The Boston music scene has a character all its own. It never had the glamour of L.A., the grime of New York or the slick professionalism of Nashville — it's neither hip like Portland, nor weird like Austin. It's just hard-working musicians turning it out night after night, usually after a long day at work. Since 1986, Q Division Studios has been pumping out great music with the same blue-collar mentality as the city that spawned it. Jon Lupfer and Mike Denneen were musicians who started a studio so there could be a place to make music the way they wanted it to be made, and while that's a pretty common idea now, it was virtually unheard of when they first opened their doors. With little fanfare and even less ego, they helped expose the world to music by the Pixies, Aimee Mann, James Taylor, Mission of Burma, Fountains of Wayne, Morphine, Natalie Merchant, Liz Phair, Sebadoh and a staggering abundance of independent and self-financed rock bands. This interview is comprised of two parts: Part 1, in which Lupfer and Denneen recount what they've learned about running a sustainable business in an industry prone to drastic changes — and Part 2, in which studio engineers Matt Beaudoin and Rafi Sofer talk about their nearly 10 years working at Q Division, and how after learning the importance of sharp pencils and file management, it ultimately becomes a job of dealing with people.
Jon Lupfer and Mike Denneen
Tell me how Q Division began.
M: We went to high school together, and we had always talked about starting a production company or something. When we got to Boston, we just decided to do it.
J: We didn't know what we were doing!
Tell me about your first location.
M: It was the 4th floor of an old building in the South End of Boston, on Albany Street. There were 16-foot ceilings, and nobody was paying much attention to the building. Young people could get in there to build a studio, and no one really noticed.
Did you have to do a lot of build-out?
M: Tons. It was an empty shell. We hired two of our friends, an ex-con and one real carpenter.
J: We're not the most talented carpenters in the world, but we got good at "guerilla wiring." We overbuilt it, which turned out to be a good thing, because we could grow into it. We got a lot of help from Michael Blackmer, who is sort of a mad genius studio designer. He's the son of David Blackmer, who started dbx [and Earthworks]. He did a really great job with it. We built a really nice control room, a good live room and it served us well for a long time. We'd swap studio time for work. We spent more time than money.
M: We were the "guerilla recording studio" then — it was basically us and Fort Apache, who started about a year and a half before we did with a similar concept of "musician guys start a studio." All the other studios were engineer-driven.
J: They were sterile, recording-is-a-science environments. We needed work all the time, but we were cheap so we had it!
M: We were $250 for an eight-hour session, and you would get either him or me. We also identified engineers and producers who worked with bands, and we offered them free time.
What was the original setup like?
J: It was a Soundtracks console that we bought from "the guitar store" in town, and a 16-track, 1-inch Tascam, both of which turned out to be much better than you might think. Our best compressor was a dbx 160x, and our best microphone was a [Neumann] U87...
M: ...that I literally dropped the first day we took it out, and the head snapped off. And we had a pair of [AKG] 414s. J: We did a lot of strange things in the early days. I would get a vocal sound with an [Electro-Voice] RE20 and a [Neumann] KM 84 combined, trying to imitate a much nicer mic. It's actually not a terrible sounding combination!
Was there a watershed moment that changed your business situation?
M: One of the first bands we recorded was called The Buddy System, who were on The Basement Tapes on MTV during the first fall we had opened! They were friends with the people in 'Til Tuesday, and that's sort of how we started to meet all these various people.
J: We got in with the synth-pop crowd. I know it's sort of hard to put yourself in that mindset now, but that was a really big crowd back then.
M: So in '87, 'Til Tuesday came in to do pre-production for their third record. They had done half their record, and were demoing the second half before they went to record in New York. They came in for three weeks, and I think that was our first high-profile thing. Then the Pixies came in to do their second record [Surfer Rosa] around Christmas of '87.
Were you able to charge a higher rate because there was a bit more money behind them?
J: No, I don't think we were that smart yet — though I remember when we told them how much it would cost they were sort of like, "What? That little?"
How did the Pixies stuff come about?
