily on drum sounds. I guess since David Bowie's Low drums have been the focus of production. And pitch correctable vocals, that's a big one. Not just Cher's "Believe." Did you hear the Rosie O'Donnell Christmas album with the parody of that? She did a duet with Cher in which Cher's normal voice was what we have come to expect as Cher's normal voice but Rosie O'Donnell in her duet is heard in the "Believe" effect of over pitch corrected vocals. And for 30 seconds it's very, very funny.