Count, a member of the dreamy pop band Halou, is becoming well-known for his production, engineering and remix work. A lucky break (right place, right time) and a distinct sense of doing things his own way has led him down a multitude of paths, culminating last year with engineering and mixing duties on DJ Shadow's [Tape Op #11] The Outsider. Count's innate musical direction, drumming skills and band experience have informed his work in many ways, and the variety of work he's completed points at an open mind and a talented individual.
Who are you? Where did you come from?
Well about twelve years ago, coming into San Francisco, I was interning at Toast Studios, where the Breeders [Last Splash], R.E.M. and Neil Young did records. It was this really dumpy, small studio south of Market, but it just had the cool vintage gear. Young, cool guys owned it and worked there, and because of that they got good projects. The indie bands came there because they were cheap and then the major label bands found out about it. I interned there and learned all the gear — I had no intention of producing or recording other bands. I literally only did it because the band that I was in, and still am in now [Halou], truly had a very unusual sound and it was very frustrating to try and convey something you're hearing in your head to somebody else who's trying to help technically. Even sometimes when you'll bring in a reference, and be like, "No, no. I actually do want the guitars that high" and the guy looks at you like you're wrong, like they're not supposed to be that loud. "No, I want the vocals distorted." "But it sounds wrong! People will think I'm a bad engineer! I can't put my name on this."
Those are usually the engineers that don't have projects coming to them. They just kind of work in a place and get projects.
Exactly. I had no intention of ever doing it for other people, but after a few sessions where I clearly wasn't able to get the sound that I was trying to get with another engineer at the helm, I realized I was going to have to learn how to do this. It's the only way around it. It was a studio with a really long hallway and everybody worked with the doors open. You could hear everybody else's stuff, which was kind of odd. Whenever anybody walked from the big room they would walk by me and hear my stuff in there. I guess I fooled them into thinking that I knew what I was doing. People would walk by and they'd always ask, "Hey, what are you working on?" There were a lot of other people that knew far more than I did technically, but the studio would give projects to me even though I probably didn't deserve it, knowledge- wise or years of interning or any of that.
Well, you could make it sound good.
They were getting interns there that tell you every component of the microphone and why it's supposed to be better than this other one and I would just pick up one, pick up another and whichever one sounded good, I would use. Sometimes it would be the cheap, shitty one and I didn't know! It looked like some old, fucked up, garage microphone — turns out that's a Telefunken. I didn't realize those are supposed to be good. That's kind of how I started and then I ended up very quickly getting some good projects. Before this I had an ADAT, but I never really spent time in a real studio. I was working for Polygram at the time doing a part internship/part assistant for Verve (the jazz label). I was doing stuff for the alternative new music, but I was also an assistant for the guy in charge of Verve. I just got turned on to a lot of music during that period and got to work on some really amazing stuff at Toast. Really quickly that turned into mixing and producing and engineering stuff — I started getting offers. It would start with one guy — the normal guy who would be mixing was busy or out of town, so I'd sub in and do a good job and then quickly was getting to work with bands like Blackalicious and doing a lot of cool remix stuff for New Order or No Doubt.
How do projects like that end up in front of you?
Well, I worked really hard for that period of time. I would stay there overnight and read this stuff so that I could leapfrog above the other guys that were there. I was literally staying there overnight to learn the gear so that I knew all of it. I think the most important thing is that I used Pro Tools. All of the other recording school guys were tape-oriented guys. I had learned how to align the tape machine and use it, but all the projects that were coming through, people were wanting to use Pro Tools and here I was — the guy who didn't go to recording school but knew how to use Pro Tools. "We're going to give this gig to Count." This was early Pro Tools, so just simply knowing how to operate the computer was how I got a lot of the work. Also the guy that owned the studio, Philip Steir, was in a very good band called Consolidated. He was a really good schmoozer, so cool remixing stuff was coming his way once he stopped doing Consolidated. He did a couple of high profile remixes and he started using me to pose as engineer and mixer, and that's really how I was able to get good projects right off the bat. I heard in my head what I thought would sound cool and would do it. I think that I'm glad that I wasn't properly trained first and that I trained myself after the fact, because I think I might've gotten stuck doing things like looking at meters. I would chain three compressors together to get things to sound good and none of the other guys there would do something like that because that might've been looked down upon.
