[ image mic type=fullcenter ] What is the attraction of vintage microphones? While we all may spend more hands-on studio time with our outboard gear, our console, and so on, there's undoubtedly a uniquely personal connection we have with the microphone. In one way or another, our
...","url":"/tutorials/latest/vintage-king-restoration-series-part-2-microphones","authorName":null,"authorSlug":null,"contributors":[],"viewCount":38076,"showCoverImageIntro":true},{"id":"fc9916f2-096b-4971-acde-00c8675bb01c","title":"Fizmo: The Synthesizer That Was And Is","slug":"fizmo-synthesizer-was-and","subtitle":null,"issueNumber":null,"tiptapJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I'm a Fizzer. I'm one of the lucky folks who own, play and love a \"loveable loser\" of a digital synthesizer with the funny name of Fizmo. It was available from synth and music company Ensoniq a couple of years ago, but didn't last long for several reasons. I believe that the thing was just too damn weird for the people that it was marketed to — people like DJs and techno/dance musicians. For the experimental, industrial and noise musician, however, the Fizmo is a dream. Once digging in and programming, one can create sounds from scratch that range from thick, evolving synth pads to total environments of sound that are so alive-sounding, morphing and constantly growing that it'll make your head spin. Ensoniq's Fizmo was built upon Transwave synthesis. Transwaves are wavetables, which many other synths have used, but transwaves are much different in that that each one has many loop points rather than just one where the sound can cycle back around. Ensoniq has used transwaves since the '80s but the Fizmo was the first synth that they devised that was totally built around them. It features bank of knobs to tweak and tear apart sounds that can easily be used in real time — which is great for performance and for quick work during composition. It also has a superb multi-effects engine to modify sounds even further. One can run any outside sound source through the effects via an external jack, and the Fizmo has a built-in vocoder for processing one's voice via the keyboard. I spoke with Scott Peer, who worked for Ensoniq during the development of the Fizmo and now runs SoUnDEnGiNe.com, a self-proclaimed \"creative outlet\" where he offers new synth patches to musicians. They've just released a wonderful collection of more meat-and-potatoes sounds for the synth called \"Fizmo World\", which were designed by Craig Snoke, another Ensoniq/Fizmo alumnus. Previous to Ensoniq, Scott worked for Sequential Circuits, Peavey, Fostex, and Passport. Scott started at Ensoniq in 1996 with the position of Sr. Software Engineer, where he wrote sample import code, worked on the synthesizer engine for the MR-Rack, which eventually evolved into the MR/ZR-76 and the ASR-X series — the same synth engine used in the Fizmo. He acted as project leader and Software Engineering Manager for a group of 4-5 engineers, QA, and Technical Documentation. Soon after, he was promoted to Director of Product Development, which coordinated efforts between Marketing and Engineering to specify and develop product concepts. The Fizmo stands alone in a musical community riddled with synths attempting to model other ones. It's no virtual modeler, nor is it very common-sounding. I believe that its oddball approach, collection of strange sound patches and means of creating even weirder user sounds really put people off when it was released. Scott has unique insight into the Fizmo, it's concept, uniqueness and untimely demise.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What was the creative spark behind the conception of the Fizmo? What were the original ideas for this synthesizer?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Originally, Fizmo was referred to as PHYS-MO. Bill Mauchly (Ensoniq Chief Scientist) and I were talking about developing a synthesizer around a chip called the OTTO-FX which combined the ASR-10 Synth Engine and Effects Engine on one piece of silicon. This chip never shipped in a commercial MI (Musical Instrument) product. What eventually evolved was a product based upon Transwaves, which I felt were the most compelling new sound synthesis technology that Ensoniq had in hand. Things really started to happen after Waveboy (aka the aforementioned Bill Mauchly) and Soundengine.com (aka me) independently released two transwave products for the ASR-10.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"When the idea for the synth was pitched to Ensoniq what was the response?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The idea of a transwave synth was pitched to Ensoniq management. I was Director of Product Development at the time, so my role was essentially to generate consensus among Engineering and Marketing Management. I convinced the Director of Marketing, the VP of sales and marketing, and the VP of M.I. Engineering that this was financially viable product, and we got started.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"How was the Fizmo to be marketed?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"As a non-\"me too\" analog simulation synthesizer. The notion was that it initially would have more appeal in Europe (with all of the dance music being written there) than in the US.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"How long was it actually on the market before being discontinued?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It was actively marketed for about six months. Around the time Fizmo was to be released, Creative Labs decided to merge the Ensoniq MI division with Emu.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Why was it discontinued?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Creative Labs decided to pull all of the engineers that were working on MI products in Malvern (Ensoniq) back onto Sound Card, Video Card and other Multimedia related products. The engineers who remain are still doing this. It's all history now, and in the long run, it really doesn't matter. Fizmo has a history of defects because of one simple reason. It was manufactured by a team of people (the Creative Labs Malvern Manufacturing Team) that were frankly, tired of making keyboards. They were more focused on seeing the hundreds of thousands of Audio and Graphics PC cards go down the product line. Keyboards were much more bothersome to build, because there is much more craftsmanship involved. As I understand it, most of the Fizmo-related defects are power supply related, which means that it's likely that an inferior supplier was chosen for cost reasons.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What do you think were the reasons for it not being very popular? \"Fizmo Bashing\" is evident on synth review archive sites.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I think the main reasons behind the Fizmo-bashing are two-fold: [1] For some reason, the message about it not being a virtual analog synth wasn't related well enough, and when customers tried it out, they couldn't find the TB-303 patch or the \"Jump\" patch. [2] I think the factory set of presets is a bit too \"evolutionary\" in nature. What I mean by this is that I have seen the typical way people normally try out sounds on a keyboard in a music store. They have one hand on the Preset button, and the other on the keyboard. If the sound they select doesn't hit home within 1-2 notes, they hit Preset. This method, of course, doesn't let the dynamic, synthetic, transwave technology be heard in Fizmo. Try selecting sounds this way — I think you'll agree.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What do you think are the most innovative and unique things about the Fizmo? What got overlooked?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Transwaves, audio processing through the best sounding effects in the business.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What do you think are its most detrimental attributes? What really hurt its chances with users.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I think if I had the opportunity to design it again, I would include an LCD display with text characters.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Tell me a bit about SoundEngine.com and what your mission with that company is.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"SoUnDEnGiNe.com has been around since 1991! At Peavey, where I worked in a life prior to Ensoniq, my employment agreement laid claim to all materials that I developed there, including any sound programming that I did at home. I did programs for all of the synths I designed at Peavey, as well as at Sequential Circuits, where I worked before that. I always wanted to have a sound development company, and when the Internet started to take off, it was a natural venue for me to market what I had created. SoUnDEnGiNe.com now has evolved into something much more. I view it as a creative outlet for me, and an opportunity for sound developers worldwide to apply what I have learned in participating in online sales for 9 years, to market their sounds. I am fortunate to work with extremely talented sound developers from Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and the US. I offer a more generous royalty than other sound development houses. I look at SoUnDEnGiNe.com as a collective. With that perspective, the last two years have been the most rewarding in the company's history.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Why have you released a new collection of patches for the Fizmo? Is there a renewed interest in this synth?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I don't know if there is renewed interest. Craig Snoke and I have maintained a friendship since we both left Ensoniq, and this was something he wanted to bring to market. Good thing he did — sales have been great!","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Why do you feel that many experimental and industrial musicians have embraced the Fizmo?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Because they get it. They held Middle C on the keyboard for more than 1 second, and tweaked the knobs rather than press the Preset button. I applaud them. They understand that Fizmo is a completely unique sounding synthesizer. Joe Kramer (the former product manager for Fizmo at Ensoniq) and I joke that in 2005, Fizmo will be as valuable as TB303s were two years ago, because they are so rare and unique — a cult classic.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"With all the modeling devices popping up every day, there seems to be a revival of synthesis lately. Please share your thoughts on this.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"We were discussing this the other day. I agree that there is more synthesis out there. Call me a dinosaur (and to some degree, I call myself one), but I think most of what is considered \"the revival\" in synthesis is software based products. This technology sounds good, but being the Brontosaurus that I am, it's not fun nor interactive enough for me to tweak virtual knobs on a CRT. I want the buttons and lights. They are what keeps me interested enough that I look up at the clock and realize is 1:30 AM.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"More Fizmo Resources:","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"\n\n","type":"text"},{"text":"Fizmo Users Group","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"link","attrs":{"rel":"noopener noreferrer nofollow","href":"http://cortidesign.com/Fizmo/Fizmo.html","target":"_blank"}}]},{"text":"\n\n","type":"text"},{"text":"SoundEngine","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"link","attrs":{"rel":"noopener noreferrer nofollow","href":"http://soundengine.com/","target":"_blank"}}]},{"text":"\n\n","type":"text"},{"text":"MP3 Fizmo Users Station (artists using Fizmos)","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"link","attrs":{"rel":"noopener noreferrer nofollow","href":"http://www.mp3.com/stations/Fizmo_users_group","target":"_blank"}}]}]}]},"tiptapIntroJson":null,"primaryImage":null,"publicationDate":"2002-01-06T08:00:00.000Z","featuredImageUrl":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/common/gear/gear-iso-pad.webp","excerpt":"I'm a Fizzer. I'm one of the lucky folks who own, play and love a "loveable loser" of a digital synthesizer with the funny name of Fizmo. It was available from synth and music company Ensoniq a couple of years ago, but didn't last long for several reasons. I
...","url":"/tutorials/latest/fizmo-synthesizer-was-and","authorName":"Jeff McLeod","authorSlug":null,"contributors":[{"id":"bd19336e-eb53-421c-9042-558086e6bdd2","name":"Jeff McLeod","role":"author","firstName":"Jeff","lastName":"McLeod"}],"viewCount":34118,"showCoverImageIntro":true},{"id":"96cd420f-3d83-4c6d-8cad-e1c4098fc624","title":"Greg Sage of Zeno Studios and The Wipers","slug":"greg-sage-zeno-studios-and-wipers","subtitle":null,"issueNumber":null,"tiptapJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I first discovered The Wipers in a basement record shop in Southeast Portland. I picked up Silver Sail and was blown away by the sonic quality. I quickly found myself buying all The Wipers' albums I could find on any format; vinyl, cassette, and yes, even CD. But it didn't stop there. I soon found myself researching the band's past, but the more I learned the more mysterious The Wipers and Greg Sage became. Then I hit a brick wall. The Herd was the latest Wipers' album released and from what I heard maybe the final album. Had I known that this was almost the norm following each release of a Wipers' album, it wouldn't have mattered. But I didn't know that then, so I turned to the albums I had and studied them intently. The Wipers have an unmistakable \"sound\" that is unique solely to them. All their albums retain this \"sound\" yet none of their albums sound alike. It was this concept that nearly drove me mad on many occasions and ultimately led to this interview.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"How did you first get into recording? What initially spawned you?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I used to have a professional record cutting machine. I think it was fifth or sixth grade. My dad used to work in broadcast and I guess all the radio stations used to use these professional lathes for cutting commercials. Then they went to tape cartridges or something; so there was a big surplus of these. My dad happened to know somebody at the TV station he worked at and they had a lathe just sitting in a room.taking up space. So I got it for like a hundred bucks.It had a Grampion Head and everything else; including a microscope. So I started cutting back then. You could find blank red lacquers at Goodwill and things like that for a nickel a piece because there was a big surplus of that stuff. Cutting needles and everything else, just because there were a lot of home cutting machines. I would cut stuff off the radio for kids at school. I spent a lot of time looking at the grooves through the microscope; inspecting my work. It got me kinda interested in playing music. Basically that's where it started for me musically. As far as recording goes,. it just kinda carried over from cutting records.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Did you graduate to a four track?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah. I think the first tape machine I had was a four track Tascam and a small eight channel mixing board.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Then it just kinda took off?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Well yeah, once I started making records I was just in the habit of recording my own stuff so it just slowly built up over the years.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What was the first band you recorded besides yourself or The Wipers?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The first band, oh man there's been so many. I couldn't tell you.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Did you ever have a job at an outside studio?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I tried to when I was sixteen. It was like the major studio in Portland, I forget what it was called.... NWI, I think, where \"Louie, Louie\" and stuff was cut at. I almost got a job there, but I lied about my age. Once they found out about that, it was like \"Um, sorry kid you have to be eighteen.\" I never worked for any other studio. I did freelance stuff.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"So bands would just hear what you've done and ask if you could help them out?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, in the early days I used to record a lot of the local bands.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I've read that The Wipers' \"sound\" was due to the VTDI (Vacuum Tube Direct) preamps and the technology that you're making yourself. How did you get into that and when did you start building your own equipment?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It would have been around '77 or something. Once I started making records I was always extremely poor; we never got paid from any of our record labels, or from record sales. So it became apparent that it was really difficult for me to rent equipment, from friends and stuff. Renting a house or whatever. It all added up. I had always worked with tube equipment ever since I had started cutting records, and I've just always noticed that tubes have a specific sound to them. This was back in the day where people would give me a lot of crap. People would laugh when I talked about vacuum tubes because solid state was the only thing out there. Even professionals, other studios, and engineers would just laugh and call me prehistoric. Because I saw value in vacuum tubes. I just started learning all that I could about it, it was kind of a lost art form during the 70s. Tubes were basically cast out. Even the old equipment that would be revered these days, people would laugh at. I bought a pair of Telefunken ELM 2500s for $300 in pristine shape from a studio. The studio just went out and bought all new shiny Neumanns. Stuff like the Telefunkens was just considered junk. It wasn't until the later mid-80s that people started realizing that new isn't always better. I never had money to buy equipment, so I just started teaching myself as much as I could about electronics. It was a hard field because you could hardly find information on it and no one I met knew anything about vacuum tubes. The only electronic people I knew were just strictly solid state. So, I just started experimenting, I would tear apart equipment that I liked the sound of and I would study it's circuitry. I started breadboarding circuits that I found that I thought sounded good, then I started experimenting with different topologies. Which, in those days, were just unheard of like ground plaining, zero point grounds, and dual match grounds. Things that might've been used in radar equipment or something that had that super high band width, but I was self taught so I had no idea. I'd say after about two years of basically tearing stuff apart and learning from it that way. I started building circuits that I thought sounded pretty good, the stuff I built was strictly for my own production. It was just the sounds I was looking for. I always looked for something that was very open and very natural sounding. Not anything that was clean or pristine, but my sound uses a lot of distortion to simulate the distortion of the every day world. I found it really hard to find any type preamp that could mirror distortion, some of the best equipment just didn't know how to understand distortion and it just sounded horrible. I always looking at the coloration and such. I just started building for my own purposes with not ever really thinking about selling any of it. Then I designed a direct box and it probably one of the first vacuum tube direct boxes in that period of time. There weren't any companies at all producing tube equipment. I mean at all. By the time I got it to where there was a lot of interest in my direct boxes, like a lot of major studios had purchase them from me (even in Hollywood). But I never had money to market it and by the time I really kind of got it together, it was like everybody and their dog was making tube equipment. I never got into the competition of it, I build like 4 or 5 different types of mic preamps for different things. Vocals, guitars.....All with a different speed characteristics. You want something fast for drums, something medium speed for vocals, just depending on what you're working on.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"So if someone came to you with an idea for a preamp and asked you to build it would you be open to that?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, I build like guitar preamps, keyboard preamps, vacuum tube stuff with really radical passive EQ. I build stuff that you can basically use as a front end into an amplifier. Whenever I go to Europe, on tour, I usually get stuck with the horrible sounding newer Marshall that has zero tone. So I built my own front preamps that I bring with me so I can pull some tone out of those amps. Or just plug them directly into the power tube section. I'm more into building speciality stuff. I don't build anything that seems to be the trend. There were a lot of pro-audio stores in the Northwest that were really interested in taking some of my stuff, but we get into these arguments because they insisted that the trend was balanced outputs. I work with unbalanced out in a balanced environment. If you are running a small signal like a microphone over 25 ft., yeah, you need to balance it, but I mean, where it's a trend where if you sell something that's unbalanced out it's not considered the flavor of the month. I don't even bother competing because I build all sorts of circuits. I've built a lot of balanced equipment and personally I just use, myself, what I think sounds the best. Unbalanced out is the way to go, all my equipment in the studio has been switched over to unbalanced in and unbalanced out except for microphones. I kept my cable lengths under 12-14ft. and the amount of punch and clarity you gain that way is just unbelievable. You can argue with people all day long about how good this is, but they don't use their ears. They just talk about what they read; I use my ears to design equipment.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Over The Edge seemed to stand out in the mid-80s as an unique sounding Wipers' record. What went on during those sessions?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"All I can say is that I never tried to mimic what I did before. It depends on the mood, it depends on the set of songs, and it depends on the situation. On that particular record I had to rent a house and use the basement to record it in. It was all on rented equipment. On that album I used a particular amp and it just had a characteristic. A lot of the records I make I try to make real characteristic if possible. Some people pick out one record and say \"Why did you depart from this\" But I say \"Why don't I just record the same songs and album.\" You would be surprised how many people comment that they didn't like the new record because it wasn't anything like the last one. That's been repeating consistently for over 20 years so you tell me...... It's hard to make a record sound characteristic. Over The Edge had a certain type of song content and it was very, very limited as far as equipment goes. I basically rolled off all the low end completely on that record. That's the way that record felt. It just felt like it shouldn't have any low end. It made it very vocal and very guitar. That record I got nothing, but 99% insults over for the first six years because of that. No one seemed to understand that it's like being a photographer. I mean you don't just take a picture, sometimes you work with filters, sometimes you work with lighting, sometimes you work with depth of field to create an actual illusion with what you're shooting. I approach music and recording in the same way. In fact this record (The Power in One) I've been working on for the past two years is very much different. It's basically very raw and just very unproduced.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Back to the ethics of early punk?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"If there were ethics involved with that. It was just the feel that should go with this record. It has more.......I don't know how to describe it........the sound is just very raw and under produced. I'll get crap for that too, I'm sure. The funny thing is, when Is This Real? (The Wipers first album) first came out it was just totally put down, until about 8, 9 years later. Now it's considered a punk classic, like on a pedestal. But that record was totally rejected for nine years, Youth of America was rejected for seven years, Over The Edge was totally rejected for about....Well it actually did really well in the beginning, but in the main circles for what was going on at the time, it was totally, totally rejected for six years. That's kind of how I like to do it. It's not a good business decision, but I think it's kinda important that music can survive over three months.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"How did your first solo album Straight Ahead come about?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"After I recorded Over The Edge, I had $5,000 invested into that record. The record company went bankrupt, so they took the money and started a new label. We got screwed and I had no way of paying back the debt, so that was the end of The Wipers. I was out in the Mohave desert and I wrote a bunch of songs on the acoustic guitar, I fixed a tape recorder for somebody. An eight track recorder, so I got to use it for a month as a fee for fixing it, I guess. I just recorded those songs. Then one day someone called from a record label, a guy that used to work for the label that screwed us, and he said \"I feel sorry for you guys\" and I told him that I didn't have any Wipers stuff for him and that The Wipers didn't exist anymore. Anyway, the label, licensed Straight Ahead, a live record, some old tapes and basically got me out of debt for Over The Edge. If I never recorded those songs, Over The Edge would've been The Wipers' last record.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What process led up to the building of Zeno Studios?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"At the time, I was getting requests from lots of large bands that were well known, to produce records for them. A lot of indie labels wanted me to produce records for them. I had a bunch of equipment, but I had no place to set it up. Then I found this old church building and decided to build a studio. By the time it was finished the whole industry changed. Indie labels just don't exist any more, or don't have any money to give their artists recording budgets, and Arizona isn't a mecca for the music industry.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You acoustically designed Zeno Studios. What was intent with that design, what did you want to bring out?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Guitar and drums. I've worked in other studios for other projects and I never liked how you would have to spend four to six hours trying to get drums to sound like drums. I just never like the economy way of dealing with acoustics, which would be using sound deadening material. So I had this mill cut me so many board feet of Ponderosa pine, I built all these arches....The studio is 70-85% all wood, so it has a real nice sound for guitar and drums. You can bring drums in there and in about 45 minutes you're ready to track.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Beside the VTDI preamps do you have any pieces of gear you like? Do you build everything you use?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I got 12 channels of tube preamps that I've built, got EQs that I've built, direct preamps that I've built for just going direct to tape through the board. I got tube compressors that I've built, I have an old Trident mixing board that I totally stripped out and redesigned. I put newer op amp circuitry in it. An ATR 16-track 1\", a Studer two-track. Yeah, I don't have much money for equipment or anything, but most of the stuff I have that sounds good is just stuff I've built or redesigned.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Do you have a favorite mic that you use?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"My favorite all time mic was the Telefunken ELM. They were just like a human ear, they were just so amazing...magical sounding. I like the U47. My tube preamps are just amazing sounding with [Shure] 57s, so those are the ones I use the most. I use the Electro Voice, that little egg shape mic, MV40BB, I think. I use those a lot on guitar now instead of 57s. But for vocals I use a 57 into a tube mic preamp. I got a lot of mics and a 57 is the one that I think works, but it only works through the right tube preamp. It just has the right characteristics. I got some AKG tube mics, I don't use those very much. The main mic I use now is that egg shaped EV and the 57s.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Have you ever tried to build a mic?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"No.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"No interest in it?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Not that I have no interest in it, it's just the finance. We're not like a digital, animated mixdown, or computer-based studio. Only being 16-track with link up 24; we just don't bring in the type of business that can warrant spending tons of money.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Do you have any strange mic'ing techniques that you've used?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Nothing really weird, I've used some plastic PVC tubing. Put a mic in one end and a headphone transducer in the other end, about ten feet of distance, to get some weird sounds. I mic drums from a distance, we have a 14 ft. ceiling for drums. But you know, I mic snare somewhat close-up I don't mic snare as close as most people do. A lot has to do with the tube preamps that I built for mic'ing snare too. They're really open sounding so you don't need to close mic stuff as much. For guitar I, 99% of the time, mic those close up. I'm experimental with a lot of tracks, but I don't find much merit in it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I know you're not one for influences, but was there any album's whose production blew you away?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Not really. I kinda liked, I forget the studio name, I think it was maybe Sunset Sound.I liked the sound that came out of that studio. The Forever Changes album by Love, I like the recording style on that. It's probably just an eight track, but I like the sound of the acoustic guitars. The way the drums were recorded was probably just one mic, with nothing on the kick drum. It had a really tube-y sound to it and I kinda liked that. I like the sound of some older records just because of the tube mics that they used. Not that it's my cup of tea, but I liked the sound of the vocals on the early Beach Boys because they were definitely all U47s. The same with the early Beatles, U47s onto an Ampex 440 or some other four track going at 30 ips. Nice sound, something you never hear these days. When I drive I scan through radio channels and it's just weird. When you scan through all the modern stuff, and then you hit an oldies channel and it plays something from the late sixties. Man, the sonic difference is just.....","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Amazing.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Well it's just the color, it's got body to it and color to it. You can taste the color of it. The thing about modern recordings is that they're transparent and in your face. It's like the difference between film and video tape, or the difference between real wood or a Formica table top. Modern stuff is very pristine and in your face, but then it's just single dimension. See I record super super analog. So it has this three dimensional sound quality. Everything I do is super analog, then when I go to master, I just end up being very depressed. The way I record actually hinders the way it ends up in the modern world. when you master now it goes through digital processing. I just watch the 3D color fly away with little wings. The last time I mastered, it wasn't one of my projects, I actually insisted that it goes straight from the convertor, bypassing the mixing board, and into a three band limiter/compressor. I never have to EQ any of the stuff I mix. The most I've ever had to EQ, when mastering, was half a dB at 50 and maybe a half dB at 4.7 just so there's some EQ in the circuitry. So I can take something I mix and bypass all the convertors, and that's the thing with digital, if you can bypass as many converters as you possibly can. You go into a mixing console, that has tons of convertors in it, go into digital compression,.that has tons of convertors in it. Every conversion you go into takes away the realism or color. So the last thing I mastered I went from the 24 bit convertor straight into a three band compressor directly onto hard disk. I was able to keep about 30% of the imaging. Which is pretty good considering that at a high end place, at best, you're able to keep about 6%.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Any suggestions for young recordists out there?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Learn how to do it yourself. I mean the music industry is so bad right now. There's just no money in it. I was lucky that I taught myself everything, it was out of necessity that I did. I think that if you are going to survive in this day and age, the more you can do on your own, the better chance you have.","type":"text"}]}]},"tiptapIntroJson":null,"primaryImage":null,"publicationDate":"2000-01-20T08:00:00.000Z","featuredImageUrl":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/common/gear/gear-iso-pad.webp","excerpt":"I first discovered The Wipers in a basement record shop in Southeast Portland. I picked up Silver Sail and was blown away by the sonic quality. I quickly found myself buying all The Wipers' albums I could find on any format; vinyl, cassette, and yes, even CD. But it didn't
