Doug Haire | TapeOp

Doug Haire has been a staff engineer (a rarity these days) at Jack Straw Studios in Seattle since 1990. He’s recorded just about every kind of music and engineered countless live radio performances. When he’s not in the studio he heads outside, listening for interesting sounds and locations to record. These recordings then became the basis for audio compositions, musique concrète mash-ups, if you will. On top of all that he’s a super nice guy who was a pleasure to interview.

I know you do frequent field recording. Do you have a lot of material to keep track of?

I'm in the middle of a massive project digitally encoding tons of cassettes that I recorded from all around the world going back to the '80s. It's time consuming, but it's valuable. I realized I need to start doing it now. I'm halfway through maybe 60 or 70 cassettes. Most of the recordings I have are on DAT tape, though, and I've got all those on CD-R now. Actually, I've never had an archival DAT fail on me. But you never know.

I think it's really hard when you have these once-in-a-lifetime experiences on tape. It's not like you can go back and remix or rerecord them.

No you can't go back. My mindset is not to look at things I've done as archives, but to look at them as, "How can I use this again?" I won't commit to performances of my own, or anything like that anymore, unless I can see a second use for it. In other words, I make a recording in some fashion and then I anticipate putting it together with other material. It makes better sense time-wise. It's kinda more fun to think about it in a multidimensional way.

I have a hard time not recording stuff, especially when I'm traveling. If I don't have recording gear with me, the things I'm hearing seem much better.

Well, I think when you don't have the gear you internalize those sounds better and retain them. When, at every turn, you're reaching for your deck to record you get this sort of patina of technology over the joy of just hearing it. It's a battle for me as well — I almost always end up recording it. [laughs]

Do you feel encumbered by your gear sometimes?

Not anymore. I used to. My first trips overseas were ridiculous. I had this stereo bar with mics and screens on it, a cassette deck plus all these fucked up cables. You know, it was hideous. It was like an albatross to the extreme. But these days it couldn't be simpler. I'm using the Sony [PCM] M1, which is their last version of the portable DAT deck. Leonard Lombardo down in Oregon at Sonic Studios makes these lovely DSM [dimensional stereo microphones] mics. So, no one knows I'm recording. It's very easy to get it into record mode.

These mics are mounted on glasses?

Yeah. I also have them on a windsock headband. They kind of look like headphones. I get really good wind rejection, which is vital.

Do you feel the "sneaky" factor is important?

Generally. Sometimes I'm being sneaky. Other times I just want to be anonymous. There's nothing really to be sneaky about. I just want to be like wallpaper. That's my general mode. I'm not interested in recording my interaction with either people or nature. It's not interesting to me. I love the sound of cityscapes and human interaction, especially if I can't understand what they're saying. So I've tried to master being totally neutral. [laughs] When you're the only white guy around in a third-world country it can take a while. It seems to work. If not, I'll be around the corner or something like that. [laughs]

Have people ever noticed that you were recording them?

I've had that problem with children. They're not interested that I'm recording, just that I'm there. I've had some stuff ruined, I thought, because I didn't want to be an ass and ignore them. If children want to interact with you it's better that you do it rather than just shoo them away. I am drawn to children's voices. I like to stand outside schoolyards and...

You better be careful!

[laughs] Yeah, especially in the U.S. these days. [laughs]

Quite a variety of projects come in and out of Jack Straw. Is there any style of music you'd like to record more of?

Often it's not getting to record a specific artist. In terms of genres, I don't feel like I'm missing anything. I don't do very many indie-pop records. There must be 80 studios in Seattle and probably 70 of them are exclusively orientated toward indie-pop or something of that type. I used to mix bands live on the radio. That was a great charge during the week to spend three hours with a band getting ready, and then to spend an hour mixing them live.

Are you still doing the KEXP stuff?

Yeah. I'm doing my show "Sonarchy Radio." It started January 1996. It's kind of a weird juggernaut in my life that I hadn't really expected.

What do you mean exactly?

Well you start those things, and you know, radio is a really volatile medium, like any of the electronic media. You're kind of an idiot to think that you'll be doing the same thing even a year out. But just through a quirk of stability I've been able to get the show to evolve over a decade. It's really just a reflection of the music that I run into during the course of a work week.

