We both started with analog tape at the beginning. I know when you were engineering D'Angelo, it was all about working old school.
Well, yeah. I started interning in 1986. Pro Tools wasn't even a thought at that time. Then I worked my way up from interning, to assisting, to engineering and eventually I went out on my own. But back then, when I was assisting, I'd put the calibration – tones up, and align the tape machines. I'd "zero" the board, make sure the patchbay was clean, and be ready for the engineer to come. I'd be responsible for recalling mixes, so I'd be documenting all the settings in the outboard gear and console used. It was a whole different world. When digital first started coming in, Pro Tools specifically, it was when I was working on [D'Angelo's album] Voodoo. But I was still trying to master analog, so there was no way I was going to switch suddenly to digital; besides the fact that the first Pro Tools system sounded like shit. [Alesis] ADAT or [Tascam] DA-88 converters sounded way better. I wasn't about to switch. It became my thing. I thought, "You guys are fooling yourselves." The workflow was different – looking at a screen versus being more intuitive and done by ear. I'm all about analog. I grew up on vinyl, collecting and listening to albums. Vinyl still rules, as far as sounds.
I get irritated with it. We finish a record, and then I'm listening to the test pressing and there are all these clicks and pops.
It pisses me off, too. It's more prevalent nowadays. I'm a stickler. I need to listen to the test pressings before we give the okay. Absolutely. If I'm working on the album, I try to make it to the vinyl stage. But if I can't make it, sometimes I'm disappointed in the way it turns out, as far as surface noise or the quality of the pressing. Most of the time I have been lucky, but I have found moments on a couple of albums that wasn't up to par.
It's frustrating.
It's very frustrating. Even on older sessions. I worked on an album by Common, Like Water For Chocolate. When they pressed it, the CD had more of what I liked in my original mixes than how it got transferred to vinyl. It's disappointing. The quality control isn't how it was when vinyl was flourishing.
How are you working now? Are you able to do a lot of sessions on tape still?
It varies from year to year. Sometimes it'll be 50-50, but it's never 100 percent working on tape. Like Animal Collective, for instance: I was ecstatic when they said that they would want to try to do everything to tape. I said, "Yeah, let's go." Unfortunately, the budgets are the worst these days. Some people have a problem spending the extra money to budget to use tape, or even to print to tape. Luckily, with most of my clients, if I say, "I think this would benefit from printing it to 1/2-inch tape," they usually will go with my direction. I guess most of the people that ask me to work with them probably want me to do tape in the beginning. I'm lucky. I've carved a deep niche.
But sticking with it to any degree, through this era, takes a bit of a bit of work.
Yes, that's a good point. My manager at the time was telling me, "You should do your own Pro Tools studio." Everybody was doing it. I wasn't getting any work, and there was this period where Pro Tools became the default and the standard. Clients were leaning towards people that were doing it in the box because it seemed like that's where everything was going in the industry, and they didn't have to book a studio anymore. For a three or four year period, I was not that busy at all. I'm glad I stuck it through. I was still not willing to do a Pro Tools studio. But I eventually had to do my own studio, because the budgets were nothing. People were willing to pay my rate, but then I'd say, "Okay, what studio do you want to book?" And they'd say, "What? Studio? We don't have a budget to go in the studio. We have only enough for you."
Famously, you spent quite a long time on D'Angelo's Black Messiah. I interviewed Ben Kane [Tape Op #139] about some of that. He said, "I'd be doing other projects, then that would pop up and take me away."
Yeah, me and Ben, we stuck it out through that whole thing. But it paid off because a lot of people like that album. We got a Grammy [for Best R&B Album]. Ironically, if there was any project that would have benefited from being in the box with instant recallability, it would have been that one because of all the overdubs and the "mixing as we go" style that developed. Every time we changed to another song, we'd have to recall the whole board and change my settings because on certain songs we were in a virtual mid-mix scenario, where the mix would change slightly with each overdub session. For a lot of the songs that we knew were going to be on the album, every time D'Angelo wanted to change it, we effectively had to put the mix back up how it was the last time so we could make further adjustments. Or come to find D'Angelo liked a previous mix that was two or three versions old.
The mixing process became part of the tracking process?
Exactly. It was pretty intense. We would make safety copies of everything. We had a lot of safeties of the multitracks. Eventually we had to lock Pro Tools to tape. If it was going to go past 48 [tracks], we couldn't squeeze anything else onto the tape. We'd find any room on the tape. "Okay. The hi-hat track is free for two minutes. We could put the guitar solo there."
Oh, yeah. I don't miss that! [laughter]
But we tried our best to stay on tape through the whole thing. Certainly, [with] Voodoo, we were mixing from tape, but by the time of Black Messiah, in 2014, it didn't make sense to try to kill ourselves. Everything hit tape, and we were locking Pro Tools to 48 tracks of tape for the mixing.
How long would it take for everything to sync up?
We had the [TimeLine] Lynx [Time Code Modules] for synchronizing the two machines together with time code [SMPTE]. The pain in the ass is when I'm trying to get a level that would only happen at the first part of the bridge, and I'd have to keep rewinding and waiting for everything to lock up. But locking from the top of the song, and if you wait for the second machine to stop, to park, then press play and it's only a three second lag. But it's the rewinding that's the pain, because the second deck is rewinding slower than the main. The main will park first, and then you're waiting for the other to park.
