You went to University of Miami for the Music Engineering Technology program?
I was there at the same time as Joe Barresi [Tape Op #23, #81] and John Paterno [#54] among others; really great people. It was a really good time there. I thought I would go intern at a studio, but a friend of mine graduated a year before and had a gig at New England Digital. He said, "They're looking for someone for the L.A. office. Do you want to do that?" They had a small [New England Digital] Synclavier [digital synthesizer/ sampler] at Miami, and I'd messed around with it and thought it was really cool. I could get paid to work, instead of working at a studio for free? I thought, "Yeah, I'll go do that for a bit."
For our readers who don't know, what was a Synclavier?
Well, along with the Fairlight CMI and the WaveFrame, those were the three first digital audio devices that were meant to be used in a studio to make music. MIDI wasn't a standard yet. The Synclavier started with FM synthesis; then they had monophonic sampling, which was basically one-shot triggering off of a disc. If you had a drum kit, your snare drum cut off the cymbal sound. They built it all from scratch. The CPU was like a Class A CPU: two circuit boards with a lot of cables going between individual components, and they were crazy good at doing certain kinds of math. Once they had polyphonic sampling, if you were sequencing drums and you wanted the kick drum louder, you would copy the kick drum track, because it was all sample-accurate. It would be louder because it was triggering twice. Crazy tight timing. I worked with New England Digital doing field service to fix the Synclaviers in L.A. and then in England. They had a London office.
Were you exposed to a lot of studio scenarios by doing that?
Yeah, I'd get a call. By the time I was working for them, they had polyphonic, 32-voice sampling. It would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it would be the centerpiece of the session. They would break, and I was the guy they'd call to come over; I'd bring a bunch of circuit boards and fix it. It meant that I was in sessions with all the people who had shit tons of money.
No one was buying rigs like that without tons of money.
No. If I was in L.A., it meant I got to go up to Frank Zappa's house, or visit Mark Knopfler [Tape Op #97] in London. I went to AIR Studios when it was still in Oxford Circus [London]. I'd get it working but they wouldn't trust it, so they made me stick around. "Yeah, sure. I'll stay for an hour."
What were you picking up in these rarified environments?
Just the sheer scale, and the panic of how much money people were spending per hour. Especially having an orchestra out there with a click track. Understanding the pressure of that; but also the opposite, where they were in these big budget sessions and they were going to stay in the studio until the album's done.
Mark Knopfler would be a good example.
Yeah, and Sting. They had this gear because it helped them make the records exactly the way they wanted. My introduction to the idea of record making was that you made the record you wanted to make. There weren't reasons not to do it; you'd never make an excuse for it. That was the extreme version, where you could afford to do it that way. But then you could carry it on to the home studio idea, where if you're tired, you go to bed, but then you wake up and work on it some more. If you can make a good record in a week, that's awesome. But you can't make a mediocre record and say, "Oh, well. I only had a week." Not even perfectionism, like in a Steely Dan way, but perfectionism for your art. What's the point in settling?
It's a hollow feeling if you let a record go too early, which we've all probably had to do at some point.
Usually it's one person that wishes, "Oh, that could have been something else." But usually the band wants it that way. If everybody is disappointed, then they should've kept going. If I can fulfill one person's vision, and it doesn't happen to be mine, well, that's the gig. They did what they wanted to do, even if they didn't know what it was.
How did you end up making the transition into sessions?
I always wanted to make records. While at New England Digital I thought, "This is a great gig, and I'm watching sessions." But then I thought, "This isn't exactly what I want to do." I grew up reading album credits. I would buy anything that Brian Eno's [Tape Op #85] name was on. I discovered Talking Heads because of Fear of Music; it said "Produced by Brian Eno" on the back. From working with Synclaviers, I could become a Synclavier programmer. I could get sessions that I certainly had no business being on as an engineer, but I could be the Synclavier guy. Then that turned into the Pro Tools guy. During all that time I was learning to be a better engineer. Then budgets started shrinking, and the number of people in the room started going down. Unfortunately, for a lot of really amazing engineers who couldn't get their heads around the technology, it was more important that somebody be able to run the technology than be a good engineer. An engineer who couldn't run it [Pro Tools] couldn't run a session. It didn't matter how good the mics sounded; they couldn't record them if they didn't know how to run Pro Tools. I ended up on sessions as an engineer because I could run the gear. I was right at the transition from analog to digital coming out of school, and then right at the transition from "full staff" records to just me and the band. All of that shaped everything I did. I've managed to be the beneficiary of that in a lot of ways. I'd be doing a Michael Jackson record, but when I wasn't doing that, I'd be getting paid $15 an hour to help someone put together a synth rig at their house or to help record another band for free because somebody had an ADAT. It was a really weird combination.