...","url":"/tutorials/latest/greg-sage-zeno-studios-and-wipers","authorName":"Bryan Bingold","authorSlug":null,"contributors":[{"id":"eb96282a-8dfa-4a97-9bb2-f1884126851a","name":"Bryan Bingold","role":"author","firstName":"Bryan","lastName":"Bingold"}],"viewCount":64690,"showCoverImageIntro":true},{"id":"711d38e5-dbd4-4ab4-a812-d66089a12a38","title":"Bob Rock","slug":"bob-rock","subtitle":"Metallica, Mötley Crüe, & More","issueNumber":121,"tiptapJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Mötley Crüe's ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"Dr. Feelgood","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" turned 25 a few years ago. That sound helped usher in a new, mainstream respectability for metal production. What were you hearing differently from the rest of your peers to inspire you?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"My production, at that point, was more to do with sonics. In the '80s, production was about sonics; about the sound. Coming from an engineering/mixing background, I went into Mötley with that in mind. With ","type":"text"},{"text":"Dr. Feelgood","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", I was trying to make everything as big and powerful as I possibly could. There was no preconception as to what I was doing. It was more like, \"Okay, let's get in there!\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Do you consider pre-production an invaluable and essential part of the record-making process?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Pre-production with me – for every band – is the same. Every time I've short-changed pre-production, it's never really worked. I try to get into a rehearsal hall with a really basic tape recorder and work on all the songs – the structure, the riffs – and find out what's missing. I work on the drum beats, guitar parts, vocal parts, and figure out what needs to be worked on. It always works; any song worth recording should stand on its own with just one mic in the room. So that's what I try to do.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Your drum sound is legendary. How did you create and capture that to tape?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Back then it was the beginnings of hip-hop, and I think bottom [end] was becoming bigger and bigger. My mic techniques that I had at that point were all ones I'd picked up from working with the different people. Then, in time, I'd adopted my own sound. Everything is derivative so, for instance, when Bob Clearmountain [","type":"text"},{"text":"Tape Op","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" #84] was in the studio working with Bryan Adams, I'd go in at night after session, look at all the mics, and combine that with other people I had worked with through the years. It was a question of learning good mic'ing techniques. It's pretty much stayed ","type":"text"},{"text":"the","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" drum sound – without being mixed – it's pretty much what I get these days. Back then, I used a [Sennheiser MD] 421 in the kick, an [Electro-Voice] RE20, and usually a [Shure SM]57 or [Shure SM]86 on the snare. For overheads I used [Neumann U] 87s or [AKG C] 460 Bs, room mics were condensers, and I've always double-mic'd my toms; top and bottom. That's stayed the same, pretty much to today. Metallica records are slightly different. With ","type":"text"},{"text":"The Black Album","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" there was maybe another 40% of top-end on everything; I think everything became a little tighter, and there was a lot more damping. A lot of Tommy Lee's drumming, back then, I think the big shocker there was I had to open up the mics – he was such a loud hitter that he would actually compress the drums. He hit so hard that the drum would almost compress itself, so I remember I would have to back off the mics. It was really a question of trying to tame that energy, as well as getting the right distance on the cymbal mics because of the size of the cymbals. I think the big thing with the sound of the drums on these albums came in the mixing. In mixing it was pretty much Tommy pushing me, and me figuring out a way to make it happen.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You broke some new ground in relation to the hybrid way you built out Tommy Lee's drum sound on Dr. Feelgood. Could you deconstruct that for us?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"By using samples in conjunction with the drum kit to get the weight and the size of the drums. Tommy would tap me on the shoulder and say, \"Rockhead, could I have a little more bottom?\" Of course we'd add bottom to the kick; the kick would be thumping, and there wouldn't be any bass [guitar]. Then we'd increase the bass and the definition would be gone. If you listen to the beginning of ","type":"text"},{"text":"Dr. Feelgood","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", what I did was triggered a bass tone with an AMS [digital delay] – like one hit on the bass that's hammered. And that's with the kick drum. In mixing the drums on that record, it was a question of detuning, as well as finding the right balance between all of those drums and the guitars. The best thing I can do to describe that (and then what I did on ","type":"text"},{"text":"The Black Album","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" in comparison) was \"weight.\" I tried to give as much weight to the drums as possible.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"sidebarExtension","attrs":{"title":"","variant":"default"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[object Object]","type":"text"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"On the heels of ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"Dr. Feelgood","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", Metallica's ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"The Black Album","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" took radio and MTV by storm. When you got the call to do that record, what new territory were you looking to take the band into?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Metallica told me that they sought me out to produce ","type":"text"},{"text":"The Black Album","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" based on the drum sound I'd gotten for Tommy on ","type":"text"},{"text":"Dr. Feelgood","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":".","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What strengths of each player were you focusing on to get the best sound out of both their kits, and with the natural way they each hit the drums as players?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I think what Tommy always brought to Mötley was pushing the muso-quality of the band. He was always trying to push, like with the different beats. For instance, with ","type":"text"},{"text":"Dr. Feelgood","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", things got a little funkier. In terms of the rhythms before, it had always been pretty straight ahead. All of a sudden, with ","type":"text"},{"text":"Dr. Feelgood","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", Tommy sort of broke away from what had been their traditional drumming sound. To me, Tommy, as a drummer, is like an open nerve end, whereas [Metallica's] Lars Ulrich is probably closer to Keith Moon than anything. Tommy is a classic back-beat drummer; he is the basis and a rhythm kind of guy. He does have syncopation, but he's a rhythm machine. Whereas what makes Lars Ulrich's drumming so wonderful and so unique is that he's reactive to the music. ","type":"text"},{"text":"The Black Album","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" was him consciously trying to be more of a backbeat, keep-the-time kind of guy. Most of his fills and unique drumming all comes out of the fact that he plays to the riff of the music, much like with The Who. The Who and Metallica are very similar, because Keith Moon played to Pete Townshend's solid rhythm playing, and Lars Ulrich has always played to James Hetfield's solid rhythms. I don't believe Lars thinks in the terms that most drummers do, I think he thinks in a musical world that is unique. He plays to the riff, rather than trying to ","type":"text"},{"text":"control","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" the riff.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"When you're collaborating with personalities as strong as those of Metallica's James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, where did you look to strike a balance as production decisions were made on ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"The Black Album","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":"?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Lars and James are equally the life-blood of Metallica; that is a marriage when it comes to Metallica. Not at all short-changing Kirk Hammett [lead guitarist]. Kirk has always been the mediator between the two, but James and Lars – when they're both strong – they're the sound of Metallica. When one or the other dominates in any situation, it changes drastically.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The \"Bob Rock Guitar Sound\" still reverberates in today's world. What are some of the secrets?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I think the one thing with me is to always try to get the guitar player involved, and get what he wants. I think that comes from my engineering background, and being a guitar player myself. I had some early experiences in the late 1970's and early 1980's, when I started. In some cases the producer and the engineer used to supply the drum kits and amplifiers, and say, \"Here're the drums you're using. Here're the amps you're using.\" There were so many rules, and growing up in the industry I was thinking, \"You guys have got it all wrong. You're supposed to try and capture what these guys are ","type":"text"},{"text":"doing","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", rather than trying to force them into sounding like this or that.\" Right from the beginning I learned to get in sync with the guitar player and his sound. I think the big thing that I brought to both Mick Mars and James Hetfield was using multiple amps, as well as using the differences in phasing, cabs, and heads that all combined to get one sound. Different volumes on different amps, for different frequencies and clarity. That's basically what I've always done to record guitars. Multiple amps and multiple mics, and finding that sound. It's basically a process of building the sound in the studio. Some people, like Eddie Van Halen, throw one mic in front of an amp and make it work. I think sometimes you have to build that sound. I use [Shure SM]57s, [Sennheiser MD] 421s, and [Neumann U] 87s when I'm mic'ing amps. I think the big thing with amps for Mars' sound was that he used Jose [Arredondo] modified Marshall [amp heads], which John Sykes [Whitesnake] was using. I used that same amp on ","type":"text"},{"text":"The Black Album","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", and really every album I've made since. That became a mainstay.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"When you were matching microphones to amplifiers, what was your approach with each player?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Mick's sound is about size and sheer volume, not unlike James Hetfield, John Sykes, or other players who have a big, monster sound. That has a lot to do with Black Sabbath and Tony Iommi; that style of playing with single-note riffs. That sound is like a monstrous power-chord. That has to do with the playing, and Mars has a style that is very much ","type":"text"},{"text":"his","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":". Very light strings, and a very soft touch, but very loud. I tried to get on tape what I heard. We went through all the cabinets, I got him involved in the control room, and we did it 'til we got it right. That was it. The big thing is Mars, like James, has different amps – you get four different Marshalls and you get four different sounds. When I group Mick Mars and James Hetfield together, I do so for what they bring to their bands. As players, make no mistake, I would say James Hetfield is absolutely the best rhythm signature-sound guy I've ever recorded. It's phenomenal. I can pick up the same guitar, with the same amp, a minute after he's played and it will sound like crap compared to him. He's got ","type":"text"},{"text":"that","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":". Mick Mars is much the same way. I can't pick up Mick Mars' guitar after he's played and make it sound like he does. I would say the sound of Metallica is built more around James, where I would say Mars is the collective in Mötley. As far as Mars' playing, I think it comes down to him being solid as a rock. Mick brings it all together; the wildness that Nikki [Sixx] and Tommy have, respectively. Even in his solos, and the little things he does in terms of accentuation, nothing is wild. It sounds wild, but it's really well played and executed. I think he's highly underrated. To me, this goes back to some of the better players that have had these great signature sounds in bands: it's Tony Iommi, James Hetfield, or Mick Mars. These guys are the backbone of the band; there're always the drummers that are responsible for the rhythm, but I think one of the reasons why Tommy works is because the guitar playing is so solid. Tommy can't do what he wants, all the syncopation, and all the other tricks he likes to do, without a solid player behind him. Mars is like Pete Townshend; he's really rock solid.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"James Hetfield credits you with being the first producer to actually coach real \"singing\" vocal performances out of him. What's your approach to helping a lead singer find their voice?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"During ","type":"text"},{"text":"The Black Album","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" James Hetfield became a singer. It was something that he wanted to work on, where with Vince Neil [Mötley Crüe], I think he likes to do his \"thing\" and that's it. I don't think there's any conscious effort on his part to say, \"I want to be somebody else. I want to work on this and improve.\" Vince is a realistic guy who knows what he is, and what he does, and that's fine with him. That's the funny thing; Vince really gets where he is in the band, and he really gets Mötley Crüe. He is the perfect Mötley Crüe guy, realistically.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"As a producer you've had to navigate some heavy moments, like in the Metallica documentary, ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"Some Kind of Monster","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":". Is there any advice you'd share about how to bring that balance to the studio?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"My philosophy is that with any band, an individual's mind will ruin anything good. Basically, \"logic\" in bands, and individual personalities, destroy bands. Rock music, and heavy rock music, are as artistic as classical or jazz. There's a dynamic to it that's very delicate and mysterious. It's a delicate balance, within all those personalities – there are so many things that come into it. I think working with both Mötley and Metallica through the years, as well as any other band that I've had a long relationship with, it's individual personalities – those people, their thoughts, and their logic – and some of the things they come up with, ruin the music and the bands. It's what bands do, from The Beatles up to whoever's falling apart at the moment. It's impossible to completely prevent it, much like you can't reverse the divorce rate. I think today, more than ever, is the generation of \"me.\" I think musicians are definitely, first and foremost, huge in terms of egos and the \"me factor\" in today's music. I think that's why so many bands fall apart.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Critics, fans, and bands have referred to the \"Bob Rock Sound.\"","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I hope there isn't a signature Bob Rock sound, because I've worked many years so that it ","type":"text"},{"text":"doesn't","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" happen. I like making records, and I like making records that interest me, and there's not supposed to be any formula in that. To be quite honest, I'm not into being a career record producer. It's not about ","type":"text"},{"text":"my","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" career. There was a time in my life where it was, but since ","type":"text"},{"text":"The Black Album","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" I've tried to be a better producer, as well as work with bands I find interesting and challenging at any given moment, and help them realize what they want to do. It's not a Bob Rock record; it's never been about me.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You've created studio masterpieces in both the analog and digital eras of sound recording. What are your thoughts on the pros and cons of working in one medium vs. the other?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Our industry has changed so much that – unless you've got the money or the time – you've got to use Pro Tools. I think we all love the sound of analog and what it does. I still do prefer the sound of it. But there are some great things with Pro Tools now. The record companies are giving out less money to make records. The time factor is even worse than it's ever been, and if you're making records these days, you've got to use Pro Tools because it's the standard. There are probably very few bands in the world that can even do it in analog anymore, timewise, to get it the way it should be done. The thing you've got to remember is that Pro Tools or analog, these are just the tools we use to make records. I think it was five or six years ago, I actually sat down and finally went, \"You know what? I kind of feel like I know what I'm doing.\" Not that I know everything, but I just felt that after 25 years of doing this, I have a certain amount of confidence. Like I feel I could go in front of anybody and get something good. I think that comes with working hard for 25 years, starting with sweeping floors at Little Mountain Sound Studios, working up through the whole gamut of analog and digital, and trying to be good. My life has always been about music. I love music; it's the biggest thing in my life, second only to my family. That's what I live for. I think it's a huge commitment, in terms of the love of music and the time and work that you have to do. To me, it's not something you can learn in three or four years. I think youth brings energy, and I think that's a fantastic thing, but with age and experience comes another aspect that I, more and more, cherish. And that's with anything; whether it's people who write books that are older, or people who make movies. There's this experience aspect that you can't underestimate.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"How does that translate to advice for the younger generation of Millennial laptop producers?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I'd say to anyone who is young, \"Just work your butt off, absorb as much as you possibly can, and use whatever tool you have in front of you to do the best job you can.\" Also, \"Don't stand for anything,\" that's the other thing. It's interesting how many people are like, \"I'm the analog guy,\" or, \"I'm the digital guy,\" or, \"I'm the programming guy.\" They're just tools. Somebody said to me many moons ago, \"A poor carpenter blames his tools.\" That's what I would say. The guys who I respect, who are still working today in this business, do so because they've been working at it for a long time. They're really good at what they do because they've spent a lot of time in the studio, as well as listening to records, forming opinions, and doing it. There's no substitute for experience. That goes for musicians too. The bottom line is you've gotta hang in there if you're young. Do as many records as possible, and work really hard. Most people really get work in this business, not because of some manager or school, rather they get work and stay in the business because of the last record they made. It's about people digging what you do, and so that's what you've got to do. Lots of it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What advice would you share with aspiring producers, should they have the good fortune to start working with bigger and bigger bands?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"With every job I do, I work at that record so I get to do another one. I don't take any of this for granted, because I work at the pleasure of the band. It's always like, \"I've got to do the best I can 'cause I hope somebody likes it. If somebody hears it, maybe I'll get another gig.\" With anybody, I want to do the best I can so I can get another job. The day after ","type":"text"},{"text":"The Black Album","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" went number one, I was worried about where I was getting my next job. I still do. It's part of the business. I still hear all the things that are wrong with ","type":"text"},{"text":"Dr. Feelgood","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", and ","type":"text"},{"text":"The Black Album,","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" and all the records I've made since and before. All the things I would change. Like I said, I feel like I know what I'm doing, but I still feel like I learn every single day.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What gives you the greatest joy about continuing to get out of bed and head to the studio each day?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"On a personal level, it's always been about trying to make the band happy, because I know – through personal experience – what it's like to make a record and not be happy with it. I lived with that early on in my career, and it's just the worst thing. I've always been an artist-driven producer. I guess it's as simple as wanting to be remembered for helping the bands I work with make the best albums they could.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Bob Rock Playlist on Spotify","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"link","attrs":{"rel":"noopener noreferrer nofollow","href":"https://open.spotify.com/user/tapeopmag/playlist/4TX3IcH3IvPFW5zl7fvz0L","target":"_blank"}}]}]}]},"tiptapIntroJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Bob Rock is a foundational pillar of modern day rock and metal production, the architect of a drum and guitar sound he pioneered on cornerstone releases, including Mötley Crüe's Dr. Feelgood and Metallica's seminal The Black Album, which has sold over 16 million copies and took the heavy metal band mainstream. Looking back on 30 years, Bob Rock's approach to recording rock and metal has changed the sound of both genres forever. The following is from conversations spread over a few years between 2005 and 2012.","type":"text"}]}]},"primaryImage":{"id":"711d38e5-dbd4-4ab4-a812-d66089a12a38-primaryImage","url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/2c702478-508d-44d2-839a-209fd0940674/originals/bob-rock-covers_optimized.webp","alt":null,"caption":null,"width":1500,"height":1050,"variations":{"large":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/2c702478-508d-44d2-839a-209fd0940674/variations/1200w/bob-rock-covers.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/2c702478-508d-44d2-839a-209fd0940674/variations/1200w/bob-rock-covers.webp","width":1200,"height":840},"small":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/2c702478-508d-44d2-839a-209fd0940674/variations/320w/bob-rock-covers.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/2c702478-508d-44d2-839a-209fd0940674/variations/320w/bob-rock-covers.webp","width":320,"height":224},"medium":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/2c702478-508d-44d2-839a-209fd0940674/variations/640w/bob-rock-covers.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/2c702478-508d-44d2-839a-209fd0940674/variations/640w/bob-rock-covers.webp","width":640,"height":448},"thumbnail":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/2c702478-508d-44d2-839a-209fd0940674/variations/thumbnail/bob-rock-covers.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/2c702478-508d-44d2-839a-209fd0940674/variations/thumbnail/bob-rock-covers.webp","width":150,"height":150}},"is_primary":true,"position":0,"use_case":null},"publicationDate":"2017-09-15T07:00:00.000Z","featuredImageUrl":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/2c702478-508d-44d2-839a-209fd0940674/originals/bob-rock-covers_optimized.webp","excerpt":"Bob Rock is a foundational pillar of modern day rock and metal production, the architect of a drum and guitar sound he pioneered on cornerstone releases, including Mötley Crüe's Dr. Feelgood and Metallica's seminal The Black Album, which has sold over 16
...","url":"/tutorials/121/bob-rock","authorName":"Jake Brown","authorSlug":null,"contributors":[{"id":"9d80d276-6ff3-406f-a27a-ebf258994f72","name":"Jake Brown","role":"author","firstName":"Jake","lastName":"Brown"}],"viewCount":49790,"showCoverImageIntro":true},{"id":"1267ebdc-917a-4fc3-b6b2-7bc5b2a17ff6","title":"Fred Foster","slug":"fred-foster","subtitle":"Monuments of Sound - Roy Orbison, Ray Price, Kristofferson","issueNumber":118,"tiptapJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: You started really young, as a songwriter, writing lyrics for a production company?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It was in Washington. I left the farm in North Carolina because my dad had died. I kept the farm going for two years by myself; it nearly killed me. I said, \"I gotta get out of here.\" I had a sister in Washington who worked for the government, so I called her and said, \"Polly, I need to get out of here.\" Her husband was a really great guy, and he said, \"If I were you, I would go to someplace where you have a lot of freedom. There's a chain of restaurants here called the Hot Shoppes. Curb service, drive-in, and they have good restaurants. You can make money in tips.\" So I went to apply and got the job; $12 a week, plus tips, in 1949. I got a tip one time for $100, because it was a congressman who wanted to park in a hidden place so he could visit with his \"sweetheart.\" I put him behind the equipment shed and got them cokes. Hot Shoppes kept promoting me. The company was founded by J. Willard Marriott. They kept promoting me until finally they brought me in to run the commissary. The commissary covered one city block, curb to curb. Ground floor was the butcher shop, where they brought all their meat from out in the stockyards. Next one up was a kitchen. Next floor up was a bakery. Top floor was personnel. When they told me they wanted me to take over, I said, \"Wait a minute. I don't think I'm qualified to do that.\" By this time, they had 34 restaurants and catered all the airlines out of Washington. You could go into any one of the Hot Shoppes and get a barbecued hamburger or a cheeseburger; all the meals were done in the commissary, put in insulated cabinets, and shipped out. Now I had to judge how much each one of the restaurants would be using. And the inventory, man...","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: What year was this?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"1951. Anyway, they said, \"Yes, you can handle it.\" It was stressful. After a while I told the personnel director, \"I need to get out of here for a few days.\" He said, \"Why don't you relieve a couple of curb managers? They're going on vacation.\" So the second day I'm out at the 14th Street Hot Shoppe on the other side of Washington and I see this Cadillac in the lot at about five in the afternoon. He screeched to a halt, started blinking his lights, and blowing his horn. I go over and tell him I'll have someone with him in just a minute. He said, \"We're in a real hurry. Just bring us two barbecues and two chocolate shakes.\" All the guys were busy, so I did and he tipped me a dollar. The girl who was with him was movie star beautiful. The next afternoon he's in the lot again with a different girl, just as gorgeous. This went on for ten days. Different girls. So he said to me one day, \"When's your day off? Why don't you come down to my club?\" So I went on my night off. He was a great emcee; the greatest I ever saw. Tennessee Ernie Ford picked up a lot from him.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: What was his name?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Billy Strickland. He played steel guitar, electric guitar, and acoustic guitar really well. He had a persona that was magnetic. So I'm down in the club one time and there were about 1,400 people in there. He said, \"Ladies and gentlemen, we're so fortunate tonight to have a dear friend of mine in the house. He's one of the great songwriters of all time. I'll venture to say he said that if you name your three favorite songs, at least one this man will have written. Why don't we give a big Washington famous welcome to Mr. Fred Rose?\" I knew of Fred Rose. He'd written one of my favorite pop tunes, \"Deed I Do.\" I was spun when the spotlight hit me in the face. He said, \"Now, ladies and gentlemen, Fred and I are such good friends. I don't think it would be unduly opposing upon him to ask him to write a song before your very eyes.\" Oh, the place went berserk. I thought I was dreaming or something! Can you imagine? He said, \"Take Mr. Rose something to write on.\" Someone ran over with a legal pad. People started hitting the tabletops like rain and were lining up for an autograph. I tried to get out, but I was in a corner booth. I'd written a little bit of stuff in high school, so I wrote a poem. I sent it up to him. He looked at it and said, \"Hmm, you all are going to love this.\" He turned around to his band, called the chord changes, and kicked it off. It didn't sound bad! The place went crazy. Before I could get out, he had sung it about ten times. He made $1,300 in tips singing my song. He said, \"We wrote a pretty good song. We need to do more of it!\" Long story short, we started doing that.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: You started writing songs with Billy Strickland?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah. One night this guy [Ben Adelman] comes in, goes up to Billy – because he'd just sung one of our songs – and he said, \"Who wrote that song?\" Billy said, \"My friend, Fred Foster, and I.\" He said, \"I want to publish some of these songs.\" So we agreed he could; we had no publishing. Then one day he announced that he would like to write with me. He said, \"I'm an accomplished musician. I was first violinist in the Navy band. We'll get Billy a record deal, but I really want to write with you. I've got a connection in New York who represents me up there, and we'll get big records.\" Billy said, \"Great.\" I met with him in his office. He pulls out a song and said, \"You'll love this. Now this is a country song.\" He played it for me, and I said, \"Really? What's the exact title?\" He said, \"Grandma's Oak Churn.\" I said, \"Ben, nobody cares about Grandma's oak churn. They don't even know what it is anymore. That's not a country song, but the melody's nice.\" He said, \"Write something to it then.\" So I wrote \"Picking Sweethearts.\" Just a few days later I wandered into the Covered Wagon bar on Northwest Washington, and there's this band, Jimmy Dean and the Texas Wildcats. I thought, \"He has a lot of mystique about him.\" He was great, but he'd lose ends of phrases at times. He'd lose a whole word or two because he didn't pronounce them properly, or at all. But people loved him. I said, \"You know, you and I need to get together and do a little work.\" We cut a demo. We did a cover of some big song, we did \"Picking Sweethearts,\" something that he had written, and one other. We sent the four songs to the smallest label I could find in the ","type":"text"},{"text":"Billboard","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" directory, 4 Star Records in Pasadena, California. It's good to make note of the fact that Ben Adelman, our publisher, was one of the all-time great crooks. Adelman had Eagle Music. The guy that I sent our demo to was Bill McCall, one of the ","type":"text"},{"text":"original","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" crooks. They called immediately and said, \"We love it. We cannot come to Washington to record him, and we cannot bring him out here. You'll have to produce it. But on one condition; we have to publish half the songs you do. If that's agreeable, we'll send you some songs and you can do a session of four songs. Two will be ours, and two will be yours.\" They sent me a whole pack of songs. I couldn't even get through them. I called Bill McCall and said, \"I can't do any of these. I don't know why you sent these. They're terrible.\" He blew his top. He said, \"Who do you think you are?\" I said, \"I'm just a fan. None of these songs have any merit.\" So they sent me another batch. I picked two. One was a song called \"Bummin' Around\" and another was called \"Release Me.\" We had the first record of \"Release Me.\" The engineer had never done a session and the musicians had never played on a session, because we were using Jimmy's band. I hadn't ever done anything like this! We spent two days and got nothing. Right across the street from the studio was a liquor store. Jimmy was as nervous as a cat in a dog show the whole two days, and would just break down and lose his place. He was just a basket case. I went across the street, bought a pint of whiskey, brought it back and poured a water glass about half full, and handed it to him. I said, \"Drink this.\" We got two songs that afternoon. \"Bummin' Around\" and \"Picking Sweethearts.\" Bill said, \"Send me the stuff as you get it.\" So I fired those two songs off and they said, \"Great! We'll release these.\" That was in August of '53. Anyway, I keep looking at ","type":"text"},{"text":"Billboard","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" to see if he's making the charts. Well, in August it wasn't there, September it wasn't there, October, November, so we gave up on it. In January I picked up a ","type":"text"},{"text":"Billboard","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" and it said, \"Houston, Texas, \"Bummin' Around,\" Jimmy Dean, number nine.\" I thought, that's gotta be a misprint! I didn't say anything to anybody. Next week I picked up a ","type":"text"},{"text":"Billboard","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":". \"Number four.\" I called him and said, \"Jimmy, you're making some noise in Texas.\" He said, \"Don't play with me man, you know I'm never going to make it.\" Then it started hitting nationally. Bill McCall decided to cover his own record with Texas Tyler. He didn't know if Jimmy was going to be strong enough to carry it all the way, so he covered him. In the meantime, there were nine different records of \"Picking Sweethearts,\" which was on the flip-side of \"Bummin' Around.\" One was by a new artist on Capitol, Hawkshaw Hawkins. The McGuire Sisters covered it. I buy one, I look, and my name's not on it. He [Ben Adelman] took my name off it and put his wife's name on. I said, \"You were supposed to give me a contract. You told me it was in the works.\" He said, \"Well, you've learned a valuable lesson here. You're just really green, buddy. After this goes by, and you get over it, we can really do some good things.\" I said, \"We might, but it won't be together! You'll need me someday, I have a feeling, and I'll give you the answer now. No. Go f… yourself.\" Sure enough, when Monument Records got rocking, I get a call. He's got all these songs. \"I'm going to have half of them, half the publishing, and half the writer's.\" I said, \"Nope!\" Jimmy Dean never got paid a penny. By this time I was working for Mercury. D Kilpatrick was running it here.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Were you doing sales or promotion at Mercury?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Promotion. See, there were no promotion men anywhere. Nobody knew what one was. All the labels knew was, \"We've got to get more airplay. We're getting lost with all these records that are coming out.\" So I was the second man hired as a promotion man. The other one was Tommy Schlesinger in Detroit. He'd been hired one week before me – we were novices together. I decided to establish personal relationships with the DJs and music directors. I went to every guy, called them up, and said, \"I'll work with you,\" because I was covering the territory; Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. I told Mercury, \"If I find something out in the hinterlands that's making noise, I'll tip you off.\" They thought that was good. After two years of the Washington/Baltimore area, Mercury wanted me to come to Nashville as a country music promotion director. The first week I get this call, \"Can you go on tour Monday of the whole South, find out why we're not selling any country records, and give us a full report?\" I was gone eight weeks. I'd just married and I left my bride back home. I covered all the states: Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Oklahoma. I got into Texas, and there was a record shop called The Record Corral. They had a card system that tracked their inventory. They would list on their cards how many records they ordered, how many they received, and how they were selling. They didn't want to keep more than a five-day supply on hand, but they wanted to keep at least that much. I'm looking at all of this, and at the \"number one\" record at that time. It was just starting out, had peaked, and it was over the hill. It had sold 52 copies.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: At The Record Corral?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, and three in stock, with none on order. But \"Blue Suede Shoes\" by Carl Perkins had sold 1,300 in the first week. They had 5,000 on order. That's all I needed to hear right there. We were doing records with no drums. Banjo and fiddle. To say \"traditional\" wouldn't even be accurate. It was beyond that – backwards. So I wrote my report, fired it off, and left a copy on D Kilpatrick's desk. Well, I'd taken a couple of days of rest and sleep, and I went back to the office. Here's D Kilpatrick, white around the eyes, and he's so mad. He said, \"You're a traitor. You've gone down in there hanging with the Indians, the n——rs, and the Mexicans.\" It blew me away. I said, \"Well, you can criticize my work, but you've gone a little over the line right there. You and I aren't going to be able to work together. If you say one more word, we're going to fight.\" I just walked out, went back, and told my wife we're going to be going back to Washington. I called a friend of mine at Mercury in New York and said, \"I need a job.\" He said, \"Well, Bob Thiele at Coral Records is looking for someone. And there's a new company called ABC-Paramount. Sam Clark is the President. You may know him.\" I applied to both of them, and they both offered me a job. But with Coral I would have had to move to New York. I said, \"No, I'm not ready for that.\" Sam said he wanted me to cover the East Coast promotion and sales.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: Were you finding any artists and doing production around then?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"We're about to jump into it. Anyway, Sam hires me. They had never had a hit. He said, \"Your job is to get us a hit. Obviously nobody here knows what a hit looks like.\" They had artists like Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé. You know, legit pop stars. But this is rock 'n' roll time, man! Or teenybopper, or whatever you wanted to call it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: What year would this have been?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"1954?","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: So this is before Elvis hit.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: Just about to.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Fats Domino had hit. Little Richard had hit. Buddy Deane in Baltimore was the number one DJ on TV; The Buddy Deane Show on an ABC outlet. I kept saying, \"Buddy, you've got to find me a hit, man. I'm used to walking in with five or six hits in my back pocket. Now I've got nothing.\" So he called me one Saturday morning at five o'clock. \"You want a hit? You better get your butt over here. I've got one on a little label, I'm sure you could pick it up.\" I jumped in the car and drove over. Walked in. He put the record on.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: He was at a radio station?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"He was on radio and TV, but this was radio. He had the afternoon on Monday through Friday on TV. Anyway, he played it and the phones lit up like a Christmas tree. He had 30 lines at the station and they were all blinking. He said, \"Answer one!