Nobody told you not to.
I just kept doing it and it sounded good. There were a couple of more experienced engineers that would come in and I'd ask them, "Hey, this isn't working. How do I get this to work?" I would play what I was working on and they would look around and they'd look at me like I was crazy.
What kind of recording projects have you worked on outside of remixing?
Blackalicious was a good one because it was my first hip-hop project to work with and I hadn't been around much until moving to California. I knew that there was good hip-hop out there, but I wasn't around it. It was a lucky thing because the Beastie Boys' manager also managed Blackalicious at the time. Money Mark was working in the big room while I was working in the little room and it turned out Blackalicious was doing a record and the manager was just sitting right there. Obviously they had been working with someone that didn't click. Blackalicious is a band — whenever people like things at a bright, sort of crisp level, they want the opposite. I love that! It's chunky as hell. They were looking for somebody that wasn't afraid. The manager just happened to be there talking about it and the studio owner was like, "You should go talk to Count."
Was that production or mixing?
It was engineering. They were producing their own stuff, because in the hip-hop world, whoever makes the beat is the producer. The recording session — you bring in a bassist or a vocalist, it's very much still the same. I'm producing this Galactic record and there's a lot of rappers on it — there are a lot of vocals and some of them are guys from Blackalicious — a lot of interesting guys. Rappers are still not used to being worked with in a studio. It's more like, "Yo, I need some cat to record me when I rap." They're not used to like, "Let's try this different delivery" or "Let's do a few more takes of that." It's a different world, but I'm lucky that I'm working with the guys that are cool — the rappers that really do try.
They seem open-minded and really, really creative.
Yeah, for sure. Even the good hip-hop — a lot of it is still not live. There's some good programming and some great rappers — but recording? The fun with guys like Blackalicious, Lyrics Born and DJ Shadow that I've been fortunate to be working with, is that these guys are all about learning the distinction between samples, programming and live performance and they're totally down to letting me do my thing and make the drums sound like they came from an old record. Blackalicious, for example, has this keyboard player, Herve Salters, who is just insane. He can play like a motherfucker, man. You record guys like that in really growly, nasty sound and it just sounds awesome. It has the vibe of an old record and it's the difference between getting that real performance, but the sound of the sample. I hear too many times where hip-hop groups will play with live musicians or try to record them and it's got to be all the way there. If it falls just a little short of sounding like hip-hop, like if the snare sounds like a rock snare, it simply kills it. As much as I love a live performance, that sound is not in the same vibe as the samples that you hear on really cool rap records. It's pointless.
How did you end up working with DJ Shadow?
We had done a couple of remixes because he needed help — actually doing a Radiohead remix. A good way to start out!
With you engineering for DJ Shadow?
Yes. Basically he used to work a certain way for ten years — his whole career — MPC and samples. Every sound comes from a sample and is meticulously placed in an interesting way. After ten years of that he'd go crazy. He's arguably made the definitive record for that style of music. All the critics and all the fans are [saying], "You've made the best record that could be made in this style." Why would you keep doing it? If you're a remotely creative, open-minded person, you'll probably want to move on after somebody said that and that's exactly what he was feeling. He needed to find somebody that was working in a different way — just technically. Luckily I had already worked with Blackalicious and Lyrics Born, and those were part of his crew. He records a lot of live stuff, but it doesn't sound like live. It sounds like the cool samples that he samples. Plus, just to set up, a lot of it was just getting him set up to work with the same setup I had, getting the new Pro Tools system and start programming beats using software samplers triggering them with a MIDI interface, just basically getting a totally new studio set up.
He's using Pro Tools then?
Yeah, Pro Tools and I got him using the Native Instruments stuff. He's using his MPC strictly to trigger beats. I remember the first time watching him do it. It was like watching a kid learn how to ride his bike. Then in about ten seconds he had already mastered it. It was just like, I was just sitting there going, "Am I really teaching DJ Shadow how to program? No, this can't be happening." Then like twenty seconds later he's amazing.
