tape op - donutsdocshare01.docshare.tips/files/25172/251729790.pdf · neutral milk hotel tape op a...

Butch Vig

Garbage & Smart Studios

DJ�Shadow

samplers, turntables & downtime

Royal Trux

their home studio fun

Ray Carmen

in Cassette Corner

Neutral Milk Hotel

TAPEOPA Magazine About Creative Music Recording

Abbey Road Pictorial

a week recording with Elliott Smith in London

Knitting Factory Studio

with Sascha Van Oertzen and the Trident console

Recording 1960’s

Avant-Garde Jazz in Chicago

An Intro to Analog Tape

Splicing &�Editing

I s s u e N o . 1 1 • W i n t e r 1 9 9 8 / 9 9

turn the page and check it out >>>

Welcome to issue number eleven of Tape Op.If you’re a long time reader you may noticea difference; more pages, ads for gear, and anew look. This is because we have a new publishing deal withmy friends at Substance Media Works. They’ve agreed to take onthe design, ad sales, printing and distribution of Tape Op and I’llretain the editor’s role. This is a good thing since the business endof the magazine has become a bit overwhelming, and this willallow us to print more pages and more copies. This means we’llreach lots more people and allows us to offer Tape Op free toqualified readers like you! Adam Selzer, who helped dig us out ofthe overload, remains a fixture at the Portland office, filling backorders, picking up the mail and checking out new CDs. There’s alsoa lot of new writers; some of them avid readers and some formerinterviewees. We thank them all.

There’s many projects still in the works here at Tape Op WorldHeadquarters. The proposed collection of back issues into a bigmagazine compendium will now include issues 1 through 10 andwe’ll be trying to get that together soon. Until then, only 8through 10 are available as back issues. We’re also collecting thefinal tracks for a Tape Op compilation CD. This will be out soon,available separately from the magazine via mail order or from yourfavorite local record store. There is a great variety of artists andrecording mediums on this album, from Bill Fox’s 4 track cassettework to Robert Poss’ Akai 16 track digital recording. The coolthing is that a lot of these songs were recorded at home or at private studios and they all sound great! Look for it soon. Anyway,enjoy Tape Op, and I hope everyone learns something new andstarts tracking!Larry Crane, Editor

P.S. If this is your first issue of Tape Op; Hi and welcome aboard!

3 Letters to Tape Op5 Sascha Van Oertzen and the Knitting Factory Studios9 Elliott Smith, Joanna Bolme and Abbey Road Studios

14 Tape Editing17 DJ Shadow20 Cassette Corner w/ Ray Carmen22 Royal Trux26 Neutral Milk Hotel28 Scott Colburn31 Butch Vig36 Tape Op Reviews39 History: Chicago Avant-Garde Jazz43 Larry’s End Rant

Contents:

pa

ge

continued on the next page>>>3 A Magazine About Creative Music Recording

TAPEOP

I’ve been enjoying Tape Op for a fewmonths now, and I thought you’d be pleased toknow that I received all the back issues of yourfine publication as payment from my friend Joefor recording his band. Your thinking and writing seem to be directly in line with mine. Itis great to see that you’ve avoided the better-faster-quieter-louder pitfall of virtually everyother REC rag I’ve ever seen. For this, youdeserve at least a hot dog and a can of Pabst,but probably much more.

I have questions to which I have been unableto find answers: The Electro-Voice 6 series fromthe late 50s. I have a 630 and love it for over-driven electric guitars, and used it tons on ourrecord. I also used a 605 for the first timerecently, and loved it as well. I’ve heard legendary things about Satan’s microphone, the666, which Brian Wilson used for vox on PetSounds, but they are difficult to find and -apparently very spendy at this point. My questions involve the middle models, the 635,644, and 664... where are they? What do theysound like? Where can I get the crazy almost-but-not-quite-Shure type connectors for them,if I do find one? There’s loads of ads for themin my old audio mags, but I can’t find any ofthem anywhere, be it a thrift store or TradingMusician. Blah, blah, blah. Lame equipmentdork talk. At least I know that you understand,whether you care or not. It’s good that way. Bighugs and kisses. I await each new issue withbaited (and very unpleasant) breath.

Chris Walla, Death Cab For Cutie/The Hall ofJustice Recording, Bellingham, WA

I personally don’t know anything about the EV600 series mics but if any readers do, drop me aline. As far as finding them, I’ll once again givea hearty plug to the ProAudioMarketplace, amonthly newsletter full of classified ads from studios and gear brokers. You can subscribe to itat 1-800-469-8023.

Do you know a simple, clean (cheap) way toboost my 20-40 Hz range on a single track ofmy mixer? I’m wondering if there is a simple circuit I could buy or make that would give mea several dB 30 Hz boost on a channel or twovia the inserts. My mixer calls 70 Hz “low end”and it sounds like ass on a kick drum.

CK, via internet

30 Hz is very, very low. Most stereos don’treproduce it very well. I find that I boost the kicklows more in the 50 to 80 Hz range, but actuallyspend more time working on the mids. You canget cheap, half decent outboard EQ and plug itin. I’m not enough of a gear head to tell you howto change the potentiometer on your mixer butI’ll bet you could do it by altering a single capacitor. Good luck!

I have one serious question to ask if you don’tmind. How in the hell does anyone go about get-ting the money for all that stuff? I have a seriouspassion for this recording thing and I think I makea decent living, but damn, after all the cash I havetied up in drums, guitars etc.. the only things Icould get were a Tascam 424-4trk, a little effectsthingy, a Nanocompressor (that I don’t know howto use) and a couple of Shure 57’s. That’s like athousand dollars or something. I can’t even imag-ine owning one ADAT and a little mixing board, notto mention a DAT machine and other bare necessi-ties. Please let me in on the big secret! Thank you.P.S. please keep doing Tape Op, ya sounded kindasick of it in that Maximum Rock and Roll interview.

Bill Valentine, Jackson, MS

Uhh, I don’t have any big secrets to purchasing gear. I’m way far in debt because ofit but I do have a steady job recording bands!Keep an eye out for really good deals, subscribeto ProAudioMarketplace, etc. I forgot about theMaximum Rock and Roll interview. That wasbefore the crew at Substance Media Works rescued me.

I would like to see more articles on recording different genres of music, like reggae, techno, etc. Maybe an article on howto make loops with reels and cassettes. Iwould like to see interviews with Stereolaband Bill Yurkiewicz. The older Stereolab CDsare really good, especially on vinyl. They usedall analog equipment and everything soundsreally warm. Bill Yurkiewicz is fromRelapse/Release Records. They release mostly grind/metal shit but for the last fewyears they’ve been putting out a lot ofnoise/experimental records, which is what I’minto. Anyway, they put out some CDs that willdestroy your stereo and/or components ifplayed too loudly.

Sam Crawford, Lancaster, OH

I like the idea of destroying people’s stereos.Stereolab are a favorite band of mine, althoughI also tend to prefer the early records.Grind/Metal shit? Oh my, I’m not so sure aboutthat!

I’ve looked at the glossy home/professionalrecording magazines in the past, and some oftheir technical pieces are worth a read. But youremphasis on exploring the limits of (and havingfun with) whatever equipment is at hand atleast raises the issue whether pounding moremoney into a recording effort actually producesbetter results, and at best reaffirms my faith inhuman ingenuity.

Kevin Fitzgerald, Eden Prarie, MN

Letters To Tape Op

“Blah, blah, blah. Lame equipmentdork talk. At least I know that youunderstand, whether you care or not.It’s good that way. Big hugs and kisses.I await each new issue with baited(and very unpleasant) breath.”

Send Letters & Questionsto: [email protected]

If there’s an abiding concern behind Tape Op, it is to turn peo-ple on to using what they’ve got and to have fun recording.Recording gear is neat to have, but when you’ve got little youshould still be tracking!

I recently sold my 4 track and jumped up to 8 track. I have a TSR8” machine which is perfect but here is the problem. I bought thisboard that looked nice and simple with nice big VU meters but itturned into a nightmare. It is the Tascam M-50 12x8. The thing isinsane and I just can’t figure out what the hell is going on. JasonKnight (Miner St. Recording) has been over a few times and he isjust like, “This thing is fucked up, not that it is broke, just that it ismade to be confusing and not to work like other mixers.” Did youever come across one of these boards? Do you know anyone who hasone? Is the board really nuts or are we just stupid?

Jason DiEmilio (Colorful Clouds for Acoustics/The Azusa Plane),Clifton Heights, PA

Jason, Thanks for writing. I’ve never seen one of those boards, andif a seasoned vet like Jason can’t figure it out I dunno. Advice? Get aMackie? Anyone know this board at all?

I’ve been 4-tracking since 1993, on a Fostex 260 cassette. I’ve beensaving up my pennies so I can graduate up to an 8-track reel-to-reel.The problem I have is that 1/2” tape is so expensive at $60 a pop for40 minutes of tape. The bands I know can’t afford this, and as muchrecording as I do in the basement, the cost would kill me. My questionthen, is there an eight track 1/4” reel-to-reel out there, because I havenot been able to find one. Who makes one? Can I find one used? I thinkthis will bring my recordings up to the next level but everyone haseither 1/2” or ADAT.

Richard Ashley, Independence, MO

#1, 1/2” tape should cost more like $37 to $40 a reel (new) andshould yield you 33.3 minutes of recording time. Ways around this tapecost include: Buying used tape, which I’ve seen for as little as $10; butbe careful, sometimes it falls apart. Reusing tape once it’s been mixeddown; I “rent” reels to bands and give them the option to purchase themlater. I ran a studio in my basement for several years and rarely had aband complain about the cost of the 1/2” tape. #2, there are 1/4” eighttrack decks out there. Fostex and Tascam made a few models whichsound decent, although I can guarantee that the 1/2” tape sounds bet-ter, and companies like Otari made some durable decks.

EditorLarry Crane

Contributing WritersRob Christensen, Curtis Settino, Heather Mount, John Holkeboer, Steve Silverstein, John Vanderslice, Eric Stenman, Leigh Marble,

Scott Simmons, Joanna Bolme & Dewey Mahood Contributing Photographers

Jeff Gros, Chris Carnel, Sonny Mayugba, John Baccigaluppi, Tony Michels, Stephane Sednaoui, Joseph Cultice, Joanna Bolme,

Heather Mount, Taylor Crothers & Greg RobertsCreative Director & Designer

John BaccigaluppiThe Proofreading and Typing Team

Jane Cowan, Marila Alvares, Lindsey Thrasher, Jenna SatherProduction Asst. &�Office Manager

Tommy RyanMail Answerer and Order Filler

Adam SelzerTranscribing Heroes

Matthew Mair Lowery and Anne Elchikawa

Editorial Office(for submissions, letters, CDs for review. CDs for review are also

reviewed in the Sacramento office, address below)P.O. Box 86409, Portland, OR 97286 voicemail 503-208-4033

[email protected] unsolicited submissions and letters sent to us become the property of Tape Op.

Advertising Pro Audio, Studios & Record Labels: John Baccigaluppi

(916) 444-5241, ([email protected])Pro Audio & Ad Agencies:

Laura Thurmond/Thurmond Media512-529-1032, ([email protected])

Marsha Vdovin415-420-7273, ([email protected])

Printing: Matt Saddler@ Democrat Printing, Little Rock, AR

Subscriptions are free in the USA:Subscribe online at tapeop.com

(Notice: We sometimes rent our subscription list to our advertisers.)Canadian & Foreign subscriptions, see instructions at www.tapeop.com

Circulation, Subscription and Address Changeswill be accepted by email or mail only. Please do not telephone.

We have an online change of address form <tapeop.com> or you canemail <[email protected]> or send snail mail to

PO Box 160995. Sacramento, CA 95816See tapeop.com for Back Issue ordering info

Postmaster and all general inquiries to:Tape Op Magazine, PO Box 160995, Sacramento, CA 95816

(916) 444-5241 | tapeop.comTape Op is published by Single Fin, Inc. (publishing services)

and Jackpot! Recording Studio, Inc. (editorial services)

TAPEOPA Magazine About Creative Music Recording

Letters Continued

www.tapeop.comfree subscriptions online!