\" \"What is that record you're playing? Man, that's fantastic. Can you play it again? We didn't get the first part.\" Stuff like that. The record was \"A Rose and a Baby Ruth\" by George Hamilton IV. I thought to myself, \"This is not even a good record! What in hell is going on here?\" Buddy couldn't have put this many people up to call in. It was a legitimate hit. It was on Colonial Records from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I called Chapel Hill for the number of Colonial Records. None listed. I said, \"Do you have a Colonial anything?\" They had Colonial Press. I called Colonial Press and said, \"I'm trying to find the manager or owner of Colonial Records. Do you happen to know who that is?\" He said, \"That would be me. My name's Orville Campbell.\" We worked out this unbelievable deal. It still beats everything. I said, \"What do you want?\" He said, \"I want $2,500 and a 5 percent royalty.\" Okay! I called Sam Clark and said, \"I got us a hit! The owner of the label and I will be flying into New York.\" He said, \"Who is he?\" I said, \"He's the guy who discovered Andy Griffith, for one.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Oh, really? That was Colonial Records?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"We flew to New York. [National Sales Manager] Larry Newton said, \"I'm not signing off on this deal until we hear the record.\" I said, \"You can't hear it. We don't have a copy. That's how hot it is!\" We brought the master tape and they had to go and make acetates. Sam went ahead and signed a deal, and gave Orville his check. Larry heard the record. When he got mad, he always said everything twice. \"You're a sick man, Foster. You're a sick man. It's the worst record I've ever heard. The worst record I've ever heard. The bass is out of tune! The bass is out of tune!\" I said, \"Yes, it is, and the kids out there in radioland really couldn't care less.\" He said, \"You've just stiffed us.\" I said, \"I tell you what. If this does not make the Top-10 in ","type":"text"},{"text":"Billboard","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" and ","type":"text"},{"text":"Cashbox","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", fire me. If it does, I want a raise.\" He said, \"You've got a deal. You've got a deal.\" Sam said, \"Well, I think you'd be entitled to a raise anyway, if it hits.\" He was a man of honor. Then I got my raise. Sam said, \"Find us some more hits!\" I said, \"Well, okay Sam, but you know I can't wave a magic wand.\" There was a record I heard about called \"Cradle of Love\" by Johnny Preston. I started tracking it down. I flew to El Paso and had worked a deal out. I called Sam, \"How far does the East Coast go West?\" \"Oh, I'd say... where are you now?\" \"I'm in El Paso.\" \"That's about right.\" So I said, \"I've got this master for you. It's going to be a monster.\" He said, \"Okay.\" I didn't go back to New York with this guy; he flew to New York on his own to meet with Sam. Larry was there, of course. Larry said, \"What's on the B-side?\" Who gives a flip, right? He said, \"Well, we don't have a B-side right now, so we thought we'd just do a little instrumental of some kind.\" I said, \"No, no, no. We've got to have a B-side.\" Larry was turning it down. It sold about two million. Anyway. I get a call one night from Sam Clark. It was like nine o'clock. He said, \"You know that record you sent us that we should pick up?\" I said, \"Lloyd Price?\" He said, \"Yeah. We were trying to pick it up, but Larry just ruined the whole deal. You need to go find those people and re-open the negotiations.\" Lloyd had made this little record called \"Just Because.\" I got that one re-opened and got it successfully done. But I said, \"You've got to keep Larry Newton completely away, because if Lloyd's manager sees him, he's liable to shoot him. That's how mad he is.\" So they picked up Lloyd. His second record was \"Stagger Lee.\" As Buddy used to say on his show, \"The hits just kept on coming.\" Then Lloyd went over to Monument Records afterwards.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: You started Monument Records around that time, right? You and Buddy, initially?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah. I had $900 that I could spare. That was enough. Over lunch one day I said, \"Buddy, I think I can cut a hit record.\" He said, \"You're out of your mind.\" I said, \"Let's start with who I am. I'm just a weird guy, maybe, but there are a lot of weird guys out there. At least a million! If I really love something, a million other people love it just like I do. I'll just get it to where I love it, and we'll have a hit record.\" He said, \"That makes too much sense to be real.\" I said, \"I'm asking you to buy into the company for $300.\" \"Well, what will I get for my $300?\" I said, \"30 percent.\" So he wrote me a check. That was in March of 1958. I had gone from ABC-Paramount; I couldn't put up with Larry Newton any longer. He was sabotaging me. I'd walk into a distributorship and there would be a whole new album release and I had no idea of anything about it. I just couldn't do that any longer. I started Monument Records and the Combine Music Group [publishing]. I had met Chet Atkins and gotten along pretty well with him, so I called him and said, \"I want to come to Nashville and make a record in your studio. Is that possible?\" \"Yeah. You can do that. We rent it out to folks. You want me to hire the musicians for you? What do you want?\" I gave him the instrumentation. I said, \"Would you play electric on it?\" He said, \"Yeah, I guess I could.\" I told him I'd get back to him when I knew I was coming. \"I don't have a song yet.\" He laughed. The apartment above me was a guy named John, his wife, and their little girl. He had a little tape recorder, and he would go out in the field. Bluegrass people, particularly, in folk music would go out and have a hootenanny. He'd be out a hundred yards away holding his little mic in hand. You couldn't understand anything. He was always playing this stuff for me, hoping I could help him do something with it. One day my wife said, \"You've got to go upstairs and listen to John's latest project.\" I went up and he started playing and oh, god; it was horrible. All of a sudden this voice comes on and sounds good. I can actually understand the words. It's a catchy tune. I said, \"Who is this?\" He said, \"Paul Clayton Worthington. But he goes by the name of Paul Clayton.\" I asked, \"Who wrote that song?\" He said, \"It's public domain.\" I said, \"I'll take a copy of that and see if I can do something with it.\" He was thrilled. I took it downstairs and started playing it. It was boring as a turtle race when you got into it. It was called \"Done Laying Around.\" It had two nonsensical verses. I said, \"First of all, I've got to rewrite this chorus.\" So I changed it to \"I've laid around, and played around, this old town too long\" [titled \"Gotta Travel On\"]. I called Billy Grammer, who had been Jimmy Dean's guitarist when they were doing the CBS show out of Washington. He not only was a great guitar player, but he could sing. Jimmy was being moved to New York by CBS, and he was not taking his band with him, which was a terrible mistake. Billy was going blind, which I knew. So I called him and said, \"Would you like to be the first Monument artist? I've got a tune here you might need to come over to listen to.\" He came over, listened to it, and said, \"I love it.\" We came to Nashville to do the record. Chet said to me – oh, he knew how to hurt you – he said, \"I need to talk to you a minute.\" I go over and he said, \"What do you want me to play?\" I said, \"Excuse me? You're asking me what to play on your guitar? Are you crazy? I don't play guitar.\" He said, \"No, I know how to play the guitar. What do you want me to do? What kind of a deal?\" I said, \"Okay, I want it to be like a Bo Diddley influence, but not exactly.\" He turned two knobs and started playing. I said, \"That's it.\" I didn't know he had quit playing outside sessions at that time – his secretary finally told me. We got back to Washington after we'd done this, and I had $80 left of my initial $1,200. Now what are you going to do with $80? You can't distribute anything. So I called Walt Maguire at London Records and said, \"I cut a record in Nashville.\" He was there in about two hours. He said, \"Oh, I think it's a smash. We can put it out ourselves.\" I said, \"Nope, you can't do that. It's on Monument.\" He said, \"What is that?\" I said, \"That's my label.\" He goes back to New York. Leon Hartstone was his immediate superior. Lee is the guy who started The Wherehouse, the music stores on the west coast, and he told him, \"No.\" Well, Sir Edward Lewis [founder of Decca/London] was a genius. He wasn't about to turn a bunch of Americans loose to run free. He put an Englishman in house to be the executive in charge; D. H. Taller-Bond. Walt took a chance and went over Leon Hartstone's head with Mr. Taller-Bond. He said, \"You've got a lot of nerve, young man. I think you might have done the right thing in this case, but I have no authority to grant you your wish.\" At that point it had to come from the chairman, which was Sir Edward Lewis. Walt went home, called him, and told him the whole story. Sir Edward said, \"You think it's a hit?\" Walt said, \"No, I ","type":"text"},{"text":"know","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" it's a hit.\" He said, \"Give the man his label.\" When I left them, they had 40-some labels they were distributing. The song spawned a new dance called \"the shag.\" Buddy called one day and said, \"You've got to come up with another shag record. That's what the kids are dancing to.\" Dick Flood, who had also been on the [CBS Morning] Jimmy Dean Show, and I had written [and recorded] \"The Three Bells,\" which The Browns covered. We both had hits. I felt I needed to write this song with Dick, so we wrote \"The Shag (Is Totally Cool).\" He said, \"I'd like to do this.\" I said, \"Use your singing partner.\" Billy Graves had a great voice. I called him; he came in and we did \"The Shag (Is Totally Cool).\" It was Top 20 in the nation. Baltimore and Washington were really ahead of the curve, then it became huge – \"beach music\" it became known as.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: How did you end up in Nashville?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I came here for my first session in 1958 [Billy Grammer's \"Gotta Travel On\"]. It was a hit. I thought, \"Well, this is easy!\" I moved here in 1960.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: What prompted you to move out to Hendersonville, Tennessee?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It was very simple. I couldn't find any office space in Nashville. We looked everywhere. The only thing that I could find was in the Stahlman Building downtown. I said, \"No, no. Oh, man.\" You'd have to park in a parking garage and walk. Boots Randolph was driving me around. He and I became great friends. He wanted me to move to Hendersonville. I said, \"Okay. Let's find a place.\" There was one little space, shaped like a slice of pie, that had been occupied by a veterinarian. I moved into it with one employee, a secretary, and her desk was over the plumbing that came up from where they washed the dogs. Later we moved into a three story building.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: You knew Boots before you moved here?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah. He was a great man. I bought a house out there near him and near the office. Sold it to Boots Randolph when I built this house. Those were good old days.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: When you first moved here I assume you were working out of other peoples' studios doing sessions initially, right?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah. When I first came here I worked mainly at RCA Studio B. Occasionally I worked in the Quonset Hut. There were a couple of other smaller places I'd use once in a while, but B was the main thing. Bill Porter was the chief engineer at RCA. When I bought the studio from Sam Phillips [Sam Phillips Recording Service of Nashville], the first thing I did was hire Bill Porter.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Sam still had the studio downtown?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah. Everything about that studio was wrong, but it was magic. No audio man could ever have planned it as good.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Was that the former Masonic Lodge?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah. Fred Foster Sound Studio. I don't know why, but when I bought the studio it was quite a splash in the local media. It was on all the news shows and the papers. Roy Orbison was getting ready to go to Europe for a tour, and he needed to do a session. I'd had the studio about ten days, and Bill had been saying to me, \"You gotta do some demo sessions in here, or something.\" I didn't know the first thing about that place. It all looked wrong. When I knew we had to do a session, I called Bill. I said, \"We got a session Thursday.\" He said, \"Great. How many pieces?\" I said, \"Uh, forty-two, including the voices.\" He replied, \"I can't do it! It's impossible. I don't have enough microphones or anything. I know I don't.\" I said, \"Go buy them. Go rent them. Go do whatever you've got to do. Do you think I'm going to go back to RCA, after all this publicity? How would that look for my studio?\" You know it was one of the best records sonically we ever did; it was [Roy Orbison's] \"It's Over.\" Sweat was pouring all over that poor man. I thought he was going to have a stroke or something. But I said, \"Bill, you can do it. You just don't know how great you are.\" And he did it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: Obviously great. Those tracks sound so good.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The thing that always puzzled me about that room was it had a box built, and turned upside down on a floor that's not reinforced, not deadened in any way. They put the drums on it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: It was a hollow box, right?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Hollow box. You put the drums on it. You thought it would have gone into every mic there was, but you could stand right by the drums and sing, and never have any leakage or anything. I never have understood it. Neither did Bill or anybody else. It was a great room.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: That was the studio my high school rock 'n' roll band recorded in, in the summer of 1967. Ray Butts brought us in there. I remember the box. I think it was Tommy Strong who engineered the tracks that we cut.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Tommy was of the old school. He did a lot of gospel. Did that well.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: You had to move out of there when they were tearing it down, right?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, they tore it down. They also tore down the old Clarkston Hotel next door to build their tower.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Bergen, did you ever work in that studio?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: On Seventh, wasn't it? Yeah. [Publisher] Bob Beckham used to do demos down there. You did a bunch of songs, and if you made a mistake...","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Tree Music was in that building, initially. Buddy Killen was running it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Jerry Crutchfield was in there. Across the hall from Tree was Roger Miller. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I was wondering if you know who the engineer was when Sam owned it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: I could make a guess.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Billy Sherrill, the producer. Before he left, he engineered a hit for us, \"(Down at) Papa Joe's\" by The Dixiebelles. There are two Billy Sherrill's. One's the engineer and one was a producer. He could do everything, Billy could.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: You bought a space at the end of Music Row after that?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I bought an old church at Seventeenth and McGavock [in 1968]. It had been a Presbyterian church. After that it became a funeral home. After that, a BMW lot. The walls were two feet thick, at least, of brick made on the premises. In many ways, it was great. I'll tell you, you couldn't hear anything from outside. I was always having some electrical things going on. I thought man, \"What if lightning comes in and hits the machine at night when it's storming?\" I had triple lightning arresters put in. Lightning struck a pole outside; it hit the lightning arresters and started the power supply on the 16-track ablaze. Tommy Strong was drinking a great big paper cup of water. So he grabbed it and I got it just in time. I said, \"Do you not know you don't throw water on an electrical fire? It'll electrocute you!\" He said, \"Oh, I didn't know that.\" I got it unplugged and we got it out. In those days, everybody was working together happily. So I called over to RCA, and nobody was there. I called Quonset Hut, and somebody answered. I said, \"Do you all happen to have an extra power supply for a 16-track, because lightning just wiped this one out in the middle of the session.\" They said, \"No, but we have an extra 16-track machine. We'll just bring it over.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: Nice.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Storming outside, raining cats and dogs, and they brought it over. We hooked it up, aligned it, and we were back in business. Now what are the chances of doing that today?","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: Some people help each other out.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Some. But I mean, by and large the number-crunchers ruined it. I cannot believe they're destroying Music Row. Why? That wasn't historical?","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: It's important. You always operated independently, with your own finances. You'd use distribution with some of the majors, but you were running your own show.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: Were other labels and studio owners working in Nashville at the same kind of level as you?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I don't think so.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: I find that really unique, and kind of inspiring to see.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Well, I got accused of everything. Wesley Rose [President of Acuff-Rose Music] called a meeting for lunch one day. I go out and there's everybody that was anybody of an established country music background. There was Jack Stapp, Wesley, Hubert Long, and Buddy Lee – a whole bunch of them. Wesley takes a spoon, bangs on his iced tea glass, and says, \"Attention!\" I thought, \"Wow, must be something big.\" He said, \"We called this meeting, Fred, because you're trying to destroy Nashville.\" I said, \"What are you talking about, man?\" He said, \"You know; you're cutting all that n——r music.\" I said, \"I see. Well, I'm just trying to make good music, and I don't care what it is. I certainly don't have an appetite. Thank you, but no thank you.\" I got up and left. Two days later I get a call from Owen Bradley. I thought, \"Oh god, they're going to run me out of town.\" Owen says, \"I'd like to have lunch with you, Fred.\" He sounded hurt, almost. I met him for lunch, we sat down, and he said, \"I hear you met the old guard. You met all the tenured bastards in town. Don't pay any attention to them. They don't know anything. I love what you're doing. As a matter of fact, whenever you want to use my studio, it's yours for no charge. You keep making that good music.\" I never forgot that. It meant a lot to me, at that time.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: That's nice to hear.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"But I could not do four sides in three hours. I couldn't do it. I never could do that. That's one of the main complaints they had, also. Messing them up because they were doing four songs a session, and here I come doing two a session. Then I got down to one, and hoped I could do that. If I couldn't, we'd just keep doing it until we got it. Whatever it took. I did [Roy Orbison's] \"Crying\" three different times. Wesley said to me before the third session, \"You might as well throw that song out. It's obviously no good.\" I said, \"It's okay, Wes; it's my money. Don't worry about it.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: He published that.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: They made their money back.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"A walking contradiction, most of the time.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: You know, it's real interesting with Roy Orbison's career. He'd been dropped by RCA before you started working with him, right?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah. You want to hear something else? RCA dropped another artist I signed, Boots Randolph. He was the biggest selling artist we ever had on Monument.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Boots outsold Roy Orbison?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yes, sir.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: I'll be darned. I didn't know that.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The ","type":"text"},{"text":"Yakety Sax!","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" album sold about two million. ","type":"text"},{"text":"Boots with Strings","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" went over three. Probably closer to four. Everything he put out was in the hundreds of thousands. Amazing! Clive Davis called me one day. He said, \"You need to come to New York,\" because they were distributing us. I flew up, and I walk into his office. He said, \"I have a plan. I want to do a major campaign on Boots Randolph. I cannot believe the market penetration he has. On his own.\" What he had done was he'd created a series called \"The World of…\" with Barbra Streisand, Andy Williams, and other Columbia artists. He'd chosen Boots. We were outselling all the Columbia artists. It had been out three weeks, and we were at 95,000. The closest thing to it was around 50,000, which was Andy Williams and Barbra Streisand. He said, \"This is going to be amazing. I want to do a major TV campaign. Print campaign. I want to set up a tour for him to really go promote him. We've got to come up with a really great new album. Can you do that?\" I said, \"Probably. I'll just tell Boots we need to do a new album, and it'll be good.\" Then I get a call about two weeks later from somebody I didn't know at CBS who said, \"Can you come in tomorrow? We want you to meet the new President.\" \"Oh,\" I thought. \"Clive got the whole group deal. Perfect.\" So I flew up, and here's this redheaded guy I'd never seen before [Irwin Segelstein]. He'd come over from CBS Television. He introduced himself and said, \"I'm calling you in first because you're a really profitable company for us, and you're the only one that we're distributing who's really making money. The first thing I want you to know is I don't know anything at all about music, and I don't even own a record player.\" I said, \"For god's sakes man, do not say that to anybody else. You're just going to destroy everything!\" I leave there, and about two or three weeks later I get a call from him. He said, \"I've been thinking. I'd like to change things.\" Epic Records handled the distribution of other labels. He said, \"Because Monument is so big, I'd like to move it over to Columbia.\" I said, \"Wait a minute, why would you want to do that?\" He said, \"For prestige.\" I said, \"No, no, no. Why would you fix something that isn't broke? That Columbia field force thinks of themselves as the purveyors of the big red ","type":"text"},{"text":"[ed: note the red labels on Columbia LPs]","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":". They don't want to see another label. Are you kidding me? You're about to do me in.\" So I then get a report that he's taken to drinking pretty heavy. He had moved me, and it was a disaster. I had to go back to independent [distribution]. I flew to New York, went to Columbia, and said, \"Where's Irwin?\" They said, \"He's down in the Ground Floor, where he stays these days.\" The Ground Floor's a bar. I go down, and he's sitting there with a glass in his hand, shaking. I said, \"Irwin, I flew up here, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. I think you're a pretty nice fellow, in many ways. You're an idiot in others. You nearly ruined my company by transferring me to Columbia, which I asked you not to do. But if you don't quit this job, you're going to die. You are not cut out for this. You're drinking yourself to death.\" He looked at me for at least five minutes and didn't say a word. I didn't either. He said, \"You know what? You're right. And I thank you.\" He quit his job and went back to daytime TV programming out of L.A. for NBC. He called me, and he was sober. He went through rehab and everything. He said, \"I just want you to know I feel like I owe you.\" I said, \"No, you don't owe me.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: It's pretty telling if somebody doesn't even have a record player at home.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"\"Not only do I not know anything about music,\" he said, \"I don't even own a record player. I don't particularly like music!\" I went, \"Oh, my god. How can you be in the music business?\" If you didn't have music to like, you sure as hell can't like the music business!","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: When you were doing sessions and producing these sessions, how did you see your role? Kyle says you have the right input, at the right time. How do you do it?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I don't know. I'm just a farm boy from North Carolina. What do I know? Seriously, I just know what I like. And I know some secrets that are obvious to the world, if they would only listen. If an artist is readily identifiable, he's got a leg up, right? If he can write really good songs, that gets him the other leg up, doesn't it? Like Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison, and Kris Kristofferson.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: Yeah, certainly.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I just finished producing the Willie Nelson album [","type":"text"},{"text":"For the Good Times: A Tribute to Ray Price","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":"]. I think I've come up with a solution to something, Kyle. You know how great Willie is about his guitar, and you can never have enough of it for him? I'm calling him sometime today or tomorrow. I've got a great idea; \"Willie. Your next album should be an instrumental. You and Trigger can have the spotlight.\" It'll work! I always had great luck with instrumentals: Jerry Byrd, Boots [Randolph], and Al Hirt. You've got so many more doors you can go through with an instrumental. Movie people buy them up by the dozens to have music behind their films. It'll work.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: When we were doing the Ray Price record [","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"Beauty Is... The Final Sessions","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":"], Bergen had done the arrangements. I was engineering in the control room and Fred was with me. We were doing a take, and I was sitting there thinking to myself, \"This sounds like it's too slow.\" Fred said, \"Does it feel too fast to you?\" I said to Fred, \"Well, I don't know, but there's only one way to find out.\" I'm thinking to myself, \"God, I don't know if I could stand it any slower than this.\" You stopped and took it down.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Two clicks.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: We started it and I thought, \"I'll be damned. This feels a lot better.\" I think I'm a pretty smart guy. I've made a few records. I have a few hits. I'm a musician. But over those few days we did that, there would be four or five times when I was thinking one thing, and Fred would say something that was just totally the opposite of what I was thinking. Every single time it was better! Bergen, you've worked with Fred a ton in the studio.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: Since I first started.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Some musicians didn't get Fred in the studio, because he's not the guy who's going to tell you, \"Put a G below that E-flat chord before it goes to...\" He's not going to do that. But he is going to say, \"It feels too fast. Let's slow it down.\" ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: We did the same thing on Willie Nelson. When I was out there with the orchestra, I'd be hearing the same thing about tempos. Also keys. I remember on \"Faded Love,\" we started to do it, and I went, \"God almighty, this thing's too slow!\"","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"We were doing it too fast. I slowed it down.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: Well, you did. And when you said what you said, Willie said, \"Yeah, that's it.\" What I'd said was totally wrong.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Before I ever left Washington I got a call one day from the Arthur Murray Dance Studio. \"We would like to get a catalog of your product.\" I only had three records. I asked why they wanted that. They said, \"We have found that your records are exactly perfect tempos for our instructions.\" I said, \"Well, I don't have a catalog. But I'll be glad to send you one when I get one.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Roy Orbison's \"Oh, Pretty Woman\" was a good tempo.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"When they brought it in, how it was structured was the same exact beat and rhythm pattern as \"Only the Lonely.\" I said, \"Roy, I don't know about that. I'd like to see a little more excitement.\" I told him [beats on the table]. He said, \"Okay.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Was that Buddy Harman on that?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Buddy Harman and Paul Garrison – two drummers. Paul Garrison was his road drummer. This almost turned into a disaster. We were running it down, and Paul Garrison was playing every lick he'd ever heard or dreamed of. I mean, he was just going crazy. I went out and said, \"Uh, you're a little busy there, Paul. Can you just play this for us?\" He said, \"I can play more than that.\" I said, \"I have no doubt, but that's what I want you to play.\" He was backing up on me. Roy hated confrontation, and I knew if we got into a big hoo-haw here Roy's mood would be gone, and he'd just back off. So I went over and said, \"Roy, you need to go over to the Clarkston Hotel and get you a Coke.\" He said, \"I do?\" I said, \"Yeah. Real bad.\" He asked, \"How long do I need to be gone?\" I said, \"Ten minutes.\" To his credit, he didn't ask me why, he just left. Then I went over to Paul and said, \"Listen to me carefully here. You're going to have to play what I want you to play, or you're not going to be on this session. I'm going to pay you, because you were hired. No hard feelings. But I don't work for you. You're working for me. You're not producing this record, I am. Are we clear?\" He said, \"I can play more.\" I said, \"Don't even go there! I know you can. Buddy Harmon's going to play the fills, and both of you are going to play that driving four.\" Just based on what little I'd heard, I said, \"The day will come when you'll be proud to say, 'Yeah, that's me!'\" He said, \"Okay, I'll do it.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: You recorded that at Fred Foster Sound?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, the old one that was torn down. Magic room.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: There's something on that record. It's part of what makes the guitar sound so good.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah. Everyone thought I was crazy. Roy said, \"You're going to do what?\" I said, \"Yeah, man. It's going to be good. Believe me.\" I'll just tell the Steve Buckingham story; that'll explain it all. I got a call from Steve Buckingham one day, and he said, \"I'm getting ready to cut \"Oh, Pretty Woman\" with Ricky Van Shelton.\" I asked, \"Why?\" That must have ticked him off. He said, \"Well, because!\" I said, \"I don't see how you're going to beat Roy Orbison.\" He said, \"Well, I know; but I think we'll make a great record. The reason I'm calling is that you did the original. I need to pick your brain a little.\" I said, \"Come on over.\" He said, \"I was hoping you'd come over here, because I'm pretty busy.\" I went by and sat down. He said, \"All right. How many electric guitars on the session?\" I told him, \"Three.\" He said, \"It sounds like more.\" I said, \"Yeah, they would, because I've got two saxophones buried in with the guitar, so it gives them more weight.\" He said, \"There're no saxophones on that record.\" I said, \"Yeah, you're right. What the hell do I know?\" I got up and walked out.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Was it Boots?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Boots and Charlie McCoy. Charlie plays everything. I sat down with Charlie one day and said, \"Okay, Charlie; I need to know, and I know you'll be truthful. How many instruments can you play that you feel comfortable enough to do a session on?\" He said, \"I don't know.\" I said, \"Well, write them down.\" It was 52.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: What? Are there 52 instruments?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: I'm thinking that myself.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Even more than that. He can play anything.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: I didn't know Charlie was on saxophone.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"He was playing baritone.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: You had a tenor and a baritone?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"A tenor and a baritone.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: I'm going to go back and listen to it with headphones.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You'll hear it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: It sounded like fuzz guitars. That's what that reedy thing was.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: It was Jerry Kennedy, Wayne Moss, and Sanford? Billy Sanford?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"There was one more guitar on it. 12-string. Roy was playing.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Did he play the lick too?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: There's a whole lot of guitar players who say they play on that.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It finally got so bad that I had to call Nashville and get a copy of the contract to show to people.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: That's ridiculous.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Who played piano on it?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Floyd Cramer.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Great piano part in the bridge.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Also that one lick he played; that one chord he played. That made the record for me.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: How did you end up working with Roy Orbison?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I ran into Wesley Rose on the streets of Baltimore one day. I had met him somewhere in passing before. I said, \"Wesley, what are you doing in Baltimore?\" He said, \"My wife Margaret has a horrible heart condition, and we're up here at Johns Hopkins for some tests. I'm worried to death. I don't know what I'll do if I lose her.\" He also said, \"Congratulations on your big hit on Billy Grammer. We might have some songs we can show you for a follow up.\" I said, \"We're already considering one of your songs as a follow up.\" He said, \"Really? Which one?\" I said, \"'Bonaparte's Retreat'.\" We did it, and it was a successful record. He called me one day and said, \"Do you know who Roy Orbison is?\" I said, \"Didn't he have a song called 'Rock House'? Didn't he do something called 'Ooby Dooby'?\" He said, \"That's him. Would you like to have him? I'm pulling him off RCA. They've dropped him.\" I was a new company, and I needed some artists. I didn't realize that Roy was as timid-sounding as he really was. I said, \"Yeah, I'd like to have him.\" He said, \"On one condition, you have to duplicate the two songs that RCA turned down.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: I was reading something about the early sessions you did with Roy too where they were trying to find a string section. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Well, Wesley Rose wanted me to duplicate those songs that RCA turned down, because he thought they were great. I said, \"What about after that?\" He said, \"After that, you can do whatever you all want. I don't care.\" We did the two songs that were turned down. It was nothing. We just called the same band in that had done it for RCA. The songs were \"Paperboy\" and \"With the Bug.\" I think we may have lost about $30,000. I said, \"Roy, we have got to get together for a longer period of time and prepare ourselves for the next session.