I really like The Private Press. He's just sonically amazing. His ears are probably better than anyone I've ever met, including myself, by far. He hears details that I don't even hear. I miss shit all the time that he'd be like, "Hey, there's a pop there, there's some hiss there or something." He can hear everything.
He's been doing that for years — focusing in.
There are things that I'll put in — a plug-in that might delay a sound by literally two samples and I'll forget to put on the delay compensation or something — some setting will get screwed up and I won't hear it and he can hear the samples in delay. I'll just look at him like, "I don't want to say you can't be hearing that because I know you can." I've worked with him enough. I'll turn it off. I'll make him close his eyes and I'll turn it off and he'll be like, "Yeah, it's fixed now." He's not just bullshitting. It's great working with him. The best thing, I think, about the people that I've been working with over the last three years is that we don't define roles, and I really try to make sure that that's something that doesn't happen. People have hired me in the past to mix things and I'll take out sections of the songs and add them and add synth parts or stuff and they like it. I realize that every ten times I do that maybe one time I might get a, "Hmmm, we're not too sure about that thing you did." I just tell people up front that that's going to happen. I'll just do what I think sounds good. I'm not going to get bent out of shape if you don't use my idea. We're all producing it together. It's ridiculous to think that I'm the producer and you're the band. It's your record. It's the same with mixing. Yeah, the mix credit should say, "Count" because they're not actually mixing, but to think that they somehow have no say in what their mixes sound like is kind of arrogant. But with that said, I don't let anyone in the room when I'm mixing because...
Really?
Yeah. The most important thing with mixing is to have that initial impact when you hear something for the first time. It's really good if you're doing it as long as your being pretty unbiased, but because I mixed it I obviously think, "This sounds good." But ultimately it's up to them and I need them to come in and hear it for the first time already mixed so they can see — from the very first listen — how does that feel? Because that's when you really hear shit, right?
Say somebody sends a mix to you — do you get instructions on what kind of thing they're looking for you to do?
I always ask them to send me at least three songs on a CD. Some people don't do it because they trust me, but I always ask them to send me three songs that they like. Don't worry about things like "this band needs to sound like me" — just make sure they're in the realm of the kind of song you want. It could be something as simple as, "The only thing I like about it is the way the drums sound."
These are songs that other people have done?
Yeah. Send me a burned CD-R of references of other bands that have shit that you like. It could be just the overall mix. "I kind of like the way this mix is. It's mixed well." Sometimes they don't even have a specific thing, but I try to get specifics, especially for drums. "Do you want it nasty and crunchy? Do you want it to sound really pristine and clean?" You can make drums sound so different when you're mixing it and I don't want to spend eight hours on drums and that's when they go, "Oh. I wanted something John Bonham-y sounding."
What about remixes with a totally new rhythm and a vocal cut around it? Did the mixer go "too far" or was that what they wanted?
That's actually a big trick, more so than mixing, because when I'm doing a remix most people want to be surprised with what they hear. They don't want to give too many instructions on how to remix. That's a good trick because they want the artists to like it. The one we did for No Doubt — they really liked it, but they wanted it twenty beats per minute faster — and they did not tell us beforehand. We did an entire ten days worth of work and I chopped it up — every single beat. I didn't use any time compression, really! I did it by hand. The remixing is tricky because they obviously want a different version of the song, and some artists are really freaked when they're not used to their stuff being remixed. They'll say, "We want a different version" but then when they hear it, they're like, "It's so different than the original." That's one of the trickiest things.
That's what I imagine.
I want to fuck it up. I want it to be different, but not so different that they're not going to like it. I get a lot of second-guessing going on.
"Do something crazy, but not that crazy!"
Yeah, and here's another thing: You're working with someone like No Doubt — they're very mainstream — so if I think it's cool, they're probably not going to like it because I think it sounds cool and they're not my cup of tea, so I can't make it too cool. It's like, okay, "Think mainstream, but not that mainstream."
The majority of your work now, say you've got a remix being done, is it in a studio, or done in your home studio?