4 A Magazine About Creative Music Recording

TAPEOP

A studio manager juggles responsibilitiesand must also find the time and space forcreativity. It takes a level head and a scopic vision to stay sane and to be brilliant. Knitting Factory RecordingStudio manager Sascha Van Oertzen runsher Studio with an ease that only comesfrom mixing experience with creativevision. The history of the Knitting Factory’srecording studio is almost as old as the history of the club itself. Many rememberthe Knitting Factory from its days onHouston St.; it is in this location that arobbery of the club in its early years nearlywiped out the club’s existence for good.That was almost ten years ago, and sincethen the club has grown and moved to amore spacious location Downtown inTribeca. The Knitting Factory remains aclub with its feet firmly planted in jazzmusic and most things experimental, withfour venues in the club, a festival production company, and a great recordlabel that appropriately called KnittingFactory Records. Sascha Van Oertzen is a

29 year old woman who is a graduate of the famed Tonemeister Program of the University of Arts inBerlin. Sascha’s daily grind includes doing live recordings of some Knitting Factory performances, andalso recording albums for either Knitting Factory Records or Kramer’s Shimmy Disc. Sascha is candid,honest, warm, and distinctly confident. She is a class-A troubleshooter, and thinks so hard about thisit’s like you can almost hear the cogs working as she thinks. As we speak I have to keep reminding myselfthat this is someone whose first language is not English- Sascha’s vernacular and attitude is as “NewYork Downtown” as any other Knitting Factory regular. Before she decided to go to this school, Saschawas a musician who wanted to do something with music but didn’t really want to be a musician.Wondering, “what else is there?” she found that recording and engineering was a program that offeredmany aspects towards engaging with music. Sascha described that in her program, “you had to playinstruments and study music, while participating in various technical faculties of the University- you thenget studio experience recording and get experience from practical work. The idea is that you learn musicand have the same experience a musician has in order to work with them...”

Sascha & theTriumphant

TridentConsole an interview with

Sascha von Oertzen, studio manager of

New York’s Knitting Factory’sRecording Studio

Interview & photos byHeather Mount


TAPEOP

So what instruments do youplay?

Piano, sort of... everybody has to play piano inorder to study ear training, theory, and composition studies. And then I play drumsas another instrument.

I heard that you are a very, verygood drummer...

You did! From whom?Yeah, everybody from Frank

London (Klezmatics) to...They never heard me play really... [blushing!]Well, they told me all about it!

James Blood Ulmer (OdysseyBand) said so too. Who did youstudy with?

Well, his name is Jerry Granelli and he’s fromSan Francisco, and he teaches a jazz facultyin Berlin. The school, in the beginning, wasvery classical oriented, which is where I started. It was very much about stereo techniques and the whole classical scene is alittle more into the sounds that you get froma good room. As the jazz faculty developedand got stronger I was more into jazz. I justwanted to get into the studio and try outstuff recording. One day there was a big CDproject workshop that was between the jazzfaculty and the engineering faculty, and producer Lee Townsend was invited for that.That was a big kick, a huge inspiration andmotivation for me to get into jazz.

What were some of the things thatdrew you in?

Well, first of all it’s the music. The improvisationpart, the creativity, and personal expressionof the musicians; this whole process hasalways fascinated me. It’s something morelively, less about reproducing and more aboutcreating something new. Working with LeeTownsend and having him as the person inbetween the technical part and the musicianwas really exciting, because he knew bothsides and he knew how to help communicate.For the engineers, to learn how to communi-cate with the musicians—and for the musicians, how to communicate more aboutthe technical side. The whole process of multitrack recording is much more interestingto me than the stereo recording in classical,jazz and rock music. I mean now, even classical projects get more into multitrackrecordings as well, but more of like a backupif they need to. But the process of mixing isreally fun- it’s where the creativity is, wherethe input is, and it’s where the relationshipbetween the musician and the engineer

becomes really important. The musician wantsto work with someone they can trust who isnot just doing something. This is where LeeTownsend again was a huge influence...

Fill us all in on who Lee Townsendis...

Oh, he produces Bill Frisell, and he has doneseveral John Scofield records. He also does abunch of singer- songwriter stuff too. He alsoknows Jerry Granelli and David Freedman,who are great American jazz guys. What wasreally thrilling was learning about the processof recording, mixing and then putting thewhole project together... it’s really deep. It’snot just putting the mic up and then youhave a recording that you put out! It’s reallysitting down with a musician and trying to understand what they want, what their toneis, what they are going for and then helpingthem to create that. That’s a pretty big partof the whole thing and that’s what makes itreally exciting and really fun. To be thatclose, to have that much input, ideas andcreativity for the whole process.

I have to ask... Do you think thatthere are more or less femaleproducers and engineers inGermany than here?

I was thinking actually that it is more rare inGermany... probably a bit more conservativeover there. Maybe there is a quarter of thewhole business that is female. Of course, justbecause you go to school, that doesn’t meaneverybody gets to work afterwards. I think ingeneral, Germany is a little more conservativestill. You need the papers, the references; youget less of a chance to go ahead and provethat you are good. They want more... I don’tknow the word..uh Umm...I don’t know, likeopinions ahead of time. It’s different thanhere. At school, you have to make anentrance test and they know there are veryfew jobs out there so they limit the studentsthat can be part of that program. There areonly like 4 or 5 a semester. I mean, when Igot interviewed for the position they werelike, “Well, how do you think you are going todo this job if you are going to have a family?”And I was like, whoa!

Wow!Yeah. Even worse was when they heard I wanted

to study drums. They were like, “I don’t thinkthis is going to work. But, sometimes theyjust put that in there cuz they know it’s hard,and if you don’t have like a really strong willto do it, they just want you to question it.But I was like, ’What the hell? Fuck it, I wantto do this. Is it really up to you to decide?’

Did that make you feel aggressivelylike you wanted to do it evenmore?

Maybe a little bit, sure.What brought you here to the

Knitting Factory? You’ve beenhere about a year now, right?

Yes, I came here by coincidence. I was visitingthe city and they were looking for an engineerat the Knitting Factory. I never really hadthought about it, I mean, I never reallythought about moving to New York, but I knewthe Knitting Factory and I knew musicians whoplayed here. I dropped by and right away raninto Michael and Ed, had a quick interview anddropped off a resume and some CDs I hadmade. I got some recommendations from LeeTownsend and others... within a couple ofmonths I had the job.

What’s the routine like here inthe studio?

The normal week almost doesn’t exist, it isalways different. There could be label projects, or people from the outside orshows... People from the outside, meaningeither people who want to record somethinghere, or want to have their show recordedhere. That’s great sometimes! Like we did thisone track on Don Byron’s new recording andthose are thrilling experiences! At the DonByron and Biz Markee show, I met producersand other engineers like Chris Whitley andCraig Street who are there to do it. There is ahuge variety that comes through here; people’s names that you read on records andthen you finally get to meet those people andwork with them!

What have been some of the mostfun projects of the last year?

James Blood Ulmer was really really fun towork with...

James Blood is just great allaround.

Yeah! His whole band is really great and thewhole vibe was very, very celebration-likeeven! It was hard work too, but the wholesession was really relaxed and exciting torecord it..

“It’s something morelively, less about

reproducing and moreabout creating something new.”


TAPEOP

How long did it take to record it?One day. The recording session was one day, and

the mixing was another day or two. That’show some people do it - Briggan Krauss wasone of the most pleasant recording sessions Ihave ever done. Their vibe together was sogood—they played together so well they justhad so much fun themselves, and were nevertoo hard on each other.

Do you find that there are bigdifferences between recording jazzmusicians and rock musicians ?

Well, no. There are plenty of jazz sessions thatare not like that. And there are all kinds ofways to record, which is what I learned fromexperiences I had with Lee Townsend—youcould work on one guitar solo, just play single notes and make that another greatsolo, that can happen too! But since we area live set up anyway, we don’t have that kindof overdubbing, headphone situation, thebest sessions are kind of when people justplay and don’t get into a lot of fixing andoverdubbing stuff in our setup.

If I may ask, what have been someof the worst experiences- likethe frustrating parts?

There are some things that are related just tohaving any job! But, a couple of things happen with personalities-where there is achauvinistic attitude. Not just me being awoman on the job, but maybe just the ignorance to how much work the engineeringjob is or how much I actually try to makesomething good. In the end it’s in the serviceof the musicians. If something isn’t right for

them, they are like, “We want to make sureeverything is cool to us” and their attitude islike, “I don’t care if I fuck up your job or not!”I am like, “Well, ok, so do you want me to dothis recording or not?” There are times whenthe cooperation isn’t good, and there is notunderstanding going on. Then I get to feelinglike, well, I will just do my job and not real-ly work with the person

That must be hard.

Yes! It can also be really hard if a musician isnot happy with what they are doing, it canbe really really hard, because they want to doit over and over and just like... hard vibes!

Everything tends to come out whenyou try to record it-

Absolutely.What is some of the studio’s gear

that you have most fun with?The Trident console! It’s actually the one that

Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon wasrecorded on-

Not like the actual one...Yes! The actual one-You could ask Kramer about

this. Trident ADB series, for people who wantto know.

How many channels?30 inputs- we have a 24 track analog machine,

a Sony MCI. The two together have a warmsound which is really really good.

And that was all acquired back inFebruary or January this year?

Yeah, we worked on integrating it all untilApril or May.

And before that it was done on...A little Mackie mixer, which are totally fine but

didn’t have any character, like the mic pre’sdon’t really have any. All we had before wasthe Mackie and two DA 88’s and a little bit ofoutboard gear. The Trident console is themain difference. The 24 track is not as goodfor live recordings—it’s just asking for toomuch trouble—but also we have this EMTreverb plate, which is really really cool and abunch of tube vintage compressors...

Ahhh, which ones?UREI LA 4 and 1176’s and a Drawmer 1960...

and a lot of ADR stereo compressors andsome great reverbs like the EMT plate, the


TAPEOP

Lexicon 224 and PCN 90. The best soundingreverbs you can get nowadays. Also theRoland R 880. We also have a lot of greatmics now, like some Neumanns and a few87’s and 84’s AKG’s, 414’s and the new BlueLine Series, and the usual RE 20’s, 421’s,57’s, 58’s...

Any other fun gadgets in there? The studio isn’t physically big enough to hold

too much more. The most fun is the board,the console- the monitors, HD 1’s, MeyerSound. The studio is just the control room,with a little overdub booth. The tape-machine room can be used as an overdubroom. All the spaces we record in.

Like upstairs in the main space?Yeah, all the stages are wired to the studio, so

we can use the main stage, the AlterKnit, orwhatever

Ooooh, so they are wired there?Um hm.This place keeps you busy. What do

you want to do in the future? Doyou want to start your own studioor become a musician again, or..

Well, I really would like to go into the producingarea, which I had done in Berlin before; just

working with young bands and helping themput their projects out. That’s really thrillingto see.

Would that be having your ownstudio to do the producing in?

I mean, I am in charge of this studio, and that’senough. I don’t need to own it. I havealways enjoyed doing live sound and that’swhat’s cool here- I can do both. I can recordlive and do studio work. That’s pretty ideal forme now. The set up is exactly what I want todo- a big variety of music, a lot of opportunities to meet people, to be involvedin a label, and sort of do the live thing

It’s cool how the whole packageworks together here-

Yeah.... Oh, I remember what I wanted to sayearlier. I find more respect here in the Statesthan I experienced in Germany. I feel morelike other producers take me seriously, andgive me the opportunity to just show whatyou are good at- not thinking, “You’re awoman.” Or “you are younger,” or “you arenot dressed the part” or...

Exactly. I was touring with a band here in the States and

I was a little worried. I was young, I am nottoo aggressive anyway, and they just let me...well they just sort of served it to you! Like,this is what you’ve got, this is how it worksand it was just really cool. Which doesn’tmean that all things over here in the Statesare like that.

New York is not an easy place to getstarted...

Yeah, I mean that was just one good experience....

“It’s where the creativityis, where the input is,

and it’s where therelationship between the

musician and theengineer becomes really important.”

