Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock

Rob and Tom have been recording records together for 10 years or so. Some of them, like Beck's Mellow Gold or the Foo Fighters debut (which they mixed) have done very well. Others, like Elliott Smith's Either/Or (which they partially tracked and mixed) and Mary Lou Lord's new one are critical successes and stepping stones to bigger careers. All these records work because Rob and Tom do a great job, focussing on the songs, the overall album and bringing out the most of what's there while making something that is a treat to listen to. I got a chance to spend a week with them in Los Angeles while they were working on Elliott Smith's fourth solo record (which will be out on Dreamworks in August). They were fun to be around and took me under their wing, giving me a lot of advice on how I should consider my "career" in recording, avoiding studio owner burnout, and tons of great recording tips, concepts and techniques. It was also refreshing to see how they worked together in the studio and how much importance they placed on the song and the performance/feel thereof. It was a blast to observe, and I even felt a part of the whole process at points when we'd toss album order ideas around and such. Anyway, after getting a kick out of the copies of Tape Op I brought down, they agreed to sit down for an interview. Thanks to Elliott Smith for bringing me to LA for the week and letting me sit in on the making of his record...

How did you guys end up working together?

T: I was working at a car wash..

R: And I had to get my Mercedes cleaned.

T: And I was wiping it down and putting the fake ArmorAll on the tires and I thought, "Man, I gotta get me one of these cars." So I asked Rob how he got the car.

R: So I told him, "It's from doing publishing deals with artists and taking all their money."

T: And I said, "Wow. That doesn't seem right. Yet you have this very big car."

R: And I said, "Thatís what makes it right."

T: The end always justifies the debauchery.

Uhhhhhh...

R: Any other questions? No, we met at the Record Plant [long-time LA studio]. We were both working there.

T: 1988

R: And we were both runners, broom pushers and it was pointless and stupid.

T: When Robin Crosby from Ratt would throw up I'd have to clean it up.

Cool.

T: That was my job. That was at the first studio I worked at, Cherokee, just months before I met Rob. Robin would come in and say, "Tom, I got sick in the bathroom." It was really, kinda nice of him.

Did you guys have recording school backgrounds?

T: No. I took one course at Humboldt State University. The closest they had was an audio for film so it was taught by film people who are inherently, masterfully knowledgeable of all recording techniques. That, of course, confused the hell out of me. I spent the whole quarter trying to figure out what a buss was.

R: Other than what you take to college.

T: Yeah, I didn't know what a buss was...

R: I was working in a studio in D.C. and I had went to a college that had a studio there but basically they taught you physics and electronics. The studio kinda sucked. I got in there, and that's the last three years of college... that's what I did. I blew a lot of stuff off.

And recorded?

R: Yeah. Just make bad recordings as often as I could.

T: That's why I took that course in film. To get into the studio.

R: You gotta make the bad ones before you make the good ones. Just like you gotta write the bad songs before you write the good ones. Sometimes you have to revisit the bad.

So you were working shit jobs at Record Plant....

T: That's where we met and I was doing this project at this studio I'd worked at before. I'd found this band through my girlfriend, and they had a lot of money, so I went to this studio that I used to work at and we made this tape. Rob heard the tape and said, "Oh, that's cool." And then we just skipped to producing together. That started on Christmas day, 1988. We've been working ever since.

Have either of you done projects on your own since then?

T: Projects we're pretty much all together. We both record stuff at home all the time. Sometimes we collaborate with other people as well as ourselves. Whether they be artists or bands or other producers or engineers. There's lots of great people out there to work with.

When I watch you work in the studio I'm trying to figure out who delegates what. It switches back and forth.

T: As the Dust Brothers say... We like to use nonverbal communication in the studio. That evolves.

It seems like sometimes you can work faster. Youíve got the setup in the back here with the digital editing.

T: That happens a lot through every project we do... splitting off into two rooms. Sometimes when itís a traditional band setup with a tracking scenario weíve set up another 24 track deck in a closet or a storage area and one guy will keep tracking and the other guy will be cutting the tape to pieces.

R: Or it can even be that one person keeps recording while the other is attending to the psychological warfare aspect.

T: Or one person's on the phone getting the string section together. When you're making a record that's not gonna be a compromise in terms of time or technical limitations and you're gonna have whatever you need at your disposal.... that sounds easy but the reality is you have to build yourself in parameters and limitations or it just immediately falls apart. There's an incredible amount of coordination and stuff that doesn't have to do with moving a fader or pushing play. That's where the "two" thing is really great.

