When John and I first started making plans to attend the May 2007 AES Show in Vienna, Austria, we talked about taking advantage of cheap intra-Europe flights and touring other countries. Having been to Vienna before, I was looking forward to going elsewhere for a different dose of interesting food and culture. We threw around a bunch of ideas before finally settling on Slovenia, and in particular the capital city of Ljubljana. Larry didn't go, as he had to get back to his studio move, but Al, our new London-based, EU/UK publisher, was eager to tour with us.
For those of you who are geographically-challenged (that'd be 99% of us Americans — but then again, Al was unsure of Slovenia's location too!), The Republic of Slovenia is cradled in and below the Alps, bordering Italy, Croatia, Hungary, and Austria. It even has a short stretch of coastline along the Adriatic Sea. Historically, Slovenia was once part of the Roman Empire, but in recent times it was a region in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia — along with Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and other now-independent states — before gaining independence in 1991.
I first heard about Slovenia from Robert Fisher, leader of the band Willard Grant Conspiracy. My label (Kimchee Records) had released a WGC album a few years ago, and an earlier WGC recording I'd engineered is what introduced me to mastering engineer Jeff Lipton (issue #34). Between Robert expounding not only the beauty of the country and its people, but also speaking highly of a particular recording studio in Ljubljana, and Jeff proudly lending me his rare ESE Lab 2176ULN compressor, designed by the same folks who owned the same Ljubljana recording studio, Slovenia was high on my list of interesting destinations in Europe. Plus, being "off the beaten track" I figured it'd be the perfect place to go after spending a few days in tourist-ridden Vienna.
Robert and Larry both suggested that we hang out with Chris Eckman of The Walkabouts, who now makes his home in Ljubljana. Robert connected me with Peter Gruden, co-owner of Studio Metro, where both Robert and Chris have spent a good deal of time recording. There's no question that Metro is one of the premier studios in Slovenia, and its credits attest to its modest but far-reaching reputation throughout Europe.
Over various emails, Peter also arranged for us to meet with Ljubljana-based producer/engineers Janez Križaj and Gregor Zemlji. Janez is probably best known in the U.S. for his work with Laibach, who in turn are probably the most recognized musical export of Slovenia in the rock/pop world. Gregor is a founding member of the internationally-acclaimed, underground-electronica duo, Random Logic. Admittedly, my expertise in international music is limited at best (despite all the traveling I do), but I did recognize the names of a number of the artists in Janez and Gregor's long and varied discographies, including Una Palliser of the UK string quartet Siren (who toured with Gnarls Barkley last year). More importantly, both Janez and Gregor had a wealth of insight and experience to share about creative recording methods.
John, Al and I met up with Janez on a Wednesday morning at the Philharmonic, just a five minute walk from our hotel, where he was recording a small orchestra with a spaced pair of mics through Apogee converters into Pro Tools. We watched the session from the balcony, and during a break we sat outside across the street from the hall and had a cup of coffee.
AH: Did you get your start recording classical music?
JK: No, just rock and pop mostly. Mostly punk rock and lots of jazz. I was in a band. I'm of this new breed of engineers: they were calling me for keyboard and drum programming. The Yamaha DX7 was my first, and it brought me the most jobs. No keyboard player knew how to change even the release time — you know, with six operators and the explanation deep in the manual. It was like, "Can you make the release on these strings longer?" And drum machines — we had at first the Roland TR-808, and then the Yamaha RX11. These were my first jobs. Then I just started playing around with the tape machine.
How did you get involved with the Filharmonija?
This one is the best orchestra in the country. I got the job because the National Radio usually records this session and there are 24 mics in the orchestra. You can mix and stuff, but the sound is just not the sound of an orchestra. It just gets muddied with too many mics — phasing problems. You have a lot of control — you can lift up cellos, whatever — but the sound is not the right one.
Is that a 63-piece orchestra you're working with today?
Yes, I believe so. With five percussion players for this piece.
I noticed that the space is fairly dry sounding.
Too short and too small for this size. This should be a 20 to 25-piece orchestra for this space.
Will you add artificial reverb to make it sound bigger?