After beingbriefly outof print,

Tape Op Vol. IIis now in it’s3rd printingand available

wherevergood booksare sold!TA

PE O

P VO

L. II

the

Book

Abo

ut C

reat

ive

Mus

ic R

ecor

ding

colle

cts

inte

rvie

ws

& ar

ticl

es f

rom

iss

ues

11-2

0 of

Tap

e Op

Mag

azin

e


TAPEOP

Elliott Smith, Sam Coomes, Rob Schnapf, Tom Rothrock

and Tape Op’s very own Joanna Bolme

live out their Abbey Road Studios fantasy.


TAPEOP

This is a story about how I got to live myfantasy of walking through the door of thebuilding at 3 Abbey Road and saying, “We’reworking in studio two.” It’s second only to theone where I walk through the door and thereceptionist says “Good morning Mr. Martin.”This was made possible by my generous friendElliott Smith, whom I believe had a similarfantasy. We were joined by our buddies RobSchnapf and Tom Rothrock, who took care ofthe recording duties, and Sam Coomes fromQuasi, the best rock band in the world.

Elliott, Sam and I arrive at studio twoaround noon. We walk into the control roomand meet friendly house engineers Paul Hicksand Chris Bolster. Rob and Tom have taken awrong turn and are now heading farther andfarther away from the studio. Let’s have alook around, shall we? The mixing board is aNeve VRP Legend with flying faders, not a little EMI board with a grinning St. Georgeand Geoff Emerick permanently attached to itlike my fantasies have led me to believe. Ohno! One of those screens with the EQ display.I’ll get sucked in I know, just like those dryersat the laundromat. A Studer A820 24 trackanalogue tape machine. There’s a machinebay, so you can wheel in whatever you want,digital or analogue. They have a lot to choosefrom. Assorted outboard gear that Rob andTom decide not to use. A comfy couch andchairs. Coffee! OK, now for the studio downstairs. It’s huge. The ceilings are 24 feethigh and the floor is 38 feet x 60 feet On thestudio statistics sheet they list the reverberation time at 1.2 seconds. Mountedon hinges and wheels against the main wallsare four acoustic screens that are nearly astall as the room, and about 1/3 the width, soyou can break it up. There are lots of smallerscreens you can use for isolation. We’ve got aSteinway grand piano, a Steinway tack piano(actually there are no tacks, just very stiff,ridged hammers), a Hammond C3 organ withtwo Leslies to choose from, and an electricharmonium. Let’s see, microphones. Hmm,Neumann, Neumann, Neumann... you nameit, they got it. I go over to check out therented Ludwig vintage drum kit. Cute. Thosecymbals look like trouble though. There are apair of very weathered looking Cole 4038’sperched nearby. “Hey Paul, how old arethese?” “Pretty old.” “Like Beatles old?”“Yeah.” I press my cheek against one of them.

(Insert Beatles fantasy here.) I open my eyes.Rob and Tom have arrived and are inspectingthe drum set. All the cymbals but the hi-hathave been nixed. The heads have to go too.They want Remo Ambassador coated top andclear bottom. “Excuse me Tom, there’s a JoeyWaronker on the phone for you.” Everyone,“Tell him to come over!” Joey played drumson a couple songs from Elliott’s album, XO,and happened to be in town with R.E.M. Hehas just arrived at the studio and is now onthe phone with another music store. It seemsto be a bit more complicated to rent gear inLondon than LA. He is being very patient andspeaking very calmly. He sounds like my chiropractor right before the big adjustment.“Now what I would like to do, is have youbring me some of these cymbals, and some ofthese, and two of these, and I’ll try them outand send back the ones I don’t want to use.Do you think we can do that?” After 15 minutes of hypnosis, they agree. Elliott isdownstairs working on a new song, the rest ofus discuss very important things while wewait for the gear to arrive. “Excuse me Tom,who’s the Nuge?” asks Paul. Okay we’rerecording now. Sam is attempting play without using headphones. This turns out tobe impossible as the delay from one side ofthe room to the other is too long for him tokeep time with the drums. After a good takewe listen back. We all marvel at the sound ofthe room. It really has a sound. “Now if wejust had an old board instead of this damnthing.” says Rob.

Abbey Road has an extensive list offloating equipment you can bring in, Rob andTom have requested some EQs that were originally part of an old EMI board. Not onlydoes the old stuff sound better, it looks better. Why is modern recording equipmentso ugly? They have also brought in Summitmic pres, a Fairchild limiter, a Tube-Tech CL1B compressor, an SSL compressor and someother preamps. Studio two has exclusive useof the legendary echo chamber. Located inthe back of the room , it was just recentlyreinstated for work on the Beatles Anthology.All studios have access to the EMT reverbplates. Hey, have I mentioned there’s a pub inthe basement? It’s part of the cafeteria,which offers up the usual casserole style cuisine, but the beers on tap are great. Youcan order a pint of Guinness, light a cigarette

and take a little stroll through the halls ifyou want to. We decide to order out forIndian food tonight. After dinner, the bandheads downstairs to work on another song, Ihave a stomachache, and fall asleep on thecouch imagining what the Odessey and Oraclesessions were like. (Insert Zombies dreamhere). The band returns to the control roomjust as Rod Argent delivers a kick to my stom-ach because I won’t let him sit down. “Howdid that sound?” asks Elliott. “Well ...”

It seems after spending enough timewith us Paul and Chris have figured out thathalf of what we say is bullshit, and havestarted dishing it back at us with gusto. Nowwe’re one big happy family. Elliott and Samlay down some vocals (U47) on the trackstarted last night. They sound great, but Mr.Smith, is unhappy with the words and thesong is shelved for now. He begins work onanother song. He lays down acoustic first(KM56), then electric guitar through a Leslie(U47 on bottom 2 SM 57s placed at an angleof about 130 degrees [for more spin, according to Rob] on top), and drums (justmake something up). Mr. Waronker isn’t heretoday so Elliott plays. Once again he laysdown one of the weirdest and coolest drumtracks you ever heard. “Okay Sam, think youcan play bass over that?” Excellent! Sam optsto stay up in the control room to record it. Weenjoy delicious frothy pints while he worksaway. Rob has something to show me downstairs. Tucked away at the end of thehall is an old EMI board. There’s compressorsbuilt right in to every channel. In fact, theVU meters on top show compression not signal. Chris comes over and tells us that theboard no longer belongs to the studio but toone Michael Hedges who produces a lot ofbands I don’t listen to. He just keeps it atAbbey Road to use when he works there. Istash a pen behind it to use next time I’mworking there.

On that note, I’m disappointed to discover that out of a staff of 80 people, only8 are engineers, and all are boys. Paul assuresme it’s not sexist hiring policies, just lack ofapplications from the girls. I think of theSpice Girls and decide he’s not taking theMickey out of me. Come on ladies of London,out of 7,000,000 people, One of you must beinterested in recording! Back at the ranchElliott is laying down an organ part.

Excuse me Tom, who’s the Nuge? -Paul

We should smash them to smithereens. -Rob

Are you taking the Mickey out of me? -Paul


TAPEOP

Elliott, Rob & Tom going over the arrangement.

A pint and playback.

Elliott & Sam reaching for a high note.

The Orchestra. continued on the next page>>>11 A Magazine About Creative Music Recording

TAPEOP

Chris (L) & Paul (R).

Power!

Waiting.....Rob and the old board.

First take

with Joey

Waronker

on drums.

All photos

by Joanna


TAPEOP

The organ sound is great. “Hey, how long hasthat been here?...” “Really? That long? Sothat’s the one they used on ‘Blue Jay Way’?”The tack piano’s been here for a long timetoo. Penny Lane! I run down and touch themboth again. We forget to eat, the cafeteriastops serving food at 8:30 and London turnsinto a pumpkin at 10. We all go to bed hungry

We went to bed hungry, not necessarilysober. The bar in our hotel stays open laterthan the pubs so we wrapped up the nightthere. I wake up at 3 pm. Everyone else leftat noon. When I get to the studio they havealready recorded basics for another song.Joey has played drums and left by now. Samis doing his bass part again. Let’s take a littletime to get to know “The Abbey Road Kids.”Paul is only 24 years old and has been work-ing here since age 19. He spent 6 monthssplicing tape by hand with Geoff Emerick forthe Beatles Anthology. “So, were you freakingout?” “Actually no, not really.” He’s so cute.Chris is a New Zealander who moved toLondon in March. He landed his job at AbbeyRoad within 3 months. Not too shabby! He isa wee 23. He also informed me that the termfor ice cream bar in England is “icy lolly.”Elliott is adding piano and organ now I forgotto tell you about studio one. It’s even biggerthan two. 92 x 55 feet., and 39 feet. high.This is where they record most of the orchestras and film scores. It’s the only otherstudio I check out because number threegives me a weird vibe every time I walk by.Later I find out this is where Dark Side of theMoon was recorded. No wonder. I do read a lit-tle info on it though. It’s smaller than theother two, and includes a separate 19 x 12 ftlive room which has no parallel surfaces andtile floors. The board is a 72 channel SSL G.It has a kitchen and shower. The Spice Girls,Morrissey, and (shudder) Phil Collins have allused this room. There is also the smallerpenthouse studio, used mostly for vocals,overdubs and mixing. It has a Neve Capricornboard and is the only studio with full digitalcapabilities. You know, if you’re one of thosepeople. Abbey Road also has a cassette duping suite, CD pre-mastering room, a disccutting facility, a classical editing room, andseparate digital re-mastering suites for pop orclassical music. Whew, now that that’s out ofthe way, we have moved on to slide guitar.

There is a story about George Harrison’siron fist while recording Badfinger’s ‘Day AfterDay.’ He insisted on doing the double slideparts at the same time, one played by himand the other by Pete Ham. Of course thiswas no easy task and took a bunch of takes.Now when I hear the song I don’t know if I’mcrying because its so beautiful, or becausethe idea of recording something that manytimes is too stressful. (Insert Badfinger night-mare here). Vocals added, the finished product is a rocker called Brand New Game.Some of you may recognize this as the songMr. Lawrence Crane and I recorded a demo ofin the short film Strange Parallel. Isn’t Larryphotogenic? Now adding vocals to the onefrom yesterday. Elliott does a lead vocal anddoubles it. Moving on, he wants to try someharmonies but clarifies more than once thathe’s not sure what he’s going to do. He’s just“sending out a probe” if you will. He declaresafter the first couple of passes that “theprobe has discovered nothing” but by thenext one he’s off and rolling. I lost track ofhow many harmonies he added but I thinkBrian Wilson would be jealous. While makinga rough mix, Rob talks me through what he’sdoing including putting some gooey shmutzon the oohs. Damn his techie talk.

Today the orchestra arrives. AnotherStuder has been brought in as a slave deck.We’ve got 8 violins, 4 violas, 4 cellos, 3 bassesand 4 French horns. They are mic’d as follows,4 U67s on the violins, 2 on the violas, 2 U47son the basses, 2 on the cellos, and the 4038son the French horns. There are 2 M50s outfront by the conductor, and very high above,a pair of KM56s. Did I mention the speciallove that developed for the KM56s? Asidefrom the acoustic guitar, they were also usedas drum overheads, on a piano track or twoand probably some other things I’m forgetting. A+ for versatility. Thearranger/conductor arrives and goes over thesheet music with Elliott. Both satisfied, hegoes downstairs, gives some brief instructionsto the players and we’re ready to go. They putdown a few different arrangements of thesong and are done within an hour. Some ofthem thank Elliott for an easy day of workand head downstairs to the pub. Tom nowbounces these tracks onto the original soElliott can sing to it. The rest of the day isspent mostly on vocals and assorted bits here

and there, interrupted only once so Blondiecan check out the studio. I resist taking theirpicture and settle for waving to Clem Burkefrom the control room. Control tower is morelike it. At about 15 ft. above the studio, youkind of feel superhuman. Just by addingsome reverb to the talkback and speaking ina deep voice you can almost live the dream.Another day finished, we head back to thehotel bar for overpriced drinks.

