You started Smart Studios (in Madison, WI) a while ago, and you used to record a lot. Do you miss engineering as much as you used to when you first started Smart?
Yeah, I guess I do. Even though we made Garbage'sVersion 2.0, our guitar tech, Billy Bush, by default became the engineer and he handled a lot of the technical aspects, particularly because this is the first time we jumped into using the full-on Pro Tools System. But, I still get behind the board all the time and even now as I'm talking to you, I've got my laptop and a Kurzweil, a little keyboard, and this Yamaha speaker set-up 'cause we're working on some b- sides and we spent most of yesterday pro- gramming some loops and things. I like to tinker with stuff. I was never really classi- cally trained as an engineer; never went to any of those schools. I always just did it by the seat of my pants. I still like to get a new piece of gear and just plug it in and fool around with it; see what you can do with it.I'm also not a good manual reader.
Did you start Smart to record your own band? What was the reason behind starting it?
Steve and I met in film school and he had a four-track in his basement at the time. I was recording electronic ambient things for a fellow film student's soundtracks.
Yeah, your already un-watchable films.
Exactly, they were very un-watchable. But, some of the soundtracks were pretty interesting. They were very inspired by John Cage and even more accessible stuff like Brian Eno's solo things, or Stockausen. I can't even remember what I was listening to back then. I was really into it, and at the time also playing in bands and we couldn't afford to go into proper studios. So, we started doing little demo things in Steve's basement and when I finished college, Steve and I had the idea that we could make a go of this, so we rented a space in a warehouse and bought an eight-track. We had very little gear. I think we had a spring reverb unit, we had a handful of mics, all 57s or even cheaper stuff than that; that was the most expensive mic we had.We had one DBX-160 compressor that we bought used for fifty bucks.
You probably used that on everything.
On every single thing. And we had a Roland Space Echo. The first board we had was an Allen and Heath. It was all kinda' to record our own stuff. We knew a lot of other musicians from the local scene, so we were like, "If you guys can go out and buy the tape, we'll charge five bucks an hour just so we can get fifty bucks for the night so we can get some money to pay our rent here. We got a lot of work off of that.Everything that we started making we put back into the studio. It was like, "We need to get a better monitor system, we need to get more reverbs, we need to get more compressors, we need to get better mikes," and the list, of course, if you own a studio never stops. Everything we made we pretty much plowed back in. Over a period of time, we went to a more sophisticated eight-track to a sixteen-track to a 24 to a 48, to now a full-on Pro Tools System. It was a slow evolution. There were a lot of bands and albums between all those steps.
I checked out your website and I couldn't believe all the bands you had recorded. It was absolutely phenomenal! You have a Studer deck, an A827, were you syncing up two of those and doing Pro Tools on the new record?
Yeah, we recorded most of the tracks into Pro Tools, then we would edit or process or whatever we ended up doing, which we do actually a lot, and then when it came time to mix the rhythm tracks, stuff was all transferred to the Studers; the drums, bass, some of the guitar and vocals. Any of the weird little sound effect things, if we were to use them, we would leave them in ProTools so we use Microlynx to lock them up, so we had the two 48-track Pro Tools and the 48-track Studers.
In general, do you use a lot of compression when you track?
It depends on what it is. I usually don't compress drums until they've been recorded. I do more compressing post. A lot of times if I'm looking for compression, I want something that really screws with them or over-pumps them or shreds them out. I always compress the bass and usually compress some acoustic things, like acoustic guitar, even piano sometimes we'll compress a little bit. Shirley's vocals, I always use a solid TLA-170. That's the stun. Whenever she starts singing it kicks down, even if it's quiet, it kicks down a -10 dB.
Do you mix a song differently if you know it's going to radio, or do you just let radio compression do its job?
Years ago I always used to use bus compression. I've got a Daking compressor that I've been using lately. I like it a lot. I'll put it across the bus sometimes just while we're tracking to make sure if something gets really loud, it's not going to blow the monitors up. I will occasionally do mixes with it, but I have a tendency to wait till mastering to do that. I always go to MasterDisk and I work with Scott Hall and Howie Weinburg. They're both really good and I always go to the sessions there so I can listen to the EQ and make suggestions, but let them do their thing. I'm well aware of how radio can affect it but I try and also compress it, so like Version 2.0 sounds as loud as anything else, but there's still really strong dynamics. A lot of times you're doing things to trick the compression. Little frequency things or things that sound like they come in loud and then ease-off right before it comes back in 'till the next section of the song.
Do you like the sound of radio compression?
Yeah, sometimes I do. I don't like it when it's so severe; like when a song starts out with a vocal and an acoustic guitar and the band kicks in and the band sounds like they drop down 20 db or lower.
It's amazing how radio stations vary in how much compression they use. Alternative stations seem to use a lot of compression. Sometimes it sounds good and sometimes it just sounds really extreme. When you track, do you track with a mix in mind, like say Tchad Blake, or do you try to get good tones down onto tape?
We just try to get interesting sound on tape. Fortunately, we have no idea what the mix is going to sound like when we start and we have a tendency to record a lot of ideas. We constantly cut the song up and chop it up in Pro Tools. "This chorus sucks.Let's just erase it. Let's take this sound thing from this other song and transpose it to this key." We do a lot of really weird things and it isn't until the actual mixing process begins that we define how the songs are going to sound. The record took us a year and the mixing took about six weeks at the end of that. Four or five of the songs had over a hundred tracks by the time we mixed, so we had a huge puzzle. At that point, a lot of the things are kinda defined around your lyrics after we've gone through and we're happy with our vocal performance. No matter what we do sonically, it needs to work around Shirley because she's definitely the center. She's the mouthpiece for the band, so whether we make it noisier, more poppier, more organic, or weird layers going on, it somehow has to work with the songs and with Shirley's vocals.
When you're not in your own studio and you're recording another band, are you flexible about what gear is available or do you always bring your own racks with you?
I'm flexible, although there are a few things that I do like to have. I've got an API Lunchbox that I've used for a while that I really like a couple pieces of Summit gear, but the TLA- 170, I cannot live without. It's by far my favorite compressor. I like that Daking, that compressor, that Geoff Daking came out with a couple years ago. It's very simple to use but it sounds really good. I will occasionally use that on some tracking, but I like to leave it on the bus. The other thing I probably always use lately, is I have an old ELA-M, I think from 1957-that's an old tube mic. It sounds amazing,. It's one of these mic's that has this incredible high-end, "haaah" all the steam and crunch, that goes on the vocals.
What's the difference between a 250 and a 251?
I do not know.
My friend has a 251 and those are Telefunken mic's right? I don't think I've even seen one. Our highest end mic is a Neuman 67. What dynamic mics, maybe more esoteric dynamic mics, do you rely on for guitars or drums or other instruments?
I love a fat U-47, the big chunky mic. It's kinda dark sounding.
It's a solid state version of the U-47?