What were some of the first sessions where you were engineering?
One of the first ones was a Michael Jackson record. I worked on the HIStory [Past, Present and Future] record for a year and a half. I came in for three days to set up the Synclavier – a year and a half later the record was done. During that record there was such chaos and so many rooms going that I did a lot of engineering. Bruce Swedien [Tape Op #91] was obviously the main engineer, and Eddie DeLena was the other main engineer on that record; but I ended up spending six weeks or so with Steve Porcaro [keyboardist, Toto] in a room doing keyboard overdubs. It was just us; nobody even came by. We'd send tapes back, and people would be like, "Oh, that's great!" Then I got to do the same kind of thing when I got to the mixing stage; hanging out and submixing. I fell into a lot of jobs during that record.
Did you get to watch Bruce work? He's fascinating.
Oh, yeah. Amazing. You've read about his "Acusonic Recording Process." Basically, he records everything in stereo, no matter what it is. If he records a choir, they get in a circle and he places coincident mics in the middle. I'd think, "Great. It'll be like a figure-8 or an X/Y pair," but it'd be coincident omnidirectional mics. That's ridiculous! Then I'd listen to it and it was this amazing stereo spread with no defined center, which is what you want out of a choir. You don't want to be able to count the voices. He has this incredible natural gift. His balances were insane.
He talks a lot about sonic fantasy.
He's got pretty severe synesthesia, so for him it's all colors. What an amazing thing to know that something doesn't sound right because it doesn't look right! It's easier to say, "That color's wrong," than to say something sounds wrong. But that's the thing; he'd go until it looked right. I don't have any version of synesthesia at all. I think the good thing is the more I do this, I really do want it to feel like something. I get really bummed out when I listen back and the chorus doesn't feel like the chorus. But I've got to get over myself if I'm thinking, "Oh, the kick drum could have been better." Every once in a while, I'll wish, "The low end could have been something else." But any time it's more specific than that, it's just me wanking. I really need to be saying, "Is it something I want to listen to?" Hopefully the answer is, "Yes."
I've had clients ask me, "How will we know when the mix is done?" I say, "When it feels like a record!" What else could it be?
I get asked that a lot. "How do you know it's done?" For me, it's when I listen to it and I can't think of anything else I want to do. Usually it's that the chorus needs to smack me in the face, or the bridge needs to make me feel like I dove into the air over a canyon. Stupid things I set up in my head and want to have happen as "moments." At some point I either make them happen; or I realize that's not going to happen, so I'll do something else.
I'll mix a song to where I want it to be and I'll upload it and get four pages of revisions. I'm always like, "Did I miss the point?" I feel that sometimes the revisions take the feel out that I loved. How do you deal with that?
I never feel that it matters that I love it. If they don't love it, then I fucked it up. I've had comments recently where it wasn't even pages [of revisions]. It was only a few, but they were big, broad strokes. I actually emailed and said, "Look, I really love this band and would love to work with them, but obviously this is not the project to do it on. I'm sorry." They said, "No, we love the mix. It's just this 'stuff'." But that 'stuff' is everything. I take everything personally. Curl up in a ball.
My heart usually drops when I get the first notes.
Yeah! "Please love me, and my work!" Every once in a while, there will be something where I feel like, "Wow, they're really screwing something up here." In that case, I'll find a way to say something that isn't offensive. Like, "I'll do it, but please listen to this now and make sure you're cool with that." Ninety-nine percent of the time they are cool with it, because it's what they wanted. So, I'll have to give up on it. Usually it's me struggling to hear what they're hearing. Then I get to the point where I can actually do it, as opposed to running over some checklist. "Yep, did all your notes!" If we do that without listening...
That's hard. I want to get it done quick so I can get another mix up.