There isn't a set pattern of who does what?

T: No. We're just always going back and forth. Sometimes somebody will give one of us a number so we'll just start following up on it.

R: Or, "I really hate that person. Could you talk to them?"

That could be handy. Do you think that there's any areas that one of you has more expertise in?

R: It's different personalities.

T: See who's jelling with who and get out of the way. Rob has a really extensive collection of guitars from being a guitar player so that's an area of expertise.

Do you play any instrument?

T: I play guitar a little bit. At the point where one would usually be in a garage band, I was in a garage with my buddies recording them.

But you really had an interest in recording...

T: Since I was a kid. It never stopped. I got really into records and record collecting. I'd buy a record and obsess about it for months. I was into it but it wasn't like I was buying records every day.

Rob, what kind of background did you have? Was it more from being a musician?

R: Well, it's been in the family. My father and uncle had a studio in New York City. I was always more into the music and my dad was more technical.

T: Yeah, your dad didn't seem so into the art of music...

R: He's not really into the bullshit, intangible stuff. He was really pragmatic so he was just into getting stuff onto tape. When I was a little kid he used to take me to the studio. It was always sort of, "Well, that's pretty much what I'm gonna do."

So now you guys are at the point that you get to pick and choose what you're gonna work on...

T: We kind of always have...

And now you can spend longer working on a record?

T: We've always found ways to spend the time.

R: Sometimes you're compacting a month into a week but we've always worked on stuff until it was right.

T: It doesn't mean you have to work in big ostentatious, elaborate studios.

R: Yeah. Beck's Mellow Gold was done at Karl's house and my house.

T: In a series of living rooms! The lead vocal on "Loser" is a hand-held Radio Shack PZM. And the slide guitar. I held the PZM up to the acoustic.

Was that out of necessity?

T: That's what we had that day.

R: Fostex ¼" 8 track.

T: And a Roland DM 80 hard disc recorder and Mackie mixers. Technology is to the point where there's enough cheap, transparent stuff that anybody can have the tools. It seems like a lot of people go down the path of thinking they're limited by their tools. It doesn't matter what you have.

R: It's about documenting a performance... whatever that may be.

T: Wherever that leads you.

R: You don't need to document a performance in a $1200 a day room. You can do it in your living room. It's just a lot cooler to do it in a $1200 a day room if you've got two guys with Marshalls! In your living room you'll bum out the neighbors!

True. You can see with something like "Loser" where it could be recorded in an apartment and you're not gonna bug anybody.

T: Or the back room of a dilapidated mansion off of Wilcox.

You mentioned before that you worked with a guy that had a studio and let you use the downtime.

R: That's how we got started. He had this studio up above the Record Plant called the Microplant.

T: Steve Deutsch. That's why, from the very first thing we did together (which was there), we weren't compromised in time. It might take a while but we'd get as many evenings in until we felt it was done. I don't know if that's good or bad but it's always been that way. To leave Microplant it was clear that we were gonna have to have our own studio. Being able to work with people who didn't have money was the key. That's why we've always had a studio, so we could just do it.

So you built a studio up in Northern California in the woods. What is it called?

T: The Shop.

That's right. What year did that happen?

R: In '91.

T: It was in the works for a long time.

You were probably assembling gear...

T: Yep. We had all the gear down here in LA.

You were saying that you only use that part of the year but you have a very low overhead when it's not being used.

R: The key to all this stuff is: If you can, buy it outright with cash.

T: Or don't buy it.

R: Rent is one thing, but loans on gear is a bummer. That makes you worry.

Yeah, yeah... I know.

T: If you have debt it means that a certain amount of the time you're gonna be doing a day job or something to just cover that bill every month.

R: Or it makes you have to be in your studio having to do something you don't want to do.

T: You're gonna be spending a lot of time to cover that debt doing shit that's not gonna further you. If you're out of debt you're gonna spend a lot more time doing things that are gonna further what you're trying to do.

Drag people in to record that might not be getting around to it. With Beck, was that someone you'd seen around?

T: Yep. Saw him once and said, "Wow. We should record." That only happens every two years.

R: Y'know, Elliott was sort of the same way. "Woo, this guy's good." And y'know, Either/Or ...

Did you just kind of offer to mix that for him?

T: It was a lot more than mixing it.

I was never sure what was done at The Shop.

T: It's not clear in the liner notes.

It's not clear what was done at my place [Laundry Rules] either!

T: Everything he brought in was on ½" 8 track. Some things were done entirely at The Shop but the bulk of it was half and half.