Just longer. Not louder. Because the reverb itself is pretty strong — but short — like wooof wooof. Like one big kitchen. I'll be adding a tail — a couple of seconds long and very long pre-delay — not to change the perception of the hall, but just to make the breaks longer so they are not so dry.
How do you work with the fact that there's a short pre-delay already but not a lot of diffusion coming from the hall picked up by your mics, and then you also add additional reverb? It's like two different spaces.
We're happy that brains are not perfect and can be fooled easily. Especially if you come from the stance of physics — soundfields and theory — there are so many things we're doing wrong completely. But they work.
JB: Do you use a convolution reverb?
Last time I used a Lexicon 480 and a Quantec [QRS]. The Quantec is unbelievable. Also, there are two beautiful EMT 140 plates at Metro with vacuum tubes. In the end they will be really, really quiet — just slide them under.
Will you also master it at Metro?
I'll do all the mastering at Metro. It's the best-equipped studio in Ljubljana.
Do they have a separate mastering room?
No, in the same room.
It's just one process?
Yeah. It's not much mixing because it's stereo mics.
So you just add reverb? What about compression and limiting and EQ?
I do all parallel processing, like adding top end but not sending the whole signal through. Just record the EQs back to the workstation and add these tracks in slightly. At Metro it's mainly Manley Massive Passive. You just slam it — 10 kHz on up. Then a Summit Audio [EQP200A], which has a little bit less distortion than the Manley, and slam this, also like 10 kHz on up. And Night Technologies [EQ3D], which is the most precise. Then I mix together in parallel all three and record a mix of all three EQs back to the workstation. Then I add this layer to the original, so the original is untouched. The same with compressors — multiband or just mix compression — just to lift up the quiet parts.
Do you find that you hear any phasing from adding the Massive Passive to the original signal in parallel?
No, but you have to take care to use bell curves and not shelving. Shelving can become a bit funny with phasing. And filters — low-cut, high-cut — they're not really phase-linear. But bell curves are perfect. The Summit is also perfect. Completely phase-linear. Just high-cut gets a bit weird — some phase anomalies.
Is this something you do only with classical music?
No.
Do you tend to process everything you do in parallel? You always have the original signal untouched, and you add to it the processed signals?
Yes. For top end I don't just use one EQ, I use three. For full-range compression I use three different compressors in parallel.
You never put them in series?
No, not really. Sometimes multiband and full-range after it. It's always a question. Sometimes when you set a compressor on slow release, it's like wooof wooof [slowly]. It's cool. But also on fast release, it's like oomph oomph oom [quickly]. Also cool. But if there are no in-between settings you can use two compressors: one long release, one short release. That's the advantage. Metro is great, but in the end, when I'm doing this mastering and I process top end separately and midrange, like 200 cycles, separately, I end up with seven layers. To do this in real-time, I'd need something like eight Summit EQs and six Night Technologies EQs and five Massive Passives. But I only have one piece of each. It's fine economy-wise. You may only have one EQ and one compressor, but you use them ten times, over and over, each time recording back to the workstation.
What do you sum it all with?
Just in Nuendo. Digital summing.
You prefer doing your mixing and mastering in Nuendo, but you're recording today with Pro Tools.
Yeah, it's just convenience. It's "house" Pro Tools. Doesn't make me bring a different computer. They're all basically the same — it's just a question of which mindset.
JB: Have you done any experimentation with Altiverb or other sampling reverbs?
A bit, but not on this material. We sampled these plates at Metro and it's nearly there. But when you put up the real thing it's this slight difference. You can tell.
Are there a lot of people that come from outside of Slovenia to record here? Is the cost here lower or higher?
Much lower. Especially from a country like Norway. For example, Chris Eckman did a session in Oslo with strings. But it cost him more and the session was terrible, so they erased everything. They came here, and instead of a five-piece they used a twelve-piece orchestra. With studio time, flying and hotel it was cheaper than at Oslo. And much better results.
Do you think music is that much more part of the culture here, and that's why there are better musicians, or it's cheaper? Culturally, what's the difference?