\" It was 2-track, and I couldn't get him above the band, really. I had Gordon Stoker [of The Jordanaires] singing unison with him. I had to. Roy was so tender and wispy-sounding. I came from Maryland, and him from Texas. We spent a week together before we went to the studio. We went through every song you could ever think about, everything he'd ever written, and every piece of everything. He had one song that I liked called \"Uptown.\" I said, \"Okay, Roy. We've got to do 'Uptown.' I'm going to put some strings on it to be the cushion for Boots Randolph and his fills.\" He said, \"Oh man, you mean I can have strings?\" So I called Anita Kerr, because she had done this commercial for Cain-Sloan department stores. It had the most beautiful strings on it. I knew she'd done that. So I called her and said, \"Anita, I need you to get me a string section together and arrange a couple of things for me.\" She laughed. I said, \"What's funny?\" She said, \"Well, the string section is no more. The symphony is on such hard times that all the good players have left town.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: Oh, no.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I said, \"I don't need any Philharmonic strings. I just need pads.\" She said, \"Let me see what I can find.\" She called me in about an hour and said, \"I'm not guaranteeing, but I've found four violins that can play reasonably in tune.\" I said, \"Okay. Would you voice them as wide apart as you can so it'll sound like more?\" So that's what we did. Boots played those beautiful, colorful fills. It made the middle of the charts. The DJs were starting to like him. I said, \"The next record's going to be a key record.\" Once again we scheduled more time together. About ten days I believe. We were both staying at the old Anchor Motel. He would sleep late. I would always get up and go to breakfast, being a farmer. We'd gone over everything, and I'd listened to every song in town. I'd called L.A. and New York publishers, Muscle Shoals, and Memphis; everywhere I knew to call, and we hadn't found anything. I called Cindy Walker to write me something. She hadn't been able to write anything. Roy had a song called \"Only the Lonely.\" It had a 32-bar rubato verse. Strum a chord, and sing a line. Totally out of tempo, just lying there. It took two and a half minutes to get through the verse. I said, \"Roy, nobody in the world's going to sit through that verse. It's not that interesting anyway, to be honest.\" Then he had a song called \"Come Back to Me,\" about his teenage sweetheart dying on the way to the birthday party he was giving her. It was really well written and a good song. But I said to Roy, \"We can't do this.\" It was too soon after [Mark Dinning's] \"Teen Angel.\" I said, \"You'll never get away with another death song this quick. But you've got a vocal here that I really like.\" That's sort of where we were, not getting anywhere. I got up to go to breakfast. This was going to be the last day before I was going to cancel, go back home, and start over. So I'm humming this background vocal to myself.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: Was it that intro?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Instead of going into \"Come back to me, my love\" I went, \"Only the lonely.\" I stood out in the parking lot in the freezing cold and sang it to myself. I ran to his room, knocked on the door, and said, \"We've got it!\" He said, \"I don't know if it'll work.\" I said, \"Yes, it'll work.\" I just stood out there in the cold and sang it. He grabbed his guitar, did just a few bars, and he goes, \"Mercy. Yeah!\" I called Anita. This time we had six violins.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Did you do that at RCA B?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Was Bill Porter the engineer on that record?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: I wish I could be a fly on the wall and go back to the room to watch that.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: These were all live strings going down, with the rest of the band and the vocal?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: Oh, yeah.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Is that the one where you surrounded him with the coats?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Well, after that first session, where I had to have Gordon sing with him, I said, \"We've got to do something. We've got to isolate him somehow.\" The band was eating him alive.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: How many tracks was that then?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Two. There was no such thing as putting him on a track by himself. You couldn't do it. So I'm sitting there in desperation one night and I said to Bill, \"What if we put Roy in the corner, put that coat rack in front of him, and cover it up with coats?\" He said, \"Yeah! There're blankets in the maintenance room I can get.\" We covered that sucker, totally. To show you how talented Roy was, there were no headphones. He had to figure it out. He overcame it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: I don't know how you do that.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I don't know either, but he did.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: So nobody was listening to headphones on that session?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"No.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: So singers were standing by the piano?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"No. They were singing clear away from it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: Who were the singers on the \"Only the Lonely\" session?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The Anita Kerr Quartet and Joe Melson. I put him in with them, because I wanted them to sound younger than they were. Joe had this whispery little voice, like a teenager, so I featured him. I said, \"Roy, this is going to be your first big record.\" He said, \"Really? Are you sure?\" I said, \"Yep. I don't have power to see completely in the future, but it's going to be a hit. It's going to be a big one, in my opinion. I feel very comfortable saying that.\" This went on for a few minutes. Finally I said, \"Okay, hold it. If you want me to, I will call the office, and we'll have them bring you a check for a million sales. You can never question it. You can never see my books. You can do no auditing. And as your friend, I'm advising you not to take it. But if you want it, you got it. That's how sure I am. Is that good enough for you?\" He said, \"And you don't think I should take it?\" I said, \"That's my advice, but you're welcome to it, if you want it.\" He said, \"I better not take it.\" I said, \"Good thinking.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: What year was this?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"1960. It sold several million worldwide, of course.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: What year did \"Oh, Pretty Woman\" come out?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"1964. It spilled on over into '65. \"Oh, Pretty Woman\" was the last thing I did with him. If Roy only had a real manager, god only knows what he would have accomplished. How many great things he could have done for movie soundtracks, the venues he could have played, and the artists he could have played with. Wesley Rose was his manager.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: After \"Oh, Pretty Woman,\" how could you not produce him anymore?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Well, that's really easy to explain. We did \"Oh, Pretty Woman\" and I told Roy that was going to be the biggest record of his career, which it was. Wesley came to me and said, \"I've checked Roy's contract. He owes you four more songs.\" I said, \"I know.\" He said, \"You can't do any more than four. You're not going to stockpile any.\" I said, \"I wasn't intending to. I'm giving him a new contract.\" Wesley said, \"Well, here's what it must include. Twenty prime time television appearances, guaranteed for the life of the contract. A guaranteed motion picture deal. Plus a million dollar guarantee.\" I said, \"Okay. Let's take it one by one. Prime time television appearances: my youngest kid can get on the phone and book 20 of those. Any man in here worth a grain of salt wouldn't have to ask for that from anybody. Motion picture contract? I do not own a motion picture studio, so there's no way I can guarantee that. A million dollars? That's okay. I can do that.\" He said, \"You can submit your offer. We're going to have a meeting around a conference table and open all the offers at one sitting.\" I said, \"Well, you won't be opening mine, because I'm not submitting one. Number one: after five years on these great successes, if I'm not entitled to any more consideration than being lumped in with everybody else, you can go to hell. Secondly, I am not prepared to offer you part of a contract. You told me what it had to include, and I told you I couldn't do that.\" So Wesley said, \"Well then, I'll just tell you what you can record, when you can record, and what you can release on the four songs we have.\" I said, \"No, you'll produce them. Nobody's dictating to me what I'm going to do.\" I had to call Wesley's lawyer and tell him that if his promotion people went out in the field one more time and told all the DJs that Wesley was producing the records and not Fred that we're going to own Acuff-Rose. It's just that simple. That stopped that. \"Oh, Pretty Woman\" sold somewhere around seven million.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The follow-up that Wesley produced, I shipped 100,000 initially and got 50,000 back. I hit 50,000 on the next release, and got over half back. I mean, I worked those records honest and serious. Particularly that first one, I worked as hard as I could. Although I didn't think they were near \"Oh, Pretty Woman.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: Did Roy not have the clout at that time after \"Oh, Pretty Woman\"?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Wesley was pulling him off of Monument and putting him on MGM. Roy came to my office, sat down, and cried like a baby. He said, \"I hate this. I want to stay here so bad, but it's easier to leave you than it is to fight with Wesley.\" I said, \"Well, that's your decision.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: I've always been curious about how you signed Ray Stevens. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Ray was on Mercury and had these huge hits. Then, whatever happened, they parted ways. I had always told Ray, \"Ray, you're limited if you stick only with the comedy. You're capable of more. If you're ever loose and free, and want to talk, come see me.\" He did, and I signed him. Our first record was \"Mr. Businessman,\" which was his first legitimate big hit.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: I love that record. Did he do \"Everything Is Beautiful\" with you too?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"No. Dolly Parton wrote a song called \"Everything Is Beautiful,\" and Ray produced it for her on Monument. It had the same identical imagery and everything. When Ray's record came out, Dolly called me and said, \"Have you heard Ray Stevens' 'Everything Is Beautiful'?\" I said, \"No.\" She said, \"Go listen for me, and call me back.\" I listened, called her back, and said, \"We've got a lawsuit. That's what we've gotta do.\" She said, \"No, I don't want that. What I want them to know is that I know they stole my song.\" I called Ray and said, \"I need to have a cup of coffee with you.\" I said, \"Ray, you know what you've done to Dolly is not right. Why don't you make it right? Call her up, give her half the publishing, half the writers.\" He said, \"No. I never heard that song!\" I said, \"Ray. I've got it in writing that you signed off on it when you did it in the studio. You signed the leaders contract. And it says on the label, 'produced by Ray Stevens.' You didn't object. That just isn't right. That makes me think a little bit less of you.\" He said, \"Yeah, it probably wasn't right.\" I said, \"Well, won't you acknowledge that to her, at least?\" I think he did, but I'm not positive.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KH: Did he record other hits for you besides \"Mr. Businessman,\" or was that the only one?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"No, we had \"Along Came Jones.\" We had a lot.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"BW: \"Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down.\"","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yep. We had a bunch of songs. Then Andy Williams' company wanted him to come to Barnaby Records, and they asked if I would sell them the catalog I had on him. They wanted to give him the TV show, and all this. I said, \"Yeah, okay. I don't want to, but if it benefits Ray, I'll do it.\" So we worked on a deal and I sold the masters over to them.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"KL: Did he record those songs at your studio, at Monument? Did he produce himself?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Jim Lloyd and I co-produced a couple of things. I produced some things on my own. \"Mr. Businessman\" was Ray and me, I think.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: What's one of your personal favorite productions?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Want me to tell you about one of my favorite records? You know the story of \"The Christmas Guest?\" Did you ever hear it? Grandpa Jones was a great human being of all time. He loved poetry, better than any man I've ever met. He had a wall at his house with shelves full of poetry. Floor to ceiling. He could recite Robert Frost verbatim, just about everything he'd ever written; which surprised a lot of people, but Grandpa was a surprising kind of a guy. He loved to go out when he was on tour, poke around old bookstores, and antique shops. He got back from Germany. He'd been on tour over there. He called me and said, \"I've got something I picked up over there. I'd like to come and show it to you.\" He came in with this book that's been in a fire. About the bottom 20 or 25 percent of it was burned off, but it was hand-bound leather. Gorgeous. On the left side was a German version of whatever the poem was, and on the right side was the English translation. It was so old that the English translation was in archaic English. He said, \"I don't know how it ends. It's burned off.\" It really upset him. I said, \"You need to write the ending.\" \"No,\" he said, \"I can't do that. You write it.\" So I wrote the end. I called Bill Walker; I hadn't seen him in forever. He came over, and he loved it. I said, \"You need to write something.\" Grandpa showed up at the studio. There was a string section and all the players. He said, \"Oh, I'm at the wrong place, ain't I?\" I said, \"No.\" He said, \"Well, I'm late then.\" I said, \"No.\" He said, \"Well, who are all these people?\" I said, \"That's your band.\" He said, \"I ain't ever been this outnumbered before! I don't know if I can do this. I don't know where to come in, and where to go out.\" I said, \"It's real simple. You can do it.\" He said, \"If it's easy, you'd better show me.\" So I read it through. He said, \"I'll try it.\" One take. He nailed it. It became a really big record. I gave Grandpa what I had written. I said, \"You publish this. It's public domain. It's a new arrangement, and all new material. It's yours. This'll be my Christmas present to you.\" That was a wonderful record. He's a great human being.","type":"text"}]}]},"tiptapIntroJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Mention Fred Foster in Nashville and the room goes silent with respect. While many of his contemporaries worked for major record labels, Fred ran his Monument Records independently, self-financing sessions and producing records on his own terms. In 1964 he opened Fred Foster Sound Studios in Sam Phillip's former Nashville studio outpost, and later opened Monument Recording Studio at the end of Music Row (now Zac Brown's Southern Ground). Monument Records saw success with a number of its artists, such as Dolly Parton, Ray Stevens, Boots Randolph, and Kris Kristofferson, but it's Fred's production of Roy Orbison's timeless hits that still inspire listeners across the globe. Fred is still at producing, having worked on records by Ray Price and Willie Nelson in the last decade, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016. Engineer/producer Kyle Lehning [Tape Op #108], and noted arranger/musician Bergen White, have worked with Fred over the years, and we met at Fred's home for an afternoon chat.","type":"text"}]}]},"primaryImage":{"id":"1267ebdc-917a-4fc3-b6b2-7bc5b2a17ff6-primaryImage","url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/a14271f0-36f7-48d9-a3f3-d9dd14d6fd02/originals/foster-roy_optimized.webp","alt":null,"caption":null,"width":1500,"height":1936,"variations":{"large":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/a14271f0-36f7-48d9-a3f3-d9dd14d6fd02/variations/1200w/foster-roy.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/a14271f0-36f7-48d9-a3f3-d9dd14d6fd02/variations/1200w/foster-roy.webp","width":1200,"height":1549},"small":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/a14271f0-36f7-48d9-a3f3-d9dd14d6fd02/variations/320w/foster-roy.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/a14271f0-36f7-48d9-a3f3-d9dd14d6fd02/variations/320w/foster-roy.webp","width":320,"height":413},"medium":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/a14271f0-36f7-48d9-a3f3-d9dd14d6fd02/variations/640w/foster-roy.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/a14271f0-36f7-48d9-a3f3-d9dd14d6fd02/variations/640w/foster-roy.webp","width":640,"height":826},"thumbnail":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/a14271f0-36f7-48d9-a3f3-d9dd14d6fd02/variations/thumbnail/foster-roy.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/a14271f0-36f7-48d9-a3f3-d9dd14d6fd02/variations/thumbnail/foster-roy.webp","width":150,"height":150}},"is_primary":true,"position":0,"use_case":null},"publicationDate":"2017-03-15T07:00:00.000Z","featuredImageUrl":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/a14271f0-36f7-48d9-a3f3-d9dd14d6fd02/originals/foster-roy_optimized.webp","excerpt":"Mention Fred Foster in Nashville and the room goes silent with respect. While many of his contemporaries worked for major record labels, Fred ran his Monument Records independently, self-financing sessions and producing records on his own terms. In 1964 he opened Fred Foster Sound
...","url":"/tutorials/118/fred-foster","authorName":"Bergen White","authorSlug":null,"contributors":[{"id":"9ba47203-6168-4697-894b-d3d128167eef","name":"Bergen White","role":"author","firstName":"Bergen","lastName":"White"},{"id":"b8ecd2ed-95dd-4258-aba3-6ecf753995ae","name":"Larry Crane","role":"author","firstName":"Larry","lastName":"Crane"},{"id":"f7437e9d-d4ff-495e-b8e2-9a8c1398e078","name":"Kyle Lehning","role":"author","firstName":"Kyle","lastName":"Lehning"}],"viewCount":16641,"showCoverImageIntro":true},{"id":"d2f149e4-2b1b-4a3c-81d8-82a557b4bf0e","title":"David Porter","slug":"david-porter","subtitle":"Making Music in Memphis","issueNumber":118,"tiptapJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Growing up on the West Coast, I always thought rock 'n' roll and soul music were from different places, and different times. Then I came to Memphis...","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"That's exactly right. A lot of the music you hear is influenced by R&B. The motivation for me was always, \"How good is the material?\" I was always trying to find out what \"good\" meant. When I was a young kid, I loved, \"I'm so young and you're so old/This, my darling, I've been told\" – \"Diana\" by Paul Anka. If it was good, it was good. I didn't care. I was passionate about learning all of it, but I also found a lot of inspiration. Having met Elvis and finding out his biggest inspiration was a guy named Roy Hamilton? It just amazes me.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"And Arthur Alexander.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, exactly.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Do you still sometimes feel like the kid that worked at the grocery store across the street from Stax?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I've had a chance to have a little bit of experience. After 75 years, I vividly remember being the young kid at the grocery store across the street and coming over to that building. A country-western label had just moved in right across the street, and that was the beginning.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"They had the record store in the front?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"They had a record store in the front that was an old movie theater. The Capitol Theater. The neighborhood was changing over. Whites were moving out and blacks were moving in. It wasn't all the way at that point, but the transition was going on. Jim Stewart and Estelle [Axton] got this building. I knew they were making music over there, but I didn't know what kind or anything like that. I was working at the grocery store across the street, so I just went across [and introduced myself]. I said, \"I like to do music. Would you be, uh, could I…\" Estelle said, \"No, we do country.\" I said, \"Well, will you listen to some of my music?\" She said again, \"No. We do country.\" That was my introduction. Because there was a record store in front of the building, and Estelle Axton was such a beautiful, spirited lady, I was able to start conversations with her and that ran into getting inside.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Did you ask them about buying soul records that you wanted to hear at the record store? Did you get to listen to things that were currently out at that point?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"No, I can't take claim to being that smart. With that record store being what it was, they were putting hit records in the store. WDIA [radio] had just launched, in a powerful way. Those records had an appeal to the community that was making that transition. Estelle was buying what was working on radio; I was just a kid coming over and listening to what they were playing inside the store to sell. She just saw my interest and excitement for music and befriended me. I befriended her as well.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You'd been playing music before, as well as in school?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yes, I had been. As a matter of fact, I had a record out right after my senior year in high school called \"Farewell\". This was before I got into Stax. I did terrible with the record but, needless to say, I was already making music. I was singing around clubs. I thought that I wanted to be a recording star. I was not thinking in terms of [being] a songwriter.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Did Stax finally relent? Or did someone say, \"Let's do something with you\"?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What happened was I was given permission to come inside. I was going into the record store, and Estelle actually got comfortable with me. I finally was able to ease my way into the recording studio. In the building at the time was a fellow by the name of Chips Moman. They didn't call it A&R at that time, but he was the guy who worked for the label. They had two artists: Nick Charles and Charles Heinz. I heard them do the country music, and I just started pestering. \"Jim, would you give me a chance to record?\" I was pushing him to give me a chance. That was actually the opening of an opportunity there. On the demo session I was doing, I brought in Booker T. Jones, who played baritone horn, Andrew Love, who played tenor sax, and William Bell, who sang background. I changed the words to a song called \"The Old Gray Mare,\" and that was what was recorded. That was the entree to getting into it. Then, right after that, Stax was working with Carla and Rufus [Thomas].","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Wasn't Rufus doing radio?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"He was a disc jockey on WDIA; a signature voice of WDIA. DJ Nat D. Williams was a history teacher at Booker T. Washington High School, a high school that Maurice White, William Bell, [drummer] Al Jackson Jr., and I went to. All the radio personnel had signature voices. Rufus was a noted and respected disc jockey because of that.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I assume that connection between what was on the radio, what people were wanting to hear, and what was going to be recorded was kind of the catalyst for you.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Exactly. It was. Rufus had that straightforwardness. He was not apprehensive at all about seeking out an opportunity. I wasn't privy to any of the conversation that facilitated it being recorded, but I can only imagine, knowing Rufus. He was like, \"You've got to hear me. You've got to hear my daughter.\" I think Carla Thomas was the voice that probably had a greater appeal to Jim, at that time. So they recorded \"Cause I Love You\" as a duo, and the rest became history.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Did you start to realize that you could be more of a facilitator and writer?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"My ultimate end [goal] was to get in, but I froze during the session. I was singing flat. I had Booker T. Jones, Andrew Love, and William Bell. I thought I had enough ammunition to cover for me, but it wasn't enough. I didn't feel like that would get me in. I started asking for other opportunities to write songs. \"I can write.\" It was not an anxiousness to get an opportunity to write, but I kept pestering for that position. Ultimately Estelle, once again, convinced Jim to give me a chance. I got other people to audition for them to take a listen to as well because I was trying to protect myself, as far as my position there, and I wanted to prove that I had value. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was doing A&R work.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Right. So you were bringing in other artists and saying, \"I'll write or co-write,\" or whatever?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I was given the opportunity of a trial period. They didn't have very much money, but they said they were going to give me a trial period, and I had six months to write them some hits. In those six months I was introducing them to some other talents. I brought Homer Banks there, a classmate of mine from high school. Also Maurice White, who founded Earth, Wind & Fire, but Maurice left and went to Chicago. I started bringing other people and saying, \"These people are good.\" I was writing at the same time. Chips Moman left, Steve Cropper came in. The first person that I officially wrote with was Marvell Thomas. We did a record with Barbara Stephens called \"The Life I Live.\" That's one of the very first records released on Stax [previously Satellite Records]. I knew that writing was my path, so I started working hard to develop that.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It's interesting that it does become a bit of A&R, because you're thinking about who would be good to work with or write for.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It wasn't a big artist roster, at that time. They were considering acts to sign, and I was trying to write good songs, because I was","type":"text"},{"text":" it","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" as far as writing staff was concerned. I was trying to help bring other energy inside the space. It ended up being of value, in that respect. I would think in terms of, \"Okay, this person can do this song,\" or, \"This person can do that song,\" for the few artists that we did have. But I was also looking for other people who could contribute in a creative way. Marvell lasted a short period with me. I ended up writing some initial material with Steve Cropper. I was still looking for a partnership that could ultimately have me competitive to the Holland–Dozier–Holland level. I had high ambitions, right?","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"There were great songwriting teams back then.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Burt Bacharach and Hal David as well as Holland–Dozier–Holland were the two that I had ambitions to emulate. There was such beauty out of the Bacharach and David writing and composition, and there was such energy out of the Holland–Dozier–Holland team. I was trying to find a way to find a niche for myself. So I was looking for the right partnership.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, I think his name was Isaac!","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"His name was Isaac Hayes. Isaac and I knew each other from high school. He went to a rival high school, Manassas High School, and I went to Booker T. Washington. We would sing on Wednesday nights at the Palace Theater on Beale Street. At that time there were talent shows, and we'd compete for $3 for first prize. He had a group called the Teen Tones, and I had a group called The Marquettes. He was a bass singer at the time. All the doo-wop groups featured bass singers, and Isaac had a beautiful tone. I was the lead vocal singer with The Marquettes. I was a huge fan of an artist by the name of Clyde McPhatter.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, as you should be.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"So we knew of each other. I didn't know the level of his talent, but I knew that he was good at singing. We were both gigging around Memphis, so we ended up talking to each other. I talked about what my aspirations were. I wanted to have a successful songwriting team and I needed a partner. Would he consider that? I brought him in while I was on staff at Stax. Jim didn't hire him, or anything like that, but I brought him in for a hot minute there. That was his entrance into Stax.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Were you writing for a certain artist at that point, or was it just to come up with songs and see where they landed?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"No, there was a small roster at that time. Ruby Johnson was the first artist we wrote for; a song called \"I'll Run Your Hurt Away.\" But even before that, he and I did a record on Homer Banks called \"Little Lady of Stone.\" We financed the record. We gave 25 percent of ownership of the record to Chips Moman. He had started a new deal over at a place called American Sound Studio, so we recorded it over there. There was a disc jockey working at WLOK. Not the right thing, but we gave him a part of it; we didn't know the record business at that time. Isaac and I created that record, after which I was inside the Stax fold. We wrote some for Ruby, and we were able to develop a bit of respect in short order after that. It wasn't easy, but the door was cracked for us.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"When Steve Cropper came in to replace Chips, did you find that a little more conducive with you as well, to collaborate with Steve, as he's more of a musician/bandleader/producer?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yes. Steve was much, much easier to grow and to work with. When Steve came, he was very anxious to learn and to grow. He was playing a different kind of music, but he had a rhythmic sense that was tremendously special. It just so happened that he found the right kind of linkage with Al Jackson Jr., the drummer who was playing the sessions there. Al Jackson Jr., if truth be known, was really the foundation of the pocket of what became Stax. Out of that pocket that Al Jackson Jr. was able to do, Steve was able to find rhythmic essences that gave identity to him, and also to all those records that were coming out of there. The combination of those two was tremendous. Steve was a person who grew tremendously fast. He was easy for me to work with. The first Sam & Dave song was a record that was produced by Steve and I was called \"A Place Nobody Can Find.\" I wrote that by myself, that was before Isaac and I did anything on Sam & Dave. The B-side of that was \"Good Night Baby.\" That's before Isaac and I started working on Sam & Dave.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"When they were tracking songs that you had written, were you in there as part of the process?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I was very much a part of the process. I was doing production at a time when I didn't understand what that was. Isaac and I were producing records, really, without a total clarity of what that was. We were also giving away credits, because we were trying to have the time to grow. \"Soul Finger\" from The Bar-Kays was a song that was really created by Isaac Hayes and David Porter, in the respect that Isaac came up with the title \"Soul Finger.\" I heard the track, went and got 25 or 30 kids off the street, directed them like a choir, and brought a couple cases of Cokes in there. When I waved my hand up and down, I asked them to scream, \"Soul Finger,\" and they'd just scream. We put that in as the energy on that record. It was the kind of thing where we were doing production at the company for other folks, and didn't really realize that's what we were doing.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Did you get into official production later on as Stax went along?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"No. That was a part of the process from the get-go. It was an experience where everyone was learning, everyone was growing, and everyone was doing whatever their skill level enabled them to do. We were in there working on different records, different songs, and with different artists. We were just simply trying to make something work. I started producing records with Barbara Stephens on \"The Life I Live.\" That goes all the way back. I just didn't realize that's what it was. If you notice on some of the earlier records at Stax, you'll see \"Produced by Staff.\" Well, in actuality it really wasn't produced by the staff. There were individuals who were, in fact, producing records. But there was a communal spirit and energy there. It was a family. No one was hung up on getting credit or anything. But those pennies could have happened.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You were working with great musicians whose instincts are spot-on. They're going to play well and say, \"What about if we do this?\"","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"That was the magic of what happened at Stax Records. We were trying to compete with some mammoths, like Motown and Atlantic Records. No one had so much cockiness or confidence that they felt it was all them. We knew we just had to make it happen. There was a communal spirit. We'd all pitch in and try to help make each of these records as good as possible. That's where the family essence came out in the Stax environment. Then Jim wanted to develop it into a system in which people could get paid for it. So that was why we started giving proper credits and that kind of thing.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"People want to be compensated, or credited at the least.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yes. Folks didn't understand how that part of the business works. It was a communal thing. Jim would take care of folks. You still needed to have the business part of it taken care of properly, so there was a willingness on his part to make sure of that.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You're starting a new family here, basically? With Made in Memphis Entertainment.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yes. The whole experience at Stax was a tremendous thing for me. It gave me a level of success that I never, ever imagined. It also taught me the beauty and the power of a community working together to make something meaningful happen. Having learned some of those principles, I used it with a non-profit that I started [Consortium MMT (Memphis Music Town)]. I also am using that with this record company [Made in Memphis], and what we're doing here. This is bigger than just building a studio. This is building a credible, energized industry again for the creative-minded appreciation for music. There's a process to getting there. This space and this building is going to be geared toward coming up with informational ways to pass it on to young folk. The fact that I've been a part of what happened before – and saw that, even though it's a lot of work, it can happen – I know, with total confidence, that it can happen again. That's what this whole operation is. It's a goal of putting together artist development; a creative foundation in such a way that people grow together, but also create a signature identity for an area that already has a brand that's respected all over the world. I think that happens, first with creating an environment where people can work and grow together. That's why we have three recording rooms inside of this facility. We have three additional recording rooms that writers can write material in. If they so choose to, because of technology today, they can actually make records in each of those writing rooms. But I think the motivation for that comes out of what Stax taught me, as well as the credibility that Memphis earned. It also comes along with what happened at Hi Records over there with Willie Mitchell, and with what happened at American Studios with what Chips Moman was doing. Just to know that you could pull all this great energy together, that's what this is all about. We have some great, great talent in our city.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"How do you gather the right people and build the right teams?