Last day and I’m feeling a little teary-eyed. Elliott wants to try one more song thathe’s been messing around with, temporarilycalled ‘Honky Bach’ because of the pianostyle. Rob sets up the mics on the tack piano,and recording begins. Listening back, we realize the tape had started rolling before Robmade it up the stairs and shut the door.Sounds great, we move onto the harmonium.He adds some low stuff that sounds like atuba, and some high stuff that sounds like an accordion. Sam adds a bass part and the songis now called ‘The Lost and Found.’ Lyrics notquite finished, we move on to mixes. Robasks Paul if they ever use any API stuff there.He’s heard of it but we’re in Neveland andnobody he knows seems to have actually usedit. Maybe next time...

We wanted to take “the Kids” out at theend of the day, but once again it’s very late.No one seems too anxious to leave our newlittle home, but Paul has to work early tomorrow. We’re reluctantly getting ready toleave when Chris rushes out and returns witha bottle of champagne and some gifts. Theboys get the standard Abbey Road T-shirts,and I get the supercute baby tee. Whichwould look great if I didn’t have shoulderslike Greg Louganis. We make a toast and hangout for just a little while longer.

I’m gonna put some gooey

schmutz on the oohs. -Rob

I’m just futzing around in here. -Rob

Take your time, as an error would be disastrous at this juncture. -Tom

Joanna waves goodbye. Photo: Elliott.13 A Magazine About Creative Music Recording

TAPEOP

Who among us hasn’t wanted to take a razor blade to ourtapes for no other purpose than malicious destruction?Through the ancient art of manual tape editing and splicing,you now have a practical reason for doing just that!

Basic materials for tape splicing and editing.� recording tape (basic magnetic tape, e.g. Ampex, Maxell)� razor blades� leader tape (white, clear)� timing tape (yellow, red)� adhesive splicing tape (blue, best on a weighted desk dispenser,

1” for 2” tape, otherwise)� editing block (usually mounted on your console reel to reel recorder with

grooves for hard cuts [vertical] or soft [diagonal])� grease pencil or china marker (white, yellow, any color that stands out

against brown tape)� ruler

Tape splicing and editing is essentially cutting and pasting tape by hand.It’s organic and crafty. Instead of working with digital, virtual sound, you aremanipulating the tape with your bare hands. In any other sense, however,there is no comparison. A comparison would be analogous to the differencebetween using a typewriter and a word processor. Manual splicing and editingis time consuming, and the results are irreversible. It is simply the old way:no better or worse than modern methods, only very different.

Whether you use digital or analog editing, the basic techniques of splicingand editing (leader tape, tape loops, and cut and paste editing) are essentialskills for anyone who uses analog tape. Most console-style reel to reelrecorders come with a factory installed editing block. It’s a rectangular pieceof milled aluminum or steel with one flat groove across the middle for holdingthe tape in place. This shallow, wide tape groove is intersected by one deeper,thin, vertical groove for cutting the tape with a razor blade (hard cuts). Nextto this is a similar, but 45 degree diagonal groove (soft cuts). Most editingblocks have only these two razor grooves, but some have one more 30 degreediagonal razor groove for a super soft cut (see diagram 1).

If you have an upright reel to reel recorder or your reel to reel is notequipped with an editing block you can buy one or in desperate situationsonly, go without. I have gone without an editing block in a pinch and it justtakes lots more manual precision. And then, only for the most basic operations like adding leader tape to the front of a master reel. If you buy anediting block you just have to mount it firmly to your workspace (as close aspossible to the tape recorder and horizontally or at a low angle).

An Intro to Analog TapeSplicing and Editingand Tape Loops.

By John Holkeboer (with Larry Crane)

Leader tape applicationLeader tape is made from polyester and is theoretically

soundless. It’s sold by the reel like recording tape andis usually white or clear with black stripes which denotetime, i.e. 30 per minute at high speed, 15 per minuteat low speed. It’s mainly used at the beginning and endof a reel to protect the first and last few feet of tape,just like on a cassette.


TAPEOP

To apply leader tape, followthese procedures:

1) Locate the beginning (or the end) ofthe recorded sound on the tape, rewind(or fast forward) a little bit to insurethat you won’t cut into the recordedsound you want, then mark (on tape)the intended cut with grease pencil(always make the mark on the tape facing away from the side of therecord/playback heads. i.e. the dull,darker brown non-magnetic tape).

2) Place the marked segment of tape inthe editing block (you can pull the tapeaway from the tape heads with the tapestill on the reels).

3) Align the grease pencil mark withthe desired razor groove (vertical for ahard, instantaneous sound cut, or diagonal for a soft, more oblique cut).Then with a clean, swift stroke cutthrough the tape.

4) Keeping the tape held in the shallowgroove, match end to end (no gaps, nooverlaps) then cut master tape withlength of leader tape, cut the same way(see diagram 2).

5) Using the razor blade, cut offenough blue adhesive tape to coverthe splice vertically. Affix the blueadhesive tape across the cut andjoined magnetic and leader tape (usethe handle side of the razor blade or afingernail to rub the adhesive tape onand to smooth out the air bubbles).Trim the blue tape from the top andbottom of the audio tape by holdingthe razor at an angle and sliding italong the groove that holds the tape inthe splicing block.

You can cut the leader tape to anylength depending on how much deadsilence you want. You can experimentwith timing in this way. Incidentally,timing tape is essentially the same thingas leader tape, except it’s yellow or redand sometimes it’s useful to differentiate between timing and leaderfunctions. The above procedure is usefulfor inserting breaks in your master tape,between songs or programs. Again,leader or timing tape is essentiallysoundless, so you can also use it whenever you don’t want tape hiss orwant to permanently remove stick clicks.

Tape LoopsBefore sequencers and drum

machines, enterprising people madetape loops to achieve endless repetition of a given sound sequence.If you’ve never seen or made one, thetape loop is a disarmingly easy andlogical device.

To make and playback a tape loop,follow these procedures:

(The only item you need for tapeloop playback in addition to the aforementioned materials is a floatingcapstan or spool, mounted on aportable stand, such as a mic stand.See diagram 3.)

1) Find the exact beginning and endof the tape segment you wish toloop and mark the cutoff points witha grease pencil.

2) Cut out the desired segment (seestep 3 of above procedure for cuttinginstructions. In the case of loops,either hard or soft cuts are fine.Again, hard for a sudden attack, softfor a more gradual attack.)

3) Make into a continuous loop (seestep 4 of above procedure). Be sureloop has no twists.

4) Splice together (see diagram 4).

5) To play back loop: Run the looparound capstans, through placeholders, and in front of tape headsas you would for normal playbackoperation, but run the remainingtape around the remote capstan.Pull taut-not tight, making sure thetape can move normally (see dia-gram 5). Press play. Tape loop willplay back repetitiously at regularspeed until you press stop.


TAPEOP

Cut and Paste EditingSay you have two takes of a song. One take has an unfixable flaw in the last section of the song. Another take

however, had better results over the same section. Isolate the flawed part in the first take, cut it out and replace itwith the better part from the other take and splice it on. This type of editing is obviously risky and has potential tocause serious continuity problems. But sometimes it is the only solution. This same type of edit was used famously on‘Strawberry Fields Forever.’ Other uses for this technique are to edit out overly long portions of a song, mix edits, andeven slicing out small pieces of tape to remove stick clicks during a sloppy drum fill!

Other more advanced techniques refined by earlier electronic music

composers made use of such things as simultaneous tapedeck playback: music comprised of separate parts played onseparate tape decks timed to sync up by carefully measured (byruler) lengths of leader tape. This type of music, also known asmusique concrete, was originated by Pierre Schafer and PierreHenri. Their piece, ‘Symphonie Pour un Homme Seule,’ is widelyregarded as the first musique concrete composition. Othernotable pieces done in this method include KarlheinzStockhausen’s ‘Kontakte’ and ‘Gesang’ or Iannis Xenakis’‘Orient/Occident’ or ‘Bohor.’ Mario Davidovsky, Otto Luningand Gyorgy Ligeti have also made significant contributions tothis repertoire. This music also utilized backwards tape whereinyou cut out a tape segment, flip end over end, and splice in fordesired backward envelope. Also artificial tremolo, achieved bycutting many equal-size segments of tape and equal-size segments of leader tape (by the use of a ruler) and splicingthem together (see diagram 6).

These are very labor intensive and seemingly archaic techniques, butthere are a few very good reasons to use them. If you do it a lot, yourtechnique improves and you even discover options unavailable with a computer. In sum: If you’re looking for new ways to be creative in yourediting, it pays to have these options at your disposal. There is also theelement of control. This kind of editing gives you a kind of ‘no-turning-back’ decision-making power over your recordings. Perhaps most importantly, experimentation with manual tape splicing and editing isenlightening and informs one’s own understanding of how sound engineering has evolved.


TAPEOP

it’s

Get a free subscription to Tape Op. All you have to dois go to www.tapeop.comand fill in the online sub-

scription form and the nextissue will be delivered to you

Offer applicable only in theUS and UK. Other territories

are not free.

TAPEOPThe Creative Music Recording Magazine

Cool ass interviews with folks like Rupert Neve,Tchad Blake, Butch Vig, John McEntire,

Mitch Easter, Fugazi, Steve Albini, Jon Brion,Andy Wallace, Andy Johns, Jim O’Rourke,

Joe Chiccarelli, Rudy Van Gelder, Spot,Alan Parsons, Bob Ezrin, Jack Endino,

Jim Dickinson, Mario Caldato, Ethan Johns,Dave Fridmann, Malcolm Toft, Daniel Lanois,

Geoff Emerick, Hugh Padgham,George Massenburg, and lots more.

Subscribe:Free!

Home recording has taken some serious leapsduring the nineties. A four track and a couple

of cheap microphones used to be the standard setup; nowadays it’s just as common

to find a sampler, turntable, and an ADAT,ProTools or hard drive recorder. This “Do-It-

Yourself” ethic is very prevalent in the samplebased DJ/Electronica world. Is it more chic to

go out and buy a sampler rather than anelectric guitar? Electronica is the new punk

rock, and there are no rules for this subculture’s art form.

DJ Shadow (AKA Josh Davis) is a perfectexample. Here you have a middle class, whitekid from suburban Northern California that

grew up listening to hip-hop. Most of hiswork is done at home using only a few pieces

of equipment. Shadow’s debut album,Endtroducing (Mo Wax Records, 1996) came

out of nowhere. It sold quite impressively,and launched him and the rest of the DJ

world into the plain view of record buyersworldwide. Shadow’s flavorful, sample drivencombination of huge breakbeats and spacey

organ and bass loops landed his album ontop ten lists everywhere. Shadow has now

released a new album under the name Unkle.Unkle is Shadow’s collaboration with Mo WaxRecords founder, James Lavelle. Shadow hasbeen quoted as saying, “He’s the director and

I’m the DJ.” What this translates to withUnkle is this: Shadow creates the music while

Lavelle brings together other artists such asRadiohead’s Thom Yorke, The Verve’s

Richard Ashcroft, Beastie Boy Mike D., andmany others to add vocal and instrumental

collaborations. I was able to sit down with DJShadow and talk about some of his gear, his

approaches to music, and the making ofUnkle’s new album, Psyence Fiction.

DJ

Shadow


TAPEOP

What is your set up like, equipmentwise? I’m sure you’ve been askedmany times.

Well, I don’t mind talking about it anymore.Mainly, I just use an Akai MPC-3000.

Will you continue to stick with thatsampler?

No. I think it’s time to move on. When I firststarted using my MPC-60 Mach II back inearly ‘92 it was so new. No one was usingthem. Everyone was still so SP-1200, SP-1200,SP-1200. Now, it’s time for somethingnew. I think that when you change yourinstrument, you change your sound. But, Istill want to keep it simple. I don’t want tofall into the trap that a lot of producerfriends of mine fall into. A lot of people thatI look up to make the same mistake. Whenthey are having a hard time making music,they spend a lot of time and energy on getting new gear. They feel that becausethey are reading manuals, they are working.However, they aren’t making anything. It’seasy to get caught in a tech trap where younever put anything out, but feel like yournew piece of gear is going to put you on thetop. My home studio would still fit on a dinner table. Turntables and my 3000.