Especially musicians are cheaper. That's the main advantage. Having a session in London, I mean you can get some students. They are rehearsing and stuff. But here, for the same price you can get top-level musicians. There aren't many, but some are very good. It's also the influence of the Balkans — you know, timing is different. With The Walkabouts, we did this André Heller song, and it was in 7/8. You know, Dah duh Dah duh Dah duh Dah Dah duh Dah duh Dah duh Dah [very quickly]. The Walkabouts' American keyboard player [Glenn Slater], he just couldn't get it. You know, where to get in. I called the clarinet guy, who is from here, and he just came in, and — prima vista — he just nailed it. You know, Wum bum bummmm... Wum bum. I think that sense of time changes most with culture.
Is this place known as a destination for music production?
We do have some tradition. Out of all the rest of Yugoslavia, Ljubljana is the center of Slovenia, the most western country. Years ago here it was like Italy — much more open. It influenced the technological tradition. Lots of big stars from Yugoslavia were recording in Ljubljana. It was the place to be.
Big stars in all forms of music?
Yeah. Especially pop and also rock. In Ljubljana was the first multitrack studio in the Balkans — more than 30 years ago. The owner died. He was like a real legend, because he was building tape machines by himself. [A collective "whoa" comes from the Tape Op crew] A really funny studio. I worked there for a month, but the owner always had some problems drinking and so on.
JB: What was the name of the studio?
Studio Akademik.
30 years ago, was it hard to purchase equipment?
Too expensive. He built a mixer by himself. There was no patchbay — even no plugs. Everything was soldered to the mixing desk — even the repro head, because he built the tape machine himself. You save a lot of money if you don't use proper Cannon connectors. Solder everything straight to the desk — the best sound for sure. It was impossible to overdub in the control room, because the mixing desk and everything was wired directly to the repro head. We always listened from the repro head. You never listened to what was going into the tape machine — always what was coming off the tape. There was a small mixer — separate — wired to the sync head and to the headphones wired in the studio. [laughter from Tape Op crew] Since you listened with like 200 ms latency, for punch-ins you had to really get a grip before... [more laughter]
There was no way to bring back a headphone feed from the studio to the control room?
Oh, we didn't mess up his studio. He was a funny guy. He had a whole rack of Audio Design Compex limiters — expander, limiter, compressor, whatever. A whole dozen or something. But only after a week of working did I realize that only the limiter was working. Only one was complete. He built the rest of them himself — the whole front plate and everything. But nothing was working but the limiter in all the machines because the limiter was the only good component from the first machine.
After coffee Janez returned to his orchestra recording, with a promise to continue our conversation at Studio Metro later in the day. We ran back to the hotel to grab our bags and head to the project studio of Gregor Zemlji?, a multi-genre producer, a mastering engineer, and a lecturer at SAE Institute (through Croatian National Radio & Television). Gregor has a modest room just across from the Ljubljana train station, packed full of gear and treated with DIY broadband absorbers. ATC SCM150ASL midfield monitors strike an imposing stance in front of the room. At the desk is an SPL MixDream analog summing system.
Tell us about your signal chain.
I use a lot of analog EQs and compressors. I don't use a lot of plug-ins, except for some basic stuff — notch filtering, side-chain compression and similar. When everything works in Logic, I group everything to stems, and I do the final stage of mixing on MixDream, which makes a big difference, especially for dance-related genres. It's a big change in dynamics. The majority of this kind of music goes to vinyl, and for vinyl you need a bigger dynamic range but a much more controlled dynamic range if you want to get punch. When I first mixed with an SPL MixDream, the difference was really subtle. But, when I started seriously working with MixDream, it was completely different; I heard music more precisely, and I started mixing differently. I have 16 channels of DA connected directly to MixDream , and on the first four stereo stems I can insert analog EQ followed by a compressor.
What stems do you typically mix to?
I always combine kick and bass in one stem. Then I group all the loud drum stuff and all the loops. Next stem is composed from all the drive synth sounds and other drive elements like guitar. It is usually followed by vocals. These four stems are processed with analog outboard. The other eight channels are not processed with analog during the final mixdown because I don't have that much analog yet.
Do you process them with plug-ins?