R: We bumped it [the 8 track] over to 16 track...

T: And added more stuff and then mixed it.

How long did you spend up there?

R: Ten days or something.

T: There was two trips up there to do it so I don't know the total time. One session to collect all the stuff and another session to mix it.

I was always amazed because I'd tracked the vocals on "Pictures of Me" and when I heard the record there were little things added. That record is rather unclear about where things were recorded...

T: That's important too, when you're working on stuff, be sure people can't really tell what you've done. Never be clearly credited. That helps you out! If too many people want to hire you it's a headache. [much laughter]

Yeah, I've done a number of records where there's no recording credit on them.

T: Great! That's good. You're already on top of it! Really, it's good to discuss all that stuff. You don't have to make a contract but just put it on a piece of paper. "This is how my name should be." Ross from Sukia did a remix for Bongload the other day and the last thing he did when leaving was... I said, "Ross, write on this piece of paper how you want your name to appear." He wrote down something that we would've been way off on. We didn't have any of those conversations on Either/Or.

What records were you working on before taking on Elliott's new one here?

R: Lutefisk... Mary Lou Lord...

T: Plastilina Mosh...

How does the work come to you these days? Do you have an agent or do people come to you?

R: We have management. It's a little bit of both.

T: Over time we've certainly picked our own stuff and we found most of it. The one act that came to us, based on someone we'd found and worked with.... We'd worked with this band Wool, which was the outcome of the D.C. band Scream. Then some people at a record company heard that and got excited and...

R: From doing Wool we did the Toadies and the Foo Fighters.

T: That was the direct outcome of that work. You never know by doing one thing, no matter how unrelated they are. That was neat. That was the first project that came directly to us that we would have never known about had we not dome some work before that. That was an exciting thing, the Toadies record.

R: And Wool was a band that we found, recorded and did a single with them on Bongload and then they got signed and we did their EP and then their album. From that we did the Toadies record and the Foo Fighters. That's a cool little illustration of finding something before anyone knows about it and how it can turn into other things. It's like the time you invest into it ends up reaping more.

For the Wool single did you do it after hours at Microplant?

R: Tom had this studio in Van Nuys that was 300 square feet...

T: But it had six rooms!

R: We had our main room, we had our drum room...

T: A control room, our bass booth, a vocal booth, a bathroom (which we used)...

R: Our live chamber...

T: We did a lot of great stuff there. That was the early 90ís. The Pleasuredome! The first three releases on Bongload were all Pleasuredome recordings.

R: It was like this... the console and the wall [right behind]. After a while you'd be like, "Ugghh."

T: "We gotta get out of here!" You'd be in there for-fuckin'-ever.

T: We kept go-peds there, these motorized skateboards, and it was off an alley and we'd just blow out of there, jump on the skateboards and race around the alleys of Van Nuys. We'd go to the hot dog stand and get hot dogs and take off. The hot dog stand down the alley was right across the street from the jail so the first place people would go when they got out of jail was to Happy Dog.

R: They'd be taking their wallet out of the plastic bag.

T: Happy Dog!

How long did you run The Pleasuredome?

T: It was about two years.

R: Really? Wow.

When I first heard about you I couldn't believe you guys were doing all this production and running a record label. How did that start up?

R: One of the things was... you'd make these tapes, and if they stay in cassette form they're a demo.

T: If you press it up, it's a record. We got hip to that.

R: "Okay, we're making records."

T: We even talked to another independent label, "Hey, let's find somebody to put these out." We had a bunch of single songs by different bands and the guy was like, "Oh, that costs too much and compilation records don't sell." Another few months went by and we said, "We'll just do this ourselves."

What was the first release?

T: Grimace. Quagmire CD. They're from Humboldt [County]. Excellent band, got great press.

R: There's also a Grimace from Denver.

T: When Bongload got more noticeable they wrote us a letter and said, "Hey, we're Grimace too. You're not gonna sue us are you?" We said, "No, the other one broke up. Keep going."

"And I'll sell you some back catalog to sell at your gigs!"

T: Our Grimace sales did pick up when those guys started putting stuff out!

So you just started putting out stuff that you'd been recording. At this point you're not doing all the recording for the label, although I saw you listed as executive producers on the Lutefisk record...

R: That was their idea not ours! [laughing ensues] That was just because they would come over and say, "What do you think?"

T: They wanted to put that on there. It was nice of them. The joke is that, in the liner notes, it also says it was recorded on a four track. Then you have ìexecutive producersî of a four track cassette production. Itís clearly beautiful!