Did you use the same equipment forEndtroducing and Psyence Fiction?

No. For Unkle I upgraded to the 3000. I mademy own album on the MPC-60.

I’ve heard that you never usecomputers. Is that true?

The only time I use Pro Tools is for the editingand sequencing of the album. For Unkle, itwas just used to de-click some of the reallynoisy samples. At the very beginning of making the Unkle record, I was feeling veryself-conscious. I was hearing all these chopson drum and bass records that I couldn’t doon the 3000. I played around with Cubase alittle but then I decided that I already had mysound and that I’d stick with it for a while.

How much multi-tracking do you do? Endtroducing was recorded to ADAT because that

was all that we could afford back then. TheUnkle album was multi-tracked to 2” analog.Jim Abbis did the actual mixing but Jamesand I were there for every minute of it.

What about outboard gear? Anycertain pieces that you like a lot?

The MXR Pitch Transposer. It was somethingthat Mario Caldato Jr. from the BeastieBoys introduced me to. That’s one of thefew pieces of outboard gear that I’ve eversought out and bought. I used it a lot during my DJ set when I was touringEurope with Radiohead.

Are all the sounds you samplealready pre-recorded? Would youever commission musicians tocome in and play parts that youhave written?

Jason Newstead from Metallica played live basson one of the Unkle songs. That wasbecause I couldn’t find a bass line that Iliked. That was the only reason. I used hisbass line because after working on the beatand guitar sample for six months, I stillcouldn’t find a bass line to sample. It wastoo strange of a melody. I grew up on sample-based music. Breakbeats are thefoundation of what I do. I like the fact that,even though it doesn’t always sound thegreatest, someone could go out and find thebeats. They are out there. Everything I usecan be found somewhere else if you lookhard enough. I think that makes it veryinteresting. I love finding other people’ssamples. It’s great to not only find the sample but then to also see how it wasused. It’s great when people aren’t lazy andtake the sample as a whole. I like it whenpeople chop up stuff and flip it around.

On the Unkle song Nursery Rhymeyou made a piece of music thatis entirely made out of samplessound like a rock band.Someone who didn’t knowbetter would assume that it isjust a rock band playing thatsong. Was that your goal?

Yeah. As rock bands try to sound more sam-pled, I’ve wanted to make songs that are100% sampled and feel live.

It does. It even has the stick clickfour count.

Exactly. I had to go through about 30 recordsto find the stick clicks. It could have beenworse if I hadn’t known to look for them inpunk records. That was a fun song. It wasa milestone for me on the record. It cametogether faster than anything else.

Will there be a new DJ Shadow albumin the works anytime soon?

The thing is this. I finished Endtroducing inJune of ‘96 and started Unkle right away. Idid High Noon, toured, and then worked onUnkle all the way up until now. I haven’t hadany time to relax or reflect since ‘95. I thinkthat for the sake of me making good music,I need to take the rest of the year off. I needto just DJ and not make music. If I startedanother record right now it would sound likeUnkle. To be inspired, you need to live a little bit. There’s a lot of bait for me to work,work, work. Strike while the iron’s hot. Ican’t buy into that.

I’m sure that you could do a ton ofre-mix work if you wanted to.

I don’t really do re-mix work. I have done a few.They have to have really influenced me in amajor way and be friends of mine. Some people make their whole living doingre-mixes and do a really good job. Someonelike Fatboy Slim. I think that’s cool. For me,I don’t look at music that way. I have a hardtime with it. I still consider myself a consumer of music more than anything else.As a consumer, I think that a lot of re-mixesare rip offs. Rarely will something hit me theway the original song does. Usually it’s sparebeats and two days in the studio. It’s thesame reason why I didn’t have manyre-mixes done off of Endtroducing. The CutChemist re-mixes were the only ones. It justdoesn’t seem like a good idea for me.

What other current producers do youreally like?

I like Timbaland. There’s a producer from Miaminamed Gray Strider that I really like.

Are there any new pieces of gear comingout that you are excited about?

That’s a good question. I’m really not a techie.When it comes to me building my new setup, I’m going to have to do some investigating and call around. It’s hardbecause the MPC turned out to be a veryclassic, standard machine. There’s not mucharound that’s been an improvement. I’d haveto find something that is better. I don’t wanta new piece of gear just for the sake of having it. It’s got to be able to do at leastwhat the MPC can do. I’ve always liked thefact that it’s all in one box. (pause) I can’tbelieve that I have no Akai sponsorship. I’vetalked about Akai for so long. I don’t knowwhat’s wrong with them. I don’t know what’swrong with me. I should be calling them.

“To be inspired,you need to livea little bit.”

Interviewed by Eric StenmanPhoto by Jeff Gros


TAPEOP

““Distortion isusually your

friend.”-Rob Schnapf in Tape Op No. 9

Photo by Sonny Mayugba

Ray Carmen has been a part of theunderground "cassette culture" for over tenyears. As might be guessed by the heading,Carmen's main forte' is pop, as inByrds/Beatles/Monkees, but he does ventureinto other areas. He recently put out his thir-teenth tape on his own POP! Productionslabel, and has releases by cassette notables R.Stevie Moore, Don Campau, and others in hisPOP! Productions catalog.

Carmen mostly records by himself athome on cassette four-track, playing guitars,keyboards, bass, drums, and doing very nicevocal harmonies. He has also collaboratedwith synth wizard Ken Clinger, released a CD(Nothing Personal) on Émigré' Records, anddrummed for Witch Hazel and the KingDapper Combo.

The earliest release in Carmen's catalogis Naive Assumptions (1989). It's a 30-minutecompilation of some of his earliest record-ings. Ray writes, sings, performs, and pro-duces everything on the tape. NaiveAssumptions opens with "I'll Get You ForThat", featuring a nice jangly guitar and"why did I fall in love with you" lyrics, andcloses with "Take It Like A Man" which isbest described as Casio synth-pop. WhileNaive Assumptions doesn't sound quite asdeveloped as the later tapes, it is a charmingand delightful listen.

Duet Yourself (1990) is described in thePOP! catalog as "The one everyone likes." Itopens with three very angry songs:"Passive/Aggressive" ("Is it just you or is itcold in here?"), "Brand New Boyfriend," and"The Weight." Things lighten up a bit with acover of Mike Nesmith's "You Just May Be TheOne," and a light-industrial version ofNesmith, Goffin and Kings "Sweet YoungThing." This tape is classic Ray Carmen.

1993's Bubblegum Buddha is sort of asequel to Duet Yourself. It opens with chim-

ing keyboards on"Rise and Shine,"throws the listener acurve with "Too MuchCoffee" with its heav-ily distorted guitarsand vocal, and settlesinto traditionalCarmen-esque guitar-pop on "Out Of YourHair" and the songsthat follow. Other

highlights on Buddha are the driving but stilljangly "More Than Enough," the Japanesesounding instrumental "Rain On The Road,"and the wonderful “Vanquished."

In 1995 Ray collaborated with theabove-mentioned Ken Clinger on Hopes AndFears. Clinger wrote and played most of themusic and Carmen wrote and sang the lyrics.Clinger's keyboard programming is beautifuland his orchestral arrangements are gor-geous. Carmen's lyrics on songs like "SheSays" and "Better Off Alone" focus on histhen-current divorce. Hopes And Fears alsocontains four covers, including a take on theBanana Splits' "I Enjoy Being A Boy" and theBeatles' "Here, There, and Everywhere,"which reflect Carmen's optimism over hisburgeoning relationship with his now newwife. Hopes And Fears was mostly recorded byClinger to DAT.

Hopes And Fears was followed by 1996'sacoustic EP Accidentally On Purpose, whichagain featured Carmen as sole musician andengineer. The one exception to this is somefiddle played by Blind Waldo on the pseudo-country tune "Ugly and Slouchy." This tapefeatures early versions of "A New Beginning,""Monster," and "Nothing More To Say," alllater re-recorded for 1997's Too Old For Angst.

After Accidentally On Purpose cameHanger 18 and an EP entitled Snow Day.Hanger 18 is described in the POP! catalog as"thirteen ambient, experimental tracks from afew guys who should know better." The SnowDay EP is another collaboration with KenClinger and features three Christmas songs.

Too Old For Angst is Carmen's mostrecent album of new original material. Thiscassette represents a nice leap forward inRay's progression as a recordist. The arrange-ments have more nice, subtle touches (ear

candy!), and as a whole the tape soundscleaner, clearer, and more confident than hisearlier cassettes. I don't know for surewhether this is due to better recordingequipment or simply experience and prac-tice. I suspect it's a bit of both. Some of thesongs, like the re-recording of "Monster" and"Walk Away,” were done in collaborationwith Ken Clinger. Most of the others are allRay.

1998's Old And In The Way is a collec-tion of remakes and rarities. It opens with a

16-track version of "Me And My Big Mouth,"which was originally heard on NaiveAssumptions. Following that are nine songsfrom the Nothing Personal CD. NothingPersonal was recorded in an 8-track studio,with Carmen again playing all the instru-ments. Even though there's lots of good stuffhere (including several remakes from DuetYourself) and the recording quality is good,Ray himself says that he's not crazy about itand that he could do a much better CD now.Based on Too Old For Angst, I believe him.Side two of Old features assorted raritiesfrom various compilations and several songsfrom What The Hell Is That?!, which I assumepredates Naive Assumptions, as it includesearly acoustic versions of several songs thatappeared on that tape.

The latest release in the POP!Productions catalog is a cassette single titledLucky 13. It contains a gorgeous cover of"Daydream Believer,” featuring synth pro-gramming by Ken Clinger, and is backed withRay's take on the Residents'"Constantinople." These songs will be includ-ed on Carmen's next full-length cassetteCorrect Me If I'm Wrong, which will mostly becover tunes.

In the online 'zine Free Agent, MikeBowman said of Carmen's several tapes that"there's not a clunker in the bunch." I haveto agree. Over his several tapes you can heardefinite artistic development and progres-sion. They reward repeated listening. They'reoriginal yet familiar and personal yet univer-sal. And they're inexpensive - no cassette inthe POP! catalog costs more than $4.00. Bestof all, they're good.

Ray Carmen- Pure Pop For D.I.Y. People


TAPEOP

What kind of recording equipmentdo you use? You say "4-track"quite a bit. Is it a PortaStudio?

Actually, no, it's an old Fostex X-30! I don'tthink they even make them anymore. There'sno built-in mixer in it, just the bare bonesstuff, like bass and treble controls... I've neverused a mixer. I just plug everything directlyinto the Fostex (or into an effects rack, theninto the Fostex), and hope for the best.Sometimes I get it, sometimes I don't.

How does that compare with goingto DAT? Do you have any experi-ence with ADATs?

Well, DAT definitely sounds better, but it alsomakes your mistakes that much more clear!The only experience I've had with DAT wasrecording my Hopes and Fears album with KenClinger. He did the music on computer and Idid the vocals and occasional instrumentaloverdubs. We did it at his home studio. As forADAT, I recorded a 16-track version of one ofmy songs, "Me And My Big Mouth" on two 8-track ADATs synched together. It turned outreally nice. Much better than the 8-track ver-sion I did on my Nothing Personal CD.

How has your equipment arsenalgrown over the years?

Slowly. I have the aforementioned Fostex,plus a nice effects unit, a Zoom Studio1202, with CD quality effects on it. I havea couple of halfway decent mics. One ismade by Audio Technica, the other one byElectro-Voice. For drums I have a YamahaDR-550, plus I also have a regular drumkit, which I haven't had the nerve to tryand record yet! I have no clue how to micdrums. My guitar is a sunburst red 6-stringRickenbacker. My pride and joy! Foracoustics I use a 6-string and a Yamaha12-string. I have a very old bass that has

the word Kalamazoo written across thehead. I don't even remember where I gotit. Plus I have a couple of cheap old Casiosand a bunch of odds and ends like a tam-bourine, a toy harmonica, a beer-mugmicrophone, and one of those tubes youwhirl around...

Do you have Pete Townsend’s Scoopcollection? The liner notes onhis evolving studio fascinate me.