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The great thing about this is because of the respect that Memphis has as a place of music that has happened in the past, and because, knock on wood, I'm still here, I think that I have a potential audience of people; young folk, who will listen to me, and come as a gathering spot to a place where they can show their wares. When that happens, we show them how proficient we are at doing a level of quality they'll be happy with. That enables them to have energy to let their own creativeness come out. I think the artist development part of that concept lives inside of that world. If you're good enough to get into the place initially, you can grow. That was the thing at Stax. If you were good enough to get in, you'd have the opportunity to grow. We saw what happened. I believe the same thing can happen here. We have the facilities here.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"How do you vet the people who are coming in?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Part of that lives in this concept. In the Consortium MMT, we shop those talents throughout the industry. We send out notices to all the major companies, that they need to come to Memphis and tap into some of this talent. We just had a showcase – sponsored by Universal Music and Concord Music Group – where A&R and publishing folks came and listened to a talent pool of several different writers, producers, and artists to consider for signings. Because I'm a founder of that organization, Made in Memphis can't touch that talent – at least for a year or two. That would be a conflict. But some of the people who don't make it to the Consortium program, but want to be in the music industry, can simply come and seek an audition for this company. Some of them have done that. This community is evolving into a recording mecca again.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"We hear a lot about how there isn't a studio system these days, and you don't bump into so-and-so in the hall and collaborate. Or the way Stax was working, where you'd have a variety of people in and out, doing different things. Do you feel like this will help create that?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I think, without a doubt, that this will play a role in changing that mindset. People live off the credibility of music. It has an emotional connectivity to people that's inescapable. If that's the case, if you find that people have to have music like they have to have food, why not work on elevating the quality of it into something that people want to hear? Why should you run away from emotional connectivity through music? To develop places that really get serious about making music resonate with people is a good ambition to have. It's already been proven that it's successful, based on the catalog value of so many great artists. I think that artist development, and that role, is a role that I'm willing to work hard and passionately on to prove the validity and credibility of it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Do you feel like Memphis hasn't been well-represented in the music business?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I think it would be true to say that there has been a lag. But it doesn't mean that it's a lag because the talent doesn't exist here. The talents that have existed here, though many of them have chosen to leave and go to other places. Justin Timberlake was here. Three 6 Mafia was here. Stevie Wonder's touring band; these are Memphis kids. The Bruno Mars band members are Memphis kids. The list is long. The talent has always been here. Now we're working to show that talent can stay here; let's make the message of credibility resonate as a base out of Memphis. Let's have a vehicle where you can rest assured that we'll get that message out. That's what this is. We're doing all the due diligence. We've not even promoted that we're here yet, and we're almost finished with two albums. We've almost finished with the total construction of the three main recording studio rooms. We want to be able to say, \"Not only are we here, but this is us.\" We'll be off and running in a very powerful way in 2017, with marketing, promotion, and the whole nine yards. That's the reason why we've kept it quiet, up until this point. We want to do our grunt work on the front end, so that we don't have to talk about what we're going to do, but rather can talk about what we're ","type":"text"},{"text":"doing","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":". I think that the community itself will be extremely proud. We certainly saw that just a few nights ago when these major record companies came, and they were blown away. The talent was exceptional. I think that there's tremendous hope and excitement for what can be coming out of Memphis. It's an exciting time for Memphis. I want to build a credible, creative community in this city again before I'm out of here.","type":"text"}]}]},"tiptapIntroJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"In a recent visit to Memphis, Tennessee, I made time to chat with legendary songwriter David Porter. David was one of the early employees of Stax Records, venturing from his job at the grocery store across the street to work as a songwriter, producer, and artist. His co-writing with Isaac Hayes generated some of the biggest hits, including Sam & Dave's \"Soul Man\" and \"Hold On, I'm Comin',\" as well as Carla Thomas' \"B-A-B-Y\" and many others. These days David is still musically involved, and with Made in Memphis Entertainment there is a plan to bring the Memphis music scene some excellent exposure and support. I dropped by their complex where I found studio designer and architect Michael Cronin getting his hands dirty while putting together some impressive recording spaces. David and I sat down in one of the completed studio spaces to talk about the past, and the future.","type":"text"}]}]},"primaryImage":{"id":"d2f149e4-2b1b-4a3c-81d8-82a557b4bf0e-primaryImage","url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/88893d23-7ac3-4f37-9125-0cd0b53ad53d/originals/david-porter_optimized.webp","alt":null,"caption":null,"width":1500,"height":1050,"variations":{"large":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/88893d23-7ac3-4f37-9125-0cd0b53ad53d/variations/1200w/david-porter.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/88893d23-7ac3-4f37-9125-0cd0b53ad53d/variations/1200w/david-porter.webp","width":1200,"height":840},"small":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/88893d23-7ac3-4f37-9125-0cd0b53ad53d/variations/320w/david-porter.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/88893d23-7ac3-4f37-9125-0cd0b53ad53d/variations/320w/david-porter.webp","width":320,"height":224},"medium":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/88893d23-7ac3-4f37-9125-0cd0b53ad53d/variations/640w/david-porter.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/88893d23-7ac3-4f37-9125-0cd0b53ad53d/variations/640w/david-porter.webp","width":640,"height":448},"thumbnail":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/88893d23-7ac3-4f37-9125-0cd0b53ad53d/variations/thumbnail/david-porter.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/88893d23-7ac3-4f37-9125-0cd0b53ad53d/variations/thumbnail/david-porter.webp","width":150,"height":150}},"is_primary":true,"position":0,"use_case":null},"publicationDate":"2017-03-15T07:00:00.000Z","featuredImageUrl":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/88893d23-7ac3-4f37-9125-0cd0b53ad53d/originals/david-porter_optimized.webp","excerpt":"In a recent visit to Memphis, Tennessee, I made time to chat with legendary songwriter David Porter. David was one of the early employees of Stax Records, venturing from his job at the grocery store across the street to work as a songwriter, producer, and artist. His co-writing with
...","url":"/tutorials/118/david-porter","authorName":"Larry Crane","authorSlug":null,"contributors":[{"id":"b8ecd2ed-95dd-4258-aba3-6ecf753995ae","name":"Larry Crane","role":"author","firstName":"Larry","lastName":"Crane"}],"viewCount":21413,"showCoverImageIntro":true},{"id":"68f4fe86-c2c4-404e-b5bb-350d201f21ed","title":"John Dwyer","slug":"john-dwyer","subtitle":"of Thee Oh Sees","issueNumber":117,"tiptapJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: I see you have Pro Tools here.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I'm slowly learning Pro Tools as I go — I've never been a digital guy. I wanted to get the body of the song on tape to get that nice tape sound. Drums, vocals, guitars, bass, and main keyboard will go on tape. That's what I need the eight channels for. Then, ideally, I'll start doing tracks in Pro Tools, like claps, backup vocals, and little parts that don't need a lot.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: So you can get more than eight tracks.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, I can get as many as I need; but I honestly still don't know how to do that. I'm learning Pro Tools as I go, and I haven't been home much. I have some time coming up where I'm going to finish up a new record. It's been slow.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: You're known as a pretty productive guy. Do you think it is going to get worse now, having a home space? Do you think you'll be even more productive?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"No, I've always had a home space, but it's always been a bedroom or something. This was the first one where I could alter it to how I wanted, and to be officious in it being a recording studio. The funny thing is I got all this gear in, then I came down here and for two months just couldn't do shit. The well was dry. My buddy was like, \"Give it time, it'll happen. Keep going down there and smoking weed. Eventually it'll click.\" That's kind of what happened. I wrote a bunch of shit in a row. You guys will appreciate this. I got one of these [neon signs] for me and Dave Sitek a while back.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: \"Don't record over stuff!\"","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I had to turn that on when I got too high down here so that I didn't accidentally record over tracks. All of a sudden I'm like, \"Fuck, did I record over the drums?\" I'd have to re-record the whole song. I bought a tape deck remote for use by the drum kit; now when I'm here by myself I don't have to keep getting up and running back and forth. I'm always working in a small space, but that fucking thing [the remote] doesn't have an RTZ [return to zero] on it, so it's moot. I still have to get up because the readout is here, and I can't see that from the drum kit. My eyes are shot because I'm getting old, so I have to get up and make sure it's zeroed, and then I can go back and hit record.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: How well is your dog trained?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah. \"Buddy, RTZ!\" I'd have to keep putting snacks on it. The tape repair guy would be like, \"Well, here's your problem. It's full of spit.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: So you've done most of the Damaged Bug records at home on this setup?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"All of them, so far. I've done a couple of Thee Oh Sees records on this as well. I did ","type":"text"},{"text":"Castlemania","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" on this machine, and ","type":"text"},{"text":"Dog Poison","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" might have been on this machine. ","type":"text"},{"text":"Dog Poison","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" might have been 4-track though. I don't remember, honestly. Thee Oh Sees has always been recorded with Chris Woodhouse, for the most part. I like to have somebody available so I can go and play. We've been working for months on these songs, and it's nice not having to do double duty. Also having an extra person there behind a piece of glass and not having to run back and forth makes a huge difference. When I'm doing songs at home all by myself, it's really nice to have this setup. I dig it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":" John's home studio, Stu Stu Studio ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: Chris Woodhouse mixed a lot of these home recordings?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Chris mixed the last Damaged Bug [","type":"text"},{"text":"Cold Hot Plumbs","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":"]. We went up to the studio at The Dock [Sacramento, CA] to mix. He's obviously a much better mixer than me, although I've taken a lot from him. He showed me subtractive mixing, and helped me wrap my head around gain staging. I was always an additive mixer, like, \"Oh, it needs more mid-range?\" He'd say, \"No, take away everything but midrange, and that will stick out in the middle more.\" That way I'm not having an incredibly noisy record. We'd always have everything pedal-to-the-metal, blasted really hot. I'm backing off of that a little bit; I'm trying to make things actually sound good, rather than hiding them with the forgiveness of compression and smashing it to tape.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: It's a balance.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"For sure. Everything I have is solid state, somehow. I like a lot of tube gear, obviously, but for some reason the gear that stuck out for me with Woodhouse at The Dock, and at Panoramic House, tended to be solid state when we did a little taste test. It depends what it is, though. I think it's time for me to get more tube gear. Half the rack shit I have is garbage too. I found some shit in the trash, like the [Yamaha] SPX-90. This thing is shockingly great-sounding.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: It's got cool choruses and flangers.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It's a weird, weird effect. But my console's only got two sends on it, so you've got to limit yourself.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: You should track right through it.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I do that a lot. I used to do it all the time, but then Woodhouse talked me out of it, because I can have more options. Now I'm leaning back to tracking with an effect. Fuck it, I know what I want it to sound like. Ideally it would be nice to have four effects sends and options, but I need to get better shit before I start focusing on that. I'm a real one cord kind of guy. It goes from this hole to this hole, and then you're done. This is my first time ever having a patchbay.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: How loud does it get upstairs in your home when you're downstairs working?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It's not too bad. It's not full band recordings. If it was a full band, it would be loud as hell up here. When I'm monitoring, it's nothing up here. It's the live drums that are loud. The neighbors are all, \"Oh sweet, you're a drummer?\" They're all old hippies up here who want creative types around.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: Did you look around for a while before you found this place?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah. Basically right now the state of affairs in L.A. is that everyone's trying to sell their houses for a half million and up, so we looked at these really horrible flip houses. This place was trashed. It needed a new floor, new pipes, new electric, the ceilings were popcorn ceilings so we got rid of that, and all new paint. It was fucked. The people who lived here were hoarders, so it smelled like piss. We pulled up the subfloor, hollowed out the whole joint, and had to pour the foundation that was sitting on these pucks of cement at the back of the house.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: Do you see yourself bringing in other bands here, at any point?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Not really, no. I would like to; it sounds like a great plan, but I don't even have time to fucking record myself. The band's so goddamn busy. I have to make time.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: What are Thee Oh Sees' studio sessions like?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"We've been doing ten-day stretches. With car rentals and food, I end up spending eight or ten grand and then waiting eight or ten months to get some of that back. It's always an investment.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: Do you try to budget a certain amount of time?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I try to book a little more than I think we'll need. I think, with recording and with life, I've gotten to the point in my life now where, if I want something and have the money, I just fucking spend the money. You're only alive for so long. That's how it is with recording. If you need to pay a string section, want to get a good dinner, you want to buy drugs, or if you need more time, just fucking spend the money, if you have it. For years I recorded for nothing. I loathe Kickstarter for art projects. I managed to be high the whole time, and do it for free. Why do you want my money for your terrible band to record a record when you could just bust ass? Figure it out.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: It feels weird to say, \"Hey, can you give me some money for my small business? I can't quite get it together to start it myself.\" It's the mark of an amateur, I think.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It inevitably means that your shit's going to suck. I bought a 4-track for $150 when I was a kid and recorded 30 records on it. They sound like shit to me now, but people bought them and I was able to tour. I've been slow and steady my whole life. Slowly climbing the ladder. But because of that, I've got people who haven't paid attention, but I've been doing it for 20 years. I'm always fucking there.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: You mentioned how you can't stand how your early 4-track recordings sound.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I don't like going too clean. I never have. That's what I really like about tape. You have the option. I think, with mellower tracks, it's nice to go clean, but I've always leaned towards raw recordings. I like live recordings — a lot of people don't. The 4-track is really nice, because it's really accessible and fucking cheap. Anybody can do it. I learned how, in like ten minutes, because I was so obsessed. I couldn't wait to start. \"You can record four things? Holy shit, I didn't know you could do that.\" I like shit rough. I've always liked it really up-front. There were certain things I'd always hated about some kinds of recordings when I was a kid that I've grown to deal with now more; like evident overdubs is something I've never been a fan of. I think that was a big part of wanting to be raw; that it gave recordings that live aesthetic. We used to record a lot live. I used to record a bunch of shit with Woodhouse, all live to the 8-track. Thee Oh Sees' Warm Slime was done on a [Tascam] 388 at a bar I used to work at. We rented it for the day, went in, and played our set. That was it. I would make Woodhouse mic that fucking PA, which he loathed. Now I do overdub vocals, and I'll mix in a little bit of the scratch vocal for rawness. I like music to be a little bit hairy.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: So you went from the 4-track to the 8-track, right?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I'd love to get a Studer 16-track, or something. I think that machine fucking rules, but it's not in the cards. A Studer's like a swimming pool. I've got friends who have them. I'm like, \"I'm happy that you guys have one I can use, but I don't want one.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: Even with the Tascam 388, there's maintenance involved.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I would put that thing standing up in the back of my Volkswagen Beetle all the time and drive to San Francisco. As far as machines go, that thing still works. We bring it to clubs.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: You did that series of live recordings with that, right? [Live in San Francisco Series]","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yep. They sounded fucking great too. It's all on the 388.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: You worked with Eric Bauer on some of that?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Bauer, Woodhouse, and Bob Marshall are always the guys. Eric Bauer does Bauer Mansion in San Francisco, in Chinatown. He did some Ty Segall, and the new Heron Oblivion records.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: When you take the 388 to a club, how do you patch in?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"We set it up in the bathroom. We drilled holes in the floor and ran a snake.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: You put live mics out to capture the ambience and take splits off the stage?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"We usually put PZMs [pressure zone miscrophones] in the room, the old standby for me, and then an [Electro-Voice] RE20 on the drum top and a drum mic on the bass kick sometimes. It sounds pretty fucking good, for a live recording. We also us [Electro-Voice] RE-15s for guitar amps, which are like a secret weapon. I like the [Shure SM]57s, which are classic, but the RE-15s are great. Then usually a [Beyerdynamic] M 88 for vocals, and everything running through nice preamps. This is in a basement of a vintage shop in San Francisco called Vacation, with a shit PA I bought at Guitar Center.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: Do they have audiences there?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, it's slammed. It's BYOB, and free. We do these secret shows in the basement about once every month or two.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: Do you mix these with Chris?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah. Woodhouse has been there for all these.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: How much of your live vocal setup chain — with the [Roland] Space Echo, the Mackie, and the JBL EON speaker — is an integral part to your sound? Are the studio recordings done the same way?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"We do mic it. We use a bit of the scratch vocal. I used to use it all the time. You can hear the difference if you listen, like, four records ago. It sounds pretty shitty compared to how we are now, as far as fidelity goes. On the heavier songs, when I'm playing it live in a room, I tend to sing it more aggressively than an overdub. That's one of the problems with overdubbing, vocals in particular. I feel like it's really tough to get in the zone. I literally have to hold the guitar and play, and Woodhouse would complain that he could hear the plectrum. I have to be playing it to sing it. I finally learned how not to do that. It's really tough for me to belt it out the way it is live without the band playing with me, having all that in the mix. I started bringing a PA with me with on tour years ago. It's mostly because sound guys can be jerks. If I got to a club and they didn't get it, they'd be like, \"Why?\" Like fuck it, \"We're playing on the floor, bringing in our own mic stands and setting up everything. You're [point is] moot. You're null. Go have a beer.\" We'd have total freedom to do whatever we wanted. But, on the other hand, that's the PA at practice too. It's nice to set up on stage and have everything sound like it did at practice, how I wrote it, and what we're familiar with. Everybody can hear. We have two PAs on either side of the stage, so my bass player can hear me singing. The other end of that coin is that monitor guys are either great or a totally inept nightmare. Having my own monitors on stage means I have my own monitors set up in addition to theirs, which is nice. If they're fucking up, I can wing it with my own PA. That's what all the keyboards go through live, so when I turn around to my amp to play the keyboard, I don't have multiple monitors on stage creating this feedback zone. I can walk away from the other monitor, as well as have a monitor right here that I play and can hear it with guitar. It's the same exact thing we do at practice. We take it to the stage. A lot of sound guys will like it too. They'll say, \"I can take exactly what's on stage and make it louder up front.\" I bring my own DI for the vocals and keyboard.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: So you can split out the DI for them?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I have my filthy sound on stage, and it's still dirty for them; but they can clean it up a bit, compared to what I have on stage. It sounds fairly consistent. We set up pretty tightly. Everything's set up like it is at practice. Nothing's worse than writing something you're excited about, and then you go to a different environment and it sounds terrible. You're requiring some guy you never met in your life to be like, \"Don't worry guys, I got you. You sound like a ska band, right?\" No!","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: The recording studio can be the same process though. Sometimes you go in and come out with something that doesn't feel like what you wanted to achieve.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"That happens a lot too, but I think the way to cope with that is to try and make it better than you had hoped. I'll take songs in with Woodhouse that are really basic ideas that grow into something completely different. We started getting into the vibe where I'd write a song on guitar, we'd go in, I'd play it, record the guitar nicely, and get a scratch vocal. Then we'd orchestrate parts with a Mellotron, and have somebody come in to play violin, flute, and saxophone. In the end we'd take the fucking guitar out completely and have it just be the orchestra, and then re-sing the vocal. That's on \"The Lens\" from ","type":"text"},{"text":"Drop","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" with the cartoon video. That was one that was originally a guitar and drum song that has none of that left in the end. We could sound like Scott Walker by writing a shitty pop song and taking all the pop instruments out. That's a perfect example of going in and leaving with something completely different. I've started to embrace that.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: Do you do a lot of writing in the studio?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"We did this time. We do. We had 13 ideas total, maybe nine of which were really written. We had four or five that were really just an idea. A few of them ended up on the record, kind of like jams. I love writing in the studio. That's why we do ten days, instead of five. It would be nice to have a month, if I didn't think it would kill Woodhouse!","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: Someone's going to break. JB: You've gotten away from the PA thing exclusively in the studio on the vocals now?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"We do both. The PA is disgusting sounding. There's no good way to mic a PA speaker. Woodhouse is like, \"Maybe if I diagonally point it at the horn we'll get a little bit of woofer.\" You have to EQ the shit out of everything anyway.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":" Dry erase board from the A Weird Exits and An Odd Entrances LPs ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: I took this photo of John and Chris' dry-erase board during the last sessions.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, that's a great system. I love that dry-erase board, man.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: That's everything, all the overdubs?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"That's as we're writing. \"Claps would sound good on this!\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: I've seen a lot of these kinds of boards, but that's a dense one.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"That's not even dense, compared to some we had in the past. We had paper hanging off of it with more shit.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: Obviously you could start and finish a record completely on your 8-track, all by yourself.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I'm at the point now where I've learned so much by doing it, for so many years, that this next record I'm ready to do it all by myself.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: The next Oh Sees record?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"At home, with me doing this by myself, or bringing in a drummer, it's really easy. When you get four or five people, it's nice to have an engineer to herd the cats. With Thee Oh Sees, it's such a big band, with so much shit, and so much volume. I like having the engineer there to help slightly produce, but also be the person who can say, \"Do it again.\" It's nice to have that fifth element to help guide, and push buttons, and know what they're doing. I don't want to have to be like, \"Oh, the tape machine's not working! Let me go put my guitar down.\" That kills the momentum, having to deal with the studio, on top of recording a live record. They get red light syndrome. The drummer's like, \"I keep fucking up!\" Woodhouse is like, \"Let's do a dry run.\" I'm like, \"Fucking record it. They'll fuck it up the second you tell them you're recording.\" We use a lot of first takes, because they nail it right out of the gate. Then they'll try to compensate later and fuck it up.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: That two drummer approach you did sounded really cool on the new record.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It's been great. People love it. They're both great drummers [Ryan Moutinho and Dan Rincon], and I've been watching them both get better. One's a guy who practices every day, and the other guy is a punk drummer. I wanted a real straight guy who could learn a couple cruddy beats. He's starting to come up with innovative parts, even now. They had to learn the old set. They played on all my old drummer's songs, so those are them playing in unison, synchronized. Now they're starting to do syncopation and playing separate shit. And there's a lot more that we're writing. This record has a lot more of that. If you listen to the fills, they're going back and forth. You can't really tell when you're looking at it, but when you listen to it in hard stereo pan, they're playing completely different shit that fits together. They do a lot where the bass drums will be going off of each other.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: How did you end up panning it all on the record? You put the toms left and right, right?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Woodhouse did that trick, which was nice. He was going for the one big drum set aesthetic, with the overheads, the kicks, and the snares. We ended up using one kick on each song, because it's the one thing that's going to be most ","type":"text"},{"text":"off","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" with two drummers, because they can't really hear them. The kick will be up the middle, and overheads and snares are panned. The toms from those kits would go to opposing sides, so when they'd roll, it would [go back and forth]. I usually hate that shit. In my opinion, the way a drum set should sound is not as if you were sitting behind it, but as if you were standing ten feet in front of it. It would be in this atmosphere, but Woodhouse would always do this thing. That was a super big point of contention. I'd say, \"Don't do that! Now you have to remix it because you did that thing! I fucking hate it.\" I don't want the record to be from the point of view of the goddamn drummer. But this time he did it, and when I heard it I thought it sounded pretty cool. It's because we have two drummers, though. When you have one drummer, it's different.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: So the snares were panned out too?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"No, the snares were on the appropriate sides. Overheads and snares [panned] out, toms opposing, and whatever kick we picked was dead center, so it sounded as if it was one big kick. It worked really well.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: What's it called?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"A Weird Exits, and then there's a companion coming out called An ","type":"text"},{"text":"Odd Entrances","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":". The rest of the session is going to come out on that. We did two records while we were in there. We recorded quite a bit. You'll hear a lot of variety.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: You spend a lot of time on the road, as well as putting out a lot of records.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I feel like if you're fucking good, or you do it long enough, people will notice. I'm on the road all the time, and it's pretty rare that I see a band that blows my mind that people haven't already heard of. The way the world works now, with the internet and all that shit, in the underground, if there's good music, people know about it. Like that band Sheer Mag are doing really well right now. They're a fucking good live band; the reason that people like them is they're fucking good on stage, and they write good pop songs. The word spreads now. You don't really need a label anymore to get out there.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: With Castle Face Records, it's you and Matt Jones?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, Matt's my partner. We did an S Corp this year. We're getting murdered with taxes as a small business. Profit was going out the door.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: You guys can pay yourselves dividends.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I'm on a salary now, and we both have healthcare through the label, which is really nice. I've never had that in my life.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: You can pay all that pre-taxes.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It all comes out of our salary we make every month. With Thee Oh Sees, Ty [Segall], and White Fence, we have a few records that sell really well. We have others that sell okay, and then we have ones that don't make any money. He [Matt] was trying to explain to me how finances work. \"Well, we sold $130,000 worth of records and all the other bands lost $140,000.\" This year we're starting publishing, doing books, and more, too, so we'll see. It's a labor of love.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: You have your photo book, Vinegar Mirror. You didn't self-publish that though.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"That wasn't me. I'm doing a poster book this year — 80 pages, all the way back to 1995, with posters I've been making since Providence [Rhode Island, John's hometown]. I wrote an intro for it. There're a lot of drug stories. It'll be funny.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":" John and Buddy @ The Dock in Sacto, CA. during the A Weird Exits and An Odd Entrances sessions ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: Do you guys have any employees, or is it just you and Matt?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It's me and Matt. In fact, I beg him to get an employee every now and then, because he gets buried, especially when we do a big release. But he's a workaholic. He does all the shit I was never able to do, nor would I be able to do. I'm really good at selecting, putting it together, and orchestrating projects. And then says, \"I'm going to make this happen.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: What's his project that he was working on recently?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"He does a band called Male Gaze. He used to be in Blasted Canyons.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: Some of that Male Gaze music sounded really cool.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It is; it's strange. I like the really poppy stuff. They had some heavy shit, but I'm more of a fan of the English '80s pop. He's got a great voice too, like this Bryan Ferry/Scott Walker — like reaching for it all the time. Singing in a way I'd never sing!","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: So how much do you get involved in the recording of the projects on the label, besides your own, obviously?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Not at all. Really, it depends. Sometimes a band will give us a batch of songs and it's like, \"I don't know what the fuck I want to do.\" I think that's insane. When I was a kid I'd be like, \"This is the record,\" and I was really adamant and opinionated. Now a lot of bands have this great set of songs and will actually let me and Matt pick out what we want, put together the order of the record, get it mastered, and everything. A lot of people want to write and record. We did that with Zig Zags. We helped put together the order of their record. POW! has sent us all their shit; we [still] need to go through and cherry pick all the songs we really like. As far as recording goes, not too much. If something sounds good, I'm happy with it. I wish we could use JJ Golden for mastering everything. I started using Golden for Thee Oh Sees, and fuck man, it sounds so good going to wax. He doesn't leave an essence of himself in the master. Somehow, really delicately and tastefully, he's made it sound better. The real gift of that guy, more than any other mastering person I've ever worked with, is he has this intuition of what it will sound like going to vinyl, so it's perfect. JJ just gave me something and it came back on record sounding exactly like what I had sent. It's like frequency-perfect for going to wax. That's a big deal, because a record can sound like shit if it's too loud going to the master.