I saw that livestream with Mr. Bungle that you worked on.
I've done three livestreams, and it was definitely a new challenge. Hopefully we won't be doing them much longer.
What makes working with livestreams challenging?
The ones I worked on weren't totally live. They were filmed, recorded, edited, and mixed, or at least the video was edited. It becomes more like a concert film. I've done a ton of those anyway. On the mixing front, it was the same as mixing live DVDs or Blu-rays. But for Mr. Bungle and Corey Taylor [Slipknot], I was actually there recording on-site. There were definitely different challenges to overcome, because we had to have live sound and a monitor guy. Some people are on in-ears; some people are on wedges. It created a lot of audio challenges. With those two artists, I used a live monitor engineer and recordist named Danny Badorine, who works for Slipknot and a bunch of other bands. He recommended different microphones for their [off axis] rejection. Telefunken M80 is his go-to vocal mic; it has incredible rejection. With Corey, it was different, because we were on a big stage in The Forum [Inglewood, California], so the leakage wasn't too bad. With Mr. Bungle, we were in a recording studio, and Mike [Patton, Tape Op #53] was standing ten feet in front of the drum kit, and it was Dave Lombardo [on drums]. It's not like it's going to be quiet in there. And then I've got Scott Ian and Trey Spruance with their guitar amps cranked on either side. It was a full-blast live concert in a room that's about 40 by 20 feet. It was intense. But man, that microphone killed; and Mike sang great, so it made it pretty easy.
There's the "Loss of Control" video, the last song on the set, where Mike's jumping back and forth between a little walkie-talkie and the mic.
Yeah, he walked in and handed us this walkie-talkie that somebody had rigged an XLR [jack] onto the end of it. We plugged it in, and it was all crackly and crappy. The engineer at the studio fiddled with it a bit and got it taped up and working. The best thing about that little handheld walkie-talkie was that it only worked when Mike pressed the button. If he was singing through the regular mic, he would then grab the walkie-talkie mic, press a button, and do his screaming into it. It was fantastic, especially during the mix, because it was only on when he was singing, so it made it easy to deal with. I would only have to deal with the leakage of his regular mic when he wasn't using it. It's a lot of automation.
I'm a "Strip Silence" [gating processing] guy, and that's always been a lot of fun for me in [Avid] Pro Tools.
I don't use that too much for live mixes. I like to keep some of the leakage in the mics so the sound stays consistent. There are a lot of cymbals usually, so if I take it out completely and then it comes back in every time he sings, we're going to hear a pretty drastic cymbal change. Once I get my vocal level set, anytime they're not singing I drop the lead and background vocal mics down, about 10 or 15 dB [lower] max. So, it's still happening; still noise. I try to make the noise usable.
That particular scenario, in a 40 by 20 foot live room, you can't put the guitar players in iso booths. They want to hear themselves.
They weren't on headphones or anything. None of them were even on in-ears. The Mr. Bungle show was on [monitor] wedges and fully live, no repairs. They went for it. I recorded the rehearsal the day before, just in case, and I didn't need to use any of it. It was great! They did a flawless performance.
You also mixed the re-recorded Mr. Bungle's 1986 demo tape album, The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo. The band was going for a pretty live feel, right?
Yeah, they recorded it at Dave Grohl's Studio 606, with Mike's engineer [S. Husky Höskulds, Tape Op #56]. I mixed that record. Scott Ian came to me and said that they were stalled on the mix and he was not sure what to do. It was pretty raw-sounding. He sent me one song, I mixed it, and everybody seemed to love it. But, unfortunately, I was committed to record a different band for about another two months. I was like, "I'm glad you love it, but I'll see you in another two months. Hopefully you'll still want me to mix the rest of the record." Fortunately, they were patient and waited. It worked out nicely.
Were you referencing the original Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny demo at all to get a sense of the vibe?