Yeah, I LOVE that album! I remember he usedone of those whirling tubes as a link for some-thing on that record! He's a genius, and that’sprobably my favorite album of his.

How do you record? Well, it depends on the song, obviously, but

generally the first four tracks are the drummachine on two tracks and the rhythm guitarson the other two. Then I mix those down toanother tape, and add bass, and lead guitar,or a keyboard, or whatever. Then those twoget mixed down to another tape and I addvocals. Again, it depends on the song.Sometimes there are no drums; sometimes thedrums are me playing the drum machine byhand on two tracks, or maybe putting a pre-set rhythm on one track and adding drum fillson the other. But that's basically my method.I never bounce tracks on the same tape,though, because, frankly, it sounds like shit.

Do you have any tips for Tape Op

readers?Nope. If you’re a TAPE OP reader you already

know more about home recording than I do!How often do you record? Do you

set a schedule for yourself?No, I've never set a schedule because I would

never stick to it! I record off and on all thetime but it usually takes me about two yearsto come up with a 10 or 12 song "album". ButI often release EPs of "works in progress", likecassette singles, so I usually come out withSOMETHING every year. It's funny, sometimeswhen I'm at work I'll think to myself, "well, I'llwork on some music when I go hometonight". But then when I get home I'm notin the mood or I'm too tired. Once I start asong, though, I can't sleep until I've got itfinished, so if it spreads out over two or threedays, I spend ALL my time thinking about it;at work or wherever.

You’ve been recording since 1987,right?

1986, actually.What inspired you to start?Well, I've always wanted to be a musician for

as long as I can remember. When I was 8

years old I got Paul McCartney's first soloalbum for Christmas, and even back then Iknew that's what I wanted to do- makerecords and play everything myself! I was acrashing bore to my classmates, lemme tellya. Then around the summer of 1986, I got sosick of what I was hearing on the radio thatI decided to get off my ass start doing some-thing about it. So I started recording my ownsongs at home. Ultimately, that's the reasonwhy I do music--for myself. I know thissounds really pretentious, but it is "artisticexpression" for me. It's fun and fulfilling forme to build a song track by track and hearthe end result. It's a real creative thrill, andthe fact that I have a small core of peoplewho like what I do is an added bonus for me.I know that sounds really hokey, but that'show I feel about it. Sometimes I'll feel reallyshitty about what I'm doing, and then I'll geta letter in the mail from somebody telling mehow much they liked one of my tapes, andthat totally knocks me for a loop.

I assume POP! Productions is notyour primary source of income...

Check (or in this case, NO check)!...but how does the catalog do? Do

you sell many tapes? Or do you domore trading?

I don't sell that many tapes. I do more tradingthan selling, but every year I get a few newpeople on the mailing list. I could be adver-tising a lot more than I do, but I really can'tafford that. Every year I try and network a lit-tle more, though, so it's building.

How does doing cassettes yourselfcompare with being on anindie label? What were yourexperiences there?

Well, my Nothing Personal CD came out on theÉmigré label about six years ago. I thinkbeing on an indie label can be real benefi-cial. You get more distribution, obviously,and some ad space in magazines. You have amuch better chance of being taken seriouslyby music publications that won't even con-sider reviewing cassettes.

Would you record for a label again,or do you prefer to do it yourself?

Sure, I'd record for a label again. I like thewhole do-it-yourself ethic and I'll contin-ue to do it regardless of whether I'm on alabel or not. But if an indie label askedme to do an album I'd be stupid to passup the chance.

What do you think of CDRs?

An interviewwith Ray Carmen

continued page 25 >>>>>>>>>>>21 A Magazine About Creative Music Recording

TAPEOP

JenniferHerrema and

Neil Hagertyhave led the Royal

Trux for a number of yearsnow. They pulled a coup of

sorts when Virgin Records dumpeda lot of money on them, put out two

albums, and then dropped the Trux. Jenniferand Neil kept the house and full-on home studio

that they bought with said money and now they’reback to putting out fine records on Drag City, like they

had before. Only now, they can do all the recording and mixingat their home studio! We caught up with Jennifer at EJ’s in

Portland before they tore the house down in a rockin’ frenzy.

their home studio, recording classes, and production workby Larry Crane and Scott Simmons

photo: Royal Trux


TAPEOP

I was listening to Twin Infinitivestoday and I was wondering how itwas recorded. There’s all theselayers of stuff going on.

Yeah there was. It was done 8 tracks at a timeand dumped down.

Was this done on 8 track or was it 16?No, this was done at Greg Freeman’s in San

Francisco.Yeah, I know. I’ve worked with him.He had a 2’ 16 and he also had an 8 track there. Did you do the second and third

records with Greg?No, we just did Twin Infinitives. Also some

songs that we ended up using on the Live andUnreleased CD.

On Cats and Dogs did you playeverything on that or did youhave a live band?

We had a band. We actually did that in a 24track studio with an API board that hadbelonged to Brian Wilson at one time. OmegaStudios is the name of the place. It was reallyoverpriced and all but we got a deal with thisguy and we tracked in 2 days and mixed intwo. It was with a drummer, a second guitarplayer, Neil and myself. As far as the basictracks, it was all done simultaneously—live.

It sounds that way. That’s prettydamn fast to record a record!

I guess it really was. It just seemed luxuriousbecause I guess it was our first time ever ina very expensive studio.

Was that the first time with a band?Yeah.Did you rehearse a lot?Yeah, yeah. Neil and I wrote all the songs and

then we picked the musicians that we wanted to work with. It was three weeksstraight of playing the set and trying outthe arrangements.

Were the vocals live or did you overdub them?

The vocals? The vocals were live. I did myvocals, and I have a completely differentphrasing than Neil does, so I did mine and hedid his but without having each other in theheadphones. Hearing that kind of thing...

It’d throw you off. So at this pointyou guys have a studio at yourhouse.

Yeah.You have 4 ADATs?We have three ADATs but we just bought

ProTools so it’s all synced up. Kind of unlim-ited tracks.

Cool. Go crazy with that stuff.

We haven’t replaced the BRC yet. It’s so mucheasier than a mouse. We’ve got a cleanboard; a Mackie 24 by 8 but we have 16 channels of Drawmer 1960 mic pres.Everything goes through the Drawmers.

Where did you score those?Through this place in Indiana called

Sweetwater. Yeah, I’ve gotten stuff through

there.We had a sales rep and we were buying so much

stuff through them we were getting cut somereally good deals.

So you went to recording school?I went to recording school for a year and I went

to college...Pre Royal Trux?College was simultaneous `cause I moved to

New York while we were doing it. Neil wasgonna move to New York so I only applied toone school. I was a freshman and you canonly get into the classes you can get in. Therewas one class that was on theory that wasbeyond calculus and I was like, ‘Hmmmm.’There was one really technical class where itwas about soldering and it started there andwent on. It was all done at Planet Soundwhich is where the Fat Boys recorded. Neiland I had already started recording the firstrecord and we’d gone to so many differentstudios—we’d worked with Wharton Tiers andall these different guys that all had this information about how things should bedone. It’s not that I disagreed but I wantedto know why they were saying it and whatwas going on. So I would go to the class atthe studio and ask all these questions. ‘Whythis?’ ‘Why that?’

Were you driving them crazy?Yeah, I guess I kinda... They were like older

people that were trying to make a career andI was a real pain in the ass. But then I quitand dropped out of college and we moved toSan Francisco. The School for Recording Artsin San Francisco. You know that place? Youcan take a semester for $400, and they hadthis certificate thing and I wanted to have itas an ID whenever I went in to record somewhere I would just flash it and keepmoving. ‘Pardon me.’ I was there for twoweeks and I blew it, I quit, but I picked upenough about what the hell was going on.Fundamentally it is all pretty simple.

What was the reason for bailing onthe place?

In San Francisco? Uhh...I can guess...There was definitely problems.

Anyway, that whole Virgin Recordsdeal enabled you to buy a houseand set up a studio. Then youended up working with DavidBriggs...

Yeah, he was the most awesome guy. I kind of figured he helped you set

up the studio. The first Virgin album was done down in

Memphis at Keynote recording studio thatwas, at the time, owned by Joe Walsh. Davidwas a really particular and peculiar guy. Hedidn’t really do a whole lot of work in his life,Spirit, Easy Action [Alice Cooper], and abunch of Neil Young records. I remember theday he called me, and he said, “Cats andDogs... I love this. I’m coming out to yourhouse.” Two days later he flew out to the mid-dle of nowhere in Virginia and was sleepingon our floor. When the record was done, itdidn’t end. For a year afterwards he was call-ing twice a week. Then he got really sick, andwe were always talking until the day beforehe died. There’s liner notes in the Spirit reis-sues and Randy California wrote this reallysuccinct description of David Briggs. Youshould get it.

Did he come across your stuffaccidentally?

He had done a Nick Cave and the Bad Seedsrecord and he’d been sent a bunch ofrecords that were coming out around thattime and he got Cats and Dogs. Then wesigned to Virgin and he was a producer thatwe were kind of interested in talking to sowe had our A & R person call him and heknew Cats and Dogs so he said, “Why don’tyou just call them?” So he called us and westarted talking.

You must have amassive patch bay!


TAPEOP

Were you under pressure to find aname producer?

No, we wanted one! We’d never had the moneyto have one. I mean, we were gonna use himfor Sweet Sixteen too, and we were alreadytalking about how we were gonna do it andthat’s how it came to pass that he’d come outto see the house after we’d bought it and wewere doing a lot of remodeling and construc-tion and we started talking about bass trapsand stuff for the back room. He didn’t know hehad cancer— he just thought he had a reallybad back. Sweet Sixteen, we were gonna do itthere. Then he got really sick and we couldn’tfind... We met with one other producer, thisguy, Peter Cohn, who had done a lot of Rushrecords and also happened to be the brother ofour A & R person. It didn’t work out that great.It was meant to be this other way, but since itcan’t be, we’re just gonna deal with it on ourown. And we had the guy, Greg Archilla, whodid the engineering for Thank You, do the mixing as if everything had gone to plan.

Did Virgin want to supervisemixing?

They would have loved to have done all thosethings. They would have loved for us to usePeter Cohn, they would have loved for us tohave not taken all that money and built a studio. It didn’t make them happy at all. At acertain point I think they were like, “Handsoff. If we give them enough rope they’ll justhang themselves.” It wasn’t like a “Fuck You”to them at all. It was just how we thought itshould be.

So, your last record you did all athome. Did you mix it somewhereelse?

No, we mixed Accelerator there. Through the Mackie? I’ve got a

Mackie 32 x 8...We record through the pre-amps but nothing

goes down to tape without being put throughthem again. Everything is outboard. We don’teven use EQ on the Mackie. It’s basically thefaders. It’s just like a landscape machine.

So you’ve got a bunch of outboardEQ? Do you have a lot of racks?

Yeah. You must have a massive patch bay

system!It gets really... the whole balanced/unbal-

anced... I’ll be putting them in and out, thesignals not going through, and I’ll be, ‘Fuck!’Every time we get something new we have tore-configure everything...

I know all about that. Ya know, we’ve got nearfield monitors,

Genelecs. And we’ll check it on a boombox.Standard stuff.

Do you do all the engineeringyourselves?

Yeah, and Paul [Oldham]. He didn’t know thatmuch about it at the beginning but we senthim to school. Actually, he’s got two creditsto go.

You haven’t had anybody record atyour house?

No. Nobody except for us. Is there a reason or is that just the

way it’s gonna be?Yeah, that’s the way it’s gonna be. The way we

do stuff... the next thing is going to be aspectrum analyzer. My idea is to put on a hitrecord, watch the analysis, and make surethat the next album we write is gonna be theexact same pattern.

You’ll need an oscilloscope too.Yeah, of course. Behringer’s got some awesome

stuff coming out. It’s gonna really encom-pass all of that. “We’ll make it look like this.”So nobody is allowed in there.

But you’ve done mixes for otherpeople there.

If they send us stuff that’s already been trackedand they dump it down to ADAT. But nobodycan track in there.

So what about the Make-Up [InMass Mind produced by Neil andJennifer]?