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: Does the vinyl record still feel like the final, ultimate format for you?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah. I don't give a shit about CDs. We do CDs, but I like an LP with a digital download. I feel like that hits every base. It has the big format, with nice artwork. We have handpicked visual artists we like to work with. We do a lot of releases with no text on the cover, so when you rip off the plastic [shrink wrap] it doesn't say the band's name. The cover is a piece of art. That makes all the difference, holding that in your hands. I love records.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: Do you guys still sell a fair amount of vinyl?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Dude, vinyl's killing it right now. That's what we make all our money on. The way our label works is different than most, where we don't own anything. The reason I started the label, with Brian Lee Hughes back in the day, is because every deal I looked at was terrible. The record industry was going down the toilet, and these boilerplate contracts were like, \"We own the masters for the record 'in perpetuity.'\" I'd be like, \"You didn't write any of these songs. What the fuck? You're just paying to facilitate the pressing of the record and promoting it, basically.\" Which I could do. I got screwed by a label because they had eight partners and one of them pulled out at the last minute, so we couldn't do the record. I put out [Thee Oh Sees'] Sucks Blood on our own imprint, and never looked back. It's really nice to have control of everything. When a band comes to us… let's use Ty [Segall] as an example, because he's doing well. His first record came to us, and they're like, \"What's the deal?\" We said, \"There is no deal. It's a handshake deal. I do your record, we take the expenses out first, and whatever the record makes from there on out is a 50/50 split. If you want to move on, move on. I don't want to own your shit. I didn't want anybody to own my shit.\" Now, when I sell a song of mine to a movie or something, I get to keep all that money for the band. Half of it doesn't go to a label. I understand the concept of a label owning half and wanting their taste, but 50 percent of royalties I think is fucking absurd, outside of the concrete product. We take half the money from the sales, but we don't really keep their digital.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: You let the bands do their own digital?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"We have license people we use that they can work with, and they'd give them a percentage, but we don't take any cut of licensing. I feel like that's bands' money. That facilitates people doing what I've done, which is to not have to fucking work and continue making music. It's a big deal. I like to think of us as a band's label. Everybody gets paid, and we have really transparent accounting. I just went through it with a label who owned a bunch of my shit and never paid me. I said, \"I want to repress this, and I'll buy your backstock.\" They're like, \"No.\" I'm like, \"Cool, here's my lawyer. He'll talk to you.\" He said, \"Yeah, you never paid him, or gave him any accounting.\" I'm like, \"Yeah, I'm taking everything back now. You can sue me if you want. You never paid me. The contract's null and void.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: So you don't do iTunes, or Spotify, or any of that?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"No, we do. We do digital, and we offer the bands options. Like, \"Hey, you can work with Terrorbird,\" who I pretty much work with exclusively. We're exclusively with Revolver for distribution, which has been great. With digital we use Revolver, but we offer them a really simple deal. Most labels do a 10-year [contract]. That's the one I always had to sign back then when I was a kid, and they take half the money. We do a 5-year contract, with 30 percent of the money, so it's a little tastier. After 5 years, they can either renew it or move on and do it themselves. The thing about digital that a lot of people don't realize is you can fucking do it yourself. As a band, you can sign on to The Orchard and sell your own shit. It won't get that push that labels spend money on, like putting it at the front of iTunes. Labels should start accommodating bands, but the precedent that's been set is, \"We own you.\" I've even worked with labels that I've never signed anything with, and I'd get a commercial deal for Volkswagen. All of a sudden, it was, \"We'll give you five grand to use a bit of your tune.\" I'd say, \"Okay, I need money. Sure.\" Then the label would be like, \"We get half that.\" I'd say, \"No, you don't. I own the masters. You definitely fucking don't own shit. Dude, where did I sign any contract?\" Now, if something goes wrong, it's either my fault or Matt's fault. It's very easy. I don't want it to be some guy on the outside.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"LC: How do you approach recording budgets for your own projects, with the label and everything?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Well, Thee Oh Sees is a little different than other bands on the label. We don't usually pay recording budgets, except for records that we know will sell. I feel like we're a steppingstone label. Like inevitably Ty moved on to bigger labels that wanted to throw more money at him. We're like a mom and pop store. A lot of bands that approach us already have their recordings they did with a friend, or whatever. But we paid for POW! to record. Or Jack Name. I love his shit, so we'll pay his rent for a couple months so he can record. With Thee Oh Sees, I make the label pay for it because I'm half partner in it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"JB: It's a better tax write-off.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"That way it doesn't have to come out of my pocket, and I don't have to figure out who in the band owes me what. The label gets that money back first, and then we get paid. It's nice and easy.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Thee Oh Sees Playlist on Spotify","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"link","attrs":{"rel":"noopener noreferrer nofollow","href":"https://open.spotify.com/user/tapeopmag/playlist/33DFj1NXmCqOz5hoEtxNz7","target":"_blank"}}]}]}]},"tiptapIntroJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"John Dwyer is certainly prolific. His main band, Thee Oh Sees, have released 18 studio albums since 1997. His side project, Damaged Bug, has two albums out. He co-owns Castle Face Records, where most of his output has been released. He tours frequently, and Thee Oh Sees are legendary for their energetic live shows. I met John about ten years ago through our mutual friend, and his main engineer for the past decade, Chris Woodhouse. Since then I've had the pleasure of going out for sushi runs and cooking a few dinners at the studio with John. He's a fun hang with a great combo of in your face dry wit and a razor sharp intelligence. He's one of the smartest, savviest independent musicians I've met. Since forming Castle Face and self releasing his albums, all of Thee Oh Sees records have hit the #1 spot on the CMJ charts. He could teach a master class in how to survive, and even thrive, as a muscian, while so many other music business folks moan about how terrible the business is. Maybe his secret is that he works his ass off. When he's not touring, he's recording, and before the rest of the musicians in the studio have even woken up, John's run several miles and is on his laptop taking care of business, even though he worked later, and probably partied harder, than everyone else the night before. Last time Larry and I were in Los Angeles, we dropped by John's new house to see his home studio and talk about making records. -JB & LC","type":"text"}]}]},"primaryImage":{"id":"68f4fe86-c2c4-404e-b5bb-350d201f21ed-primaryImage","url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/267a347a-bab2-41c1-ba0d-05e6d3fba9b8/originals/dwyer-4_optimized.webp","alt":null,"caption":null,"width":1050,"height":1500,"variations":{"large":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/267a347a-bab2-41c1-ba0d-05e6d3fba9b8/variations/1200w/dwyer-4.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/267a347a-bab2-41c1-ba0d-05e6d3fba9b8/variations/1200w/dwyer-4.webp","width":1200,"height":1714},"small":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/267a347a-bab2-41c1-ba0d-05e6d3fba9b8/variations/320w/dwyer-4.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/267a347a-bab2-41c1-ba0d-05e6d3fba9b8/variations/320w/dwyer-4.webp","width":320,"height":457},"medium":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/267a347a-bab2-41c1-ba0d-05e6d3fba9b8/variations/640w/dwyer-4.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/267a347a-bab2-41c1-ba0d-05e6d3fba9b8/variations/640w/dwyer-4.webp","width":640,"height":914},"thumbnail":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/267a347a-bab2-41c1-ba0d-05e6d3fba9b8/variations/thumbnail/dwyer-4.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/267a347a-bab2-41c1-ba0d-05e6d3fba9b8/variations/thumbnail/dwyer-4.webp","width":150,"height":150}},"is_primary":true,"position":0,"use_case":null},"publicationDate":"2017-01-15T08:00:00.000Z","featuredImageUrl":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/267a347a-bab2-41c1-ba0d-05e6d3fba9b8/originals/dwyer-4_optimized.webp","excerpt":"John Dwyer is certainly prolific. His main band, Thee Oh Sees, have released 18 studio albums since 1997. His side project, Damaged Bug, has two albums out. He co-owns Castle Face Records, where most of his output has been released. He tours frequently, and Thee Oh Sees are legendary
...","url":"/tutorials/117/john-dwyer","authorName":"John Baccigaluppi","authorSlug":null,"contributors":[{"id":"5c3f1004-00cc-42d0-a63a-dda831f74e20","name":"John Baccigaluppi","role":"author","firstName":"John","lastName":"Baccigaluppi"},{"id":"b8ecd2ed-95dd-4258-aba3-6ecf753995ae","name":"Larry Crane","role":"author","firstName":"Larry","lastName":"Crane"}],"viewCount":68239,"showCoverImageIntro":true},{"id":"715651e4-5e83-478c-8ea8-43f091b74315","title":"Flood (aka Mark Ellis)","slug":"flood-mark-ellis","subtitle":"U2, Nine Inch Nails, Nick Cave","issueNumber":117,"tiptapJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I wanted to start off by going back in time to when you and Alan Moulder first founded a production partnership, one that hasn't had a break in over 30 years. What has made you two work so well together, over so much time and through so many classic albums and hits?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Flood: Alan and I have worked together, and been friends, since '83 or '84, and we worked a lot in the same studio starting out as engineers. He's one of the best people you could end up trusting as a really good friend, but also professionally he's highly consistent. We've always worked really, really well together.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Alan: We both have the same sensibility about what we want from a record. We both want excitement and passion; and the same things get us excited, so we work very well together that way. Also, we're free to argue without fear of anything being personal. We always know if we're arguing, it's a creative argument. We actually enjoy arguing because it's more like you understand what the other person's hearing, and it makes you hear the song in another way you might not have thought of. We're free to say what we think without having to worry about each other's feelings, because we know nothing we say is meant to hurt that person's feelings. It's purely the creative war, if you like.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: It's like, neither of us really takes the lead with one thing or the other. Alan tends to do more of the mixing, and I tend to do more of the recording. But the best thing is that we're completely honest, and the arguments the two of us have are phenomenal. It's a totally positive thing, because you can speak your mind and argue your point while being respectful of the other person, because they may well be right. You've got to be in a position where you can both trust each other and be respectful of that.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"A: I think we basically enhance each other, in terms of ","type":"text"},{"text":"we know what each other means","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":". A lot of the time it's funny; we don't even have to talk. We can just look and know what each other means. It's almost like a secret language going on, because it only takes a little glance and we know, \"Well, that's not happening\" or, \"That's good.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Flood, you've got a unique pedigree as a producer who's also a musician. How does being able to relate to both sides of the board make you better in your craft?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: I suppose calling myself a musician is probably a very bad term. I would say the reason I became a producer is because I was probably the world's worst guitar player. I've never had a formal lesson in my life. I suppose I've just trusted my instinct of what I hear, and then applied it in a way that if I'd had the formal training, I wouldn't necessarily do. A lot of the decisions come from the phonics. I feel, really, that you've got to have some musicality in order to be a producer. Unless you're one of these people who come in and it's more about arranging the people and getting the right beat, in the right place, at the right time. Otherwise I think it's not fair on the people that you're working with that you can't communicate with the music. So often a lot of bands aren't technically trained, or if they are technically trained you see how frustrating it can be when you're very technically-minded. You can't see, \"Oh, maybe it's something deceiving my ears, but there has to be a different reason for it.\" That's what I specialize in. Because I'm really not a musician, it's just what I hear in my head. Most of the people I work with are like, \"Oh, yeah; I hear that too,\" or, \"I hear a bigger or better version of it.\" So I think you have to have some musicality, or some sense of it, in order to respond to people in a band.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"With U2's groundbreaking Achtung Baby, you produced arguably one of the most successful gambles a mainstream rock band ever took in shifting their sound into new sonic territory. How important was the headspace you put the band in, heading into that experiment?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: The main thing was that the band felt at ease, comfortable, and felt in a creative space. That will always generate a different type of sound. When you're recording, it's about the emotional response and the chemistry between the people. You can't duplicate what's come before. Time immemorial said that. You can have one amazing album, or one amazing painting, but it doesn't mean to say that the next one's going to follow.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"When you're tracking vocals, say with a singer of Bono's range for instance, how do you like to design the placement of players in the studio while you're recording?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: I tend to like having the vocalist be in the control room with me, for a lot of different reasons: 1) First and foremost is for communication. If you've got the person right next to you, it becomes unsaid. 2) For a performer, most singers prefer to feel as though they're doing it live. A lot of times I use a single, handheld [Shure SM]58 because it frees them up. If they can hear themselves coming out of the speakers, generally, their pitching is much, much better. When they've got headphones on, they've got the sound of the voice in their head and the vibe coming back through their ears. You have to have the voice so loud, or with such an extreme effect on it, in order for the singer to hear it. Often you find there are tuning issues. That's another reason why I would do it. It's all about the performance. With the advent of Pro Tools, you can go through and fix bits and technical things, but, generally, if it's not about the performance, why bother?","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You've long had a gift for channeling the power of an artist's rage on tape, from Trent Reznor famously screaming, \"I want to fuck you like an animal!\" to Billy Corgan's [","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"Tape Op","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" #115] roaring chorus on \"Bullet with Butterfly Wings.\"","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: In the studio, the singer is doing a performance in front of a group of people, which is me, the engineer, and the assistant. But even if it's just for me, it's a performance. It's not a sterile entity where they shut their eyes and disappear. I realized early on, when I did a remix of \"Rock N' Roll Nigger\" by the Patti Smith Group for ","type":"text"},{"text":"Natural Born Killers","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", that trying to eliminate spill, you get rid of the sonic glue. But if you're careful about what you put through the speakers, the spill acts as a real excitement in the track. Obviously you don't want the tambourine, or things that are questionable when blaringly loud. But if you use it sensibly, and position the speakers in a certain way, and make sure that you don't get loads of feedback, it can usually add to the track.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You and Trent Reznor won a Grammy for your work together on \"Wish.\" As with so many of your productions, no one else at the time was doing what you two were doing in the studio together, especially rhythmically. What heavy machinery did you and Reznor break out in the ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"Broken/ Downward Spiral","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" era?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: I was locked in a world of industrial music at that time. As I recall, the way that I worked, I would have probably used the Alesis SR-16, as much as a trigger unit as anything else. A lot of what I was doing in those days was setting up loaded loops or beats within the [Akai] S1000 or S1100, and then using the SR-16 to trigger them. Sometimes to replace the basic sounds, and sometimes as a trigger, because I liked the groove of the SR-16.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You've recorded so many amazing rock bands across the stylistic spectrum throughout your career, from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Killers, 30 Seconds to Mars, to The Charlatans, and on. What is one thing you've found common to recording all of them?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: One person cannot take credit, and I'm very much a person who feels that you should try to capture the essence of people playing together. It's that collaboration; that's what's brilliant about music. Capturing human beings reacting, working together, and providing an emotional response – you hope that you can capture that, which I think you can. It's almost a gift and privilege to be part of a creative group of people who make great works. If you can find a way to learn something new, and to have people you work with and respect push you in different ways, that's an amazing experience. For me, it's not about one single person; it's about the group of people. Everybody is vitally important to the whole process – even though they might not do as much physical labor. I always hope that I can capture that energy in a really positive way, rather than in a negative way. That's the beauty of making music; that's exactly what you can do. You can capture the sound of four people who are just out of this world. It's living proof that it can change people's lives. When you're making records, it doesn't matter if it's a double album, a triple album, or an EP. I feel you have to let songs have their natural life. People will start to play things and it will start to fall into its own space.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You produced an amazing collection of music with both Billy Corgan and Trent Reznor. How did working within that co-producer dynamic differ from a collaboration where you're pretty much running things from behind the boards?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: I take pleasure being in a highly creative situation, which is the same with most of the bands I work with. They push me, I push myself, and they're open to hearing new ways of doing the same old thing; then they manage to translate it into playing it as a band. That's all you can want: to be open, do something that you feel proud of that is a representation of you as a person.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Making records can be a frustrating at times. Have you had to put on your proverbial \"psychologist\" hat over the years? I assume you've used that frustration to your benefit, from time to time?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: I use that frustration to benefit the music all the time. [laughs] All the time! That's the nature of the job, but it's incredibly difficult because those frustrations will work positively – because everybody's open-minded and there'll be an outburst, or somebody disagrees with something – and then that will lead to something else, and then it's all forgotten.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What are some of the greatest ways Pro Tools plays into your record-making process?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: I've spent so many years working with different bands and effectively doing guerilla recording with the bare essentials. That sort of thing becomes relatively easy to set up if you've got the right room and the right vibe. Essentially you're mic'ing a live gig, and you better cover your bases in case somebody screws up, or you don't like something. Now you can take it out and fix it much more easily. When Pro Tools first came out, I'd been working with Trent. I was very, very used to working with whole songs based in Pro Tools and committing them to tape.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"sidebarExtension","attrs":{"title":"","variant":"default"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[object Object]","type":"text"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You and Alan have given rock 'n' roll some of its most sonically mind-blowing mixes over the years. How conscious do you stay during recording of decisions you're going to be making later in the mix arena?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: I think because I grew up using tape, it means I have to make decisions – from arrangement to instrumentation, and even decisions about balance. [On tape] for some songs it's impossible to have the drums over 15 tracks, so you suddenly make a decision, \"Well, we'll just have it on two tracks.\" If you don't like the sound after a few weeks, you change it. It's such a vibe type of thing, because it's all about the song and a feeling. It's like, \"How do I get that feeling from the balance of the instruments that serves the song?\" If you've got a whole album that's based on \"we'll fix it in the mix,\" to me that's the kiss of death. To leave everything to chance by waiting until the end just seems like total madness to me. You've got a group of the most amazing musicians in the world, so have some balls and make decisions. Then, if you make the decisions, that creates momentum and creativity. People react to what they're hearing. You've got to be there and just do it. For me, mixing should really be an extension of the recording process. It should be that you're able to get a simple balance, and you've got the essence of what's going on. Then you have somebody like Alan, who's a master of the mixing process. He basically sends it out into the stratosphere.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"A: Back when we were cutting on tape, we didn't have a choice. We had to commit, because we only had 46 tracks and a lot of guitars going on there, between 15 and 18, so we had to make commitments and choices. But we had enough to be flexible. We would each have a mic at the desk, so it was mainly in how we recorded the sounds. The EQs and compression were all committed to tape. Flood and I both came up in the same school, so if we found something we liked, we'd commit to it, because you never know if you're going to be able to get it back.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Do you ever know ahead of time in the studio that you're onto something special in the \"hit\" category? Does that make you treat the production any differently from the other songs on the album?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: I've had this view for years that you should never label a song as being a single. The moment that that happens, it attaches itself as weight and baggage. Everybody tries too hard, and there's a pressure on the song to deliver. Quite often it can never live up to that, or it ends up as a compromise, because everybody's piddle-paddling around trying to make it the greatest thing since sliced bread. When you try to make something sound good for the radio, you'll end up making it sound like garbage... or worse.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Every producer I've talked to through the years has a great last-minute rush story about finishing up a record they almost didn't get delivered to the label on time.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"A: With the Smashing Pumpkins' \"Tonight, Tonight\" I remember the mix on that was really, really difficult. I think we had gone through the night, and we had to hold the door shut to stop Bobby Brown from getting in so we could finish it off!","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Any favorites sessions or albums you'd highlight, looking back?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"A: Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, and The Cure were my three babies. I've been very, very fortunate to have more than one.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: I think the thing you have to concentrate on is being proud of managing to get something through the door that stands the test of time.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Any closing advice for the beginners reading this who want to become producers in their own right?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: Try not to second-guess yourself, because that's the worst thing you can do.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What's it like to know you have a fanbase, the same way the artists you produce do? What is it like to know you've been an influence on others?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"F: It's nice to hear. I was talking to Johnny Marr once, and we were talking about songs as a producer or performer that he'd released. One in particular I felt was a brilliant song but that the production wasn't very good. He said, \"You know what? That song changed my son's life. He listened to that song religiously.\" That's the power of music; don't abuse it and don't take it for granted. If one person in the world is served or changed, then you've done your job. So it's brilliant to hear that doing what I love doing is translating and helping people have a different way of looking at life. I try to learn something new, and I try to do something different every day. We've only got one life, and I feel very humble because I'm just a bloke from the suburbs.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Flood Playlist on Spotify","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"link","attrs":{"rel":"noopener noreferrer nofollow","href":"https://open.spotify.com/user/tapeopmag/playlist/5o415tVFAgOSb397vJkS9Y","target":"_blank"}}]}]}]},"tiptapIntroJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Flood (aka Mark Ellis) could be called one of the most mysterious record producers working in the business by name alone, not to mention that most special way his ears hear music, and the extraordinary gift with which he translates that sound onto record. From revolutionizing U2's sonic landscape at the dawn of the 1990s by credibly delivering them into the electronic dimension with the 20-million selling album Achtung Baby, to the way he and fellow visionary Trent Reznor developed the sub-genre he'd invented throughout groundbreaking albums like Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral, Flood has been convincing bands to take artistic risks for decades, risks that often have turned out to be leaps in musical time. \"1979,\" one of Smashing Pumpkins' most progressive hits, is one such sonic journey, as is Depeche Mode's futuristic-sounding Violator. They remain among so many other trail-blazing moments in his storied catalog. His co-pilot behind the boards for over 30 years, engineer Alan Moulder, a translator of sorts for Flood, who has remained an invaluable partner in his record-making process for both soundmen's entire careers, joins us here.","type":"text"}]}]},"primaryImage":{"id":"715651e4-5e83-478c-8ea8-43f091b74315-primaryImage","url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/737c2dd2-c00a-4de7-bbf6-9158fd29e0e5/originals/flood_MxKFzfU_optimized.webp","alt":null,"caption":null,"width":1500,"height":1050,"variations":{"large":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/737c2dd2-c00a-4de7-bbf6-9158fd29e0e5/variations/1200w/flood_MxKFzfU.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/737c2dd2-c00a-4de7-bbf6-9158fd29e0e5/variations/1200w/flood_MxKFzfU.webp","width":1200,"height":840},"small":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/737c2dd2-c00a-4de7-bbf6-9158fd29e0e5/variations/320w/flood_MxKFzfU.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/737c2dd2-c00a-4de7-bbf6-9158fd29e0e5/variations/320w/flood_MxKFzfU.webp","width":320,"height":224},"medium":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/737c2dd2-c00a-4de7-bbf6-9158fd29e0e5/variations/640w/flood_MxKFzfU.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/737c2dd2-c00a-4de7-bbf6-9158fd29e0e5/variations/640w/flood_MxKFzfU.webp","width":640,"height":448},"thumbnail":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/737c2dd2-c00a-4de7-bbf6-9158fd29e0e5/variations/thumbnail/flood_MxKFzfU.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/737c2dd2-c00a-4de7-bbf6-9158fd29e0e5/variations/thumbnail/flood_MxKFzfU.webp","width":150,"height":150}},"is_primary":true,"position":0,"use_case":null},"publicationDate":"2017-01-15T08:00:00.000Z","featuredImageUrl":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/737c2dd2-c00a-4de7-bbf6-9158fd29e0e5/originals/flood_MxKFzfU_optimized.webp","excerpt":"Flood (aka Mark Ellis) could be called one of the most mysterious record producers working in the business by name alone, not to mention that most special way his ears hear music, and the extraordinary gift with which he translates that sound onto record. From revolutionizing U2's
...","url":"/tutorials/117/flood-mark-ellis","authorName":"Jake Brown","authorSlug":null,"contributors":[{"id":"9d80d276-6ff3-406f-a27a-ebf258994f72","name":"Jake Brown","role":"author","firstName":"Jake","lastName":"Brown"}],"viewCount":49784,"showCoverImageIntro":true},{"id":"35a4205a-bde6-42da-b242-a739ddb7e8d8","title":"Ben Hillier","slug":"ben-hillier","subtitle":"Depeche Mode, Blur, Elbow","issueNumber":112,"tiptapJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Elbow's second album, ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"Cast of Thousands","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", contains \"Grace Under Pressure,\" a song with a stadium choir at the end. How do you get a crowd to pull this off? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"After their first album [","type":"text"},{"text":"Asleep in the Back","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":"], they got booked to play Glastonbury. At the concert, Guy Garvey, their lead singer, decided out of nowhere to say, \"Glastonbury, do you wanna be on our next album?\" Off the top of his head, he made up a phrase for them to sing and got the drummer to do a click track. They all sang it, and so they had a recording of that and we sampled it. The band ended up writing a song around that sample. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Did you have problems with pitch and timing? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"With a crowd that big, the pitch is so vague, so it isn't much of an issue. We did have to pitch it a bit, but they had been working with the sample when they wrote the song. I think Guy had played the chord before, so he had sung the line to the crowd in a key. And they were pretty close! It was more of an issue with the timing, which was pretty vague. When we made the album, the first thing to do was to get this section down. One of the concepts of the album was that everybody who had anything to do with the record, and anybody who came to visit them, had to sing on that section. So it was the Glastonbury crowd, plus 50 or 60 other people on top. We had that track record to go all the time.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What strikes me about the Elbow records are the guitar sounds, with their slight lo-fi edge. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The way they lay out their frequencies is quite good. The drummer is fantastic, and his tone is great, so you can get quite a big sound on the drums. The bass tends to play very low; there's not a lot of top-end. The guitarist's melodies are quite good at standing out on their own. You can make the guitar sound quite small and hard. And I got it to poke out quite a lot, because I wasn't relying on the electric guitar to set up the warmth of the track. It is usually the bass and the keyboards that are doing that. Listening to it on its own, it is quite aggressive; all the other frequencies are covered by the rest of the band on the track. Guy's vocal is also quite low-pitched and warm sounding as well. There's quite a lot of space in the guitar register, around 1.5 to 2 kHz, you can poke out really well. Craig Potter, the keyboard player, was very good at choosing his sounds. Quite often, keyboards are tricky in rock bands. They're difficult to blend in... ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Since they can cover a broad range, from top to bottom? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Exactly. Normally the keyboards are trying to do everything. Craig is quite good at being minimal and keeping a sense of space in sound. As soon as you get those types of players and sounds, the rest is quite easy to sort out. A lot of the guitar sounds were recorded with a ribbon microphone 15-meters away from the amp! We worked in a large studio [Parr Street] in Liverpool, and the room was dry enough not to color the sound too much. But when you put that in the mix, it sits in there really nicely. I nearly always record a guitar amp with an [Shure] SM 57 on it, but that would be purely as a spot mic; it will be the focus of the sound. The \"character\" sound will be something presumably a long way away from it. I'm recording guitars with a lot of space on them. If the room's right, I can do 10- to 15-meters away. The close mic will give it the definition, but the sound will be the room mics. My studio, at the moment [The Pool in London], is in a great big open warehouse space. We have a couple of room mics at the ceiling, which is about 10 meters high. It's not very \"wet\" though! ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Sounds a bit like Abbey Road's Studio 2, which is a big room, but it doesn't have a large reverb tail either... ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Exactly! And it's great when you record in such rooms, because you can get the distance from the mics, but you get a much less \"bent\" and colored sound as you would in a really wet-sounding room. Right up close to the speaker sounds a bit choked to me. It always sounds to me like the sound doesn't have space to move in the air. Guitar amps aren't designed to be listened to at a really close distance. They are designed to be listened to from a distance, so I record them like that. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"If you record them right off the speaker, you're always trying to make up for the sound. You're trying to mimic what you hear in the room... ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Exactly. And if you can get that result without having to resort to compression and reverb, it will be a much more natural sound. Adding reverb will add mud and messiness, which you don't get acoustically in the room. It's very difficult in the modern age, since most people record in very small spaces and not in studios. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Early reflections can be troublesome. Someone recently claimed that you actually get the best \"small room\" sounds in dry-sounding big rooms. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yes! The great thing about big rooms is that the walls are quite far away! If you want to have a sound that is less colored, you just keep the microphones away from the walls. The sound is really clear and direct, even though the microphones are quite far away. