Eric Valentine

When I first walked into Barefoot Studios, a shark and a beautiful mutt greeted me. Elsie, at times affectionately called "the Pooper", runs off to announce my arrival. Welcome to the world of Eric Valentine. Any misconceptions of a flashy Hollywood producer's private studio are dashed as you realize shoes are discouraged and musical adventure is the sole purpose of this clubhouse. Eric has earned his place as a first call producer by developing unique methods, an endless supply of talent, his tireless, almost obsessive work ethic and a few lucky breaks. His breakout successes with Smashmouth and Third Eye Blind in 1997 came after years of 4-track recordings and office space studios. His presence at the top of the charts continues today with bands like Queens of the Stone Age, Good Charlotte and, recently, Lostprophets. Though he relishes the challenge of pleasing band, label, and his own musical sensibilities in today's very single-minded world of major label releases, he spends as much time on no-budget local bands from around the Bay Area. I met with him just before Christmas at his studio in Hollywood.

So let's talk a little history. How did you get here? You've now built two major recording studios for yourself to work in. The first was up in the Bay Area. That one came out of your first band's record deal, called T-Ride?

[laughter] Yes. Yes, it was.

That was in the early nineties.

Yes, I think that album came out in '91. The whole history is that I started out as a drummer. I started off playing very young and there were not many folks to play with. I wanted to play songs. Solo drums are not very fun. So, I started to learn other instruments. I learned guitar and a little bass, started to figure out how to record stuff so I could actually play songs. I started off with just two home cassette decks and a little mixer I bought at Radio Shack. I would record music on one cassette deck, plug it into my mixer, plug an instrument in, blend them together and record it to the other cassette deck. Just go back and forth until you had all the parts and could not hear the first thing you recorded anymore. I then made the giant leap to a Tascam 244 PortaStudio and used that for a long time. Recorded demos for bands at school and recorded my own music and spent a couple years working on that. I never really did the thing of interning at another studio. I briefly did that for a while but just wasn't interested. I really wanted to learn to do things my own way and getting people coffee and doughnuts was not helping me, so I just bypassed that whole thing. I just put the hours in myself making a lot of really bad recordings for a long time and just experimenting to come up with methods and an approach that worked for me and made sense.

It is a logical leap that you would want to work in a room that you built, unlike some producers that can just jump around.

I don't know how they do it. I can't bounce around studios. I have a complete loss of perspective and it can make things very difficult. I have done it at times as long as I can finish it at my own place and mix in a familiar environment then I'll survive. So there has been a long progression of studios. The first one was in a friend's parent's garage and then after that it was in a small little office space and then to another office space. After that was when the band actually got a record deal. The early studios were built to do demos for ourselves and we would record other stuff to pay the bills. We signed with a record company that agreed to give us the budget and improve the equipment in our studio so we could record it ourselves. I bought a vintage 8038 Neve console that had 32 1081s. I was 19 years old at the time. People said that Neves were great so I bought one — never used one before. Probably the smartest purchase I have ever made in my life without knowing it. I bought an Ampex MM1200 and a Studer 800 MKIII. The two machines that I still use today. Bought a U47 tube mic... just a handful of high-end stuff.

Those are some good decisions. You still use all the same stuff today save for the Neve console.

I still have and use all those pieces. With the exception of the tape machines, everything has gone up in value.

Absolutely. So that was in Mountain View?

When we got the record deal we moved out of the office space and into our own space. We actually built a place from scratch, invested some real money in making a nice studio. That was in East Palo Alto. We finished off the album there and had that place for a couple years. The band then had to go on tour. The studio didn't function well without me there to run it so we ended up closing the studio and putting all the gear in storage for about a year. Finished off touring. We started the process of making another record and ultimately didn't finish it, but set up the studio again in Redwood City. That was one of the best locations, the one just previous to this. It was very utilitarian. No frills. Just threw up a couple of walls and called it a control room and started recording shit. It was messy and smelly, but we made great sounding recordings there. All of the first round of records that helped move things along — the first Third Eye Blind record, the first two Smashmouth records — were all done in that studio. I was there for quite a while from 1994 to 2000.

Looks like you have been doing a lot of work around here.

We just did a huge cleaning and overhaul on this place. I've been acquiring some new stuff so I had to reconfigure how all these racks were and try to get everything situated in a way that was going to be manageable.

You have a design scheme in here where these racks behind the console can be moved around, out into the live room near the drums if need be. You like having your pres near the instruments?