Do you ever give workshops?

I have. Mostly related to radio production for people who are just getting used to the idea of what is now called "audio art." But I've been pondering the idea of a mastering class. I'm not a mastering engineer at all, but I visit them all the time and go to sessions. There's an awful lot of confusion about what mastering does for a project and how to prepare for it.

"We need more filters; or we need more people who are willing to wade through tons of music to find the gems...But I need filters, too. That ought to be a new occupation."

So what are you working on right now?

I have a list! I've got a lot of projects that can be done in an afternoon — live to 2-track. Then I have all these other projects that take two or three years and I have to spend a lot of time notating what the hell I'm doing. It's usually because of budget or eccentricities of the artist. Right now I'm recording a duo of four clarinets, which is all extended techniques. It's clarinet master Bill Smith and Jesse Canterbury. Bill's written these fantastic extended pieces where the clarinet gets blown apart and then reconstructed. It's fascinating work. There are sounds I've never heard before! I'm also recording a fortepiano, which is the precursor to the modern piano. It's like a harpsichord-type instrument. It's a beautiful sound.

The piano that's only loud?

Well it doesn't have much in the way of dynamics. [laughs] Actually, it's only quiet. It's very temperamental. What else? There's this group that's sort of a fusion jazz, Grateful Dead hybrid without the jams. I'm working with a group called Emma Zunz. It's dark torch songs. Two women who have a great way of... emoting, I guess. They come out of a tradition of improvising, although this isn't improvised music. You can hear how space and silence has invaded their music through their improvisational experience. A Ghanaian drum group is in progress. I'm just about to start with a koto and bamboo flute duo. I'm participating on Bill Horst's new album with some field recordings. Bill is a real guitar force in Seattle. What else? A violin and drums improv duo. It's really powerful. These guys are in top form — Tom Swafford and Matt Crane.

Have you ever done any recordings with groups outside of a studio?

Absolutely. I tend to collect places around Seattle that I think will sound good with various instruments. There's a group here in town called BNSF, named after the railroad-Burlington Northern Santa Fe. We recorded one evening, quite late I think, under an overpass next to some railroad tracks. So the ambience included a lot of reflections off of concrete. It included a kick drum, electronics and saxophone — three guys. We had sound events happening while we were recording. Trains were going by. You could hear the traffic sort of coming through from above. It's like theater — they're playing to what's going on around them. You've got constant stuff to draw from. It's beautiful. It always needs editing. It's an interesting way to work. The thing about pop music: There's a whole bunch of precedents you need to meet to get the sound in an area where they're happy with it. Frankly that's one of my downfalls. I couldn't necessarily hook up with a pop band and quickly get sounds that emulate what's going on these days. I just don't have the experience. There are people who spend their whole careers developing those sounds. I'm just not good at emulating. I can emulate an old jazz record from the '50s or '60s, but that's about as far as I take it. I mostly want to be transparent. But recording under an overpass is not a transparent method. [laughs]

But it's not you getting in the way!

It's not me. But generally I consider myself an active participant when I'm field recording with musicians. It's too difficult to be transparent in that kind of a setting. I just saw this movie about the Minutemen last night [ We Jam Econo ]. It had all this live video footage with really crappy sound. I could fill in what was missing since I knew the tunes. But I was with a friend who didn't know the music, and I kept wondering, "What is she hearing?" What she was able to glean from it was the emotion. That's what's important, isn't it? I suspect that makes it a success. That's why I want to record groups together at the same time in the same room. I'll use whatever technology and techniques I have to make it work. It doesn't work with everybody. But after years of doing this I can hear the emotional connection.

I keep hearing about engineers who get burned out from doing just one thing.

Absolutely. Patience is usually what goes first. Most of the people I know who have stopped working in this field have said that. What I've tried to do is set up each day to be different — changing genres, changing personalities. If I had to do all classical music I would have burned out immediately, because the temperaments and the editing are really intense. But if I can balance that with a noise act or some free jazz the next day, it's fine. In fact, I love it! It's about organizing the life you've chosen. A lot of it is just pure luck. Things come along, and I can say yes or no. One of the advantages of being a staff engineer — and particularly a lead engineer — is I know who I can give the job to if I don't want to do it. [laughs] I've got good partners at Jack Straw so I'm not compromising anything. As long as I don't fuck it up, I think it's a totally valid way to stay fresh.

