GETTING IT ON

February 2005

It’s Marvin Gaye time. They’re looking at you. You’re looking
at them. Someone’s going to break first. Since it’s
your job, why not make that you, wiseguy?
Yeah, yeah: Start it up.

44. Delaying tactics for the direct approach.

Taking a direct and miked signal from the same source? Don’t forget that the miked signal will be delayed a bit, because sound had to travel through the air to hit it. Remembering that ome-foot delays sound by about 1 milllisecond, nudge the direct sound a little bit late to compensate.

45. Reverb diffusion: good for drums.

Percussion sounds get along best with reverb if the diffusion setting is relatively high. Otherwise, you’ll hear discrete echoes that can give the dreaded “marbles bouncing on a metal plate” sound.

46. Time sure flies when you internalize.

If your synthesizer or digital keyboard part isn’t sitting well in the mix, use the instruments’ internal EQ or effects to help shape the sound to suit the other tracks.

47. Hype that vocal performance.

When you feel a singer is really starting to hit a groove and that the next take might be the one, bump up the volume in the singer’s headphones a tiny bit — like one dB. This will hype the sound just a tiny bit, and might bring out an even better performance.

48. Warming up the old stuff.

Run any vintage keyboard or any sampled vintage keyboard through a tube amp such as a Fender Twin or through a tube preamp before going to tape. This will add warmth to digital samples and will make a real vintage keyboard part sound more musical.

49.The right meter for the right job.

If your metering has a choice between average and peak settings, use peak when recording drums, percussion, acoustic guitar, or anything with strong transients. These instruments have a relatively low average signal level, but high peaks that can distort if you’re not careful.

50. Choose meter dynamic range appropriately.

If your meters have adjustable dynamic range, use a really high dynamic range for tracks so you can see if there’s any low-level noise or crud. Use a lesser dynamic range for your master bus so you can see what’s going on in that all-important top 10-20dB of the dynamic range.

51. The cheapo hardware controller.

Haven’t checked out the joys of using a hardware controller? Don’t forget that a lot of gear in the typical studio can generate MIDI control signals suitable for realtime control over a sequencer, plug-in, and whatever else. For example, a synth usually offers more than just a mod wheel, like foot pedal control, one (or maybe more) assignable data slider, and so on. These will provide at least some degree of realtime control until you move up to a serious hardware controller.

52. Double-click to default.

Quite a few software programs have “knobs” that will return to their default positions if you double-click on them.

53. Don’t drive more than necessary.

Enabling lots of drivers within a host program for multichannel sound cards wastes a lot of computer resources. If you’re recording a stereo instrument and don’t need more inputs, turn off the unused ones. Ditto for outputs.

54. When to push “eject” with digital tape.

If you still use digital tape like ADAT or DAT, always eject a tape at the beginning, the end, or in a space between songs. Should any tape damage occur while threading or unthreading, your song will be spared.

MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE

MALCOLM BURN'S work with DANIEL LANOIS, EMMYLOU HARRIS and now THE STRING CHEESE INCIDENT has marked him as the go-to guy for SPARSE. Steph Jorgl corrals Burn for his Tip take on taking it easy.

55. Think small.

The current trend is to record a lot of tracks and then when you go to mix, deciding what not to use in the mix. When I first started recording in the late 1980s, I was given the opportunity by a couple of people to work within a very limited format. It was a 1" 8-track Studor machine, with a rack of fine pre amps, a very nice Neve 12-channel broadcast board, and a grab bag of microphones. It really taught me the principle of simplicity.

56. Old Dog, Old Tricks.

I was recording this band called Crash Vegas in the late 1980s. We’d already filled up seven of the eight tracks and we still wanted to do a vocal and some background vocals. But we only had one track left to work with. I didn’t know what to do. Then one of my mentors — who came from the 4-track world — said, “In the old days, we would bounce the bass and the tambourine track together.” And I said, “Yeah, but what if you want less tambourine later?” And he said, “Well, that’s easy. You just cut the top end out, because that’s really not going to effect the bass. And the same goes for if you want more bass.” It was this kind of pragmatic minimalist approach.

The experience sort of led me to believe further in this certain mentality that it is a good thing to commit yourself to something and stay with it, rather than come back to it a second or third time. That way, you come up with a real piece of work, rather than a bland kind of mix — which is unfortunately what I’ve heard a lot of in music. To be honest, I think that things have improved over the last few years, but there was a point in the mid-1990s where every rock record was mixed by like two people. And all of it sounded the same because they were all using the same EQs and the same compressors. That all didn’t go down very well with my revolutionary nature.

Even with the band I’m recording now, The String Cheese Incident, their manager was like, “Why are you only using 24 tracks? We have 52 inputs...” And my answer was, “I’ll tell you why — because we’re only going to 4 tracks for drums. If we have 6 vocals—we’re going to comp them together and put them down to one track. And when we go to mix the record, it’s gonna sound done. That’s why.” I’m still immersed in that same simplistic mentality that is far more concerned with creative decisions than technical nonsense.