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I heard you have a collection of old synthesizers that you use a lot on your productions. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"My three main ones, at that time, were the Korg MS-20, ARP 2600, and an EMS VCS 3. When I started out as an engineer I had to justify the purchase, so I used them an awful lot for treating sounds, especially for controlling the frequency range by using the filters of the MS-20. You can take sounds that would take too much space in a mix, tune them into essential parts, and give them a lot more character. The thing I like about it is that there are no presets. You don't step through and ask yourself, \"Is that one good, or this one?\" Going through presets is the most boring thing you could possibly do in the studio. Instead, you can go in there, build the sound, and patch things through the way you want them to be. I find that much more creative. That's a problem with software synths to me: It will only let you change the sound so far, but won't actually let you get in there and mess around with it. And just by their nature, you're removing what makes the original analogue version great — the unpredictability and the constant variation. Digital can't do that. Digital is a victim of its own success. It has become so easy, and what companies want is to sell plug-ins to people who can't afford going to studios. That's where they're gonna make the most money. People who are developing and experimenting in studios, that's not their target group. If you can afford going to a real studios, you're going to use a real [Urie] 1176 compressor. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The last Blur album, ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"Think Tank","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", took 18 months. You built a studio in Marrakesh, Morocco, and hauled a big console along. From a producer's point of view, it must have been a difficult record since guitar player Graham Coxon had quit? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, [it was] difficult, in some ways, because we didn't have Graham. He's an amazing musician. I've done four solo records with him. He has a very strong musical DNA. Obviously that was a real drawback: you've got this band and you're missing one of the main parts. The gap Graham had left almost served as an inspiration to the rest of the band, especially to singer Damon Albarn. Making a record without Graham was like starting again. It was their seventh album, and at that point as a band, there's not much you haven't done before. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Who came up with the idea to record in Marrakesh? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Damon had been to a festival over there, and he loved the fact that there's so much live music everywhere. You'd walk into a carpet shop and they had a band playing, rather than the radio on. There are live musicians everywhere. It was less than a year after 9/11, and going to a Muslim country everybody told us to be careful, but everyone was really lovely and we were never threatened or anything. We were never worried, at all. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"How did you get the gear to build a studio? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"We rented the equipment from Tickle Music Hire in London. They built the studio. It had Genelec monitoring and a Rupert Neve Amek console — a good sounding desk. Lots of outboard, mic preamps, API gear, and Urei compressors. I think it was the first time I did a record entirely on Pro Tools reliably. We mixed to 1/2-inch tape, but recorded to Pro Tools. That gave us a lot more freedom to move around, since we didn't have to work on a multitrack tape machine with heat and weather issues. We brought the whole studio back to England to finish it off. So we'd been in Marrakesh at 40 degrees [centigrade], next to the desert, and we came back to Britain and we went to Devon. It's possibly the wettest place in Britain, in autumn. Windy and wet! ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Why did you mix in Marrakesh? Did you want to finish the project right away? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yes, that was my aim. Damon is a really fast creator. He's interested in the spark of creativity, and making something new is what excites him in music. If you put Damon in a studio, he'll write or start a song. But to finish a song is hard work, because that's boring. Finishing a song, you have to knuckle down — getting the vocals and the lyrics right. With the early version of the song, everything is almost there, but it's just not finished. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"At that part of the process, you're becoming more of a craftsman instead of an artist. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Exactly. You're crafting it in the end, which is a real discipline. The reason we went to Marrakesh was that there were a lot of distracting things in London. They were very famous at the time, and it would've been easy for somebody to come in and take them off partying somewhere else. They were pretty disciplined when we were in the studio; but it was increasingly hard to focus everyone, so we went somewhere else. They didn't have anything else to do; there were no distractions. And it was a question of forcing Damon to finish off things. So in Marrakesh, Damon and I really knuckled down the songs. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You were basically trying to capture the moment of creation? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Exactly. With some artists it's the hardest thing getting to finish records. To finish a song, without losing what excited you about it. In all my productions, I will keep tracking as open as I can, for as long as I can. I never understood the overdubbing productions, where the band writes songs, then you bring the drummer in, and afterwards you do all the bass tracks. To me, there's no excitement and no spark. It's not even craftsmanship; it's just drudgery and going through the motions. The thing that excites me is when everyone starts playing and something comes out that excites everyone at that moment. You have to make sure not to lose that, and also to remember very clearly what their inspiration was, as well as what excited you about it. Then you have to be very delicate to make sure you can bring that out and don't swamp or drown it. That happens very easily! The temptation with computers is to record something, and then put it in time afterwards or tune it. That's not what excites me. It's very much production by numbers, putting things in time and tune. That's a last resort to me. I have to be forced to do that. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Sometimes, the actual sound of an instrument sparks an idea. When you get to it later on, with a different sound, the spark is gone. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, that's very true. Strangely, once you've completed the song and you've managed to maintain the thing that was great about it, it's much more robust. Then you can learn what it is about it that is great. But until it's a complete thing, it's a very delicate flame, and you have to be really careful to look after it. It's easy to undermine. Because of that, I tend to work very fast. As soon as we're excited about something we record, build it up, and focus what we love about it. We don't worry about technical details, because that can all be sorted out later. We have a level of technical attainment we can rely on, which means anything we record will be useable and feasible. Unless something breaks, or a connection is faulty, just keep going! ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You're a songwriter, as well — how important is that perspective for producing records? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I think it's important to be musical, and to understand how to put a song together. Writing a song is quite a different job that has nothing to do with producing. I'm not in production mode when I write a song. Trying to produce a song while you're writing it can be very destructive. You can easily spend a lot of time overthinking subtleties that shouldn't be subtleties yet. You have to reject that part, see what happens, and then cut things. The Nadine Shah album [","type":"text"},{"text":"Love Your Dum and Mad","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":"], I co-wrote with her and it took a lot of time to write. Then we had to go away from it and work out what the project was — what worked and what didn't work. If I'd been in production mode, I would've made those decisions earlier, but I would have probably gotten them wrong at that stage! ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"When you got the call from Depeche Mode to produce Playing the Angel, were you surprised they chose you? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I ","type":"text"},{"text":"was ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":"surprised. I hadn't done any synth-heavy records. I knew [Mute label boss] ","type":"text"},{"text":"Daniel Miller","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"link","attrs":{"rel":"noopener noreferrer nofollow","href":"/interviews/110/daniel-miller/","target":"_blank"}}]},{"text":". I had worked with him before, and he knew I was into synths. I'd done much rockier stuff before. I think the key element was that, as a producer, I'd basically always done live drum kits. Obviously Depeche Mode have very little live drums on their albums. But, as an engineer, I'd done an awful lot of program music, doing dance music for years, and Daniel Miller knew this. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What did they expect from you? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Basically they said, \"We have these songs. Do you think we could make a good album out of them?\" And there were some very good songs, so it was easy. There were certain challenges involved with working with them for the first time, and them being such an established band. But they were very easy to get on with. And Dave [Gahan] was beginning to write — he'd written an awful lot of songs, and he didn't necessarily know which ones were suitable for the record. He gave me 15 to 16 songs and said, \"You and Martin [Gore] choose which ones fit the album. Pick what you like.\" That was very brave of him! It really helped Martin and I form a good relationship. Some of Martin's songs were finished already, like \"Precious.\" As far as I was concerned, the demo was great. The drums weren't, so we spent quite a lot of work on the drums, and we knuckled the vocals down. But sonically, the demo was really good. There were a lot of elements I wouldn't have used — [such as the] quite modern Nord Lead synth, and an [Access] Virus virtual synth. He tweaked the sounds and programmed them. I said, \"We don't need to change that; it's not broken. We need to get the grooves right, and we need to get the vocals right to fit in the right spaces.\" A track like \"Precious\" is quite hard to sing, because it isn't full on. It has to have a subtlety to it to make the lyrics work. We worked with Dave to get that right, and Dave is great at that. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The song deals with divorce and feeling guilty for a child — it has a fragile element to it. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Absolutely. That was very important. That was the key to the song. Making sure it didn't become too strident — to stay quite personal instead. It needed to have a gentleness. With a song like \"Precious\" that was the aim; making it a band song rather than just a Martin song. The songs that Dave had written, that we really liked, were quite a long way, stylistically. So it was a question of reworking those songs and trying to improve them. Make the bits of them that we really liked be the bits that really shone out. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"How did you establish trust for working on their songs? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Martin is quite precious about his songs, or at least he was at that stage with me, because we didn't know each other yet. He used to be quite defensive about ","type":"text"},{"text":"his ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":"songs, whereas Dave's songs he hadn't written. Dave was precious about his songs, too, so we had to make sure he was happy with our results. That was a really good exercise. It meant that later down the line, there was trust established to work in writing together. Martin had a tendency to never give you songs that weren't finished. As a producer, this is a strange position to be in because there's not that much room for maneuver. You don't want to fully dismantle the songs because, as we talked about earlier, you might lose what's great about it. On the other hand, being in on the creation of the song can be much more exciting — so you get a really special version of the song recorded. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You might create something bigger than the writer might have achieved alone? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Exactly. And that was the difficulty with Martin. The only song that he really let me do that with was \"John the Revelator,\" because he wrote it in the studio. He worked at the guitar part and had the idea in his head for the song. He played it to me. I went, \"Great. Let's do that now\" and off we went. I kind of took him by surprise. [laughs] He was expecting me to say, \"Go do the demo, and then we'll do it!\" ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"He couldn't protect the idea any longer... ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Exactly! [laughs] He let it out! That worked out really well. On the next album, ","type":"text"},{"text":"Sounds of the Universe","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", we did a few songs like that. The song \"Wrong\" was very different from the demo. It was great having that growing relationship with him. We reached a point on the last album [","type":"text"},{"text":"Delta Machine","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":"], where there was full trust. [laughs] It is a very intimate thing to work on a song with somebody. When you write songs with people, it is very hit or miss as to whether or not the relationship will work. Friends of mine are great songwriters, and we say we'd love to write together, but it doesn't work, even though we get on very well. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"When Depeche Mode keyboardist and sound designer Alan Wilder quit in the mid '90s, they lost the guy who'd built their sonic landscapes. So now, basically every producer becomes a member of the band for this period. Did you create a sonic vision for ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"Playing the Angel","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":"? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It was a bit of a reaction to the record they had done before. ","type":"text"},{"text":"Exciter ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":"was very much in the programmed world, and very electronic. Everything was very specific, whereas I wanted to be getting something that wasn't so digitally nipped and tucked — something that had a bit more of a rocky, bluesy element to it. I wanted the excitement of a performance. Very often, we'd record live performances of synths instead of programming them. Or we'd use lots of different sequencers and older drum machines, because I didn't want it to sound like the software sequencer that we'd used. Say I was programming in Logic, for instance. Pretty much everything I'd program in Logic has the same feel, because the functioning in Logic pushes me in a direction. I wanted the opposite — music programmed on an Akai MPC drum machine, an ARP Sequencer, or something like that. I wanted to do it as I would with a band, where I'd have a drummer with a certain feel, and a bass player [that I] would work in a certain way with him. We've done that with all three records, but we changed ways of doing it. I wanted it to be a messier, bigger-sounding, more open record. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Their ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"Sounds of the Universe","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" DVD shows some studio performances. I noticed what great performers Dave Gahan and Martin Gore actually are. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"They are fantastic performers! Dave as a singer, and Martin is an amazing musician. He's got great feel. You could spend ages programming the sound, and it wouldn't be right. Martin would play it, and it would be right straightaway! [laughs] At the time, we were doing ","type":"text"},{"text":"Playing the Angel","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", I think they were at quite a low point. Dave was clean and Martin wasn't. It really felt like they weren't sure whether or not they were going to do any more records after that. Martin was kind of giving it his last go. A lot of the record involved getting through that. On the following tour, Martin gave up drinking, and he was a much happier chap. Now Martin and Dave are great friends again; probably better friends than they've ever been. Being a very successful rock musician creates a very strange setup of pressure. I think they're comfortable now, and they were very graceful in the way they handle it. I think that it takes a while to learn that. Any band who, from a young age, has been told by lots of people that they are great is a recipe for disaster! [laughs] If you're growing up and everyone out there says you're brilliant, it does funny things to your head. There were points on that record where I really didn't know if they were all going to stay in the same room. But they did! They chose to be professional about it when they needed to be, which is exactly the right thing to do. My approach to these things is to make it clear, \"Look, we're here to do a job. We want to do a job, and so should you.\" All the other crap is exactly that — crap. It's got nothing to do with making records. I tend to be very compartmentalized, in that way. \"We are working on this record, and we're making this record. Other things are of no consequence.\" ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Maybe they needed someone pointing this out? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Exactly, rather than to get involved in any band politics, which, through experience, I know is a stupid thing to do. They've known each other since they were kids; they went to school together. It's like getting involved in family politics when you're not in the family. You don't know the depth of the feelings and how things run. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"On","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":" Playing the Angel","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" some vocal tracks were distorted. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"For some tracks we wanted a real drive. As he's getting older, Dave's voice is getting a deeper growl to it, which wasn't there on the earlier albums. That responded really well to distortion. Dave's got a great rhythm in his delivery, and we were emphasizing that; making the songs heavier and the sounds darker. It was a question of making his voice step up to that. A bit of drive and distortion really did that, as we did with the drum and bass sounds. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Distortion on vocals is a double-edged sword. It gets more aggressive, but it also thins the sound out so the vocal delivery loses impact and depth. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yes, you have to be very sensitive as to how you do it. I never use just the purely distorted vocal. I'll always have the dry track blended in as well, which usually gives me the definition, the clarity, and the size of it. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What was the vocal chain on Delta Machine? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"On Dave we mainly used a [Shure] SM7 with a LaChapell 992 mic pre, with either a Retro 176 or a [Urei] LA-3 compressor. He usually held the mic so he could perform in front of the speakers. He'd quite often use open back headphones, as well as speakers. That way I could keep the speaker level lower — less spill in the microphone! He's such a master of live performance with a handheld mic that it seemed like the logical way to proceed. With Martin, we changed the setup for each track, for example: an AKG C12 or a Korby KAT47. For the track \"The Child Inside\" we recorded him in a tiled room. I blended a large diaphragm mic — the Korby, if I recall correctly — with a contact mic that was wrapped around his neck. The contact mic has this muffled, inside-your-head sound, and the room mic is really live and splashy. The idea was to make a disconcerting vocal sound! ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Delta Machine","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" was the third album you did with Depeche Mode. It seems they really like your way of working. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, I hope so! Well, I know what they don't like — which is sitting in a room, looking at the back of somebody's head who's looking at a computer screen. That is really boring. I don't like the creation process being a clinical thing, where we mess around with computers. My experience is that if you have good musicians, every minute you spend editing or quantizing is a waste of time, because you could get them to do it better. We did a lot of that on the last record, where we'd get to a certain stage of a song and I'd say, \"You know what? We should start it again. It's going well and it's sounding interesting, but it hasn't got the same spark in it that's really exciting me. What we'll do is we'll do exactly the same song again from scratch, now that we know what it is.\" It's the same way with a guitar band; when we've got it finished but it's not quite right, we'll play it again. The result is better because you've learned so much about the song, and it's a much more exciting experience. As soon as we felt like it was laboring, we'd stop and start again from scratch. We'd do it in the same key, at the same speed, so everything is interchangeable, and we're not losing anything. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"So, with the first try, you basically lay down the arrangement, and then you replay it with all the experiences you've had? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Either that, or we just say, \"This is the thing that we really like about this song. Now we're going to completely rework it and just keep that one thing.\" That was the case with \"My Little Universe,\" from the last album. The demo was really infuriating, because it sounded like an unfinished song that had loads of potential, but we couldn't get it to sound finished. We ended up in Santa Barbara on the last day of the session; the clock was ticking and we had 6 hours. I said, \"We'll do '...Universe.' We'll keep the vocal and the click track.\" [laughs] Dave had done this brilliant vocal. \"You have the next 45 minutes to pick a synth.\" Martin had one, I turned up a drum machine, Christoffer [Berg], our programmer, and Ferg [Peterkin], our engineer, were doing other sequencer parts. They basically had a jam for about 45 minutes on this groove. I just sat back and let them try everything. Dave and I were listening to it, and I was taking notes. I took everything that they'd done, 1800 bars in Pro Tools. There were a couple of noises that they played just right, and there was a 2-bar section that I really loved. [laughs] I collected the bits I really liked, and edited the 2-bar-section around to get rid of anything I didn't like. I built it all from that, with these noises they put in. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"But that was some laboring then, instead of the \"redo\" idea... ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I heard what was great and what was bad about it, and it sparked off things in my head. It was one of the things we talked about earlier, about following your inspirations and doing it quick. I was like, \"Now that I've listened to it so closely, I know exactly what I want. These two bars are everything I need.\" I was realizing what I was hearing in my head from what they'd done. Having done that, the result inspired Martin to do some extra parts and flesh out the structure of it. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Does it help to lay down a rule, so the constraints spark something? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You have to do that. Especially in a studio, where you have every option at your fingertips, it's all about ","type":"text"},{"text":"limiting ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":"the options. Otherwise you'll get hopelessly lost. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Looking back, what was your most difficult project to date as a producer? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I did a record with a band called Clinic called ","type":"text"},{"text":"Walking with Thee","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":". It's actually one of the records I'm the proudest of, in a lot of ways. They asked me to do the project, and it was very early in my career. When I walked into the studio, they gave me a booklet they had printed out, which had all the songs listed, as well as the exact arrangements of the songs, to the last bar, with the exact tempo and length. They had a list of all the instruments for each song. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Sounds like they already did the production themselves. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Well, they had a description of how all the instruments should sound. I was like, \"Well, what do you want me to do?\" They said, \"You're just gonna stop us from arguing!\" [laughs] It was funny, because — as we were talking earlier about limitations — there were so many limitations on that project. Back then, I was thinking that this wasn't going to be a creative experience for anybody, that it was just going to be recording things and saying, \"Yes\" or, \"No.\" Actually, it became a really creative experience, because I had such a limit to what I could do within the project. I could find ways to manifest myself. There were certain areas they weren't that interested in, like drum sounds. The more outlandish the drums turned out, the more they liked it. The drum sounds on the record are fantastic! [laughs] I could do what I wanted there. Guitar sounds were very heavily policed. They had a really clear view of what they wanted of the guitar sounds. I was meant for the groove, and the drums, and the bass sounds. I was kind of allowed free reign, which meant I could really impart my vision for the songs. It was very much in the groove area, which was great! I really enjoyed doing that. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"For the record ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"Love Your Dum and Mad","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", by singer/songwriter Nadine Shah, piano and vocals were done in a big warehouse? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, we recorded all the piano parts in a big curtain superstore in Newcastle, which Nadine's father owned. They'd just moved into a new warehouse, so it was empty when we got there, which was great. I put together a six-piece-band, and we recorded that in my studio in London. We had a PA set up in the room, and we bounced the sound within the room, and then we recorded the room. All the reverb on the album is natural — vocals and everything. I had microphones that were 100 meters away from the piano! When I started recording, my first experience was with classical music. They work on location all the time, so I'd turn up with a van full of equipment and set up a studio. I love doing that! I've got a portable 8-channel Neve desk. That's got direct outs to [feed the computer]. It only works if you have musicians who can deal with it, specifically singers. I don't know many other vocalists that could have cut that. Nadine's vocal performance is of such a quality. When you're dealing with that level of performance, it's very easy — you can use the acoustics. ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"How did you come up with the idea of creating that landscape? ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It was a desire to record it in a way that was using big acoustics. We really wanted it to not be a church; we wanted a colder, harder edge, like a warehouse. All the extra noises — the rattling, traffic noises — give it richness and texture. I amplified those in mixing, where I wanted them. In the song \"Winter Reigns\" there's a massive rumbling. That is actually me taking off the low-end filter of the room mics and turning the bass up. That's just the ambience! If you record in a clean way, you don't have those things to play with. I find those sorts of things much more creative. ","type":"text"}]}]},"tiptapIntroJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Producer/engineer/songwriter Ben Hillier's work ranges from indie guitar bands to synth-driven music. He's produced the last three Depeche Mode records, singer/songwriter Nadine Shah, Blur's Think Tank, Elbow's Cast of Thousands, Graham Coxon, Doves, and The Futureheads.","type":"text"}]}]},"primaryImage":{"id":"35a4205a-bde6-42da-b242-a739ddb7e8d8-primaryImage","url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/502ace13-bd67-4c9d-a909-a7a7f80fefaa/originals/ben_hillier - 1_optimized.webp","alt":null,"caption":null,"width":1280,"height":740,"variations":{"large":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/502ace13-bd67-4c9d-a909-a7a7f80fefaa/variations/1200w/ben_hillier - 1.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/502ace13-bd67-4c9d-a909-a7a7f80fefaa/variations/1200w/ben_hillier - 1.webp","width":1200,"height":694},"small":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/502ace13-bd67-4c9d-a909-a7a7f80fefaa/variations/320w/ben_hillier - 1.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/502ace13-bd67-4c9d-a909-a7a7f80fefaa/variations/320w/ben_hillier - 1.webp","width":320,"height":185},"medium":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/502ace13-bd67-4c9d-a909-a7a7f80fefaa/variations/640w/ben_hillier - 1.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/502ace13-bd67-4c9d-a909-a7a7f80fefaa/variations/640w/ben_hillier - 1.webp","width":640,"height":370},"thumbnail":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/502ace13-bd67-4c9d-a909-a7a7f80fefaa/variations/thumbnail/ben_hillier - 1.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/502ace13-bd67-4c9d-a909-a7a7f80fefaa/variations/thumbnail/ben_hillier - 1.webp","width":150,"height":150}},"is_primary":true,"position":0,"use_case":null},"publicationDate":"2016-03-15T22:28:00.000Z","featuredImageUrl":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/502ace13-bd67-4c9d-a909-a7a7f80fefaa/originals/ben_hillier - 1_optimized.webp","excerpt":"Producer/engineer/songwriter Ben Hillier's work ranges from indie guitar bands to synth-driven music. He's produced the last three Depeche Mode records, singer/songwriter Nadine Shah, Blur's Think Tank, Elbow's Cast of Thousands, Graham Coxon, Doves, and The
...","url":"/tutorials/112/ben-hillier","authorName":"Nicolay Ketterer","authorSlug":null,"contributors":[{"id":"84b1f53c-152a-461a-a38d-9fe9e67e52dd","name":"Nicolay Ketterer","role":"author","firstName":"Nicolay","lastName":"Ketterer"}],"viewCount":23241,"showCoverImageIntro":true},{"id":"7693f2d5-7208-47b5-b086-46c821401f91","title":"Additional Dialogue with Deke Dickerson","slug":"deke-dickerson-bonus","subtitle":null,"issueNumber":110,"tiptapJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You grew up in Missouri. We had ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"an interview with Lou Whitney","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"link","attrs":{"rel":"noopener noreferrer nofollow","href":"/interviews/98/lou-whitney/","target":"_blank"}}]},{"text":" in issue #98. I know you were in different cities, I think...","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I knew those guys, and they were my heroes, but they were just a lot older than me. When The Morells played their last show in 1984 I would have been 15 or 16 years old, and I was standing outside the club, on my tiptoes peering in the windows, watching them play their last show. I wound up getting the set list from their last show. Those guys were a huge influence, but they were also kind of these scary older guys to me. I think it was in 1990 that the Untamed Youth actually recorded a record at Lou Whitney's.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Column One?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yeah, with their drummer, Bobby Lloyd Hicks. He played drums for us, because our drummer had just quit. We actually got Donnie Thompson to play second guitar on a song with me. I idolized those guys.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Lou seemed like — minded.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Definitely. When I was 15, or maybe 16, The Morells had broken up and they had a spin — off band called Maralie and Her Boys. It was Lou's wife Maralie on keyboard. They asked me to join the band while I was still in high school. I went down to Springfield for a week and rehearsed with her and a couple of other guys. She took me by Lou's place, and it was so funny, because I idolized Lou Whitney. He said, \"Let me give you the best advice I could possibly give you. Get out of the music business now, while you still can!\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"That shows up in his interview, too. \"Become a lawyer. Do anything else.\"","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"At the time I was like, \"Wow, man that guy's really cynical.\" Now here I am at 45 years old, probably the same age he was when he told me that, and I'm like, \"That was probably the best advice I ever got.\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I think you're sort of a brand, and people recognize that if you're presenting a show, or putting together a band, or your name's listed, there's something identifiable. I think that people who follow that support it, too.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Absolutely. I think a lot of (for lack of a better term) cult musicians build up that brand over time. You just have to make sure that if you attach your brand to something, you're going to deliver what people are expecting, and it's not going to suck.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Do you ever feel it's limited? I imagine that any musician's taste is wider than what the artist expects of them. Do you feel like sometimes you'd like to do completely different stuff?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Well, I feel like I ","type":"text"},{"text":"do","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":". I feel like I challenge my audience to like different things. Actually when you listen to this EP I did with Nikki Hill [","type":"text"},{"text":"Soul Meets Country!","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":"], it's like a soul — funk record. I was worried that a lot of the rockabilly people wouldn't get into it, but luckily Nikki Hill has really kind of blown up over the last year, and people love her. It's mostly been really positive feedback on it. I'm more interested in doing stuff that interests me. I guess if there's a comparison, it would sort of be Neil Young, a guy who does all these weird projects and sort of invites the audience to follow along with him. It's like, \"Hey man, if you like me, then you should like this. If you don't, give it a couple of listens, and I bet you will like it.\" It's sort of a different career path than like The Ramones, who did 31 albums of the exact same sound.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"feel like anybody worth their salt's going to be drawing a bunch of different genres and styles.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I sort of get identified as a rockabilly guy, but it's funny because rockabilly is just a tiny slice of what I do. But once you get the tattoo of rockabilly on your career, it's like you can never shake it. I've done all these different projects, and I could do an avant — garde experimental record, but people would still call me rockabilly. I just roll with it.","type":"text"},{"text":" ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"A lot of people who pigeonhole people are like the least knowledgeable ones. My favorite example of that was when I did this record with Biller and Wakefield, this steel guitar combo. They were just fantastic sort of Western swing/jazz musicians. I recorded six songs with them, just straight live — to — mono tape. It was great. It sounded like a 1952 recording. They were going to do a record on HighTone, and the guy from HighTone records said, \"Look, the playing is great on this, but I can't put out a mono record. You have to put out a stereo record.\" I said, \"Okay, well if we're going to get an advance, I'll record this record in stereo for you.\" Basically what I did was the exact same recording, using RCA ribbon mics and everything else. I just recorded it to stereo with stuff slightly panned. When I played it for him, he's like, \"No, this sounds old! I need it to sound stereo!\" To him, the term stereo meant new, radio — friendly, modern. I was like, \"Oh, I thought stereo meant that there's stuff in the left and the right speaker that's different.