David Torn is a tough man to pin down — literally and figuratively. One day he's in his upstate New York project studio as a solo artist/avant- guitarist working on the follow-up to his latest batch of cut-n-paste/jammin'-in-space brilliance known to the world as SPLaTTerCeLL. The next he's headed to a UK scoring stage to record a London Orchestra doing Bollywood-style string parts for a film score he's composed for a big budget Hollywood film [The Order]. Soon after I get a call from him as he steps into the role of producer/remixer of Jeff Beck's most recent album, Jeff, transforming tracks into post-modern, pan-cultural extravaganzas — resulting in a 2004 Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance for the song "Plan B". Of course, this is the same David Torn whose serene, ambient, and finely textured soundscapes have gone on to become über-successful mainstays of the sample CD and film music world.
Weeks pass and the next time I hear from him, he's been summoned to a New York City studio to record guitar for Tony Visconti [Tape Op #29] and David Bowie, who goes on to call David "the Yo-Yo Ma of guitar." By the time I finally catch up with him, he's back at home, preparing to produce a new album for guitar tapping phenom Kaki King, to be followed by another film-score composition assignment [Friday Night Lights]. Of course, he's also trying to squeeze in a favor for a friend by mixing an album for another well-known musician, one of the many who call upon David's talents as guitarist, texturalist, producer, remixer, composer or mastering engineer to grace their projects.
When we finally sat down to catch-up and chat, I did what I always do when I find myself in the presence of this grinning, wise-cracking, forever- excited musical genius: I sit back, smile from ear to ear from the laughter that always follows, scratch my head a few times as I try to figure out what David's come up with next, and most of all, prepare to listen with both ears and both sides of my brain.
On producing/remixing Jeff Beck
So how did your involvement with Jeff Beck come about?
I got a really nice note from Jeff in October/November '02 or something like that, that had nothing to do with working. It was just like, "I love your stuff. Thanks for making the SPLaTTerCeLL stuff, it drives me crazy." Terry [Bozzio] called and said, "Jeff is insane about this SPLaTTerCeLL stuff, he's absolutely nuts about it." Then his manager called in November before I went to London, and tried to get us together while I was there and I obviously couldn't 'cause I was 24 hours a day on that film score [The Order] while I was there. It just never happened. Then in January, his manager, Ralph [Baker], called saying, "You should really talk to Jeff because he's really unhappy with his record and he thought you could save a track or two." [laughs] So Jeff called and said, "Whatever you wanna do. I don't care. Use whatever you want, don't use whatever you don't want." I asked, "Do you mind if I'm rewriting?" I hadn't heard the material at this point, and he said, "I don't care what you do, go as far left as you want, as far right as you want, just completely reshape it." I got the first track, "Plan B", which ended up being the single, and I went, "God, how am I gonna fix this?!" I went into the multitrack, I got the multitrack, and I thought, "I can't do this! I don't know." So I rewrote four or five different versions and it was driving me insane. I was going for a week — let me try it with this tempo, this key, these chord changes. Then I tried the little thing with the tablas, and the new chords at the beginning, and I thought, [whispers] 'Fuck, shit, I can't get it!' I put it to the side and went back to it a week later and I just went, "Okay, I'm going back to my original idea with the tablas at the front with the new chord changes," and kinda started organizing around that, and I was kinda still hating what I was doing. There weren't any spaces in it at all, so I started working on that, and then Craig Street came over and I played it for him and he's like "Dude, you're like Mr. Electronic now!" [laughs] As he's walking out the door he goes, "Sounds like it needs an acoustic guitar," and I was like, "Fuck you, Bitch!" Right? [more laughter] And after he left I went, "Hmm, acoustic guitar..." I put the acoustic guitar down at the beginning and then at the end, with the tablas, and I thought, 'Wow! This is a good setup. I like this, that's good!' Then I sent the track to Jeff and he said, "Do another one." He sent me another track, so I did another one. There were no substantial changes he made to anything except he would call back and say [in British accent], "Is there something new we can do to the guitar at the end?" That would be it. The third track was like the week before the album's release, and they called and Jeff asked, "Can do you one more track, can you do one more?" and I went, "Yes." To work with Jeff Beck, "Yes, I'll do one more track." That was the last one and it didn't turn out that good. I rushed it and never really organized what I thought it might have become because there really wasn't the time. I probably would have been able to do it if I spent two weeks on the one track because you're handed material and you're not being asked to do a remix, you're being told, "This is what's going on the album!" So you have this restriction of your writing but you have to write as if you're in a remix mode, and then you're picking out material from the original tracks you really dig, but writing around it, and I just didn't have the time for the third one.
