Are those really your handclaps on the OutKast's "Hey Ya!"?
I can't say for sure that those are the handclaps I made and sent to André 3000, but it's entirely possible. I hope they are. When you're a sound designer, you just make the sounds.
How'd you get that gig?
I was the head sound designer at Syntaur Productions, which was my first real paid recording job, after I'd been an intern for a few years. Syntaur is based in New Braunfels, Texas, which is 20 minutes south of where I went to music school, in San Marcos. They were making aftermarket sample libraries for samplers like the Akai MPC and the Ensoniq ASR/EPS. It intrigued me that there was a company in this little Texas town making cool sounds for these cutting-edge samplers and producers; there weren't a lot of people doing that at the time. I applied and got the job while I was still in school. It didn't pay a lot, but I was thrilled to be able to go to work every day and learn more about MIDI, sampling, and sequencing. It was pretty mind-expanding for a kid who grew up playing in punk bands.
Forgive the question, but what's an MPC?
Akai MPCs are like an all-in-one production center: a sequencer, sampler, and drum machine with lots of bells and whistles. They were especially popular in the hip-hop world then, right around the year 2000. There were people out there, like J Dilla, who were using them in absolutely brilliant, creative, and incredible ways. My job was to invent and create sample libraries those artists might want to use, one of which was an all-clap library. Most sampled handclap sounds at the time were cheesy – always the same bad, bright [Roland TR-]808 thing. I thought, "The claps I like are on old soul records, the ones that sound huge and dark, like bear paws." I made a set of big, fat claps that have that huge, round sound. That ended up being one of the libraries André 3000 bought from us, along with another one I made of orchestral percussion.
Can you name any other songs where your samples found a home?
Oh man, those got used by everybody. It's been about 20 years now. I don't know if I could pick one out any more, but I remember hearing songs at the time and going, "Hey, I think that's me!" Those libraries were used by everyone from Jay-Z to U2 to the Spice Girls. It was funny to me that a 20-year-old kid in a podunk town was making samples that big shot producers were using all over the world.
Fast-forward 15 years, to when you and I were working on Shearwater's Jet Plane and Oxbow. We spent a few days in L.A. working with Brian Reitzell [Tape Op #107], who mostly does film and television work now. What did you learn from working with him?
He was who I wanted to be! The records he made with Air [Tape Op #39] are still huge for me. He's on a different level from me, but we're both drummer/producer/ engineer/mixer/synth nerds with one foot in indie rock and another in film music. Brian has this curious, tinkering joy about him that invites everyone around him to bring that same energy. That was inspiring. I remember one afternoon; we'd had lunch, and Brian started bowing a chopstick he was holding against the top of a snare drum, going, "Listen! Listen to this amazing sound!" It was squealing like the most beautiful, insane guitar feedback. That curiosity and openness is important, and it's why I have all the instruments up and running all the time in my studio. All my synths are plugged in and ready. There's always a drum kit mic'd up, a mic on the vibraphone, and a line run to the Leslie. "You got an idea for something? Let's try it now." The problem with working that way, of course, is that you get some pure gold. However, you also end up with a lot of abandoned ideas that aren't quite right, but they might be right for something else. Brian's assembled a massive, unique palette of sounds and samples over years of working on so many different projects. I got much more intentional with my own library after we worked with him. I'm super careful with my file naming conventions now: labeling BPMs and pitch centers so I can find and use them later. Brian also taught me to concentrate on the shading behind the main elements of a song or a piece – all the glorious little details of tiny background sounds that you don't necessarily perceive consciously, but you feel them.
A few years earlier, we mixed another Shearwater album [Animal Joy] with Peter Katis [Tape Op #31], and I remember learning a lot from him, too. Before that, I'd been used to hoping that mixes would shine up a bit in mastering. But when his mixes left his studio, they sounded mastered already.