J: They had done Come On Pilgrim at Fort Apache. There was some sort of disagreement that happened with their second record, and Paul Kolderie [issue #22] told them they should go to Q Division. I was an assistant on that session, and I was very inexperienced in working with outside producers. I tried to help. I said, "Here, this is what I do with the guitars," and [engineer] Steve Albini said, "Um, you should go away now..." [laughter] I had such little experience with certain things — I wasn't able to be a great assistant.
What was he doing that was new for you?
J: I remember him spending a lot of time getting the room mics set up. Those 414s I mentioned earlier? That pair was the sound of the studio. To this day, if I hear that record I say, "He really got it." And he used a [Sennheiser] 421 for [Kim Deal's] "Gigantic" vocal. That's not what a lot of people were doing at the time.
M: He used these little Shure SM98 condenser mics on an alligator clip on a guitar cabinet, and he would move them maybe four centimeters, go into the other room and listen, then come back and move them again. And no compression.
J: No compression, no noise reduction and very low levels — he did not want to mess with the headroom. I remember thinking it was a very big sound, but that it was really quite noisy. After that I realized, "Don't worry about noise, worry about headroom." It's a much bigger problem a lot of the time, and it's rock music, so who the hell cares about a little bit of noise?
And at the time Albini didn't have the reputation he has now.
M: He was just some guy from Chicago who wore a leather jacket and tried to offend people as much as possible.
J: Then I remember Paul [Kolderie] calling me up and saying, "The Pixies are number one on CMJ," and I thought, "Oh, how cool!"
What was the next thing you guys did that really had an impact?
M: I was in a band called The Walkers. Kevin Killen [issue #67] produced that record, and that got a lot of label interest — we got signed to Atlantic. It was then that we decided we had to step it up with the equipment. We had another big project coming up and we decided to get some Neve 33609s and a pair of John Hardy [preamps, issue #15]. Then this broker...
J: ...he called us up and asked, "Hey, I hear you guys are interested in tube stuff." And this was before the big tube revival.
M: There was somebody who owed him some money and wound up paying him in old equipment. That ended up being a pair of [Neumann] U47s, a pair of U67s, an M49, three RCA 77s, two RCA 44s and a pair of Pultecs. He let us have all that for a small amount of money! It completely transformed the studio.
J:We also got a crazy deal on a new board-an Allen & Heath. People might think that Allen & Heath is not the best console manufacturer, but it was a good console. This was just a couple years after all the MIDI stuff, which was cool, but it had started to die out — those keyboard players didn't want to come into a big studio. They just wanted to work at home. So from that point on we tried to position ourselves in relation to music that you couldn't do in your house. "Wow, maybe we should buy something that won't depreciate in value."
M: We moved to the 24-track machine in 1989, and then we started buying guitar amps, Optigans, Mellotrons, a Chamberlin and things like that — the Jon Brion [issue #18] phase... He and Aimee Mann were around a lot for four or five years, and they were into weird keyboard stuff. We did a bunch of stuff together, and some of it ended up on Aimee's first solo record [Whatever].
J: During this time — '90 or '91 — we were recording a lot of things that weren't getting released. You could do some stuff at home, but you couldn't make your own CDs yet, and the labels were kind of confused about these changes. The concept of going into a studio and doing demos was gone, because people were making these demos [at home] for cheap, then they'd go to make their high-end record and it wouldn't be as good.
Can you paint a picture of the Boston music scene at that time?
M: It was sort of the heyday of Fort Apache, Dinosaur Jr., Juliana Hatfield [issue #55], Morphine, Blake Babies, Buffalo Tom... there was a lot of good stuff going on.
J: The South End was a great musician area at the time. It was very lofty, there were a lot of weird after-hours parties and we were working a lot.
M: Work has always come from word-of-mouth, from people who liked some record that we recorded. Then in '92, I did the first Gigolo Aunts record. They ended up being picked up by RCA, and that was a really big boost for the studio.
J: I also did the Cavedogs record right around then, and they got signed by Capitol.