What was it like, as a guitarist, to rework or rewrite the guitar parts of Jeff Beck?
A part of me was saying, "I don't even know if I can work on this" because it's almost as if I put any attention at all he's gonna love it because the writing was not around his guitar playing and also didn't sound cool. It didn't have anything that felt like where we are today. I don't mean it like you have to have digital manipulation. But if you don't have the playing and the writing, there's gotta be something in the organization of the concept that has some excitement to it, that has some enthusiasm to it. Just the root of the thing was that it wasn't around him. So I restructured everything. The main guitar lines were from outtakes. They weren't in the original track. The things that I ended up using as central pieces — there were 30 tracks of Jeff, and they were in the last four spontaneous tracks that he did. There'd be ten unbelievable guitar phrases that were melodies in and of themselves but weren't even in the track because it had been about the vocal. So it was a weird one.
On producing the next Jeff Beck album
The first time we met was after it was all done, [laughs] and he did very sincerely ask me to do the whole next record, which I wouldn't want to do this way. I'd like to just see him in a room playing with people, and then leaving. Just the idea of him playing with Terry Bozzio and Me'Shell NdegéOcello, or Terry and Melvin Gibbs, or ?uestlove and Melvin, and Jeff with [John] Medeski on keys, or Craig Taborn or somebody like that! Just some whack-ass group! Then organize it afterwards. We talked about a lot of different shit, like if he wanted to take this route. Really just go in this direction where somebody's clearly writing around his playing. Then I prefer that he just record an hour of his guitar everyday and email it to me and then I could structure the tracks around real spontaneous playing, 'cause, I can put shit in time [laughs]... you know what I mean? I like the idea of being in a room, seeing him at least with great players. I think it would be very exciting to see him with players who challenge him and who are a lot younger than him. The whole thing with Jeff is he's continuously changed his element. He hasn't necessarily always been at the leading edge of the curve, but he is one of the leading electric guitar players of all time. I know! [laughs] I sat in a room with the guy and I haven't a clue how he does what he does. I wanna do more with him. He said to me, "I honestly wish that you had been in on the project from the very beginning, because I think we could have got it done with a lot less pain to me." He said very publicly that there's a lot about this record that he hates, you know?
On listening in mono
In 1992 David required surgery for a life-threatening brain tumor that left him deaf in his right ear.
I recently regained hearing in one of my ears after a month-long sinus infection and I couldn't imagine mixing without being able to hear in both ears. How are you able to make that work, especially with so much spatial stuff happening in the sound stage of your mixes?
You get used to it. Like if it's permanent, and you know it's permanent, then you make a huge effort. You know it's a lot different than somebody who for their entire life has heard things in mono. When you talk about that happening to you and you talk about that happening to me, after 40 years of hearing in stereo and mixing, or being involved in the mixes of many, many records, films scores, etc., and always having a sense of movement, specifically when we're talking about movement in the stereo field. For me now, it's a question of exercising my imagination enough to remember what that was and activate it in my current mixes. I listen in mono. That's the way I listen. If I were another person, I might actually always turn off one speaker and really listen to everything in mono, but I don't. I actually monitor in the full stereo that I was used to before I was deaf on one side. Recently, I've gotten into, in my mixes, kinda actually analyzing the stereo field, looking at the phase scope, seeing what's moving around, what frequencies, because I can use a digital scope now, I can see which frequencies are in motion. It's an exercise of the imagination — an imagination that's based on what I remember I heard before I was 39-40 years old.
So you're imagining, as opposed to actually hearing, the mix in stereo in your head?
Absolutely! No question about it. The physical reality is that I hear in mono, but in my head, like if you turn the music off, and I go lay down, and I'm listening to a mix in my head, inside my brain, to me it's all in stereo. There's an imagined feeling of a stereo, or even broader than stereo field. It's the sound I hear. "Boy, wouldn't it be cool if this was over here, and yet, it trailed out over this way?" All that stuff is stuck in the brain somehow.