57. Compress? Or Not?

I’m a firm advocate of using good, clean analog pre amps and going straight to tape. And I don’t use a lot of compression or EQs while recording.

58. Best = Least.

With SCI we’re using the RADAR format. I’m still a huge fan of tape — that’s the format I prefer. But the location we’re recording at is a beautiful house in the middle of the hills. So it wasn’t practical to drag a tape machine all the way up here. The RADAR functions very much like a tape machine. It has a 24-channel transport, you can arm tracks that you’re recording. . . . You don’t have to stop recording to punch someone in on another track. It doesn’t distract me from what I consider the ultimately important thing in the song: the performance.

59. Least = Fewest.

One thing that I’ve got an opposition to these days — not just in music, but in the modern world — is this emphasis on having lots of options. My attitude is that I firmly believe I’d rather have one piece of equipment that does its job passionately than 10 things that it does not do very well. A computer is a multi-tasking format. And there’s this whole corporate push to get people to multi-task. But this multi-tasking is not something I want to be involved in. I want to use one machine that does one thing and that is: record music really well.

A great guitar only does one thing: it’s a great guitar. So why have a recording environment that’s any different. I don’t get it.

60. Future Shock.

I’m fairly worried about the way things are going now because, I mean, everybody’s got Pro Tools….everybody’s got an Mbox. My concern is that the aesthetic is getting lost. I find that one of the places where a strong aesthetic still exists is with rap music. It’s the one area that I find kind of exciting in that they’ve gone the other way. They don’t try to fill every track that’s available. Instead they’ll do like five tracks, and a couple with vocals. I mean that’s where the rock and roll still exists for me.

MR. MACKAYE’S RULES OF ORDER

IAN MACKAYE (Rollins Band, FUGAZI, Minor Threat, THE NECROES), producer, player and founder of DC’s seminal DISCHORD Records has been recording with DON ZIENTARA at INNER EAR STUDIOS for the better part of the last 25 years. Notoriously direct, MacKaye’s advice on getting the sound that’s informed everyone from BLINK 182 to GREEN DAY was not much different.

61. Do NOT laugh at your bands.

When we were 17, we started recording with Don because he was the first guy to take us seriously. We were in one other studio before then and the guys at the board were laughing at us WHILE we recorded. Yeah, we weren’t great, but we were serious. AND we were paying them.

62. DO try absolutely anything.

When we started recording with Don, all he had was a half-inch 4-track reel-to-reel and a homemade board. The control room was a boiler room. We only had the most basic separation schemes, and would run two snakes up the stairs into the backyard. HR from the BAD BRAINS did all the vocals in the backyard. You could hear neighborhood kids asking him “what are you doing mister?” The fidelity wasn’t there but it was PUNK, and good songs and power were there and what mattered.

63. Recording vocals in a vocal booth is creepy.

I was having a real hard time recording vocals on this one song, “the Argument.” I started thinking that recording in a booth was not really working for me. So I tried it just sitting at the board. It’s awkward but singing live is awkward sometimes and it worked. So that’s what I do now.

JOEL HAMILTON IS NAILS

Working out of Studio G in Brooklyn, with everyone from Sparklehorse, Frank Black, and Ludacris to Swiss strongman Rollie Mossiman, Hugh Masakela and Lubricated Goat, Hamilton takes neither crap, nor prisoners. Forthwith his...

TOP 10 THINGS TO NEEDLESSLY COMPLICATE YOUR LIFE IN THE STUDIO & HOW TO DO THEM...EVERY SINGLE TIME.

64. Putting 2 million mics on any given source.

Nothing makes a simple rock recording really get unmanageable quicker than overprinting every single sound. Use your judgement. Will you really use the CB mic through the distressor and the LA2A on this roots rock band? Was that decision for the band or you?

65. Having crappy wiring.

I am constantly amazed at what passes for wiring in a “studio.” Wiring is easily the most boring thing to buy for the studio, and yet it makes an ENORMOUS difference in the sound of your room. A good patchbay, well done with decent wire, will get all the sonic goodness you hoped for from your new snazzotron 2000 to the listener! You can always patch up 30 feet of cheap mic cables to the pre-fader insert point on your console if you miss the wheezy, squeezed grain of the old wiring you had....

66. Print way too hot to tape.

For some reason, every engineer I know (including me) goes through a renegade cowboy phase where doing things TO THE EXTREME becomes the norm. If you think that transient information is just for suckers, then by all means keep on rockin’ the crap out of the JH24’s output electronics. But when you chill a little and hear how punchy the snare gets, and how much oomph the kick drum has when it is not pasted to tape, you go “oh, wow.” Tape is an amazing thing, and should be preserved at all cost for many reasons, but use it wisely.

67. Get really scared about EQ, compression, or reverb.

Amazing how certain clients come in and you would swear their big brother used to beat them with an 1176 when they were kids. Maybe it was an EQ, or a Lexicon 480 bit them when they were young.… People have all sorts of hang-ups about certain techniques used to make them sound good. Used with good judgment, and good taste, under the right circumstances, these things actually HELP them, and you, get a good mix happening. Try to be as diplomatic as possible, and show how good it can be. If you make someone look great, they always come back.