So now your work is starting to get picked up by these major labels, and you're still relatively new to this. What was your learning curve like?
M: Mark Sandman used to call the studio a "caste system" where you would go work in some studio in New York and make coffee. But we didn't do that — we'd wait for some producer or freelance engineer to come in and we'd just hang out and watch them. They appreciated that we had a "vibe" to our place, and that even though everything wasn't perfect it was a really creative environment.
J: It wasn't like major labels were sending work our way — it was the beginning of the indie explosion, and that stuff would bubble up through our studio. There was a change in the mindset of the industry where the tracks didn't have to be re-done. They said, "You know what? We like this. We don't need to remix this."
So was it around then that you got the Neve?
M: In 1993 a broker said, "My brother just saw a couple of those old Neve boards down in Sao Paulo. You guys like those old boards, right?"
J: The Neve thing wasn't in full swing yet. You look at what they cost now and we should have snatched up five of them!
M: The deal was very reasonable. We got our choice of frame and 32 modules. It took maybe 10 months until it was installed in April of '94. I had never heard one before, so we put some of the stuff we had done through it, and it just sounded completely different — it had a dimension to it that was there before, but you just hadn't been able to hear it.
J: I wanted to try tracking something just to see if everything was working, and it was the best guitar sound I had ever gotten. It made me realize some things — my knowledge just about tripled. I had learned you should never add high end EQ — I thought that was just a rule about EQ. But it turned out to be a rule about bad EQ. It was like magic.
M: So we bought a bit more gear in '94, and we could now make a "real" record without apology. By '95 the whole scene had moved over to Cambridge — it was a ghost town! Then in '96 we did a development deal with Columbia. We had a farm team concept, where they'd give us enough money to make and market a record, and then if Columbia was interested they had an option to pick it up. So there was no pressure to put these records out — we had total autonomy. They signed Expanding Man and Talking to Animals, but then the two guys we had signed with got fired. When our names came up Columbia was like, "Who?" But we got a Studer A827 out of it, and some other stuff.
So what have you learned about gear? What makes for a good investment?
M: Things that are old sound better than things that are new. [laughter] Studer A80s sound better than Studer A827s, sadly. But the A827 was such a pleasure to punch on, because with the A80 you almost had to announce that you were going to punch, and then there would be this gap — it was really nerve wracking.
J: There are these skills we learned that are now completely irrelevant, like learning to punch 300 milliseconds ahead of the time that you actually wanted the punch to happen.
M: Or like tape editing and crossfading.
You don't splice tape any more?
M: There's just no reason to. Why do people do Civil War reenactments? I don't know!
So are you tracking to tape, going to Pro Tools for editing and then flying it back to tape?
M: I did that for a while, but I wouldn't bother with that now. Whenever practical, I still record drums and bass to tape, and sometimes vocals.
J: My recent experience has been, "If it's the kind of thing that can stay on tape, I'll leave it."
I love tape, but I'm learning that once I get the bottom end recorded, I just want to move faster.
J: There are a lot of workflow issues with tape. I remember shuffling everybody out of the room so I could do a tape edit, and first there's a practice edit on 1/2-inch, so I'd ask them to come back in three hours.
There's a dynamic that happens with digital where the guitarist starts and messes up. "Hold on, let me start again. Nope, again. Nope, one more time." With tape, there's a nice breath while you rewind.
M: That's the responsibility of the engineer or producer. You want to keep it moving, but you also want that breath, so you learn to wait until it feels right. "Hang on. Okay, we're rolling."
So now we're in the digital era...
M: Almost. First there was the ADAT period. The draw with ADAT was that it was better and cheaper than cassette 4-tracks, which everybody had. Then they came out with 8-track, which sounded fine, and there was a box you could use to sync it up to 2-inch, and we loved that.
J: It was a new era. We could use ADATs to sneak extra tracks in.
M: I remember in '97, I mixed a record that Adam Schlesinger [issue #37] from Fountains of Wayne produced, and he sent me some ADATs of extra percussion and background vocals.