Absolutely, and that's been my goal since we worked with him. Peter and I both mix through summing amps in the analog domain – in my case, a Rupert Neve Designs 5057 [Orbit] – with a pretty stout selection of analog bus compressors inserted on all the instrument subgroups. Then we both use a hefty mastering chain on our 2-bus before we bring our mixes back into the digital world. These days, I monitor through that entire analog mix/mastering chain from early on, even in tracking, so we can make informed decisions about where parts are going to sit and interact in the mix, and how they're going to hold up once they get steamrolled by compression. Plus, it feels good when I'm playing something and the song already sounds awesome! When I feed a monitor mix to a drummer from a Coles [4038 mic] being smashed through an 1176, you can't tell me that they don't respond and play differently than when it's coming back clean. It's more exciting, and it gets more energy out of the player. This also means I can be steering a tune towards a finished mix the whole time we're working on it.
What you were saying about Brian, and the importance of background elements and textures – some of that seems like a natural outgrowth of working in film, since soundtracks don't always take center stage.
It is, and it's pretty different from music mixing. There's a different level of headroom, and the music is only one of many sonic elements you're serving to the listener in a film.
When you're mixing a soundtrack for a film, do you have all the dialogue and sound effects on hand too?
I like to have as much of that as possible, because I want to know what's going to rub against the music. I don't want to push the cellos or low brass super hard when there's some tense sound design in the low mid frequencies, for example. Maybe the dialog is super intimate and quiet in the scene, and I can go 100 percent wet on the string treatment. Although often I'm working with temp sound design, or no sound design. Or maybe a scene gets re-edited last minute and the music's role is different. In the film world, everything is printed in stems, so the re-recording mixer can still make adjustments at the final dubbing stage if something doesn't work.
How would you compare mixing an album to a film score?
Mixing records, for me, is a game of smash and chop: removing unnecessary info that eats up headroom, so that a sound can go through the compression trash compactor and come out retaining the essence of what it was before you crushed it with ten limiters. All these weird resonances pop out when you clamp down with the amount of compression we use these days. So I'm a meticulous cutter, trying to control those honks and resonances. I don't want to be able to not turn a song up or push into the limiter a little bit harder because of a few gremlins that are in there stabbing me. But with film, there's more dynamic range. You don't have to compress as hard, so there's more room to work with actual dynamics, with your hands on the faders. Something can soar 15 dB and be this gigantic, impactful moment instead of doing tricks to create the illusion of impact, like sneaking down whatever's happening just before a big event.
What's the difference between mixing in stereo versus mixing in surround?
Surround is way more fun than stereo, because you can envelop the listener from every angle. Working in 3D space opens up this whole world of dimension and creativity – throwing delays behind you, mixing multiple reverbs to blend and interact in interesting ways. It's so engaging as a mixer to get to paint with such a wide frame. You can create such a transportive, immersive environment around the listener.
I've always assumed that mixing for film requires a big, expensive facility.
It turns out, no! My studio's in a converted house in a little town 20 minutes from Austin. We make a lot of indie records here, but to get dialed in for 5.1 we did what we've always done with stereo, which is extrapolating across a bigger playback system. We spent a lot of time listening to reference material and making minor adjustments to speakers, level, tone, and crossovers. You see how the room reacts, and, at a certain point, you just say, "All right, let's try it." Recently I was working on Daniel Hart's score for David Lowery's film The Green Knight, and I got to go to Skywalker Sound and hear my mixes on the [Akira] Kurosawa dubbing stage. I'm not going to lie, it was a little scary taking mixes from my control room to one of the best mix rooms in the world, surrounded by some of the best ears in the world. But they sounded great, to my great relief.
What happens in the final mix of a film like that?
All the elements – music, sound effects, sound design, dialog, and ambiences – all of that – are mixed together for the last time on the big dubbing stage, which is essentially a theater-sized mix room. But you don't have to have that; you can do great surround mixes on a budget. All you need is a monitor controller, five speakers, a sub, and an interface that has six outputs. The big hurdle for me was room calibration, because that's what allowed my mixes from here to translate to Skywalker and hit the mark. It takes time, but it's running tones and moving speakers around a little bit, as well as adjusting levels. Fortunately my studio partner, Max Lorenzen, is a total wizard at that. Then, boom; mix your friend's indie documentary in surround! There's a perception that mixing for film and working in surround is this elite, academic mixing, and it's totally not.