Sometimes. I usually process tracks beforehand. I go out of the box and use various combinations of EQs and compressors in the rack. I have a collection of vintage pedals, Space Echo delays, outboard and effects. I have an EMT 250 reverb downstairs. Stuff like that. I used to have a mixing desk here, but few years ago I decided, that it is impractical for my way of work. My idea was to build a modular mixer with sophisticated, open patch bay to which all outboard devices are connected and all routing, automation and sends are controlled from Logic. I have 16 inputs and 24 outputs. So, for each project I can "build" a unique mixing environment.
What was the first project you completed working this way?
Magnifico [Export-Import], which was released on Sony BMG worldwide. It was quite successful.
Is that electronica?
It's kind of ethno-electronica. The genre is called "Balkan Beat". They gave me really good arrangements and really good songwriting to work on, but they had weak sounds and drum programming. With the equipment I had it was impossible to do the complicated mix I wanted to do. I processed each sound through an analog chain, added the reverbs and delays that it needed, and bounced it back to the workstation. In the end I had a flat mix in Nuendo with no plug-ins. I did the final summing and automation in Nuendo.
How in your mind do you think of the big picture as you're working on one track, two tracks, or maybe even six tracks at a time, as you're processing each track or set of tracks separately.
When I started doing it, it was like, "Okay I'm doing a big experiment." We didn't have a mixing desk anymore and this was the only way to do it. I just went along, and because the album had dance elements I knew if I would get it right with the bass spectrum — kick drum, bass, and the loops — then everything should work. This is the area I had the most experience. If I did anything wrong in the process I just went back and bounced again. But it came out great and I didn't have to go back many times. The biggest advantage of a system like this is that you can do live mixing, live dubbing, live automation. When I was working on dub delay effects, I could do a take tweaking the feedback and every other parameter available and record it. If I was not satisfied with the result I just repeated the procedure. It sounded much more alive and better sounding at the end than if I had a static mix with just an open send. [Gregor plays some tracks from the album]
I noticed that most of the drive elements are right there in the center, but you managed to have the vocal closer in soundstage. What did you do to process that depth?
The whole magic in his vocals I suppose is an old Neumann KM 56 I had. It was through a Neve, completely dry. It just worked. For the depth I used really short delay times, which were then sent to the Lexicon PCM60 plate preset. I don't use reverbs a lot, I use short delays instead, but they're all unique. For example, RE-201, RE-301 and RE-501 are completely different Space Echo delays. If you want a dirty sound, you use a 201. But in a clean mix like this it's kind of useless because it's noisy and has an overdrive that comes out too much, so I might use a 501, which is much cleaner. On this whole album it's all Boss DM-300, an old analog, bucket-brigade delay. Everything I used is a combination of DM-300, PCM60, and Mu-Tron Bi-Phase. I put a lot of stuff through the Bi-Phase with LFO off so it doesn't sweep, but it stays in a fixed position. You can get a really warm color. A lot of reverbs I use, like spring reverbs and the PCM60 (still my favorite reverb — it's so simple, it's got a few presets and you can do a lot of stuff), I just usually put through the Bi-Phase and do a really, really mild phasing, so it kind of evolves over time. But on this album I think it's the mic. On the new album we tried many, many mics, but the only one that approaches the right color is the Brauner Valvet — but at the same time it's too precise for his vocal. But this is the commercial part of the stuff I do as a producer or mixer or co-arranger. Usually I do much more experimental electronic music. My main project, Random Logic, is basically the first thing that started my whole career. I started as an underground electronic musician, and we were releasing a lot of 12'' vinyl, even in the United States — about 40 12'' EPs under the Random Logic name. We sold 70,000 vinyl.
You're a musician and a composer, but you were also engineering and producing. Can we hear some Random Logic?
This is really experimental. This is the new album and all sequencing is made without a computer. Everything was done with analog sequencers: Doepfer, Roland, Korg, and so on. No presets are used. We used the computer just as a tape machine and an edit machine. The idea is to play the song — we want a live sound. When we compose we set up a kind of big modular system with all the synths and we just create one big patch, like a kick drum, hi-hat and snare drum patch. Then we make a groove and we jam and record. We tweak relevant parameters for the complete period of the song. Then we reset everything and we do the bass and lead, and we program another live jam on top of what we have already. This is similar to the original approach to electronic music, like Kraftwerk and so on. They recorded on a tape machine. If you make a mistake you can't recall anything. It's much more alive. [We listen to Random Logic and hear lots of interesting textures on top of strong rhythms and beats]
Do you also tour with this? Play live?