It does shock me how good that record [Burn in Hell Fuckers] sounds...

T: It took them over a year to do it.

R: We spent 7 months on the new record.

T: That may or may not come out...

So you have people running the label for you...

T: Since the first pressing, there's always been a day-to-day person. Neither one of us wanted to stop recording to do it. Somebody had to do it. That's how it is able to stay active and be an outlet for stuff we come across.

It was funny, I think Sidecar [recently recording for Bongload] seemed to expect that you guys would jump in and produce their record for them. I told them it made more sense for you two to record someone else for money and delegate the recording of their record to someone that you trust.

T: We don't make a living off the label or the bands on the label. We make our living off of recording. The more recording we do, whether it's for the label or not, the more it helps the label and the bands on the label. Sidecar is better off with us recording Elliott Smith this month while they record their record with Dave Bassett (who also worked at the Record Plant with us). Here's a guy we've known a long time and know well and it's perfect. It's a much better situation. The reality, at this point, is that we can only do a couple of things a year on the label.

R: And they also have to fit into the schedule at the right time.

T: If we were to record Sidecar, which would have been great, they would have had to wait until June and they're recording right now, in the beginning of February. They're one of the first new bands to be involved in this new mentality... we started the label as an outlet for stuff we recorded. At a certain point, when we got busier, bands would end up sitting around for months waiting for us. And we know great producers with great studios.

In the past you've had the time to go watch people play and check stuff out. I would gather that it's been hard to do that lately.

T: Very good point.

R: It's not as regular.

T: That's the thing about recording music for a living... a lot of it isn't even about being in a studio. You also have to be your own A&R person. It's very important what you decide to work on and you have to put a lot of time into that. Going out and getting inspired by other bands.

R: Or whatever it is.

T: You can't stay in your little cocoon in the studio all the time.

R: Books and art...

T: Whatever it is that turns you on. I like working on cars and I don't get enough time to do it. You have to schedule it. Build it in.

Do you ever find yourselves burned out on music in general?

T: It happens. Only in the middle of something I think. It's not so much that you're burnt out and sick of music but that you're so burnt out that you don't know anymore.

R: It's usually on the projects that are obnoxiously trying on many different levels. When it should just not be that hard. "Okay, we've got these songs and you should show up and we should work on them." Sometimes all this other stuff comes into play.

T: The external things aren't necessarily as simple as people being difficult with each other either. There's a lot of forces that can come in. Working with Elliott and then the Academy Award nomination coming up was a huge positive but it was extremely disruptive to the session.

It seems to be taking a toll on his concentration.

T: And ours too, at times. Sometimes the universe throws a lot of fuckin' curve balls at ya'. If you get enough of them thrown at you and you end up working on this record, five months in, and you could have been done in two months. That can be tough.

R: With making records, whether you admit it or not, you only have so much energy per project. And it's one way.

T: When we start a project, a band usually wants to record 15 or 20 songs. Well, "That's a great idea. Then we'll pick the best ones and put them on the record." Great on paper, but the problem is, if you only have a certain amount of energy per project it becomes simple mathematics. That's part of the corralling in. Technically we're not gonna compromise but there is still a finite amount of energy.

Do you find yourselves reining a band in?

T: It depends. Sometimes the band or artist really get that. Other times they're clueless to that fact. "We wrote 20 songs so we should put 20 on." It's not about that... It's about making the best record. The best record benefits you the artist. Having 72 minutes of music is rarely a good idea.

T: But there's an exception to every rule.

R: Yeah. But just because you can doesn't mean you should. A lot of that can get sorted out in good pre-production. Hanging out at rehearsal and just going over stuff. That's another thing we were able to do early on was to go into people's rehearsal places. When you have your own studio and you're the recording guy, people just come to you, theoretically ready to go. If you can back it up and go into their environment it's helpful to everybody. You get a much better concept of where they're coming from and watch them interact in rehearsal you'll understand the dynamic of the band before you're in the middle of trying to get great drum takes.

It's nice to be in a position where you can work that way.

T: Anybody can put themselves in that position... The trick is defining what position you think you need to be in. If you think you need to be in it, go for it.

Any tricks or gear you've been using lately?

T: Some you don't notice. You get these basic ideas and you keep building on them.

R: Different ways of doing distortion. The one thing we did on this record was that we'd bounce a bunch of vocals to one track and then we'd bounce them around about nine times, kinda hot to the tape. Then got that and blend it in with the original again.

T: You started getting this high end thing.