There's a more texturally developed and layered sound to your records in recent years. Did that coincide with the changes in your hearing?
It started when I lost my hearing on my right side, and started with my guitar sound, and that's still in motion because I have progressively looked for something less shrill, fatter, and I think that applies to my mixes as well. A fairly wide sound stage, but a pretty fat, grittier kind of tone in general that applies to my guitar as well as generally applies to my mixes. I'm consistently looking for something less shrill and thicker and more animated on its own as it relates to the guitar sound. To that end, I've been working on this new Bogner tube guitar amplifier since January, and we're getting pretty good on it, we're getting pretty close. We have the sound, and now there are the features that kinda go along with it. For any musician there's never — I hope there's never — a moment where I can say, "This is my sound," and when I say that, I mean it not just for this moment in time, but for ten years from now. I hope it's a really animated sound, but I hope it's always really moving. Neil Young's mixes don't sound the same now as they did 20 years ago, and frankly, I don't think his guitar sounds the same either. It sounds better. It sounds 100 times better.
On recording guitar
How's your guitar setup looking these days?
It's about to change because I've always been happier, especially in the last few years, when other people have recorded my stuff than when I did. So I'm in a moment of change. So I'm looking for new preamps, mic pres, looking for new microphones. I'm pretty sure I know what I like, but I have one other thing I want to try. I really like those Royer ribbons. Not much gets used with the microphone around here.
So what are you substituting for a mic when it comes to your recorded guitar sound?
My own guitar sound, pretty typically, in my own room, has been a direct sound. With that weird little setup I've got. It's never been so much the sound as it has been the way it feels as a guitar player and that's a really good direct sound. For mics, on acoustic instruments, I'll always use this thing, which is an old Equitek E200. I've used this on both acoustics and the oud, and sometimes in combination with the pickup, and sometimes my Beyer M500 ribbon mic, which is very low output. My take on sound as a guy who's recording for himself is so odd that sometimes I use the microcassette, I often use the mics built into my guitars — the shaker mics. But so much of the stuff I do now is direct and manipulation of other things.
On the home studio
You know this isn't really a studio. It really is a project studio somehow. It just happens that some of the stuff I've done in here has gone onto disc. [laughs] All the SPLaTTerCeLL stuff, the two records on CMP before that, most of the pre-records to the score for The Order were done here.
The studio used to be called Cell Labs, right? It sort of resembles a laboratory where technology and sound are constantly evolving and feeding into each other.
Yeah, and things are changing again 'cause I'm tired. So much of my life goes on in the computer. So much of what's outside the computer, like the Mackie console, I do use the one mic pre in this thing, but it's a patchbay. But in a pinch, it's what I'm using. But everything is in motion again. I'm tired of these speakers. [points to a pair of Genelecs]
What don't you like about them?
I don't find them pleasant to listen to. I think there's something really, immensely inaccurate about how it reproduces in the room in the low end, and it's partially responsible for why, I think, my mixes sound pretty bad. Sometimes I'm better off listening to my mixes on Beyer headphones than I am in this room. The room is a box! It was never designed for anything except for some kids to play in, you know? [laughter] I'm currently rethinking everything and a lot of this stuff is for sale. [laughs] I really love the speakers that Craig Street and Husky work on [Pro X]. They're high-end consumer. They sound great. I don't know if they would sound great in this box of a room. My needs are always changing. You know, I've hesitated on this mic pre, and compressor, and converter and stuff for fucking years now! But I still did a score, and it sounds pretty good. I still did a couple of records, and they have an interesting sound, [although] some mastering engineers apparently hate me!
On mastering
So why do they hate you?
I'm not really sure. [laughs]
Are you pushing the envelope of what they're used to?