Yeah. That's still gonna happen with these racks. Leaving them really modular with an open structure has been really great. I can just swap stuff and I don't have to re-solder anything. It is all on these Elco connectors.

So do you still like moving your mic pres out by the drum kit for tracking? Were you noticing losses?

Yeah. That's an idea that people have had for a long time. I think the first Neve console that was built like that was for Air studios in Montserrat. The console eventually ended up at A&M studios. That was the first one that they did where the actual preamplifier was in the sound room with the musicians. That was built in the late seventies.

It makes sense, sending balanced line level back. It's going to be less susceptible to losses and interference.

Yeah, because of the higher impedances — running long, long distances of cable. The type of signal that is traveling through the cable is more susceptible to the capacitance of the wires. It is definitely a noticeable difference. We've got a good 40 or 50 feet by the time it gets to the console. Then you put another 20-foot cable on there. That's 60 feet of mic cable before it hits a preamp. It is very noticeable. I got these about a year ago [pointing to the satellite Neve pres], but since then they have now come out with satellite mic pre version of the mic pre that is in the 1073, the full Class A ones.

What else have you been building in here? I see you put in a hardwood floor. It is so much liver in here than before. What did it used to be?

Just carpet. It was really dead when I first moved in here. They had the floor completely deadened. The ceiling completely deadened and curtains available on every wall. It was the biggest, driest room.

What is the history of this room?

It was turned into a recording studio in 1967 [Crystal Sound]. It was built by Andrew Berliner, a really brilliant engineer and designer of studio equipment. He built the console and custom electronics for all the tape machines. He built most all the equipment that was used in the studio from scratch. The studio very quickly got a reputation for being one of the best sounding facilities in L.A. and it recorded just about any of the top entertainers of its day from the late sixties through the seventies — all kinds of artists: Stevie Wonder, the Doors, Jackson 5, Barbara Streisand, James Taylor and War.

It is a huge room. What are the dimensions?

It is about 45 feet and almost 70 feet across. The ceiling is 17 feet high.

Was it affiliated with any labels?

No. They were very independent.

Have you gone back and listened to any of those records now that you know they were done here?

Yeah. Absolutely. I have listened to Songs in the Key of Life and Talking Book, the Stevie Wonder records. Some of them you can distinctly hear the sound of this room on the recordings. On Talking Book, "Big Brother", there is a bunch of percussion on that song that sounds so much like this room, so much like how they had it treated, this big dry room. A lot of the horn sounds too. It really sounds like this room on Songs in the Key of Life.

In an old Tape Op interview with John Fischbach [ Tape Op #21 ], who used to run this room, he talks about the horn sounds and how they faced them against the wall. It must have been this wall here.

Yeah. He came here and told that same story.

What a trip. Let's look at some of the toys you have lying around here. You are amassing quite a cool collection of stuff.

I started collecting stuff about ten years ago and anybody that does this knows it's an addiction. You don't stop. There are probably thirty some guitar amps, maybe twenty guitars, ten basses, a Yamaha grand piano, all kinds of drums sets — huge variety of kicks and snares, maybe three or four different sets of toms, stacks of cymbals — piles of guitar pedals. Tons and tons of stuff to play with. Synthesizers, Mini-Moog, Micro-Moog, Prophet 5, Korg MS20, Clavinet. Just tons of stuff.

You have an amazing collection of upright pianos in here.

Yeah. Actually, those aren't mine. Those are on loan from Jon Brion [ Tape Op #18 ]. That Ivers & Pond piano is the best sounding piano I have ever heard in my life. It's amazing.

I know you love fuzz pedals. Any new stomp boxes?

Umm. Let's see. The last thing that I got that has been used on everything is this Boss parametric EQ pedal, to be able to dial in and get the crunch just right on distorted guitars, to fiddle with the character of the guitar before it hits the amp.

You like to EQ guitars in this way rather than at the console.

Well, this changes the way the amp responds. It changes the way it distorts. Hard to find though. They don't make it anymore.

How about microphones? You got a lot of classics as well as quirky ones. I remember you got a great distorted high-hat sound on our record, on "Wasted Days". What mic was that?