J: I worked on a Brian Stevens record. We sent off a bunch of the roughs to Dave Gregory in England on ADAT...
M: Of course now you can send anything online, but the ADATs were great because you could send off something as a reference.
Did you feel like you were losing something with the ADATs or Pro Tools?
M: With the ADATs, definitely. I resisted going full Pro Tools until HD came out. I can hear the pre-HD stuff pinching in the top end, the lack of high-end clarity, but I have no real issues with the sound of HD. But in '96 I did a record where I dumped the drums into Pro Tools, edited takes together and spit them back out — that was pretty great.
But it was 16-bit...
M: So there was a price to pay.
So you guys have seen all these changes in gear, techniques and in sound quality. What have you seen with the casual listener?
M: People listen on worse systems every year. Cassettes were really bad, but the speakers of the '70s and '80s and the CDs of the '80s were much better than what people are using now. There was no surround stereo button on their boom box that gets rid of everything in the middle — there were no crappy ear buds or computer speakers. It's part of why everything is so compressed now, and I'm just as guilty of it as everybody else.
J: I'm a bit shocked that people don't care more about Auto-Tune. I hear it and say, "How could you let that go?" But obviously that's not how other people hear it.
When did you guys first start noticing the loudness wars?
M: I first noticed it when [record companies] kept hiring other people to re-do my mixes in the mid-'90s. They were mixing things so that it already sounded like it was on the radio. It would be brightened and slammed before it even got to the A&R guy. And these days you're above digital zero most of the time! The first piece of gear that contributed to all of this was the TC Electronic Finalizer — people could crank the level up before they burned the CD. Then what cemented it all was the shuffle mode on the iPod. No band wants their song to sound quiet when it comes up on the party mix. It doesn't matter what I want — the band wants it loud. But I mix to the [Alesis] MasterLink, Pro Tools, and 1/2-inch, all at 0 VU.
J: I like to give the mastering engineer something to do. People become obsessed with signal-to-noise and feel that if they don't get the levels going to the DAW just below the red that they are "wasting" bits in the recording device. I'll give them back their extra bits by not blowing up the input above every fader.
How did you end up in your new location?
M: In the late '90s the scene had moved to Cambridge, and we felt like it might be better for us to be here [in Somerville]. Jon found this building, and we decided we'd move over here and expand a little bit.
J: And having two rooms now helps so much, because we can weed out the rough cuts [and overdubs].
M: And we also have a third room — a small editing room.
There's a lot of commercial stuff, jingles and things that get done there?
M: Yep. So Frank Ciampi [the commercial/jingle guy] and Matt Beaudoin are the only full-time staff — then [freelance engineers] Rafi Sofer, Matt Tahaney, and Joe Tooley are all around a lot.
Are they on salary? Paid by the gig?
M: It's different for each guy. Basically it's an understanding of what type of work each one would prefer and what works for them.
J: We've certainly hit our slow patches, and there have been some dark months, but it generally works out.
M: When we got the Sony deal, we wanted to step up the professionalism of the studio, so we started having interns, and we hired Ed Valauskas to manage the studio. That has developed to how we get our engineers, ultimately. Everyone who engineers here started as an intern, assisted for a while and earned their way into engineering.
J: The way we didn't get to do it.
M: Now people can learn how to do things the way we think they should be done — the engineering culture, how to run a session, respect the client and all that sort of stuff.
Is there a signature sound you try to impart?
M: I don't think so. My stuff and Rafi's stuff do not sound the same. But we're not doing country or hip-hop, so we're all working in this general universe of old gear and weird keyboard stuff.
J: I think of us as an old-school recording group — I hope that's how we're seen.
Despite the high level of gear and technique, there's still a ramshackle feel to this studio. There's a lot of cool stuff lying around, and I feel encouraged to pick it up and make it work.
M: That's totally intentional. We're musicians originally, so we've never charged anybody extra money to use a guitar amp or a piece of gear.
J: The ramshackle approach versus having everything working perfectly is a fine line. In the old studio that just happened, but when we built this studio we really talked about that.