I went with Neil. He and I set it up at this studio [Stillness] that was maybe an houraway from us. It’s set up like ours, in a big,old house. The guy’s done a lot of stuff. It’sanalog. Those guys in the Make-Up, they’rekind of into a purist thing. We did all thetracking and all the mixing there.

Do you enjoy producing otherbands?

Yeah. They just had these really rough ideas.Some riffs. Then we just made this thing andIan was just furiously writing lyrics as wewere arranging instruments.

He was actually writing downlyrics? It just sounds like he...

Well, he does make some up! We got him theAnita Baker cover, “We Really Want You To DoThis Song.” It is great working with them.

What about Will Oldham? Have youdone anything besides thatTrudy Dies single?

No, we did Trudy Dies. We did Edith Frost... Ileft... We were offered the job and they sentthe demos of just her, guitar and vocals, verysimple. She wanted to put it to record as afull band. We started coming up with ideas forit and stuff and I just realized that I couldnot deal with it at all so I flew to SanFrancisco. So Neil called me up and he hadher crying and stuff.

Did he play on it at all? Well, he’s played on everything he’s worked on

but I always make sure it’s mixed really low`cause there’s no guitar player like Neil. Ialways insist that we get royalties as well asa producer’s fee because when he put’s anything on a record... It’s gonna change it.On the Will thing he pretty much played allthe instruments.

Isn’t that like organ...Actually we had Liam doing that. Liam from

Plush. That’s how they met; Will and Liam.Liam is just a Mellotron freak. That’s all hedoes, is work on Mellotrons. It’s the mostinsane endeavor, really.

I read that you forced Dan [at DragCity] to put out the first Palacerecord.

Wasn’t into it at all. We were like, “Dan!” Does he like it now?He and Will are really tight. I don’t think he’s

gonna put out any more of Will’s recordsthough. They’re good friends but it wasn’treally his cup of tea at all. He just wasn’t intoit. Neil and I put on a tape of Will’s when wewere in Chicago and we were like, “Hey. Asinger/songwriter. Have you ever thoughtabout this?” And he was, “Oh man!” We werelike, “C’mon, listen.” We kept playing it overand over for four days and finally he was just,“Shut up.” We just talked him into it. We feltlike he should branch out a bit, ya know? Heonly had 2 or 3 bands.

Wanna get technical? What kind ofmics do you guys like to use?

photo: Taylor Crothers


TAPEOP

The AKG 535 is my mic of choice. It’s kind of awhiny mic. It’s what I use for my vocals...exclusively. Neil uses an Audio Technica 4033.

What do you use for drums?For the kick, there’s this one AKG that the one

drummer we were using before wanted. It wasa D110, not the 112. He got really anal aboutit. We were just, “Okay. Whatever this shit is.”We tried to find it. They only made it for a year.We spent a long time trying to find it so we gotthe D112. We use Sennheiser overheads and wealways put PZMs up.

Does it always change?There’s no formula. Each record sounds really dif-

ferent but it’s all within the scope of the equip-ment we own. We keep buying new stuff.

So that’s all in the back part of yourhouse?

Yeah. It’s got a really high ceiling with beamsgoing across. We’ve got a PZM that’s alwaysslapped at the very top. Sometimes it’s goodand sometimes you just erase that track.There’s a bathroom that’s pretty much a basstrap. It gets these really great sounds. We do alot of the vocals there because when we builtthe studio we had custom 300 foot cablesmade that go to the fourth floor of the house.I do the vocals on the third floor. There’s anold, wooden landing and the ceiling goes up 30or 40 feet. The guy who owned the housebefore us was a carpenter and built mirrors intoeverything. Just clapping there... there’s themost awesome sound.

Do you put an extra mic in there orlet that mic pick up the ambience?

Yeah, it picks it up. A lot of times Neil will recorda lot of his guitar tracks in the old part of thehouse, which has a lot of stone, stone fireplace, etc. Then, we take the tracks and setup a really large speaker cabinet on the l andingand we play the guitar tracks back out and re-record them.

Do you have one of those Reampboxes?

No...It’s called Reamp. They make this

transformer box where you cantake it straight off of tape and plugit into an amp and it’s the perfectlevel for a guitar amp. That wayyou’re not overdriving the input.

Yeah. We lost one of our Drawmers... it’s reallydepressing. I haven’t dealt with sending it backto England. As far as voltage and stuff likethat... it’s all hit or miss. We blow stuff up allthe time.

Do you have any ribbon mics? You canfry those pretty easy.

Yeah, I know. No ribbons but we’ve got a shitloadof drawers full of mics. Actually, the mic list Igot—what to buy—came from David and Greg,our drummer. I already knew AKG was my vocalmic. David assigned it to me; “This is yourmic.” We used it on Thank You and I used it ontour. I grew to like it. It is really hot, and Ihave no lung capacity whatsoever. I don’t eventour with it now—a lot of small clubs don’teven have phantom power. We went on thislong tour and we had this roadie, this kid fromPhiladelphia... really crusty, blowin’ snot out ofhis nose... and he was always doing the soundchecks and Neil would come up with thebleach. Neil would bleach my mic three timesa day. By the end of the tour the diaphragmwas just disintegrated. We had to send it toCalifornia to be redone. That’s one good reasonto carry your own mic. I’ve noticed that even ifthey’re in good shape they smell like somebodyelse’s bad breath. And there’s all those littlegerms living inside it. Bleach is not the answer.

Are you planning to record somemore stuff after the tour?

We started recording a little bit before we cameout here. We’re gonna take the band andrecord for two days, two songs, straight onwith the band. We’ve been trying to work onthis one song during sound checks.

While the band’s playing welltogether?

Yeah. It’s a 40 date tour... it’s a long tour. It sounds like a great setup. You’re

able to record at home on your owntime.

It is, but we don’t allow ourselves back thereeveryday. We go back there when there’s aplan. Otherwise, the tapes would be stacked upto the ceiling. We’d be excessive and insaneand we’d work too much! c/o: Drag City Recs.,PO Box 476867, Chicago, IL 60647


TAPEOP

I feel like cassette releases are not reallythought of as "legitimate". A self-released CDwill get you attention in many places a tapewon’t. I think as time goes by and theybecome more affordable, you'll be seeing a LOTmore CD-Rs. Whether or not they'll replacecassettes, I don't know. I have a few CD-Rsavailable myself. Ken Clinger sells themthrough his Bovine Productions web page.He's the one that makes them.

What prompted you to re-master yourcatalog a couple of years back?

The main reason is because some of my masterswere starting to get pretty worn, especially theone for Duet Yourself. I must have made a cou-ple hundred copies of that for people. The otherreason is because I had a cassette called Lostand Found, Vol. One that I deleted from my cat-alog and I added some of the tracks from it toother cassettes. I figured since I was remaster-ing I might as use some of those songs becausesome of them were too good to lose. But overallLost and Found was not a very good tape. It wasa collection of leftovers, basically.

Do you do something non-musicalfor a living? How old are you?Does your wife encourage you torecord and play?

I work for a branch of the Akron-Summit CountyPublic Library. I've been in the system for tenyears now. My wife is very encouraging. As forhow old I am, well, let's just say I'm half wayto 72! [laughs]

Do you play live shows? I’ve beendoing solo acoustic shows, myself,as I’ve had a hard time findingband members. Especially thosethat will stick to the arrange-ments on the tapes.

Well, you've got more guts than I do! No, I don'tdo live shows.

<http://raycarmenmusic.blogspot.com>

Cassette Corner:Continued from page 21

www.tapeop.comfree subscriptions online!

Have you had a long day, Jeff?Long day... Don’t sweat it, you’re not pestering

me. I really like your zine a lot.Thank you. Well, these are the

questions I was thinking of.Your first single was the CherDoll Records one, is that right?

Yeah.I really like That. I heard That

whenever it came out, someonesent it to me to review. And I wasthinking that you’re, even still,oriented towards recording beingreally separate from live. So Iwanted to head in that directionwith questions, as far as yourband being a band. Like on thenew record, how many of thepeople who played with youtonight appeared on that record?

All of them. Jeremy plays drums on the album,Scott plays all the horns, Julian plays accordion and saw, and Lauren plays the silver saxophone and the xitherphone.

So you headed up to Robert’s[Schneider of the Apples InStereo] house in Denver to dothe recording?

Yeah. The whole band approach-es recording in a very... recordingis such a magical thing, it’s funto see the songs grow and takeshape as you’re working on themand not get too caught up in try-

ing to worry about exactly how they are live.The whole fun in recording is finding the littlemagic keys to the songs.

Were you playing stuff off the newalbum live before you went to thestudio?

We played ‘Ghost’ a couple times, and that was it.Cuz we got the band together up in New YorkCity after ...Avery Island [NMH’s first fulllength] came out, and then we toured for awhile. Then Jeremy went to Chicago, Scottwent to Austin, Julian stayed in Long Island tostart his album on his own, in his grandmother’s basement. I went to Athens andstarted working on some of the songs for thenext record. And then Jeremy flew down toAthens for five days and that’s where weworked up ‘Ghost,’ in the garage, and then hewent home. The other songs we did after he gotback from Chicago, we worked on them rightbefore we went to make the record and then weworked on some of the stuff in the studio.

Just worked it up a little bit andthen recorded it?

Uh-huh.What did you record on this time,

did you use the eight track?Yeah, eight track.You did the first one on a four

track, right?

Fostex four track, reel-to-reel.Damn. Didn’t he have the eight

track at that point, when youwere out there for Avery Island?

Yeah, we couldn’t afford the tape.That’s a wild reason. An extra eighty

bucks or something.Well, Robert’s been eating rice and beans for both

records. We basically ended up living off a cred-it card for half the album. And plus I was onlyused to cassette four track at that time, so itwas a step for me into something still comfort-able.

And they can sound great. Has it beennice working with eight?

Yeah it’s great.How’d you hook up with Robert in the

first place?I met Robert in third grade, in Louisiana. Will from

Olivia Tremor Control I met in seventh grade, andhe moved away when he was eighteen. See, wewere always trying to get out of Louisiana, wealways knew it was a place to leave. We werealways surprised at how many people who livedthere didn’t have the same idea that we did. Sohe ended up moving to the Virgin Islands, think-ing he was going to sit on the beach and drink martinis and write Hawaiian music. And heended up homeless on the beach, broke. Hisplane ticket was round-trip, so he went back toMiami and called our friend Lisa in Athens, whowent and picked him up. So one of our friendshad actually broken free of Ruston so we allflooded to Athens immediately. I ended up mov-ing, though I’ve moved back to Athens threetimes, this is my third time to move back.

NNNeeuuttrraall MMiillkk HHootteellBy Larry Crane and Leigh Marble

Neutral Milk Hotel began in the early 90’s as a 4track cassette project by Jeff Mangum. Since

then, he’s released a couple of albums on Mergerecords (On Avery Island, In The Aeroplane OverThe Sea) and assembled a “band” to take theshow on the road. We interviewed Jeff after a

Neutral Milk Hotel show at the Portland rockdive, Satyricon. Despite having been booted

from the stage after a scant forty minutes dueto club scheduling problems, Jeff was still up

for talking Tape Op trash. After assuring us weweren’t bugging him, we got underway with

a few questions.


TAPEOP

Where did you move between?Denver, Seattle, and New York City.I thought you had lived in Seattle, like

when the single was done or some-thing?

I did the single in Athens, then went to Seattle, foundout about Cher Doll records and sent her a tape.

So at that time you were four tracking athome?

Yeah, working at some crappy theater job. Giving awayfree popcorn. Constantly.

To friends, or anybody?Anybody who looked interesting. Some guy would buy

ten bucks worth of food, give me a ten-dollar bill,and I’d give him ten bucks back in change and saythank you. [everyone laughs] They’d look at mecompletely confused. And then everybody quit andthere were three fifteen year-old kids there thatwere asking me how to pop the popcorn and look-ing to me for guidance and I couldn’t take it so Ileft. Yeah, I lived in Seattle for a while.

Before that you’d been four- tracking,when you lived in Athens, right?