I work in my house — I love working in a "proper" studio, but it hurts my hands a lot. I have very severe carpal tunnel, which is awful, so working on remixing stuff all in Pro Tools can really suck. My set up at home is really specific. I have this very weird ergonomic stuff. Recording stuff — it's great to be in another studio — I love that. [With] almost every mix, I've taken some time to do some tracking somewhere. Ideally the way I like to work, which is pretty odd, is to have a proper studio when I'm mixing. I spread everything out on the console — insert things — different tones that I like — work them back into Pro Tools. Then go home, do my mix in Pro Tools, but then go back into the studio, spread it all back on the console and literally put everything at zero and then use the board to sum. In that case, there's no tweak.
Running back and forth, do you hear a big difference between something with a console and something in the box?
The stereo width is the first thing that kind of freaks me out, because I'll listen and the thing that was mixed in Pro Tools will kind of be here, and then I hear it on the board and it sounds wider — especially on an SSL. Ironically, I find myself having to actually change some of the panning and I don't like it as much. If I have a budget to do it, I'll do two mixes — they're the same mix, just one went to the console and one didn't. You'd be surprised how many times people choose Pro Tools mixes versus the console summed mix.
You talk about changing some of the sounds — like the Galactic record. What kind of processes do you use say, for changing the drum sounds or sculpting a song?
I was very fortunate — Stanton Moore is probably one of the best drummers in the world, or at least the coolest drummer, so he has endorsements — Gretsch makes custom drums for him. I was really lucky because I usually have to borrow some drums, like find shitty, weird drums from people that they think sound bad that I'll borrow for a session. He had these weird Gretsch drums, like a kick drum that was 16 inches that sounded amazing. It had a pitch to it. It was almost like playing a bass note — just all sorts of interesting drums.
Were you tracking songs or just little bits and pieces of ideas?
They were only fragments. They had thirty fragments and they were all grooves, so a lot of it was just, here's the break beat that they like the sound of. They looped it for a while and I had him play on top of it. Sometimes he would just replicate the exact beat, but we would come up with our sound. He played it and of course you listen to the original break beat and you think, "Oh man, that's a fat beat, I don't know, man." Then he would play it and it would sound even more groovy. And we were able to nail the sounds of the original break too. Working with a guy like that you get spoiled, because not only does he have his own drums, but he can play them differently depending on what song it is. We're trying to mimic a '70s break beat that's really dry, dead — thuddy kind of drums — he'll play them differently to get that sound. He'll tune them differently. He'll do weird things like turn a tambourine upside down and put it on top of the snare and it gets that '70s kind of gated-sounding, dry, dead, snare thing. There are a lot of those kinds of things, where if you are working with a drummer that's not used to doing that it could be difficult because all of a sudden they're having a hard time playing the song if they're having to play it differently to get the sound. I'm always telling drummers that they have to hit their drums differently and they're not used to that. How do you normally hit the cymbals? Hit them half as hard. Hit your hi-hat a quarter as hard and it'll sound so fat and they're like, "I don't know!" Hit your snare half as hard as you normally hit it and it'll sound fatter because you're choking it off when you hit it that hard.
Where with someone like him, you can pretty much ask him.
It was the most incredible experience I've had with a drummer. I was doing things like — he was playing a beat and then I would tell him, "All right, now play it with an upbeat on eighth note ride and then go back to the high hat and do it not on the upbeat, but on the down beat." That's a little unusual to have somebody who can do that on the fly. I just might have to hire him for every drum session I do.
As far as processing post-recording, you're using a combination of plug-ins and analog equipment and whatever?
For the drums, to get those really interesting, cool sounds, there's a Radio Shack mic that I love. I used it at a studio once and they never used it for anything there, but once I used it on drums and then all of a sudden they wanted it. I have them FedEx it to me when I have an important session — literally, a one-dollar Radio Shack microphone. I had them FedEx it to me in London when I did Shadow's record and it was probably a hundred dollars to FedEx it, for a ninety-nine cent microphone.
You can't find your own? They don't make it?
Not that one. It just distorts in a very unusual way.