R: Sort of a sibilant thing, just sort of this weird thing happening. It wasn't really good all on its own but it was really cool when we combined it.

T: We thought we'd bounce it a million times and just use the bounce but by the end Rob discovered that it was better to go back and blend the 10th one with the first one.

R: That's something you can try with drums and stuff.

I did some stuff like that with vocal comps. It made me think of the sound of vocals on Beatles records.

R: A lot of that old sound is the old tape.

T: It was like the quality of a cassette tape.

R: So you go into tape compression real quick and print through.

Hey Elliott! What kind of tricks have you seen these guys use?

E: Tricks? I saw them record the drums with very few mics. I don't know.

T: I think a good trick is not getting comfortable with something. Continually changing things up. One song use two mics on the drums if you can. See how little you can get away with and how much you can get away with.

R: Also changing the environment. There you are in the room and you've got these drums. "Okay, let's make it dead." What does that do?

What kind of effects do you guys like?

R: Analog effects. Or the early digital delays that can get you that analog feedback.

T: When it recycles and collapses in on itself.

R: Like the old Yamaha delays.

T: The black ones with the round knobs that are recessed. Those are cool.

R: There were Ibanez ones too.

We've got one of those Ibanez analog ones at the studio.

T: Rackmount analog? Oh yeah.

It's Elliott's. It will regenerate into oblivion.

R: Nothing like tape delay. Run it to the Echoplex.

T: Echoplexes are great. Nothing's better than having a big complement of analog stuff.

R: With tape delay, if you have a 4 track you can run it through all four tracks and keep building up delay.

T: You could use your ½" 8 track as an analog delay unit. Go crazy. You never know what you've got.

We were talking about setting up the two 8 tracks and making a delay line between them.

R: Frippertronics.

T: Nick Saloman [Bevis Frond] is really into that. He'll make tape loops on his reel to reel and put them all around his room with mic stands up so the tape rests on corners of mic stands.

What kind of stomp boxes do you use in the studio?

R: The Boss delay. The red one. That's a really cool delay.

T: Just use it as an outboard effect when you mix down.

R: There's these little boxes called a Reamp that's like a...

T: Backwards DI.

R: You come off tape and it gets the level back down and has a volume control and you can send it into your stomp boxes without exploding them. Or you can run it back through an amp.

T: That's why they call it Reamp. There's no better way to get a thick flange than a Boss flanger pedal or something. Rack mount shit for flange and chorus always sucks but if you go to a stomp box, Small Stone or whatever you need. All the stomp boxes are great because: A- they're cheesy which is great, and B- they're single task devices. They don't try to be clean and that's why they sound good.

R: You get that distortion, once again. Distortion is usually your friend.

T: I can't tell you the hours we've spent in studios with H3000ís trying to get a flange.

R: And the flange just sucks.

T: And the whole time you just picture in your head, "When I put that one on my guitar it's so thick." Grab that one and use it.

R: Running drums through the Phase 90 or the Small Stone.

T: Buss it on through.

R: That's a cool sound. Doing that with compression, multing out the kick and snare, sweeping them till they have a sound and then blending those elements back in. Or you can do that with a good stereo compressor. You can lean on the room a little more, put in some of the drums, squash, and blend back in.

T: A great thing when you mix is if you've got a couple of stereo compressors just put them on buss buttons. So you've got your mix going, and then you return them on faders just like they were reverb. When you're mixing and you need more kick and snare you just hit the buss buttons and boom. The second one you can use for other shit. "Let's put the bass and the vocals in the second one." You'd be amazed at how everything gets thumping and glued together in a cool way.

R: Cause then you have this thing that's sort of like the core and then you have the other, less compressed, track that still lets things poke out.

T: The compressor will kill all the transients.

R: Yet you get that smack that the compressor gives you.

Do you guys use that trick where you mult the signal out to several faders to bring out a sound?

T: Never more than two faders. Sure, you want another EQ on it. I had a friend that would always do that on bass drums.

R: If there was a problem for some reason, if the kick drum wasn't thumping, that's what he would do.

I do that a lot.

R: With bass, if it's in E or A, if you do EQ around 200 Hz you're in a harmonic zone and it helps it "speak." Remember frequencies and keys...

T: There's a correlation.

It'd be nice to have a chart...

R: Well, you know A is 440 Hz so 220 Hz is a lower octave.

T: That's a good way to look at your equalization too. Start thinking about it in octaves. Look at the numbers and think what they actually mean. You start to look at the sonics of your mix in a more musical sense perhaps.