I guess I just didn't leave enough for this one mastering engineer to do. It really wasn't right of me. I should have known better, but that's the way the mixes sounded right to me. I analyzed them and everything looked okay to me. Even though I knew the waveform looked kinda funny, what I didn't take into consideration with this guy was that he was getting seven tracks from seven other producers and in order to make them all sit together I should have left him some room to manipulate mine. But I just delivered the mixes the way I thought they sounded good. Probably I know better and should have given him that latitude, but I was trying to get across to the artist and the record company. I just wanted the mix to sound good, so I did most of what a mastering engineer would do themselves. I got the levels up, I did my peak limiting, I used stereo bus compression twice, I EQ'd — 'cause you know, I'm gonna play back to the artist and the record company, and they want it sound fucking great! So I didn't leave the guy much room and he got really pissy with me. Part of me was wrong, and I knew it, but part of me was like, "Hey, dude, just fucking make their shit match mine! Come on, is my stuff too hot?" Nothing was going over -0.5! The average levels were way up there. So the tracks sounded pretty loud but they were dynamic enough for what they were. It wasn't a live track — it was an electronic track! So the guy got really pissy with me. Real famous mastering engineer. I didn't appreciate it. I can tell you that I don't mind that he was pissy about it, but I was very offended by the fact that a professional, respected mastering engineer dissed me, and was pissy with me, in front of the A & R guy, who loved the tracks! That made it so that I will never — even with a project that is within proper range — go back to this guy, on purpose! You know, here's an A & R guy, who suddenly loves me, [laughs] and I've never met him, and they're sitting in a mastering studio, and this guy, "Mr. Pro," is yelling at me, over the phone, and telling me how wrong everything is. I actually panicked and called two well-known engineers, and I got them over here. One guy's also a producer, and I said, "I want you to listen to these tracks and look at the waveform, and tell me what's wrong, no holds barred. Criticize me anyway you want, I don't care! There's something wrong with each of these tracks, I want you to tell me what it is." Neither of these two guys even remotely had a problem with them. I said, "I have to deliver this to the mastering engineer, so what's wrong?" They said, "Nothing, it's fine! What are you talking about? It sounds great! It's weird, and it's loud, but it sounds great." I took my middle finger, on my right hand, and I waved it westward. [laughter]
Do you think this reaction had anything to do with the fact that you sometimes wear the hat of mastering engineer?
I have mastered a few records myself, in a very different way than the standard way, because of need and people's financial needs. So I have an idea of what these guys do, but I've never considered myself to be in the ballpark with those guys. When I think of a mastering engineer, I don't think of me. I think of Greg Calbi [Tape Op #86], Bob Ludwig [#105], Ken Lee, and I have eminent respect for them. But when I've mastered things for people, I do the best I can, knowing what I know.
On juggling careers
So how did you escape the trappings of being a guitar god and venture into so many other things?
I have a limited attention span. Partly because of the nature of trying to be a professional musician and support a family, I've done many things within my capabilities and sometimes beyond my capabilities. It's kind of a blessing and a curse. As a guy who recorded for ECM, coming out of, but not part of, the jazz scene in the '80s, I couldn't just be a player and make a living. In a way I really wasn't interested. As I developed more roles, I realized that each of them had something really interesting that I. One of the strangest features, or flaws, in my career is that I'm a lot of different stuff. Part of it is because I was never a normal guitar player to begin with. So I couldn't find the slot for me. Without making my own music, there was no place where I just fit in. Like when Linda [David's wife] and I left Ithaca in 1970-whatever, it was partially for me to find out what the hell I could do, how to make another kind of music. Like Manfred Eicher [ECM Records] would say, "The important thing is not necessarily the playing, not the quality of it, but idiomatically it is, but the frame around the playing, or it might be like a Miles Davis thing." I didn't really have a frame. You know, I'm 50 and I'm still trying to find a frame that fits. I probably won't find one. Therefore, I have all these other... jobs. Part of it is writing, 'cause that's a great expression. Part of it is producing other people's stuff, because it's great to be able to offer other musicians whatever my skewed perception is.
Torn's Direct Guitar Gear
David's ever-changing rack setup goes something like this: His Bogner guitar amp line out feeds a THD Hotplate, which feeds an ADA Ampulator (discontinued) mono input — the Ampulator output is then sent to a single mono channel of a small stereo Rane SM82 submixer, which contains effects sends on each channel. The Ampulator signal feeds a number of the stereo effects, (usually a modified Lexicon PCM42, PCM80, Oberheim Echoplex, Electrix Repeater, and assortment of exotic and off-the-shelf TC guitar pedals) and via these sends the stereo effects are mixed with the Ampulator output via the Rane's faders, and the submixer's stereo output is sent to the ADA MicroCab2 (David says the MicroCab2 is used to 'guitarify' the entire composite stereo signal), which feeds a Pro Tools HD A/D interface.
