What's the most important thing for a young engineer to have in their studio?
It all comes down to listening and what best supports listening is a reliable monitoring system. What's "reliable"? Reliable means that you can rely on its balance, its consistency, its relate-ability to a set of outside-world circumstances, meaning everything from listening to stuff on... well, I don't know. What do people listen to stuff on?
Ear buds.
Well it's a fact that having headphones is a second choice. And the other option is to have speakers and a good set of headphones. Not 7506s, which is to say not to use phones that are hyped up too much.
Is there a set of phones that you use?
Yes, Grado RS-1s. That having been said, you will hear a different "answer" to the monitor question during any particular period of time — and that answer to that question is the "Flavor of the Month". A couple of years ago it was the Mackie 824. Currently, the Adams are being pushed very heavily. But the answer to the monitor question is not the flavor-of-the- month, it's not the 824s, and it's not the Adams.
Are far-field monitors, large monitors, just dead?
No, they're fine as long as you can absolutely, precisely define the monitor and the room together. That is, the boundary and what people who are building large monitors into their rooms should realize is that if you can't do that, then you're much better off, not a little better off, with near or mid-fields. But that's the first thing, good monitoring. Then, the next thing is to confirm your work with known references, known musical references. Get your favorite recordings up in the room and [adjust] the monitoring until you hear what you loved in the music that made you want to do this. Because everything really should follow from listening and decisions need to take listening into more account than we have.
Are there listening "exercises"? Ways to improve your ability to hear?
One of the most important processes is the "client process". A client comes in and gives you something and says "this sounds like shit" or "this sounds wrong to me" and he doesn't know why, and I like that confrontation because you're not only confronting the client, you're also confronting what you hear. And what you have been hearing has been wrong and you need to understand what's wrong about it and this gives you the motivation to sit up and to listen more carefully. 'Well, what's REALLY happening here? Why does my client hear the vocal as being not loud enough, why does he hear the mix as not being punchy or loud?" And then, to deconstruct the sound — to learn how to deconstruct the sound — but I think it's better to understand how important it is to do that under pressure, to really motivate yourself.
What's the most important thing that you would to say to beginning engineers?
To have a big life, to learn how to do a lot of things, and to bring that to the art of music and audio. We learn very quickly at the stereophile shows that a lot of the guys there, although they're deeply into some arcane aspect of hi-fi, they're not very interesting to talk to. Certainly the wives don't want to sit down and talk to them. The other thing is that when you hear something, the most important thing is to tell the truth. Telling the truth is tough because you want to be passionate and your passions can carry you past accuracy — mine do — and also to be reliable, to be reliable as a person, and these are not necessarily things that have anything to do with audio. They have to do with being a good person. I think that's much more important than good audio. Good audio — you're not going to be able to avoid it. You keep doing it and you're persistent — Ah! That's what I would tell them — the most important thing is persistence. Persistence and enthusiasm. Bruce Swedien [Tape Op #91], when asked, "What should I do?" by a young engineer said, "Well, be enthusiastic about something." Always keep your ear open for a positive answer. What it comes down to in a client situation is be enthusiastic and participate.
Should a person try hard to get a job as an intern or second engineer, or, in these days of inexpensive gear, should they try to start their own studio and go for it the hard way?
Well, that's hard to say. Ultimately, Joseph Campbell's advice is the guiding principle — "Follow your bliss" — whatever brings you bliss, whatever brings you great happiness. I think that works. Then, at the end of the day, you can't say that you did the wrong thing, not really. And we have to remind everybody that at the end of one's life not many people are going to regret that they didn't spend more time at the job ("Damn, I should have spent more time with my co- workers!"). You can't chase something that's chimerical, and the idea of the modern hit record is a chimera.
Would you talk a little about hit records?
Well, I think that something one has to observe is the difference between the public's perception of a "hit" and the process that leads up to a yet-to-be-vetted "hit". It never ceases to amaze me how small the future hit record appears on the creation side of the mirror... when the song is still being written... when it's still in production, because that sense... that knowledge of what a hit record is before it's a hit and after it's a hit, well, those are two different universes. On one side of that line are the people in the studios, doing their best with every song... with every track of a CD. On the other side is a public whose perception is invariably, distinctly different from the reality of "who the artist is" and often of "what the song is saying". The "hit" becomes who or what the public needs to "see" and "hear" and, afterwards, that public is pressuring the artist to be the person that made that hit record: Alanis Morrisette after Jagged Little Pill, Michael Jackson after Thriller, Sheryl Crow after Tuesday Night Music Club, Maurice White [of Earth Wind & Fire] after That's The Way Of The World. The more venerable artists, like David Bowie or Cliff Richard, reinvent themselves with regularity. Bowie was right up there as far as innovation goes too. He was on the net years ago. Peter Gabriel [Tape Op #63] is certainly right there at the edge of innovation, too. He may not be making huge radio hits right now but that record he made last year, the one that he spent ten years on, is brilliant. Yes, it's a little hard to listen to because, among other things, there's a new idea to digest every couple of beats. You can't listen to it quite the same way as you normally would, but boy, you just stagger with how good it is. But in the public's perception, he isn't the same artist who made "Sledgehammer". Not at all. In the '60s, '70s and the early '80s there were record guys, and hit records were made by record guys. There was Doug Morris, and Mo Ostin, Bob Krasnow, Clive [Davis], Bruce Lundvall — what a record guy Bruce Lundvall is! Bruce Lundvall was the VP at Sony when we did Earth, Wind, & Fire, and he was a tenor player and a great guy, and look at the arc of his career. He had big hits from the '70s all the way through to Mariah Carey. That's a record guy! What differentiated those guys from other guys were three things, in my mind. One is leadership; that they had a vision in their eye and their ear, and their brain and their heart. Two, that they were good marketing guys — salesmen — that they were able to light people up with the possibilities of this thing that they had heard — because they did have an ear. And three, that they were good enough business people so that they didn't get into a lot of trouble. The way those guys made hits was deploying those tools. Find a great act — you know? The thing about hit records is that, for the most part, there are very few natural hits. "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman was not a natural hit in the sense that it was such a nightmare getting it done and they really had to push to get it out there. That song wouldn't have made it if you just laid it by the side of the road and expected it to be a hit. You have to do more than that. There have been some natural hits, like "Red Red Wine" (UB40), which was played over and over by a DJ at some station in Phoenix, and the rest is history. Yes' "Owner Of A Lonely Heart". Michael Jackson's "Beat It", which I think would have been a hit without x number of millions in promotion. You get the idea. But they can only be seen, I think, in the context of the twenty-year view, the long view.
