John: ...take a mix of a song, take it home and work with it, sculpting bits to be layered onto it or either coming up with...like I would take a version of "Sleepy Company" home, layer some violins and some clarinets for a part, and then like the sound of THAT recording of it and didn't want to try and redo it because my son would be singing along with me in the background while I was playing or something like that. So Eric was the sync master. He would set the 4-track up and then sync the tracks that I had done to the 8-track tape without syncing what I was playing along with. He would have the drums of one mix in one speaker, the mix of the drums on tape in the other speaker and would do it enough that he learned the response time of each...
Bill: We use an [Shure] SM57 a lot. Because it's such a versatile mic and its real cheap. And it's easy to use, it always works. And then that CAD E-200 we use that a lot. Then we did some stuff in Denver on Black Foliage with one of those Rode mics the NT2 or whatever it was called. [laughing] I forget now...
Will: I have no idea. SM57? I did most of mine on an SM57, but a couple had pretty good...
Bill: There's that one that Robert...
Will: Yeah, Neumann style things. It sounded pretty good. It picks up traffic from like 6 miles away... Bill: ...layering as many tracks as possible and have them be heard. And not turn to mush, that's a problem sometimes.
Will: I think that's the biggest problem because we'll have ideas to have these 6 things happening for about 4 bars and then have these 8 things happen and totally shift...
Yeah, well that makes it fast.
Will: Not only is it fast, you can do crazy splices that I personally haven't learned to do and we would have to call some professional in to do these insane splices. I mean INSANE. That we did, that we were actually able to pull off on digital. You know, because none of us are that amazing with precise half second splices...
Bill: You can do a mix of it onto one track and then you have three other tracks to go home with and...
Will: And it's cool. Because it's not 16 tracks, and you...
John: ...in your environment...
Will: ...weird, glassy, on and off effects... John: ...getting the feel of the room that you like to be in when you add your part.
Do you guys have any habits when you're bouncing tracks? Do you always put certain instruments together on the same track?
Bill: I always keep drums and bass separate on their own tracks and then bounce everything else together. And keep vocals separate. Because those are the three things that whenever I'm making a mix, I mean everyone's got their own thing, just me personally, drums, bass, and vocals you always want to be able to...
John: ...and the realization of that's only come over time because there's mixes that we wanted to use for Black Foliage of a song from a long time ago where the vocal track is already mixed in with everything else and if you wanted to change them you would just have to dump a bunch of vocals on top of it, hopefully it overpowers the one that you didn't want there...
Will: At least we all have a 4-track cassette, a pair of headphones, and a mic at all times if not a little bit more. You know sometimes shit breaks and that's what you're left with.
Bill: Every musician should have a 4-track. You know at least just one of those bottom of the line Fostex things for like 150 bucks. It's so great to be able to throw ideas down when you have them.
So if you could only keep one thing...
Will: 4-track cassette for me. Mine's broken right now but I'm getting one as soon as I can. That was my first tool and it's gonna be the last tool, I hope they make them forever because...
Bill: They probably will...
Will: ...it just doesn't matter how far I go... Bill: They're making them cheaper and cheaper...
Will: ...into the recording world, I'm always satisfied with the quality. It feels really real and natural and maybe it's just because I've always worked on it but..
It would have been impossible to fix.
Will: Yeah, that's exciting.
Bill: At the same time I like the idea of cutting tape because it is such a historical thing, know what I mean? It's traditional. You feel like you're part of something that... actually another thing we've done that works really well when we were recording to the 8-track, we've got a Fostex X26, like one of the old cassette 4-tracks that doesn't really work very well anymore. We use it as a preamp, like plug into that, then plug that into the board, so you can get 4- track fuzz that you can't really get any other way... They had that on earlier and I was just loving it. Everybody was making fun of it and I was thinking, "god I love it!"
I like ELO, I just want Jeff Lynne to stay away from everyone else.
Bill: He did a good job with the Beatles.
I like his vocals, I can't stand those drums!
Will: It's the big strings for me...
Bill: Yeah, the production's over the top — I like the songs. I wish he would come to our house and record on 4-track. I think it would be great! Will: Production comes and goes, I think. Know what I mean? He did great productions in the '60s with Idle Race and whatnot, but he was writing better songs in the '70s really, for some reason he decided to put the big strings...
Bill: ..."better production"
Will: Well better, bigger. I mean as it grew he was like, "Wow there's 68 billion tracks now, I'll put 50 thousand strings on that" It's just sickly sweet. It's like, strip that off, there's a great song...
Bill: ...all of a sudden I could hear underneath the hi-hat. Like between his foot, and where the hi-hat was, there was a sound in there, there was a space, it wasn't even a sound, it was a space. All of a sudden that sound seemed to be more influential than anything they were actually doing. It was almost like a sound that they weren't even listening for. They weren't trying to get it, they set up the mics, and they were focusing on one thing, but it was a byproduct of what they were doing. And that byproduct opened up a whole new world of sound...
Will: ...after a while it builds up hiss on real tape. If you want to record 150 pianos you could probably do it. I think digital has it's uses, but like I said, for songs, no way.
Bill: Especially in conjunction with certain things. Like we did some work at Dave Barbe's studio [Chase Park Transduction] and he's got these Distressors and I've never seen those before , they add this harmonic distortion, which is like a tape distortion, it's really weird. You can put something through it, It's got like 4 big knobs, it's real simple, and you set it just right and all of a sudden it sounds like it's coming off tape.
Will: ...boom boom boom boom boom ksh boom boom boom ksh. Done! And that happens a lot, which is cool.
How do you guys feel about working with outsiders?
Bill: Well we just started working with Dave Barbe, he's really cool. It helps if you get on with them really well...
Will: I think we know ourselves well enough now to do it. We didn't before...
Bill: Yeah that's the thing, we're a lot more confident than we were before. It's easier to bring someone in and say what do YOU think of this? Because we know what we think about it. When you're really unsure what you think about it , it's hard to trust someone else's opinion...