We played a lot of live gigs and we toured with a lot of contemporary dance and theatre performances. We also did a few concerts a few years ago in 6.1 surround in a big TV studio that we rented. With this kind of music it's really interesting when you can fly and move a sequence around. I also have more projects. What I do is really broad, because Slovenia is such a small country, so if you want to live as a professional you must do a variety of jobs. Since I like all genres of music I love working on diverse projects — from really underground to mainstream pop. [We listen to some contemporary pop Gregor recorded with session musician friends]
As we were finishing our interview with Gregor, Peter Gruden arrived to shuttle us to Studio Metro. Peter and his business partner Iztok erne own Metro, one of the best-equipped recording studios in Slovenia. We talked during the short drive to the studio outside of the city.
How long have you had the studio open?
The first studio was in 1982 — this is the second studio. The first one was not our own space. The '80s were good to us. Iztok and I worked night and day and we also had another full time engineer, and at that time, we paid no taxes. Can you imagine that? That was old Yugoslavia — nobody paid taxes. Everything we made we could invest in our equipment. We bought a new place, we bought new equipment. But now, the times are much different.
In the '80s, what were you recording? What kind of music?
Mostly rock and pop. That was the time when we were getting money from the National Radio. Because this is a small nation, only 2 million people, they needed Slovenian pop music for radio play so they gave money to record. The bands could record without any payment.
Were people buying records and CDs?
Yeah. If you can imagine, for just 2 million people we produced dozens of records that sold more than 50,000 pieces each. Because they were in the Slovenian language no one else would buy them outside of the country. Just the 2 million people here. The most successful releases were 100,000 pieces.
Wow, that's 5% of the population.
Today if you sell 5000 copies you are the king. It's a completely different situation. You are from Boston? Boston is a city of about, what, 2 million people? Imagine selling 50,000 copies! That was the '80s. Now we have a different situation, like everywhere in the world, where people are producing at home. An independent studio sees no more prosperity anymore. The success of the studio is connected to the people who write music — arrangers, composers, writers — and almost everybody has their own studio. Basically, along with normal production work we are also servicing this home market. We didn't take the approach of going against this market. These people don't have the space. They don't have a grand piano. They don't have a bunch of high-quality microphones and mic preamps and so on. They don't have a big room for monitoring, big speakers and a lot of analog equipment for mixing. But we try to go in-hand with them. We encourage them to go home and edit the stuff or record some keyboards, and then come back for mixing — if not for mixing, for mastering. Although the mastering we do for them is not strictly mastering, but rather we take the stuff from the home recording studio and we try to humanize it a bit. The sound from those sound cards — you know what they are. We basically deconstruct the mix completely, and we use a lot of analog outboard — and we really encourage people to come for some phases of the recording process. They find out it's much cheaper in the end to come to the studio to spend, let's say two days to record basic tracks rather than spending three weeks with samplers in a small place without the proper microphones — and at the end, it doesn't sound right — it doesn't sound good. The band that's mixing now used 24-track analog tape, and more and more people use that just for recording, they just transfer to digital and take it home.
And they overdub and edit...
That's the story we have now.
As we walked into the basement studio all three of us were immediately impressed. It looks very much like a modern, professional facility you would find in NYC, with a comfortable and inviting lounge, rooms with well-controlled acoustics and a console that looks like the equivalent of an SSL, both in size and in build- quality. Some of the gear — including the console — was custom-manufactured from Peter's designs, and the studio acoustics were designed by Roger Quested. Janez, Iztok, and Chris Eckman greeted us in the lounge, and together with Peter they gave us a detailed tour.
How much of this did you do yourself?
PG: Well, I did just the plans for most of the installation, like connection boxes, racks and the lighting system throughout the studio. You can also turn all the lights, power amps and even the reverbs in the machine room on and off from here. [showing us the remote-control panel in the producer's desk] I did all of the audio cabling and patchbays. The desk also — it's a one-off desk.