M: We want it to feel kind of rustic. We made a conscious effort here to have way more client space and to have a separate lounge for each room. Bands can book Studio A for a month and just disappear. We erred on the side of "be a comfortable place to hang out and make music" rather than a clinically perfect environment.
How has the evolution of the home studio affected you over time? Where do you stand in relation to it?
M: We always embraced people doing stuff at home — the trick is to incorporate it. Studios are great for setting up an entire rock band and playing really loud. On the other hand, if you don't want to spend $850 doing tambourine tracks, go home! But we do think it's smart to record vocals here.
J: I worked with a band where we did six days of live basics, it sounded great, then they went home, and I saw them again a year later. "Where have you guys been?" "Oh, we've been busy..." That's frustrating — it's sometimes good to bury your head.
M: Art without limits can be very dangerous. Studio time is expensive — you have to limit yourself. But there are now going to be a lot fewer of those $300,000 records — if you have to then be part of a lot more $5000 records, that's fine.
So now you guys just take the jobs you want to do, and kick everything else down to the other guys?
M: I produce and mix, but I don't engineer too much any more. I find I'm better at concentrating now on the band and the vibe. But sometimes I'll get in there and say, "Step aside. Let me fix what I'm hearing."
J: I still like to engineer — I think I like it better!
Matt Beaudoin and Rafi Sofer
Tell me about your internships.
M: I was here eight hours a day, every day. The studio had just moved here, but they hadn't opened yet. They asked, "Do you know anything about construction?" I kind of lied and said, "Yes." So I was hanging insulation, building panels and painting. After a while I think they said, "Wow, he must really want to be here if he's willing to do all this." So it was a good way to distinguish myself in a way that I couldn't have had they been running sessions — I would have been just a guy in the back of the room.
R: Sessions had begun when I got here — I did all the food fetching and pencil sharpening. I was assisting Matthew Ellard, who's very specific about things — he likes having sharp razors, clean erasers and every color Sharpie — that sort of "unseen and unheard" thing, but always thinking one step ahead and always ready to go.
Was that stuff helpful for you?
M: Definitely. It helps you learn some discipline about being organized. When you're running a session, there are a million things to keep track of, and that stuff is helpful when you're tired or under pressure.
R: Interning is amazing — it's humbling and important.
When did you start getting your hands on a session?
M: I was on some Gravel Pit stuff in the fall of 2000. People were really good about allowing me to jump in when the opportunity was there.
R: I assisted on a James Taylor session. I got to label things and I learned a lot about Pro Tools. Helping Matthew Ellard was great because he'd say, "I'll show you how to do this once, and then you have to do it for the rest of the day." It was interesting to watch James Taylor do vocals. We'd have the mic set up the way we wanted, and Mr. Taylor was unseen, behind baffles. He and producer Russ Titelman would make a comp sheet by hand, then sit and comp for hours the old-school way, with mutes and crossfades.
So you were basically demoing it?
R: Exactly. We would demo it through the Trident, and he would takes notes as to which ones worked — we would assemble it in the box as we went along.
That was right around the time that you guys started tracking to Pro Tools.
M: There was definitely a shift around 2001 or 2002, where it was a hybrid of tape and Pro Tools. Now tracking to Pro Tools is absolutely the norm.
At what point were you guys able to take on your own sessions?
M: They just kind of throw you in. "So-and-so is sick or no one else wants to start a session at 9 a.m." I think that's how it always works. You start at the bottom of the totem pole, and they'll pass something simple off to you — like a voice-over — just to see if you can handle it. You tend to get those "retail recording" things when you're starting out. You get these people who think you go into the studio, push a button, and it makes you sound like U2.
Were there any major mistakes you made early on?
R: I've had some pretty weird sessions. I had a guy who refused to pay his bill because he said the session took too long — one of his complaints was that I took a break to eat dinner!
Did Jon and Mike go to bat for you?
R: Oh yeah. Mike was amazing about it — these guys have always been 100 percent behind us.