And you're doing that band a favor, too. No one wants an engineer working on their stuff who doesn't want to.

No they don't. People get confronted with that constantly. It's just another one of the struggles of making good art — finding the right people to help you with it. To be honest, about ten years into my professional career there was a point where I said, "Am I going to keep working with these people who hardly know what they're fucking doing?" [laughs] "When am I going to be able to mix on a Neve desk or whatever? When's this ever going to happen?" I went out and looked around for places that had that stuff and saw what they were doing and I realized the tradeoff is just not worth it. These days I get to mix on a little Manley 16 x 2 mixer, and it's fucking gorgeous. That took away my whole envy of a big console in a big budget room. Particularly now — technology is so different. I used to always do projects from start to finish. The idea that I wouldn't be mixing the project that I tracked was really rare. But within the past two years I'm getting lots of projects where I'm tracking and people are using their Pro Tools LE [systems] or whatever and mixing with someone who's not going to charge them anything, or doing it themselves. That's a big, big change for me. I accept it and understand why it's happening, but I've had some projects that I thought were totally fucked up in the mixing or the mastering by people who didn't know the software. So I'm probably going to get my own mix setup here at home. I usually don't get to mix those projects because of money. I would rather charge my rate at home, which is considerably cheaper than when you have to maintain a studio. Jack Straw is nonprofit but it's still above some people's abilities. So I'll just join the parade. I'll get MY OWN Pro Tools LE. [laughs]

[laughs] It's a fun program.

It's totally fun. I find it to be a marvel that it's so similar to a totally tricked-out system. I've been in Pro Tools mode since '94, so it's been integrated into my whole way of thinking about this stuff. That's what's changing. Technology is influencing art on all sorts of levels, but particularly in the low-budget realm.

That's the thing I've been aware of since I got involved with computers about ten years ago — realizing that we're in the infancy of a technology.

And the Internet, too. When you're working on outside or fringe music, like I am, the Internet comes into play constantly. It's fascinating and I think it's really positive! But we need more filters; or we need more people who are willing to wade through tons of music to find the gems. That's what I'm trying to do with Sonarchy. But I need filters, too. That ought to be a new occupation.

That's where a good record store comes in handy. Did you go to the Recording Workshop in Chillicothe, Ohio?

I did. I had left radio. I had been working in New Orleans, and I thought radio was totally dead. I thought, "Man, I better get into television." So I did that for a while and then became disgusted with it. Then I realized I needed to be near music. It's where I'm supposed to be. I had a Tascam 4-track, and I kinda learned the most important things from that. So I took the six-week course at the Recording Workshop, and I want to say it was a positive experience, but I don't know what I learned. [laughs] I realized when I got out here to Seattle that I couldn't really say I was any good in the studio. So I freelanced a bit, started doing film sound and it all sort of worked out.

Did you know the instructor Abbey Reid?

There were no women there. It's so annoying to me how few women are operating in this world [of recording]. Listening is a totally feminine activity in a lot of ways. All the women I've worked with have been good. There are just not enough of them. I don't get it. I hope there's not this glass wall thing. I know there's no glass wall at Jackstraw. I just think that music would benefit from women playing a more technical role in it.

What other kinds of things would you like to change?

Stop treating isolation like it's imperative. I just want to see more interactive music being made.

Anything else?

Well, I just wanted to make sure I mention the Manley [16 into 2] mixer. It's probably the largest technological revelation I've had in the past few years. I've bought tons of gear for the studio, and most of it probably only makes a minimal amount of difference — sometimes it doesn't make any difference at all. It's a zero! I find going through converters and stuff like that — the nuances — to be practically indecipherable. But when we got this Manley mixer I heard a palpable difference, particularly with live to 2-track work. I don't mix in Pro Tools anymore. I route everything out to the Manley.

<em> www. jackstraw. org </em>