You know what I do? Usually the notes come in and they're super specific, like, "Could you EQ the guitar so it's less present? Drop the hi-hat 1 dB." I will always try to solve it in a different way than they say. If they want me to do it with level, I'll use EQ. If they want me to do it with EQ, I'll do it with panning. Because that way I know I'm actually going to listen. I'm not going to just do what they say without really knowing that it's achieved what they want. I try to figure out what they're asking for instead of doing this really specific task. If they knew what to do so specifically, they could mix the damn thing themselves. Obviously, they want me listening. But it's really easy to not listen when we have four pages of specific notes.
I'm glad to know you experience the "curl up in a ball" thing.
Absolutely. All the time.
I feel pummeled at times, but then I re-read the revision notes and go, "Okay, I can do these."
Exactly. The first read through is, "My career is over. I'm a fraud." Then the next one is, "I can do it." By the time I've done it, I'll realize none of that was terribly invasive. It must all be cool. They must like the way it feels.
Do you ever get mix sessions where the artist's outside mix references really throw you off?
Yeah. The textbook thing is to talk to the artist, find out what they're doing, and where they want this to go. Absolutely not. The rough mix is the only thing that'll tell me if something is true. I get bands all the time who say, "We want this song to be like [Jay-Z's] '99 Problems.'" What does that mean? The way the kick drum is distorted? The reference might mean something totally different to them than it does to me. I'll never hear the reference through their ears. In a lot of ways, that sets us up for failure. They've told me that's a reference, so now I have to do it. Otherwise I'm a dick! But I'll know that it's not going to work. "It can't be what they want." So, then I'm guessing. I'd much rather not have in-depth conversations beforehand. Once I've sent the first round of mixes, if they want to talk about the concept of things, then absolutely. If they have really specific things, like, "We don't like low end," that's good to know. But to say this should be like a certain record? Is it about the vocal effects? Is it the room on the drums? Is it the panning? Is it that the arrangements are better than yours? There's got to be something in the vibe of the rough mix which points me. Sometimes I can't even tell until I finish. Then I'll go back and see, "Okay, that's why this wasn't that way." There will be something in there, like, "Which instrument is way too loud?" Maybe it's got to lead, otherwise it wouldn't be that way in the rough.
Right. But what about when you get rough mixes that someone's not signing off on? They're saying, "I can't get a mix. I hate this."
It's good to know that. I don't mind them telling me about the rough mixes and saying, "This feels pretty good, but we want the vocal to be much more something." That's using their own mix as a reference. It's trying to figure out how other things can relate that can really be confusing. Do I undo what's great, or do I send it thinking, "Well, I've now blatantly blown off what they asked me to do." Or do I pretend that I've done it?
Yeah. It's a weird negotiation. Have you had jobs though where you had to say, "I can't do it," or, "It's a bad match; we're not on the same page," where you didn't finish the work?
Very rarely. I think that there were a few where I thought about it, but that is usually much more about people than music. That's like, "I cannot figure you out." A few years ago, I got the feeling that clients were at home saying, "Dude, we've got Andrew Scheps. We can make him do anything we want." They'd go in circles. Finally I said, "Look, you're asking me to undo the thing that we specifically did two revisions ago. Either you guys are total chaos, and everyone in the band is sending their own emails, or you're doing this just to fuck with me." So, I've got a great solution for that now. I've got this guy, Matt Glasbey, who was an engineer at Monnow Valley Studios, where all my gear is in Wales. Great engineer; really nice guy. He has all the same plug-ins as me. Once we get the mix done to the point where we're only doing tiny tweaks and I think things might be getting out of control, I say, "Matt is a great engineer. I trust him implicitly. Matt will do it, and you can pay him by the hour." Then they either immediately say, "Oh, no; the mixes are fine" – because they don't want to spend money on it – or it's so affordable that they can try to do what they want to do. Sometimes it's them being dicks, but sometimes it's that they have no idea how to talk about the thing they want. They keep telling me, "Do this, do this, do this," but it turns out they want something totally different. They can't figure out what they don't like about the mix. They think they'll figure it out and that it'll be better if they say, "I want more purple" or, "This snare drum is killing me." Then it turns out it was the vocal effects.
That is a cool handoff. The bulk of the work has been done by a certain point.
Yeah. Mix budgets are all-in now; it's no longer "this much" per day. It's "this much" per song, if you're lucky.