M: I think everybody understands that when mistakes get made, they're often due to fatigue from long hours. You're taught early on to be obsessive about double and triple checking things, so when it's time to run the backup hard drive, even if you're tired and want to go home, you still run it. I was tracking a band once to tape and the bassist wanted to do a punch. I forgot to take all the other tracks out of record and of course they all went quiet. I remember Mike saying, "That's your one time — it does not happen again." I've made a lot of mistakes once.
R: I tried once or twice to fix something without telling anyone, and it comes back to bite you, even a couple months later! "Why does that thing not sound right? That's not how I remember it." People notice that stuff! If you admit to mistakes right away and not try to cover them up, people are understanding. Working with tape is hard, but also gratifying. If you have good musicians and good engineers, then everyone can do what they have to do correctly. If you mess up and erase something, the musicians are good enough that they can play it again without freaking out. But if you're [frequently making mistakes], or if the musicians aren't great, then maybe tape isn't for you.
M: School was preparing me to be an expert on some gear that was about to be obsolete. It used to be that you would come to the studio and do everything, soup-to-nuts, but now people come in and do some drums, then go home for some overdubs, then come back to use your fancy vocal mic. There's this weird back and forth, and it's become even more important to be able to work with people.
R: There's a lot of file management. I get these mix projects that are expansive, and I have to be patient in dealing with that insanity.
Mike and Jon are now selective with the work they take on, and you guys are doing more of the bread and butter work.
M: Mike and Jon's involvement is as they please now, and they're able to hand a lot of the work off to us. When you're an assistant you take care of the background stuff — you're trying to make it invisible. You shouldn't have to say, "Sorry, there's an hour hold up because I can't locate these files."
R: Mike is really on top of the technology.
M: When we moved to HD a few years ago it was a really big investment, and I think some of those moves have to be done incrementally.
R: We've done a good job of integrating "legacy" products with newer products, but I think part of having the older gear means we have to stay a little bit behind the [technology] curve. It can be frustrating at times, but it makes financial sense.
R: I like things that never need to be upgraded. A Studer or a Neve is going to sound as great now as it did in 1974. But software and hardware do change, and some things can be done faster and sound better with new technology.
What was it like to work with Mission of Burma when they got back together?
R: I was able to assist [engineer] Bob Weston [issue #18]. They came in and did it the way they had always done it — to tape without a lot of overdubs. They'll either do a whole take again or they'll just leave it — no punches. They're able to say, "That's what I sound like. That's my voice." I think there were some trepidations when they first came in, but it sounded great. That band has more energy than bands half their age!
Are the "tape manipulations" still really tape, or have they moved to digital?
R: All tape — it was a Sony 1/4-inch tape deck, though they recently switched to digital for their tour. There are too many complications to deal with on the road.
What have you learned about dealing with people?
M: When we're first learning I think we tend to emphasize the gear. But the job is really about making people feel comfortable and getting the best performance out of them possible — that can be different from one artist to the next, but you learn how to read people and figure out what motivates them.
R: I didn't pick up on the human component for a long time. I was a musician, and I just wanted to learn how to get better sounds. But it's not as simple as, "Hey, sing that chorus again." It's a very involved relationship.
M: It's crazy working with people you've never heard before. They set up, play a take and they immediately turn to you and ask, "How was that?" "I don't know, I've never heard you play before!" It's a challenge to get to know these people in just a couple of days and give them a good enough experience so that they want to come back.
How do you convey your enthusiasm when it's not there?
R: I try to be enthusiastic before they've played anything! There was a band who brought in some gear that I didn't like, and I said, "Don't even bother bringing that in the live room. Try this instead." But that attitude can be a mistake because their stuff might sound cool — you've got to hear it first. So now I encourage bands to tell me if they're hearing what they want to hear, to not be afraid to let me know if we're not getting it. And we can always re- amp it! [laughter]
It's sometimes difficult to break an artist's attachment to their gear.