Holy cow. Is this console your life's work?
PG: Well, it took four years. The A on the front stands for Alpha, as in the first in a line.
[Peter brings out a spare channel card to show us]
JB: You guys designed the circuit board?
PG: Yes. And also assembled.
You soldered every one of these?
PG: Yeah. And see here, everything's done by relays. Basically, I took the best I could find. This is an SSL line amplifier. Then you have filters of 18 dB — a design from Orban. The EQ is from a Neve V Series. The rest is a combination of different techniques.
How many spare channels did you make.
PG: Just this one.
What happens when you lose a channel?
PG: So far no channel has died completely. If a component dies the rest of the channel still works normally. Every subassembly of the channel is separately powered and protected from failure in other parts.
Who built the frame?
PG: I only made all the plans for machinery and circuit boards. There are companies who manufacturer and do screen printing. The desk has central set/reset control of various functions, like EQ, sends, inserts and automation. There are two separate halves of the console that can be set/reset. It's centrally controlled, but it's completely analog. There are no processors running. It's static logic like the old Neve system. It's controlled by CMOS electronics, but there is no clock running inside so it doesn't cause any problems with the analog electronics. Also, there are no mic preamps — just line amps — so you don't have any crosstalk. There are 24 mic preamps above the patchbay arriving as +4 dBu line signals into the desk. They can all be switched into the second line inputs centrally. But we usually use external preamps inside the studio so the cables won't be so long — it's much better for the sound to use mic preamps where you need them.
What about these?
PG: The blue one [ESE Transcomp stereo compressor] — we made maybe four of them. The red one [ESE 2176ULN stereo compressor] — maybe ten of them in the world. One is in the US, two elsewhere in Europe, the rest in Slovenia.
I must be lucky then. I have the red one in my studio. Jeff Lipton, who masters all my records, is letting me borrow it.
PG: You know Jeff? It's a small world! The electronic design of these units is by my friend Rudi Koros [www.eselab.si]. We started together with studio gear years ago, but recently, he is more into high- end hi-fi design. We also made a stereo Pultec. Same size as these, but no meters of course. The two channels are controlled by double potentiometers instead of rotary switches, so it's not so expensive. We made six of them. We will probably not make any more. Once we finish them, we move on. But you should ask Janez about the blue one — it's a special opto-compressor. He knows these all very well.
JK: I always divide compressors into two families: clean and sterile, you know the ones that act like faders — and fun, which are fierce, like this Valley People Dyna-Mite, which slams and distorts. But this one is clean, transparent, and a lot of fun. It's heavy. I use it on bass all the time. I've never heard anything else like it.
Is it based on any existing circuits?
JK: No, completely new and unique. Opto, mastering quality, great input and output section.
How about the red one?
JK: It's a UREI 1176 black-face copy. It's a good one. I haven't A/B'ed it, but I've used many UREIs, and this is a good one. These are fun. I'd like to have one more. It's easy. No thinking. It just works or not. This one [pointing to the Summit Audio EQP200A] I use the most in mastering. The Summit has sweeter top end than the Manley. The Manley is warmer but sometimes too much distortion. The Night Technologies [EQ3D] is the cleanest and most precise — great for pianos. Completely phase-linear — no problem for parallel processing. I used to have a Focusrite — great EQ, but useless for parallel. So it went out.
[Walking into the live room, noticing a number of really cool mini mixers on stands...]
What are these?
JK: That's a cue mixer. A custom-made six-channel with EQ, pan and levels. You can label them with these.
Whoa, magnets for labels! Who came up with this?
JK: These guys of course. Peter — he graduated a philosopher. He's got a clear mind for things.
PG: Well, I was also a musician. But back then I didn't work electronics. I was afraid to touch 12 volts. This was made by another small company, but Iztok and I designed them as a user interface. It was back in '82. If you remember, when did personal mixers become available for headphone monitoring? We designed it in '81 and it was working in '82. Now it's standard of course.
[Noticing buttresses of glass glued perpendicular to the intra-studio windows...]
This glass is like this...
JK: It's glued on, so it kills resonance and yeah, also works like a diffuser. Behind the walls are hanging rubber sheets for bass traps. I have a lot of furniture. I usually set up chairs so it's full of diffusion in here.