\" Yeah, the people who always want to pigeonhole you as retro or whatever usually know so little about what it is they're putting down.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Have you ever had to take someone who's been making records for a long time and convince them to try to make them the way that they were made in the old days?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Well, the thing about legacy artists, as you put it (I usually call them old — timers), is that even though they did great stuff in the '40s or '60s or '70s, they've also lived through subsequent decades, changed their equipment, bought different clothes, had different cars, had kids, wound up being insurance agents for a while, or whatever, so they don't have a direct timeline to that flash of brilliance that they had in 1956 or 1964 or whatever. A lot of times the younger kids who listen to those old records will think that's the flash of brilliance and everything about it is great. Nokie Edwards [The Ventures] is a good example, in that Nokie's heart really, truly lies with very gentle, acoustic finger — picking music. When he does that, he's great. He'll play songs like \"Classical Gas,\" and it's brilliant. That's truly where his heart lies. He does realize but he doesn't love as much the fact that what most people like about Nokie was this violent, raw electric guitar that he played with The Ventures in the mid — '60s. If you point him in that direction, he'll do it, and it'll be great. It's just that you really have to say, \"Okay, we're going to do this, and we want it to sound like this.\" He might try to turn the volume down and make it plainer — sounding, and you'll tell him, \"No man, it's got to be up.\" At the end of the day, when you get an older artist in there with the right direction, it's brilliant. It's just that sometimes it can be so hard to get to that point.","type":"text"},{"text":" ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"In some ways I can relate to it, because if somebody came to me and said, \"That first Untamed Youth record was brilliant, and I want to take you in the studio and redo everything just like that,\" I'd be thinking in my mind like, \"Oh man, it was a Tascam 8 — track recorder, AKG 414s on everything... I hate the way that record sounds. I don't want that!\" So I understand. I also don't think I'm capable of going back and playing everything as fast and sort of crazy as I did when I was 17. But at the same time, I like to think that I understand why people would like that. I'd be fairly resistant to recreating my first recording in 1988.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I noticed one of the records you did was a live one from Portland, ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"Live at Duff's Garage","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":". What recording set — up was that?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It was an [Alesis] HD24 that we rented. This is sort of your nightmare story about digital recording. We did a Friday and Saturday night at Duff's. It was myself and this band The Modern Sounds. The guy who was engineering it was the drummer of The Modern Sounds, Alex Hall. I don't know if you know the name, but he has a studio in Chicago, and he recorded this really amazing record by J. D. McPherson. He set up this whole recording setup in the upstairs sound booth at Duff's. He had the HD24 going. We basically set it to record and played our show. The Friday night show was by far the best show that we'd every played in our lives. There was an amazing crowd response. After we played, we all said to ourselves, \"That's it, man. This is killer!\" Alex went up to the sound booth, and when he came back he was white as a ghost. The owner of Duff's had gone up there, as was his normal nighttime routine, and unplugged the power strip from the wall. The HD24 was still going in record, and when he did that, it was all gone. We found out later that we probably could have saved that, but we didn't know that at the time. We spent the next day being super depressed about losing the Friday night show. The Saturday night show is very good. It's a good CD, and I'm proud of it, but for those of us in the band, we know that the Friday night show was 25 percent better. That was one of those times that I wished I was just recording to tape.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Everything would still be there. Man, I waited years to delve into digital recording. I saw the ADATs come around, and everybody was building studios around those in the late '80s and early '90s. It seemed like if a studio was good, they kind of negated them, but if someone was bad, everyone would blame the ADATs. When I started Jackpot!, I got a 16 — track 2 — inch. Everybody said that tape sounded so much better. I let them believe that, but I just didn't want to fuck up the signal path. It took me years to get into the DAW stuff.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You're probably like me. It just doesn't feel cool. You feel cool when you're on an old board and working with the tape machine and all that, but now when you're working with a mouse, you just don't feel cool.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I've gotten used to it. Have you spliced tape in front of a younger band these days? It's a trip. They freak out.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"They can't believe that it's possible.","type":"text"},{"text":" ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"Have you ever heard the weird digital re — pressing of \"She Loves You\" by The Beatles? I heard it on a 7 — inch record at Len Horowitz's house. It was one of these vinyl records they put out in the late — '80s/early — '90s using a digital source. It was awesome, because there was actually a little digital crunch sound every time there was a tape splice. You actually realized that wow, these records have like 37 tape splices in them. \"She Loves You\" literally had a splice after each \"She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah.\" A lot of those old hit records were done in seven or eight takes with a guy who really knew what he was doing, basically doing the old — timey equivalent of cutting and pasting on Pro Tools.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"There's always been a lot of technical work in the background of records. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I appreciate a lot of different things. Just the other day, I was listening to \"A Change is Gonna Come\" by Sam Cooke, and I was thinking it was one of the most gorgeous recordings I'd ever heard. It was RCA Studios Hollywood, all the top guys. The level of engineering expertise and equipment available, with all [Neumann] U 47s and everything else, was literally the best that ever was. Then at the same time, I listened to some Jack Earls record on Sun, and it's really, marvelously screwed up in a fantastic way. If it were recorded at RCA studios with a bunch of U 47s and the same musicians, it would have been a terrible Jack Earls record. He needed to drink some moonshine and cut loose.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It's always what's appropriate. I have the hardest time explaining that to people sometimes. ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I've had that a lot too, especially with rockabilly bands that just think that old microphones and a tape machine will make them magically sound better. It doesn't.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Do you find when you're producing people that you try to get people to change out amps and stuff?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Sometimes. Obviously if you're recording a dude and he's playing his guitar and his amp, you want to see if he's got something special going on. Sometimes, like this guy here in town, Ian Miller, he's got this cheap Squier Tele, like the crappiest Telecaster you can buy, and he gets the best sound out of it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"And those plastic Danelectro pedals that he's using lately.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"He sounds great, you know what I mean? Recording him was a joy, because he's such a good musician and he knew how to get a sound out of his gear. But other guys, even some older guys who have been playing for a long time, will show up with a Roland Jazz Chorus amp. I just tell them there's no way I can get that to sound like a '50s or '60s record. It's going to sound like a Roland Jazz Chorus no matter what you do. Then we'll try to switch it out and get something that's a little more appropriate.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Do you find that sometimes people are fixated on gear they bring in that isn't actually working that well? I've had people who have brought in amps with blown out cones, blown out tubes, or microphonic tubes, issues they don't even hear.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I think people are way too fixated on gear period. I'm a guitar geek, and I love gear and all kinds of strange and obscure stuff, but if you can't play it, it doesn't make any difference at all. Another thing I learned just by watching Mark Neil record is that he'll walk around the room and just put his ear right on the guitar, or a bass, or a guitar amp speaker. It's amazing how different stuff sounds when you're across the room, or in a control room, compared to what's actually coming out of the instrument or the amplifier.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"That's so important. I feel like I'm on a lifelong quest to explain that to people.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Well, nobody ever wants to believe that they're not good enough, or that their guitar sucks or whatever. It's like we were talking about earlier. It's a lifelong thing for me to sort of ride that line between, \"Is this creative in an f — ed up way, or is this just bad?\"","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It's hard. You have to be the music critic for a moment to figure out where things need to go. That's true. It's a funny part of the job. So what do you have coming up in the future recording — wise?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"After I did this four song EP with The Trashmen, it turned out really good, and people were super — excited about it.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Is that coming out on your label?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"It already came out. I put it out as a 7 — inch four song EP and then as just a download, but everybody liked it so much that I went back and recorded some more stuff with them. It's called ","type":"text"},{"text":"Bringing Back the Trash","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":", by Deke Dickerson & The Trashmen. For me, I love The Trashmen, and people like to identify them as a one — hit — wonder novelty record band, but if you're into surf music, Tony Andreason of The Trashmen I think is like the great underrated surf guitar player. He still plays great. There are a bunch of songs on this new record where he'd go off on some solo, and you could see him just getting lost in it. It was like magic happening right in front of my eyes. For me, as a fan and also as a guy thrilled to play with The Trashmen, it's a super — exciting project to come out.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"What places have you worked at recently?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"In the last year or two I've done several projects down in Culver City at Pete Curry's studio. Pete Curry is the bass player for Los Straitjackets, and he built his own studio that he calls the Pow Wow Fun Room. I've done a lot of projects there, where I record drums and everything there and take it back to my house and do the vocal overdubs, mixing, and everything else.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"You've worked with Duane Eddy, too?","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"I have. I had him do a guest track on my new CD, and that was the sort of deal where I sent out some digital tracks and he overdubbed it in Nashville and sent them back. It turned out really well. I wasn't familiar with the studio guy he hired, but it was awesome.","type":"text"},{"text":" ","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":"One of the things I was wanting to talk to you about was recording upright bass. It's really hard, because even really good players will come in and play, and it'll have a very uneven response, even if they have a pretty good bass. I know I'm quoting him a lot here, but I give credit where it's due. One of the things Mark Neil told me was that none of these bass players now can play. He wound up using an EV — 666 with the bass player on my records, which is a pretty good microphone to use on a bass player with a really uneven response, because it kind of has that punchy low — mid thing going on, and it doesn't have a lot of proximity effect, so a bass player can be moving around a bunch and not playing very well, but you'll still get a usable bass track off it. Mark told me about Bob Moore in Nashville, who was like the guy who played on 5,000 records. I always knew Bob played on all these records, but I had this lightning — bolt experience when I was hanging out in Nashville with him and his wife Kittra and we went down to the Bluegrass Inn to see a band called The Time Jumpers play. They were like a Western swing band. Their bass player was very good. The guy playing with The Time Jumpers was an excellent bass player, but it's an upright bass. Certain notes come out louder than others, and it's an uneven response. Then they got Bob Moore up to play a couple of songs. Bob didn't touch anything on the amp, didn't change anything on the bass, and all of a sudden the bass was just amazing. Every note was exactly the same volume. Then you realized that it was in his hands. That's the reason why that guy was on 5,000 recordings. He just has a magic touch. Sometimes for that sort of thing, you just have to understand that there really is a magic touch to be had, and no amount of gear is going to change that. A lot of guys, especially when they're dealing with this older roots music, acoustic — type stuff, really don't understand that having a certain feel with your instrument is way more important than the type of instrument, how you record it, or anything else.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Oh yeah. It starts there, in the hands, the practice, the experience.","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Yep. I've talked to a few of the other guys in Nashville about Bob Moore, and they said yeah, in that day, he was the only guy who could really make a professional bass recording, because that was the way he played. You're listening to some of the other recordings of other guys, and you hear the same deal, uneven response.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"dekedickerson.com","type":"text"}]}]},"tiptapIntroJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[ image 1 ]\r\nA collector of guitars. Owner of Major Label and Ecco-Fonic Records. Record producer and engineer at his Ecco-Fonic Studios. Band leader. Guitarist. Author of two volumes of The Strat in the Attic. This guy, Deke Dickerson, does a lot of things. We met up for breakfast on a rainy Portland morning and, at the end of our interview, what did we do but to head downtown to look for the plaque (at 411 SW 13th Avenue) where The Kingsmen recorded \"Louie Louie!\" How appropriate.","type":"text"}]}]},"primaryImage":{"id":"7693f2d5-7208-47b5-b086-46c821401f91-primaryImage","url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/1c03b62f-e8ab-4705-a389-c98e3910ec29/originals/deke_dickerson - 2_TK1WfgR_optimized.webp","alt":null,"caption":null,"width":1280,"height":853,"variations":{"large":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/1c03b62f-e8ab-4705-a389-c98e3910ec29/variations/1200w/deke_dickerson - 2_TK1WfgR.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/1c03b62f-e8ab-4705-a389-c98e3910ec29/variations/1200w/deke_dickerson - 2_TK1WfgR.webp","width":1200,"height":800},"small":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/1c03b62f-e8ab-4705-a389-c98e3910ec29/variations/320w/deke_dickerson - 2_TK1WfgR.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/1c03b62f-e8ab-4705-a389-c98e3910ec29/variations/320w/deke_dickerson - 2_TK1WfgR.webp","width":320,"height":213},"medium":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/1c03b62f-e8ab-4705-a389-c98e3910ec29/variations/640w/deke_dickerson - 2_TK1WfgR.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/1c03b62f-e8ab-4705-a389-c98e3910ec29/variations/640w/deke_dickerson - 2_TK1WfgR.webp","width":640,"height":427},"thumbnail":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/1c03b62f-e8ab-4705-a389-c98e3910ec29/variations/thumbnail/deke_dickerson - 2_TK1WfgR.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/1c03b62f-e8ab-4705-a389-c98e3910ec29/variations/thumbnail/deke_dickerson - 2_TK1WfgR.webp","width":150,"height":150}},"is_primary":true,"position":0,"use_case":null},"publicationDate":"2015-11-17T07:51:00.000Z","featuredImageUrl":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/1c03b62f-e8ab-4705-a389-c98e3910ec29/originals/deke_dickerson - 2_TK1WfgR_optimized.webp","excerpt":"[ image 1 ] A collector of guitars. Owner of Major Label and Ecco-Fonic Records. Record producer and engineer at his Ecco-Fonic Studios. Band leader. Guitarist. Author of two volumes of The Strat in the Attic. This guy, Deke Dickerson, does a lot of things. We met up for breakfast on a
...","url":"/tutorials/110/deke-dickerson-bonus","authorName":"Larry Crane","authorSlug":null,"contributors":[{"id":"b8ecd2ed-95dd-4258-aba3-6ecf753995ae","name":"Larry Crane","role":"author","firstName":"Larry","lastName":"Crane"}],"viewCount":7921,"showCoverImageIntro":true},{"id":"3aacef28-efd4-4a2c-90e3-c1ce66cd02e5","title":"The New (and Preferred) Decibel","slug":"new-and-preferred-decibel","subtitle":null,"issueNumber":108,"tiptapJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The dB decibel is ubiquitous","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":" in the field of audio technology, recording, broadcast, etc. However, a need for a better notation has arisen to avoid confusion on the dB usage for certain measurements. This article explains this new and preferred dB notation with selected examples.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[object Object]","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"In the early 1920's telephone engineers needed a way to measure the loss in a standard one-mile long cable (1msc). This would allow the engineers to see if the telephone signal (voice) would need an amplifier or not to regenerate the signal strength. The development of the TU (Transmission Unit) in 1924 was created and used. The TU was defined by the following mathematical formula:","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"$$TU = \\log_{10}\\left( P_o \\over P_i\\right) $$","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Where \\(P_o\\) is the power output in watts and \\(P_i\\) is the power input in watts.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"sidebarExtension","attrs":{"title":"","variant":"default"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[object Object]","type":"text"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"This TU worked out very well for several years. However as the telephone industry grew exponentially, so did the use of the TU for measurements. The TU was then decided to become the de facto standard unit at this time and then was renamed the Bel commemorating Alexander Graham Bell the inventor of the telephone. See formula:","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"$$Bel = \\log_{10}\\left( P_o \\over P_i\\right) $$","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The Bel was considered too large of a unit to use with upcoming telephone circuits and systems. In 1928 the Bel unit was replaced with the smaller unit called the decibel dB, meaning one tenth (1/10) of a Bel. This was now the birth of the dB (decibel) which is still being used in many technical areas of sound, light, electricity, fiber optics, audio/video and other technologies.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[object Object]","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"In the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, Dr. R.W. Young explained the Unit of Level in 1971. The dB unit had acquired some various appendages or suffixes. The idea of these appendages was to develop reliable measurements that would compare the measured quantity to a known reference quantity. In this way the readings of the levels would be more accurate and reliable with less confusion.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Using this in the field of audio technology the following table will show the concept of Levels in dB (decibels). Based on the following definition the capital letter L stands for level in dB. By adding a subscript to the letter L will represent the type of level.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[object Object]","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The below levels are considered to be electrical levels.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"sidebarExtension","attrs":{"title":"","variant":"default"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[object Object]","type":"text"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"The below Lsp is considered to be an acoustic level.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"sidebarExtension","attrs":{"title":"","variant":"default"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[object Object]","type":"text"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"We can use the following general formulas for any particular technical field. The unit shall be in \\(dB_x\\), where x is the appendage letter of the reference value chosen.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"sidebarExtension","attrs":{"title":"","variant":"default"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[object Object]","type":"text"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"On the other hand, level gains typically used for amplifiers/pre-amplifiers are in ","type":"text"},{"text":"absolute dB","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":" (no appendage letter) which designates no reference.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"sidebarExtension","attrs":{"title":"","variant":"default"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[object Object]","type":"text"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Here is a list of adapted audio formulas using the above notations:","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Power","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"1. Power Level: \\(L_P = 10 * log \\left(P\\over 1mW\\right)\\) dBm","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"2. Power in watts: \\(P = .001(10)^{L_P\\over 10}\\) W","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"3. Power Gain Level: \\(L_{PG} = 10 * logG_P\\) dB","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"4. Power Gain Level: \\(L_{PG} = L_{P_o} - L_{P_i}\\) dB","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"5. Power Gain: \\(G_P = P_O / P_I\\)","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"6. Power Gain: \\(G_P = (10)^{L_{PG}\\over 10}\\)","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Voltage","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"7. Voltage Level: \\(L_V = 20 * log\\left(V\\over.775V\\right)\\) dBu","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"8. Voltage Level: \\(L_V = 20 * log\\left(V\\over 1V\\right)\\) dBV","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"9. Voltage in Volts: \\(V = V_R(10)^{L_V\\over 20}\\) V\n\n \\(V_R\\) is the voltage reference equal to .775V or 1V","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"10. Voltage Gain Level: \\(L_{VG} = 20 * logG_V\\) dB","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"11. Voltage Gain Level: \\(L_{VG} = L_{V_o} - L_{V_i}\\) dB","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"12. Voltage Gain: \\(G_V = V_O/V_I\\)","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"13. Voltage Gain: \\(G_V = (10)^{L_{VG}\\over20}\\)","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Sound Pressure (Acoustic)","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"14. Sound Pressure Level: \\(L_{SP} = 20 * log\\left(sp\\over sp_r\\right)\\) dB","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"15. Sound Pressure: \\(sp = sp_r(10)^{L_{sp}\\over 20}\\) Pa or µBar\n\n Sound Pressure References: spr = .00002 Pa ; spr = .0002 µBar","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Voltage Gain Level with Impedance dependance","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"16. \\(L_{VG} = 20 * log\\left(V_o\\over V_i\\right) + 10 * log\\left(Z_i\\over Z_o\\right)\\) dB","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"where\n\n \\(V_i\\) is the input voltage\n\n \\(V_o\\) is the output voltage\n\n \\(Z_i\\) is the input impedence\n\n \\(Z_o\\) is the output impedence","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Power Gain Level with Impedance dependance","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"17. Sound Pressure Level: \\(L_{PG} = 10 * log\\left(P_o\\over P_i\\right) + 10 * log\\left(Z_i\\over Z_o\\right)\\) dB","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"where\n\n \\(P_i\\) is the input power\n\n \\(P_o\\) is the output power\n\n \\(Z_i\\) is the input impedence\n\n \\(Z_o\\) is the output impedence","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Note:","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]},{"text":" voltage is in volts (V), power is in watts (W), impedance is in ohms (Ω).","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[object Object]","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Let me now show you a few examples on how we use these preferred formulas:","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"1. A voltage of 1.23 V is given at the input of the console. What is the voltage level \\(L_V\\) in dBu? Using equation number 7:","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"\\(L_V = 20 * log\\left(V\\over.775V\\right)\\) dBu; you get","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"\\(L_V = 20 * log\\left(1.23\\over.775V\\right) = 4.012 dBu\\)","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"2. Given a headphone with a maximum power of 100mW, what is the power level \\(L_P\\) in dBm? Using equation number 1:","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"\\(L_P = 10 * log \\left(P\\over 1mW\\right)\\) dBm; you get","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"\\(L_P = 10 * log \\left(100mW\\over 1mW\\right)\\) = 20 dBm","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"3. Given a condenser microphone with a voltage level \\(L_V\\) = -34dBV, what is the voltage V? Using equation number 9:","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"\\(V = V_R(10)^{L_V\\over 20}\\) V; you get","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"\\(V = 1(10)^{-34\\over 20}\\) 19.953mV","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"4. Given a sound pressure \\(sp = 4Pa\\), what is the sound pressure level \\(L_{SP}\\) in \\(dB_{PA}\\)? Using equation number 14:","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"\\(L_{SP} = 20 * log\\left(sp\\over sp_r\\right)\\) \\(dB_{PA}\\); you get","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"\\(L_{SP} = 20 * log\\left(4\\over .00002\\right)\\) = 106.021 \\(dB_{PA}\\)","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"This article was written in dedication to the late Albert B. Grundy, the founder of the Institute of Audio Research in New York City and a past president of the AES Audio Engineering Society. I had the pleasure to work for Al for many years in which he became a good friend and mentor on anything related to audio. The information in this article is now being used by my students which allows for less confusion on understanding the use of the dB.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"By Ronald G. Ajemian, Adjunct, Institute of Audio Research, New York, NY 10003\n\n AES Audio Engineering Society — Member","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"References:","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"1. R.V.L. Hartley, The Transmission Unit, Electrical Communications, New York, NY, pp. 34-42, (July 1924).","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"2. W.H. Martin: Decibel — The Name for the Transmission Unit, Bell System Technical Journal, New York, NY, pp. 1-2 (January 1929).","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"3. R.W. Young: Decibel, A Unit of Level, JAES Vol. 19 No. 6, 1971, pp. 512-516 (1971).","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"4. AES project report: For articles on professional audio and for equipment specifications and Notations for expressing levels refer to: # AES-R2-2004 Standards preprint, also IEC 60027-3 and IEC 60268-2 documents.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"5. Stop Using the Ambiguous dBm! by Herman A.O. Wilms, Paper Number: M01, AES Convention: 2ce (March 1972).","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"6. dB Formulas for Pro-Audio, by R.G. Ajemian, (March 2005). ","type":"text"}]}]},"tiptapIntroJson":null,"primaryImage":{"id":"3aacef28-efd4-4a2c-90e3-c1ce66cd02e5-primaryImage","url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/b09c8673-d895-444e-adc0-0c79930fe66b/originals/bell-figure_optimized.webp","alt":null,"caption":null,"width":795,"height":476,"variations":{"large":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/b09c8673-d895-444e-adc0-0c79930fe66b/variations/1200w/bell-figure.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/b09c8673-d895-444e-adc0-0c79930fe66b/variations/1200w/bell-figure.webp","width":1200,"height":718},"small":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/b09c8673-d895-444e-adc0-0c79930fe66b/variations/320w/bell-figure.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/b09c8673-d895-444e-adc0-0c79930fe66b/variations/320w/bell-figure.webp","width":320,"height":192},"medium":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/b09c8673-d895-444e-adc0-0c79930fe66b/variations/640w/bell-figure.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/b09c8673-d895-444e-adc0-0c79930fe66b/variations/640w/bell-figure.webp","width":640,"height":383},"thumbnail":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/b09c8673-d895-444e-adc0-0c79930fe66b/variations/thumbnail/bell-figure.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/b09c8673-d895-444e-adc0-0c79930fe66b/variations/thumbnail/bell-figure.webp","width":150,"height":150}},"is_primary":true,"position":0,"use_case":null},"publicationDate":"2015-08-17T19:02:00.000Z","featuredImageUrl":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/b09c8673-d895-444e-adc0-0c79930fe66b/originals/bell-figure_optimized.webp","excerpt":"The dB decibel is ubiquitous in the field of audio technology, recording, broadcast, etc. However, a need for a better notation has arisen to avoid confusion on the dB usage for certain measurements. This article explains this new and preferred dB notation with selected examples.
[object
...","url":"/tutorials/108/new-and-preferred-decibel","authorName":"Ronald Ajemian","authorSlug":null,"contributors":[{"id":"f79ed148-b611-4b7f-830a-3050c3786e0a","name":"Ronald Ajemian","role":"author","firstName":"Ronald","lastName":"Ajemian"}],"viewCount":15712,"showCoverImageIntro":true},{"id":"8478eed7-ff78-48eb-b374-0cce98cc19d9","title":"Water in the Air","slug":"water-air","subtitle":"How Humidity Screws with Instruments in Your Studio","issueNumber":108,"tiptapJson":{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"From guitars to drums to cabinets, many of the instruments we record are made of wood. As an organic, porous substance, wood tries to equalize to the surrounding air in terms of temperature and humidity. Having a stable humidity level can help to avoid damage to expensive gear as well as keep engineers and artists comfortable. Most of the time, air has water floating around in it in the form of moisture vapor. You'll often hear weather forecasters talk about ","type":"text"},{"text":"relative humidity","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}]},{"text":". Relative humidity is the amount of moisture in the air compared to what the air can \"hold\" at that temperature. The water vapor is actually mixed with the air.","type":"text"}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Hey, here's an equation:","type":"text"}]},{"type":"sidebarExtension","attrs":{"title":"","variant":"default"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[object Object]","type":"text"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"About 50% relative humidity is considered ideal for instruments and comfortable for humans. 40% relative humidity is ideal for storing magnetic tapes, but be aware that they prefer temperatures in the range of 15 ± 3° C (59 ± 5° F). Depending on your geographic area, your situation may change during the seasons. Portland, Oregon, for example, has a high average humidity, whereas Tucson, Arizona has a low average humidity. Other places have mixed situations. Madrid has high humidity in the winter and low humidity in the summer (which is the opposite of many U.S. cities like Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo).","type":"text"}]},{"type":"sidebarExtension","attrs":{"title":"","variant":"default"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[object Object]","type":"text"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"To address your humidity issues, it's a good idea to get a humidity sensor, sometimes called a hydrometer. This will let you know what the exact levels are in your studio. If you have guitars, drums or organs in house, consider keeping the hydrometer near them. Reliable digital models are available for about $20. In general, the ideal situation for instruments is 72° Fahrenheit with 50% relative humidity. However, you may achieve stable results with higher or lower thermostat settings. In hot months — if you live in an area with air conditioning, you probably know that your cooling unit chills the air while removing water vapor. This will help de-humidify your studio. Standalone dehumidifiers are also available (but they are noisy). In cooler months — if you need a furnace or boiler in the winter, you want to make sure that there is enough water vapor in the air. Check to see if you have a humidification attachment for your heating system. Readers with radiated heat (vs. forced air systems) might need to buy a standalone humidifier to introduce more water vapor in the air. Finally, if you're having trouble stabilizing your studio, you might look into various insulation improvements to your building. This will also help to conserve energy and reduce your monthly expenses! ","type":"text"}]},{"type":"sidebarExtension","attrs":{"title":"","variant":"default"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"[object Object]","type":"text"}]}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"Having a good environment for engineers, artists and instruments is more than hanging some black light posters and setting out some candles. Creating a stable humidity level will make people more comfortable, and help keep instruments good sounding and long lasting. Once you know what you need to keep your temperature and humidity in line, you can move on toward other important tasks.","type":"text"}]}]},"tiptapIntroJson":null,"primaryImage":{"id":"8478eed7-ff78-48eb-b374-0cce98cc19d9-primaryImage","url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/afb9edc7-7d12-47aa-867c-91281e68f7ca/originals/tornado_vortex2_optimized.webp","alt":null,"caption":null,"width":1024,"height":616,"variations":{"large":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/afb9edc7-7d12-47aa-867c-91281e68f7ca/variations/1200w/tornado_vortex2.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/afb9edc7-7d12-47aa-867c-91281e68f7ca/variations/1200w/tornado_vortex2.webp","width":1200,"height":722},"small":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/afb9edc7-7d12-47aa-867c-91281e68f7ca/variations/320w/tornado_vortex2.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/afb9edc7-7d12-47aa-867c-91281e68f7ca/variations/320w/tornado_vortex2.webp","width":320,"height":193},"medium":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/afb9edc7-7d12-47aa-867c-91281e68f7ca/variations/640w/tornado_vortex2.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/afb9edc7-7d12-47aa-867c-91281e68f7ca/variations/640w/tornado_vortex2.webp","width":640,"height":385},"thumbnail":{"url":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/afb9edc7-7d12-47aa-867c-91281e68f7ca/variations/thumbnail/tornado_vortex2.webp","s3Key":"tutorials/afb9edc7-7d12-47aa-867c-91281e68f7ca/variations/thumbnail/tornado_vortex2.webp","width":150,"height":150}},"is_primary":true,"position":0,"use_case":null},"publicationDate":"2015-08-15T17:59:00.000Z","featuredImageUrl":"https://tapeop-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tutorials/afb9edc7-7d12-47aa-867c-91281e68f7ca/originals/tornado_vortex2_optimized.webp","excerpt":"From guitars to drums to cabinets, many of the instruments we record are made of wood. As an organic, porous substance, wood tries to equalize to the surrounding air in terms of temperature and humidity. Having a stable humidity level can help to avoid damage to expensive gear as well
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