That was an RCA 77, an old ribbon mic. Let's see. Lately, I have been into these old AKG D19s, a real popular overhead mic that the Beatles were into. It's a dynamic mic, just a trashy, really bright sounding dynamic mic. I have been really into these old Western or Northern Electric 633As. They're called "salt-shaker" mics. They are the brightest dynamic mic I have ever heard. You can put it up next to a 251 and the ELAM sounds dull compared to this. It's crazy. It's amazing on snare drums. SM7 on vocals wins most of the time. I've been really into Sony C37As. I've been into these little ECM50s, a little Sony lavaliere mic. I hang it on the batter side of the kick drum. There is a pair of U67s, a U47 tube, a 251. I have really been into figure 8 patterns lately for some reason. I am really excited about figure 8 mic'ing for drums. What I have been doing is putting a Coles [4038] on either side of the drum kit and putting the crash cymbals a lot higher, above the mics. So the front of the mic looks down and picks up the high hat, the toms, and the snare drum. The backside of the mic, on ribbon mics, usually has a slightly brighter, silkier sound. So that looks up at the crash cymbal. So you have one of these on each side. The separation is as good as if you overdubbed the left side of the kit and right side separately. It is so dramatically wide, because the node of the pattern is looking across the drum kit. It picks up nothing right here (pointing to the opposite side of the kit), so it picks up none of the crash cymbal, very little of the ride cymbal, and tons of stuff below it. It has changed my whole mic'ing life. It is amazing. I'll never go back and do it the other way.

What other mics do you put on the kit?

With this setup you can get away with doing something minimalist. I'll usually do one ribbon on each side, put a mic in the center, also in figure 8, so the nodes are looking right at the crash cymbals. You don't have that problem with having a mono mic, when you want get the overall sound of the kit, and you get nothing but this harsh, mid-rangy, crash cymbal crap overwhelming the mic. What the figure 8 picks up from the sides is only just the remnants of the very high-end of the cymbals and tons of the actual drums. The nodes are looking at the crash cymbals so you get tons of snare and tom.

It seems like you set up the drums and mics as if it were one thing, an instrument and its pick-up pattern. Moving your cymbals to be in nodes. They are higher than usual. Do some guys complain?

I have learned how to play with it. It's not like it is completely out of reach, but some guys will whine initially. The guys that I have recorded with that have done tons and tons of sessions don't even blink. They don't care at all. You can put drums anywhere and it never affects their performance and never even fazes them. Guys that have not had a lot of studio experience will freak out, but once they get used it, it's fine. It takes a few times playing through with it and then they start to get used to it. And it makes a huge difference. You can just turn up those three microphones and the sound is pretty much there. All you need is to supplement the low end a little bit.

What do you do on the kick?

I have been using mostly [AKG] D12s. I have an old sixties D12 and then a D12E. Depending on which drum and what you are going for, The D12Es have a very aggressive mid range. The older D12 is actually a more natural sounding mic.

Where do you put them?

Just outside. I prefer to leave the outer head on. I hang that lavaliere thing right here in the front.

How about snare?

There is a variety of stuff that is great on snare. SM57, 451, U67, C12a. There is Beyer condenser mic called the 740 that I used on your stuff that is a really great, hi-fi sounding mic. Those little D19s are great for a crunchy, trashy sound. One of the other things I do, I have junky speaker that I bought at some electronics store that only picks up between 100 Hz to 500 Hz. I put that right next to the snare and it only picks up the body of the sound. I blend that in with the mic sometimes. The other thing on kick drums, I use two NS-10 speakers all the time. I have one out of the cabinet and one in the cabinet. I'll blend the two together to get a good result. The one that is in the speaker box is really punchy sounding; the one that is out is just low-end resonance. I do that every time.

When we worked together, you were getting into some more adventurous tape machine alignment. You had aligned your machines to a British EQ standard at 15 IPS.

I am still doing that. It depends on the project. If it is something that really needs to sound modern and hi- fi, I'll stick with the 30 ips. If I am going for a more vintage sound, 15 ips with the IEC or CCIR EQ is definitely a great way to go.

Is it a psycho-acoustical thing where it is reminding you of those great seventies British recordings we all love, like Zeppelin or Pink Floyd, or is it a technical thing?