M: If they have a sound that I feel is inappropriate for the music, I'll say, "Oh, maybe we should try this and see what it sounds like," or you can be really enthusiastic, and say, "Hey, this is a '68 P Bass! It might sound cool!" The important thing is that you find something to be enthusiastic about. If it's not the music, then try to get the greatest hi-hat sound you've ever heard. Find something to keep you engaged in the session. Clients love enthusiasm.
R: I like working with bands because they have their own collective consciousness...
M: ...and you can't immediately wedge yourself into that — you start with, "Hey, maybe try this," and hope that it enters that consciousness.
People don't like to feel forced.
R: A lot of people have never seen some of the stuff we have here, or they've only used the plug-in version that's been derived from the original. Mike and Jon have encouraged an encyclopedic knowledge of everything that's in this building.
Does Ed arrange a meeting between you and the artists beforehand?
M: Ed does a great job of matching the clients with the engineers. When a band cold calls the studio, Ed will send them links to stuff that each of the engineers here has done and he'll let them choose whom they'd like to work with.
R: If I get a job, I try to get some other records of theirs ahead of time and meditate on it for a few days prior to the session, just to imagine what [techniques] might be used.
M: It puts you in a confidant mindset.
What about general studio maintenance? Do they teach you how to change a resistor here?
M: I learned how to solder at school, and everything since then I just sort of fake. We can handle broken cables and stuff like that in-house, but we call local techs for the vintage gear. We had a power transformer go out on the Studer recently, and that's not the kind of thing you can just get - Studer doesn't make them anymore. So then we're emailing Switzerland! But the good thing about the old gear is that you can open it up and see what's wrong with it, unlike an HD converter.
Do you try to emulate Mike or Jon's sounds?
M: Any time I try to it doesn't work! When Jon's engineering, he sets up a microphone, turns it on and it sounds incredible. But when I put the microphone in the exact same spot it doesn't sound the same, so I know there's something else going on that I'm not aware of. You have to develop your own style, otherwise you'll just be endlessly frustrated. Anyone can learn signal flow or how much to turn a knob, but the thing that sets [successful engineers] apart from the others is knowing how to stay positive, enthusiastic and how to keep a sense of humor.
R: Sometimes an artist will come back after a mix and say, "I don't like this or that." Jon will listen to what the client is trying to articulate and he'll figure out the crux of the matter and talk to that — he never makes excuses and he never tells the client they're wrong.
M: If you're working with a band [and you're polite], then you're on everybody's side. I've worked on sessions with Matthew Ellard where we had gone way past the point of productivity, everyone was tired and wanted to go home and he just got more polite. It's an important discipline to learn.
R: When you're asked to do something for the twentieth time, a "please" and "thank you" makes a huge difference.
What are you struggling to learn right now?
M: Like a lot of things in life, engineering never gets easier — you just get faster at it. It's good to never feel like you've mastered something, because it keeps you coming back. When you think you know how to record a drum kit before you've even heard it, then it's time to try something completely different.
Do people come in and want the "modern rock" sound? I like to listen to The Who or Zeppelin because it doesn't hurt my ears!
M: Classic rock often has a lot more space to it. Bands now want to throw in everything and the kitchen sink — it's like being assaulted. I like when there's room to breathe and a space to get in and find different things to listen to. But if a band says, "We want this to be on modern rock radio," then I just try to deliver what they want.
R: There was a period where records got really complicated, but everything was really pristine, like on a Thomas Dolby album. There's horns, guitars and keyboards and it's all really rich!
Where do you hope to wind up?
R: I wish work wouldn't be as sporadic as it is. With a young family it's become difficult to have such a chaotic schedule. M: I never thought of it much beyond, "I want to sit at a console and make music."
R: I can't kick music — I can't walk away and do something else. M: It's not a job — it's a lifestyle. If you're not prepared for it, then you should maybe walk away, because it's really difficult to have an outside life, to balance it with normal relationships. r
More Q-Division at tapeop.com/articles/78/q-division
www.qdivisionstudios.com
Special thanks to Ed Valauskas for his tremendous help during these interviews
alex.c.mckenzie@gmail.com
Photos © 2009 Pete Weiss — www.weissy.com