One of the techniques I'm sure you were doing was to make a third reel of a reduction mix and open tracks.
Absolutely. Any time D'Angelo would do vocals we would give him his own 24-track reel; he always does vocals to tape. We would give him two or three stems and he would have the rest of the tape to do vocals.
You guys taught D'Angelo how to do the punch-ins?
We did do it together when we first started working, during Brown Sugar, but after a while he said, "Let me try it myself. Show me how to do it." He knew he could be more efficient and faster, not that he was shy to sing around me! It was not that at all.
Less communication lag.
Absolutely. Which takes away from the creativity.
Did you set him up with a remote out on the floor or in the control room?
He would sit right at the board in the control room.
He could adjust his mix.
Exactly, yeah. Have the remote right there. Sometimes we'd be on an SSL where he could arm right from the console, which was nice. He still, to this day, only does vocals on tape. Isn't that crazy?
Comping vocals in digital is something I'd miss!
Yeah, it makes it easier, right?
What's your process now with Pro Tools? I only use it as a multitrack. I've never bought a plug-in. It's only whatever was stock when I bought it, and I'm still using Pro Tools 10. [Pro Tools 10 was superseded by version 11 in 2013. -Ed.]
Oh my!
I'm using the PCIe cards, not using any plug-ins, and my computer's completely stable. I use the internet and Pro Tools on it and that's it. There was no need for me to go to [Pro Tools] Ultimate and get the subscription and all that. I'm using it as a multitrack. It sounds great. I'm using Dangerous [Music] converters [CONVERT-AD], and their clocking is unbelievable. I used to use Apogees before that. I compared it with different clockings, and I even compared different clocks with Dangerous, as well as the Burl Audio and a couple of different converters. There are subtle differences. They all sound the same, kind of.
It sure is different than comparing tape decks.
Exactly, yeah. Something about the Dangerous had a real tight sound. It seemed the most natural sound, to me. The bass is solid and precise, and everything sounds more open instead of this digital sound that's pressing against your face or something.
It wasn't that the digital part of Pro Tools was bad in the beginning, it was the converters getting the sound in and out.
That was the main issue for me. I loved the editing. There are some cool plug-ins; the ones that are doing something only a digital plug-in can do, like warping a sound, sound correction, or surgical stuff; things that I wouldn't be able to do with analog gear. There are some spatial plug-ins I heard that make the sound seem like it's behind your head. That's pretty cool.
Are you using a console with your Pro Tools rig?
It's a hybrid. I have a Quad/Eight [Electronics] sidecar, a Helios [Electronics] sidecar, and 32 channels of summing, which is also by Dangerous Music [2-Bus].
And you have outboard gear?
Oh, yeah, I've got a ton of shit. [laughs] I even have two Studer multitrack tape machines. I've been collecting compressors, EQs, mics, pedals, and tape echoes for years. But yeah, everything is processed all through my gear, with no plug-ins at all, and that's it.
When you go to work in other studios, do you have to make sure they have exactly what you want to work with?
Yeah. Normally these days, I look for a Neve console. Not that there are many J's [SSL 9000J] left in New York. Electric Lady [Studios] has a J console, but since everything's moved so far into Pro Tools it's harder for me to do a mix solely on the console. It's not as convenient to do revisions if I want to use the board for my automation instead of running automation in Pro Tools. My only automation is really levels and mutes, so these days I'm looking for a nice, fat-sounding console, which is normally a Neve. And then I'll make sure they have enough outboard. I do have a rolling rack and a box of pedals that go with me to different studios. The rack doesn't live in my studio. I'll take it if I'm at Electric Lady or The Bunker Studio. There are only a few studios that I really work at in New York: The Bunker Studio, Electric Lady Studios, and Ben Kane's studio, Electric Garden.
Electric Garden is beautiful there, isn't it?
It's an excellent studio. Ben's like my protege, so he acquired the same taste in equipment. He runs a tight ship.
And The Bunker too. Some great people work over there.
Excellent staff. The [Neve] console is nice. We did the Animal Collective record [Isn't It Now?] there.
How did the process work with Animal Collective? I know they'd generated a lot of the ideas during the previous record.
Yeah, they had been playing some of these songs live for about a year. By the time they got in the studio, they just nailed it. They knew how to play them. As it was developing during the shows, they were saving their patches that they had in the Nord [synthesizer]. The only things sequenced were some of the keyboards, so they were playing to some of the keyboard beds. Then we'd either replace it or keep it, and I would process it so it didn't sound like a digital Nord – I tried to analog it. And other parts that they had done we replaced with the keyboards they had at The Bunker, because they have a shitload of vintage keyboards.
Oh, fun.
There was a lot of replacing digital sounds with other analog keyboards. We did a lot of cool reverse tape tricks, recording a lot of reverse reverbs and reverse echoes.
Those Nord keyboards are a blessing and a curse, aren't they?
I know. Exactly.
I can't believe the amount of clocking noise and such that I hear on those.
Oh, I know. I warmed them up a lot by processing them. I love guitar pedals and amps. If I'm looking for a tone I'll put it through an amp, or I'll put it through some pedal.
That's one of the dangers right now. Many sources are direct or virtual instruments. They're all full range tones and they're not spatially oriented.
Yeah, absolutely. They'll print the reverbs with it and I'm like, "Come on!" It's the worst. That's what makes it cheesy, when they put the fucking reverb on.
You and I know that because we survived the '80s. [laughs]