If you ask anybody that really knows about tape machines and has been around long enough to understand the difference between those two EQ curves, they'll tell you it's just better. Actually, I remember reading a Tape Op interview at some point that had a lot of great information on this subject [Mark Neill, [ #29 ]. The CCIR EQ curve was developed later on in the life of analog tape machines and was optimized better for the machines that everybody knows and uses now. The NAB curve was a standard that was selected in the '50s. It was a convention that was created to cater to the limitations of the machines that were built in that era and in the United States they refused to change to a new curve because there was so much material at radio stations and post- production places that was recorded with the NAB standard. They didn't want to change to CCIR and constantly be changing back and forth to play old material. The NAB standard definitely stinks. These EQs are pre-emphasis EQs that are then compensated for on playback and happen in addition to the actual calibration EQ of the tape machine. The NAB curve has a boost in the low-end and no boost in the high- end, which is almost the opposite of what you really want. The CCIR curve is the opposite. It has no pre- emphasis in the low end and a nice big push in the high-end. What you end up getting is way more headroom out of the tape machine so the low end is a lot punchier. It doesn't give out or sound squishy on playback. The pre-emphasis on the high-end means less hiss from the tape machine and a really nice compression on the high-end, which is really what I heard on the old European records that I really like. When I was trying to unravel why is it that these old records that I really love — like the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin, all these amazing sounding records — what is the unique quality that these records have other than all the talent that was involved? A lot of the technology we use is the same. We use the same microphones. We have a lot of the same input electronics, front-end electronics. We use the same compressors and same mic-pres, old Neves or LA-2As and Fairchilds. All that stuff is still available. The only thing that is different is the tape machine. Back then, they were using different machines and they were using a different tape speed and a different EQ curve. That is the convention that is distinctly different. The CCIR, 15 ips set-up definitely sounds a lot closer to those old records without a doubt.

In order to implement that set-up, each module has to be changed because it is a pre-emphasis EQ curve?

It depends on the machine. On the Ampex machines you actually have to change component values on cards on both the record card and the playback card. On Studers, because that was a machine made in Europe, they built that flexibility into the machine. They had to be able to cater to the European market. You literally hit a button right on the machine and it switches everything over for you. It is very easy on that machine.

What machines do you use?

A Studer 800MKIII. This was a MKI that was converted to a MKIII. It still has the original input and output electronics so it has transformers in it unlike the MKIII. The other is an Ampex MM1200 that runs either 24 or 16-track depending on the project. I recently got a Scully 8-track that has really been sounding amazing. I have an MCI JH-24 that doesn't get used very much. It is going to get sold, I think. I am going to get another Ampex and sell this MCI. Getting it to sync is just too hard. It is cheaper just to buy another machine.

You have an amazing console in Studio B right now.

It's an EMI TGI series console. It is the MKIV. It is the last one that they made. It was originally built with 40 input channels and a monitor section. We reconfigured it to have 48 input modules and we did away with the monitor section. It wasn't very useful or helpful so we prefer to have more mic pres and regular inputs. This console was installed in Abbey Road Studios and stayed there until 1985 in their scoring room, in Studio One. It has done many, many incredible projects. Not the least of which was the album Dark Side of the Moon, which was apparently mixed on this exact console. I haven't really had a chance to fiddle with it yet. It is finally getting done. I don't doubt it is going to sound incredible.

What monitors do you have in here? Are they the same as in the big room?

These are the smaller ones. The ATC50s.

And you can access the big live room from here?

Yeah. All the rooms in the studio are tied together with an audiovisual set-up. There are little video cameras and monitors to look at instead of control room windows. So from any room you can sit down and select what sound room you want to be looking at. The musicians can select if they want to be looking at the control room or an iso booth where other musicians are. There's lots of flexibility for how people can see each other and interact.

Was this a conscious move to avoid glass?

I thought it was better in every aspect. Having a huge piece of glass mounted between your control room monitors was a huge compromise to the sonic integrity of the room. It can be really difficult to make that work. This way you don't have to worry about dealing with the isolation between the rooms or the reflectivity. Better isolation, better sonics and more flexibility of how you can see each other when you are working. It is just way better. It is even nice to turn them off if the artists don't want to feel like they're in a fishbowl. You just turn the monitor off and they'll completely forget. It has been great. We have a centralized machine room so both control rooms are tied into one machine room that house all the tape machines, Pro Tools racks — whatever you are going to be recording onto. So they stay in a cold, noisy machine room. Since it is really in the middle, the back of each control room is directly connected to the machine room. You can literally walk out of each control room right into the machine room. There is even a camera in here so you can monitor the meters or leaders. You can keep an eye on the machines so you can see if you are getting to the front. I don't think you can actually see the meters. They are pretty small. You can see which tracks are engaged in record. The meters are calibrated to the console.

When I first walked in here, you were just messing with these four amps, kind of A/B-ing them. Do you do a lot of experimenting?