Is there also fiberglass in the bass traps?
PG: No fiberglass. It's only thick rubber, then a ply of thick material that's like industrial carpet, and then another layer of rubber, and so on. It's like this [makes hand gesture for "very deep"]. Everything here is all done as Roger Quested designed it. You could not buy it like that.
What is this?
JK: Direct box, both ways. You can send a clean signal from the tape and put it in here. You've got impedance matching for re-amping. It's made by Alan Smart. I have it now connected to the spring reverb in this amp. I feed it from a send on the desk through the Alan Smart and then I bring it back through it again and record it on the workstation. But I use it most of the time to re- amp a bass recorded directly with no amp. I usually put a compressor before the amp. Then I put the mic that's on the amp into the sidechain of the compressor. That way, the mic output is controlling the input of the amp. You can really get controlled distortion. Especially for bass it's important — if it's a bit too dynamic, you can get too much distortion.
Do you have a particular compressor you use with this trick?
JK: Most of the time, Tube-Tech [LCA2B], Empirical Labs [EL8], or ADL [1500] compressors.
I use a DI/re-amp combo for erasing guitar bleed out of the drum room mics when I've got the drums and guitar amps in the same room. I'll record the DI signal and send that out to the re-amp at the same time, so during the actual recording pass, the amp is actually playing back through the re-amp. When the band is in the control room with me listening to the take I'll re-amp the guitar and record through the room mics. Then I'll subtract those tracks from the original room tracks to get rid of the bleed. It's not perfect, but I typically get 20-30 dB of cancellation.
JK: Well yes, I know what you mean. Especially on bass, you get rid of this nasty bass from the room mics that makes boomy recordings. Some top end certainly remains, because it's not complete cancellation, but this is nice ambience. The problem is this 300 cycles that goes around the room that you want to get rid of. You can do it with vocals too — it's the same. If you have 50 kids that are ten years old, putting headphones on them would just kill them. They would be gone in 20 minutes. But if you had a long session — six songs to record — they would be here for four hours. So we are just going with speakers and then pretty loud playback. If you record two takes, I just flip the phase on the second take, and you cancel the playback. If you don't need two takes, I just ask them to remain in the room and keep quiet, and I just record the speakers basically, and I flip the phase and the speakers are gone.
Oh, so you keep the kids in the room so you end up with the same acoustics.
JK: Yeah, yeah. Especially if there are 50 of them, they shouldn't leave the room or the sound of the room changes too much.
[Noticing the stone in front of the kick drum as we walk into a smaller tracking room...]
Do you choose which stone sounds best for the kick drum?
JK: Well, I don't put under the snare a bottom mic. I hate it — too harsh. But if the snare drum is above a carpet, it just kills the snares. So I put the rocks underneath the snare [points to rocks behind the kick drum], and tcsheee [the sound of a well-diffused snare drum].
That's an awesome idea! Usually I put a clipboard underneath and sometimes drum cases around the kit. But rocks underneath the snare — that's fantastic!
JK: Yeah, it's more diffused. I got this one [pulling out a sheet of metal] if I really want lots of snap. But the rocks are nicer. Much nicer than a bottom mic that just picks up pfthee [makes a spitty sound]. The rocks — they were all taken from the river. It's psycho- acoustics. I tell you, when the drummer sets up his kit and goes out, then you set all these rocks underneath the drums, like all over and you leave just enough space for his feet. Then I put all these lights — one under the kick drum, one under the floor tom, and one under the snare — so when he comes back, he's like, "Wowwwww! My drum kit! Wow!" He feels good. He hits good. The sound is better for us.
Did you also study philosophy like Peter did in school?
JK: No, but I probably read too many books. I have lots of hobbies. I'm doing astrology. I figured out it's working. Especially synastry — how people relate to each other. That's the most fun part of astrology. You can really tell if somebody is going to work well together.
What is your astrological sign?
JK: Sun in Taurus. I long for stability... but I have other influences that make me non-Taurus.
I noticed the Sony PlayStation. Is that for the bands while you're working?
JK: Yes. The mixes got better when this arrived.