Nope. I think the whole purpose of re-recording that [demo] was to make it sound great. The note I got was, "Aggressive and ugly, but pro." I think we got that. I do like the way that record turned out. I mastered it myself, which I rarely do. I love my mastering guy, Paul Logus, but we were tight on budget. I thought it was pretty close already. I did a little bump up, a dB or two, then I put some EQ on it and it was ready to go.
Your mixes have smooth yet aggressive guitars, like [Megedeth's] Rust in Peace updated for the modern era.
Wow! Thank you for the compliment.
I remember thinking that when I heard [Anthrax's] Worship Music. What shape are these tracks coming to you in, and how are you able to turn them into your sound?
I don't think of myself as a guitar tone guy. I try hard to get great guitar sounds, but there are so many other engineers and mixers that I look up to and think, "Well, that person gets killer guitar tones." I've always tried my best to not mess up what's been delivered to me. With Scott Ian, his tone's going to come to me. Normally I'm producing, mixing, or recording him as well, but with Mr. Bungle, somebody else recorded it. But it's hard to screw up his sound. It came in ready to go. He'll ask me sometimes, "Oh, can you give my guitar a little more edge?" I never had to re-amp, or anything like that. But with Worship Music, when I came in, the album was three-quarters done. The music was done, but there were no vocals. Rob Caggiano had recorded everything and co-produced the record. They got amazing guitar sounds. He split all the mics onto multiple tracks, which I never do. For me, as a mixer, when I'm producing I want the least amount of mics possible. I'll get my mic blend in the studio while tracking and print it to one track. Even if there are three or four amps and ten mics or whatever, I get the phase right and commit to it. I'll take a DI just as a backup. Having the microphones split like that during the mix – since he wasn't mixing it – was probably a smart thing to do. Who knows what's going to happen later? I did change those blends up through the course of the record, in order to alter the guitar sound a little bit on each song. Oftentimes, with hard rock and metal, the guitar sound is good, maybe not great, so I will augment it with either a plug-in like Neural DSP or I'll use my Kemper [Profiler amp modeler]. I have a lot of tones that I've captured myself and designed, but I try to stick to the band's tone as much as possible. If that's what they recorded and they were happy with it, then I try to make that work.
With guitars, if you want to make it simple and good, throw a Shure SM57 off the speaker cone, right?
Yeah, I try not to overthink it. I love [Sennheiser MD]421s as well. I'll usually do two 57s on one speaker, one straight-on and one at 45 degrees. Then I'll do a 421 on the other cone. That's generally my mic setup for heavy guitars. Or I'll do one single [Neumann] U 67, which a lot of guitar players freak out at. I'm like, "Back in Black"! [AC/DC's seventh studio album.] I also like to use a U 67 and a [Neumann] U 87. That's what they used on all the guitars. There wasn't a 57 in sight, not even on the drums. A lot of people have gotten comfortable with using the same equipment all the time. I constantly see [Shure] SM7s on lead vocals, and I'm like, "Nope." That's a muddy mic. It doesn't work for most people. It's got a very specific sound. Whenever I get a mix and the vocal's all muddy and harsh, I instantly know they've used an SM7. My friends all laugh at me and make jokes because they know it's not my favorite mic. It does have a great purpose. I like it as a room mic. I've used it on hi-hats. I use it on guitar amps, sometimes – if I take the foam cap off. But it comes down to personal preference.
I was also going to say the U 67, that was Chris Tsangarides' [Tape Op #70] mic of choice. That's [Judas Priest's] Painkiller right there.
Yeah, exactly. I have to watch the level and volume, but if the room is super dead and I put that mic a foot away from the cabinet it sounds monstrous. I know all the Rammstein tracking is done with large diaphragm condensers and tube mics. There's not an SM57 on any of those cabinets, and the guitar sound is vicious.
With metal, now a lot of engineers are starting to want to recapture space; capture the air again. Large-diaphragm condensers are your best friend for that.