Yeah. I have one reference point and that is my own control room and for me to really know for sure if it is something I can put on someone's record I have to hear it in my control room. Out of this room, I can hear stuff at a music store or at somebody's house, but it is just guesswork. Sometimes it seems like, "Oh, this will be cool," but until I get it in here, put a mic on it and hear it through my speakers, I just don't know for sure. These amps, which will remain unnamed, are a good example. I played a guitar through and thought, "Hey, these sound really cool. They're aggressive and fun to play through." Once I put them up and really got to A/B them against my favorite amps that are mainstays of my collection that people always use that have been on tons of records, you really know for sure how they stack up. They're not as good as some real classic amps and they are asking some real great classic amp prices. I don't want to pay it unless they sound at least as good as the amps I know and love.

I guess it comes as no surprise that the sixties-era AC30 and Marshall 50W just kick ass over most amps. You decided to move down here and went about building your ultimate studio. It really kind of gives you a unique advantage to not work for the big labels all the time. You do a lot of developmental work for bands on a budget or no budget. What is the motivation there?

Well, I guess having the facility is a huge advantage, especially with what is happening in the industry now. The margins have gotten so narrow for the major labels because of file sharing and because of their own bad practices. There is a desperation in their approach to signing, promoting bands and selling records that can be really unpleasant to deal with. Having my own facility gives me a lot of flexibility in how I can budget projects. I can make sure that I don't in any way have to compromise the end result. The records will never have to sound less than they ever have even if the budgets get smaller, which they are. Having a space like this is something that I had dreamed about ever since I first got interested in recording. What is most important to me is that I have opportunities to enjoy this space and bring in people here that are really talented and committed to making something really special that everybody will be proud of for the rest of their lives. That environment is easier to find with bands that are not wrestling with the narrow margins of the major label world.

What makes a successful record?

There are lots of things to consider. There are three elements to consider to having a truly timeless album. You have got to have great compositions. That's the absolute number one most important thing. If you don't have great songs, I don't care how many great mics or preamps or how long you spend EQ'ing the frickin' snare drum, it's not going to fuckin' matter. The song still sucks and your snare isn't going to save it. The next important thing is that you have to have great performances. Again, if people don't really put some emotional content into what they're singing or playing, at the end of the day, all the Neve mic pres and super- compressors won't matter. They can't interject those things. The last thing is all the technical stuff, the engineering of the album, which is the stage where all of those stupid, anal things like using the snooty gold insulated mic cables and silver core wire and all of that dumb stuff comes into play. It is my job to care about those things and I will. If you really have everything at every level, you have great songs and great performances and great recordings, you really have a timeless piece of work. That's when you get something like a Dark Side of the Moon or a Zeppelin IV or a Who's Next or Sergeant Pepper's. Those albums will live forever because all three of those elements are there, indicative of the time they were made, the best possible recordings of their eras and continuing into our eras, still those recordings stand up and the songs and performances are brilliant.

Decisiveness is so important in a producer, identifying a performance. How do you make confident decisions?

When there are no time constraints or even when there are, the most important job of a producer is to make those decisions of when something is done. For me, having grown up playing in bands and playing instruments has been the most valuable asset for me when interacting with musicians and trying to evaluate performances. I think that's the most important tool. I couldn't imagine walking into a session and trying to help a drummer get through a drum part, and not knowing how to play drums. So, I think that has helped me a lot. Whether it's grabbing an instrument and showing somebody a part or just understanding physically what's going on when somebody is playing or singing a part and being able to communicate to them how to hold your hand or try a different inversion. There are so many variables that would be difficult to think of if you haven't spent years playing those instruments.

Do you ever play on people's records? Is that something you enjoy doing?

Yeah, if it's needed I love to play. If I am the right person and am capable of generating what they need, I'll definitely do it. It is a little tricky because somebody else has to sort of sit behind the console and be able to make those determinations about whether it's really working or not or if my playing is good or not.

Is that when you call in an engineer like Jacquire [King]?

Yeah. It's really important to have somebody who can hear those types of details in the sounds and performances, someone I can rely on and not be running back and forth. Jacquire is somebody that I can trust. When I ask him, "Is that good?" If he says yes I know it'll be good. I'll walk back into the control room and I'll be happy.

How did you meet Jacquire?

The first time Jacquire and I worked together was on the first Third Eye Blind record and we went into Toast where he was working to track some drums. He was the assistant at the time and it was immediately obvious how overqualified he was. He was a huge help on the session and had a lot to contribute. He has tremendous traditional engineering skills. So, after that project, I always kept him in mind for times that I would really need somebody to lean on, to help things move faster. Jacquire is one of the few people that is as good as you can get as a traditional engineer and as good as you can get sitting behind a computer.