68. Using advertising as a guide for usage.

I see so many people using the mic that is “FOR THE BASS” and it sucks. Listen to what something gives you when it is at the edge of acceptable parameters. That seems to be where “character” really lives. I swear that is what makes something a classic or not, how it reacts to being abused or used for something the ad would have never led you to. There is a lot of useful information about your gear that lives just south of “acceptable usage.”

69. Let an inexperienced band dictate your pace.

This will negate any of the hard-earned lessons you have learned about when and how to do things every time. Stay focused. Try not to let the guitarist standing over your shoulder psychically make you keep pushing the guitar faders up.

70. Talk about a four-minute song for 30 minutes.

What a nasty trap to fall into. Forget about getting a great take by analyzing the snare part for 30 minutes solid. Why not hand out brochures about “what rock sounds like” as well? Doing another take of the song with a few little key points in mind takes four minutes (duh). It is easy to get caught up in a very academic discussion disguised as “important” to the session. In my experience, this leads to boringly dutiful takes.

71. Overthink the process of recording at large.

I talk to people all the time about this. People analyze every tiny little aspect of recording, and then play me some sterile, crappy, one-dimensional recording with no character and certainly no life. Have a plan, but don’t be afraid of deviating as the situation calls. Let the music dictate your every move, rather than the neurotic pianist or the spastic guitarist or the drunk drummer.


72. Have lots of preconceived ideas.

If you can’t shake what you THOUGHT would work, it is hard to get to what ACTUALLY does work! Be prepared to do things you never thought would be good, because every single session is different. Start with your way of doing things, of course, but be ready to backtrack and re-evaluate your position. When you can’t do this anymore, get a Zildjian jacket and a fanny pack with gaff tape on it and start blaming “kids these days.”

73. Don’t make a decision.

Don’t decide anything. Let every one of these “easy-to-go-along-with” things carry you into a world of hell, where the sounds are pretty lame, and the process is no fun for you or the client. Making decisions requires experience and know-how, two things that cannot be purchased at your local retailer. Try and be dutiful to the band or client but be true to your own goals as well. After all, they are paying you to make them sound good.

ACTION ADVENTURE AUDIO

Movies without music are slideshow curiosities. Pretty pictures minus the sound and the fury. Which is why they invented JEFF RONA (Philip Glass, Hans Zimmer, Brian Eno). With fingers in everything from the design of new electronic instruments and music software to his film work (Traffic, Black Hawk Down, The Thin Red Line), Rona, with writer Steph Jorgl, covers the waterfront of making music for the movies.

74. How to Mix a Film Score…

When you mix a film score, you want the orchestra on a set of tracks, the bass and the percussion on a set of tracks, your synths on a set of tracks, and your high percussion and your low percussion split up on anywhere from 8 to 32 tracks. When I deliver these stems, they should just be able to put their faders in a straight line and hear my mix exactly as I heard it. That way, if a helicopter is drowning out the percussion, they can bump it up. Or if a guitar or other solo instrument is making a line of dialogue hard to hear, they can pull it down a little bit. So I print in stems using an environment I set up in Logic.

75 …WELL:

When Hans Zimmer asked me to write some music for Black Hawk Down, I made just one limitation for myself for the project: no synths, no samplers, only Logic, no outboard mixers, and no outboard effects. I would write the music entirely inside of Logic. It was the first time that I had done a virtual studio project. And it was probably the first big movie to have music done entirely without any physical instruments. The music never passed through an external wire. I just mixed it inside of Logic, generated a 24-bit music file, then put it on an iPod and took it over to the music editor’s room and off it would go.”

76. What to Use to Do What Needs to Be Done:

For the movie Traffic, I wrote a ton of [Cycling ‘74] Max apps that ended up creating a lot of the textures and rhythms in the film score. I kind of built this DJ system inside of Max using Max and the virtual Virus software instrument. But with a lot of projects, I’ll sketch something out in Reason. I can be on my laptop at my dining room table, building some rhythms and bass lines. Then I’ll solo each track, bounce it out and import the whole lot into Logic. Then I’ll start chopping, flipping, flanging, and stuttering, and then start organizing it. After that, I’ll put it up to picture and look at ways to have elements move in and out, or to stop, start, or shift around. Sometimes I’ll pitch shift something. You can come up with your own ways of taking one whole system of working — like in Reason — and going in a direction that it couldn’t go once it’s in there in Logic.

77. Using Soundtrack as a Sampler:

I’ve been using Soundtrack a lot. It’s so quick, dirty, easy, simple, stupid, great. I’ll know the tempo and key that I want and I have one Mac lightpiped to the next, so I’ll just put together combo platters. I’ll mix a tabla with a guitar and together they’ll create this cool thing. And I’ll build a little sampler of ideas — two- or four-bar ideas. Then they all port over to Logic and get chopped up into bits. I use it like a live sample library, like a sample library that doesn’t exist until I click on a button. I find it very useful.