Well, I started four-tracking when I was around sixteen. And before that I had a little York stereowith the left and the right input and a little K-Martmic. It had a double tape deck so I’d record onetrack on the left speaker, and then put the tape inthere and hit play and record the right speaker andyou had two tracks.

Yeah, we all start with something likethat and it just goes to hell from there.On that first single, that has the mostdistinctive guitar sound I’d heard in along time and that was the first thingthat blew me away. It sounds like youjust plugged into a distortion pedal andplugged straight in. Is that how youwere getting that sound?

That was the Fostex X-18 that has a remix button onit which feeds, if you’re remixing on track one, it’llfeed it into track two and back into track one. So Iplugged the guitar into the four track and it’s sup-posed to be on “line,” but if you pop it [the inputlevel switch] into “mic,” the signal is really hot. Andthen you put it through the remix and the wholething just starts looping on itself. Plus I had a gui-tar with a pickup that was really hot.

So you just did it straight in, no effectsor nothing? That was my favoriteguitar sound in a long time, it kindablew me out of the water. I was start-ing to four-track, living up here in abasement, and that single made mefeel good about doing stuff on myown. It was great. You had really sim-ple drums, sounded like just a snareand a ride cymbal.

And a floor tom, I think.Yeah. Just really simple, probably one

mic?One really crappy mic. I think it was a K-Mart mic, one

of the seven dollar microphones you can buy, plas-tic with a plastic mic stand you can pop on there.

I just found one of those at R5D3, thisreally strange store that has a lot ofradio surplus and weird shit. It’s thebest place to find weird things.

Do they have any Space Echoes?Yeah, I wish.I really want a Space Echo really bad. [into tape

recorder]: If anyone reading this has a Space Echo,please let me know.

Contact Jeff now. I’ll take one too.[laughs] So after that, were you stillfour-tracking up to pre-Avery Island,doing stuff on your own? When you’rewriting songs, you’re putting themtogether on tape?

No, all the songs are just in my head. Now I just recordshit for the fun of it. Unlistenable noise. But nowI have a quarter-inch eight track.

Oh, cool. What kind?Fostex, mid-eighties model.Do you have a mixing board?I borrowed one, I haven’t bought one yet.What are your plans for recording stuff

in the future? Recording with Robert?Hell, yeah.You said he’s listed as producer. How do

you guys interact? You have the songsin your head, all the musicians,you’re there, Robert’s there, you’vegot a tape deck...

Start with the drums. We get there, sit around in hisliving room playing records. And I’ll pick up a gui-tar and say, “Hey man, these are some of the songsthat are going to be on the record, will you tell mewhat you think?” Sometimes I’ll play him songsI’m not so sure about. Robert is a really beautifulperson and I don’t understand where he gets allhis stamina from. I’m so amazed he can engulfhimself in the record as we’re making it, frombasically two in the afternoon until three in themorning. He wakes me up and says “I’m going tothe studio to play the piano for a couple hours,”and I’d show up around two.

Is it fun?It’s a blast. He wakes you up all

freaked out, “I heard thesesounds in my head, I know how we can getthis done,

I had this dream and I heard all these sounds, and Ifigured out how we can make it sound like that.” He’dsay, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” kiss me onthe head, go “wake up, coffee is downstairs, see youin the studio in two hours.” “Okay Robert!” So it’s justreally great. They gave me a room to live in, and he’sgot all his books on Eastern religion and philosophyto look at, so it’s a pretty cool experience.

What is songwriting like for you? Do youhave a bunch of ideas and then say, OK,it’s time to sit down and flesh them out,or are you writing constantly, like youfinish a song and then move on?

It’s hard to say. They all sort of morph themselves intodifferent shapes. Sometimes I can’t remember wherethey got started. Different pieces will cram into eachother. But I’m constantly writing, there’s constantlywords that come into my head that sit there a while.

Do you travel with a typewriter?No, I pretty much keep it all in my head. Usually when

I write with a typewriter it’s so Dada, you can’t lookat it. I’ve written pages and pages of typewriterstuff that is such nonsense that no one could pos-sibly make any sense of it.

Is there anything else you’d like to sayabout the recording process?

All the little stockpile of sounds that I came up with onthe four track were accidental things that happened,and then I brought those ideas and those sounds toa bigger recording situation with Robert. For me,recording is like I can sense these waves of the upand down of the music, the dynamics in the music,and I get this feeling of how things are happeningmusically and try to guide the songs and the albumsthemselves, to make the waves even and work well.

How do you communicate that withother people?

I’m surprised at how well they understand already.They seem to be really responsive to what

makes your songs work.Yeah, we’re really fortunate that we’re good friends and

we get along so well.And that you’re all able to be out on the

road at the same time, nottied down to jobs.

Yeah, well it’s rice andbeans on the road.Looks like it’sgoing to be riceand beans for life.


TAPEOP

What are some of your currentprojects?

I’ve been creating audio montages of eachalbum for the Residents’ web site. I’m alsocompiling material for a Captain Beefheartbox set.

Who are some other artists you’veworked with?

I’ve worked with Sun City Girls, Amy Denio, BaliGirls, Climax Golden Twins, John Fahey, MissMurgatroid, Ed Pias

How many years have you been anaudio engineer, producer, musi-cian?

I started playing piano in 1970, saxophone in1973, then guitar in 1976. My first live showwas in 1979,. My first “pro” recording was in1981 (reel to reel four track). I realized Ishould be a producer in 1990. I opened mystudio in 1993.

What is your audio education?I have a bachelor’s degree in sound engineering

from Columbia College, Chicago, 1989.How many projects have you been

involved with?That’s hard to really pinpoint; approximately 37

CDs, 22 cassettes, 30 books on tape, 10 sin-gles, three 78 rpms, 19 LPs.

What has been your biggest disaster?Moving to Los Angeles.What has been your biggest success?If success is measured by record sales, I project

the Beefheart will beat all. If we’re talkingabout record sales, then any Sun City Girls orClimax Golden Twins. If we are talking aboutpersonal accomplishments... Pint SizedSpartacus. My best sounding experimentalproject is Climax Golden Twins ImperialHousehold Orchestra. My best sounding rockrecord is the Leatherboy CD which isn’t out yet.

Who was the nicest celebrity whenyou were doing books on tape?

The most professional was Adrienne Barbeau.She was also the nicest. Gary Owens wassuper professional.

Who was the scariest?Michael York. He was a perfectionist to the

degree that he ruined the recording. LukasHaas couldn’t read a line without a mistake.I also want to add that Kirk Douglas was the

only person I worked with that star struckme. All of a sudden I was looking through theglass at him and said to myself,”my godthat’s Kirk Douglas!”

So is Gravelvoice a full-time thingyet?

No, not yet.Is that your intention?Yeah, definitely. I just moved the studio into a

commercial space last month.That’s the firststep: take it out of the basement. I’m alsoconsidering doing some advertising. So we’llsee what happens. It’s kind of nice to nothave to rely on it to pay the bills. That wayyou can really choose what you work on.That’s the way I’ve been working for the lastfive years. I really want to make a living at it.But I don’t want to compromise. And that’shard to do. That’s probably why it’s taken solong to take this first step.

Well it sounds exciting.Yeah it is! The space is big enough. It’s about

23 feet by 23 feet with a control room insideof that. I built it to be, firstly a control room,secondly a tracking room. I felt that if Iwanted something to sound really good Icould go to a different studio and track it;then bring it back to my studio to do over-dubs and mix.

So how big is the control room?It’s 12’ x 15’. The ceilings vary from 9 feet to 10

feet throughout the space. It’s hard todescribe how the ceiling is. It sort of dipsdown with these pyramids, like wedge foam,made out of reinforced concrete. It’s actuallyreally sound. There’s a parking garage on topof it. I have cement walls on two sides aswell. So you can make the loudest sound youwant to make at any time of the night and nothave to worry about it. I hired a contractor tohelp me build the control room walls. They’renot sound proof by any means and there’s nowindow. I chose to not put a window inbecause I didn’t have one in the studio in mybasement. And I got more comments like, “Wereally like it that you don’t have a window,”than, “Why don’t you have a window?”

Just because people didn’t feellike they were under amicroscope as much?

Yeah. Also, when I closed the door they felt likethey were practicing. They kind of forgot thatthey were recording. I think I got better per-formances that way. Ultimately, I’d like tohire someone to engineer for me. That way Icould concentrate on the performance partmore. But I’m so far away from that.

Scott Colburn

In just a few short years, ScottColburn’s Gravelvoice Productionshas been involved with a wonderfully diverse collection ofartists and recordings. His Seattle,Washington studio offers an analog 16-track, digital editing,and plenty of charm. Scott eng ineers, p roduces, and contributes musically when needed.He’s also an avid record collectorand for years was known as Shaggy(a la Scooby Doo) because helooked exactly like him. To start offthe interview, Scott agreed toanswer some silly profile questions.

by Curtis Settino


TAPEOP

But you’ve got tons of experiencedoing both.

Yeah. But here’s the thing: I know my studioreally well, because I wired it myself. But if Igo to a different studio, one that I’m notfamiliar with, I’d really need an engineerthere, or at least a super competent second(engineer). One of the things that’s funabout the new space though is that it is new.So I don’t know where the drums sound thebest, or where to put the guitar so that itdoesn’t bleed as much. And it’s kind of exciting. I was in my last studio for threeyears, and toward the end of the time thereit became almost a science. I knew exactlywhere to put everything. That’s good. But atthe same time it gets a little boring becauseit’s hard to break out of that mold.

How long do you think it’ll take foryou to figure out the new space?

Well, far less time than before. But it dependson how quickly I can get the people inthere who’ll allow me to experiment. I’malways working with Climax Golden Twins. Iwork with them twice a week. And they’resuper experimental. So I can try all kinds ofdifferent things with them. But as far asrock music is concerned, I need someonewith a really nice kit to come in so I can trysome things out. I’ve got a pretty goodrelationship with The Bali Girls now. Andthey want to come in and record a couple ofsongs. So that will be good because theirdrummer, Randy, is one of the most pound-ing players I know, and he’s always veryconcerned about the way his kit sounds. Hewants them to sound really big. So he’llscrutinize every drum sound and make comments, and I like that. He’s great towork with. So they’ll be good for the rocksound. Then I just got to throw a jazzcombo in there and try that out.

What other surfaces do you have inthe tracking area?

Well, like I said, it’s concrete on two walls andwood for the control room wall. The otherwall is a Japanese-type screen that slidesopen. It opens into another space which iswhere the Young Composers Collectiverehearse. It’s a huge space for an orchestra toplay in. Technically, it’s their space, but itcan used for isolating instruments, for a basstrap, or things like that. It can also be usedto change the acoustics of my room just byopening up the screen.

So how is scheduling work with theYoung Composers Collective?

It goes really well, actually. They have perma-nent rehearsals Wednesday night and Sundaynight. So I have all the other evenings, plussome day time slots. So that’s pretty good forright now. And realistically, most of the peo-ple that want to record have day jobs andaren’t going to want to record during the day.

Are you still doing your own stuff aswell?

Not really. I did do a live show a couple monthsago though. That was the first live show I’ddone in about ten years. I’ve done about tenalbums worth of material. But they’ve alwaysbeen released on cassette, and in very fewnumbers. I like doing it. And I’m excitedabout doing it. But what I really want to dois work with other people and record otherpeople’s music that I like. Because I feel thatthey can do it better than I can. But the liveshow was a lot of fun. And it kind of whet myappetite for doing music again. One thing isthat Climax Golden Twins consider me a partof the group. So I get to play and create withthem. And that’s what I’ve always wanted todo. It’s really fun!

That’s great.Yeah. There’s two kind of people that I work

with: One is somebody who approaches meand I check out what they’re doing, and if Ilike it, I’ll decide to record the album; theother, I guess I would call career investments. For the Climax Golden Twins, especially, I see a progression in what they’redoing, and I’m willing to put the time into it,and be a major participant in helping themachieve what they’re trying to do artistically.Because I see that as a way to go onto biggerand better things with them. I don’t seethem becoming stagnant. They’re always progressing. There’s always a lot of differentprojects coming up. We’ve done CDs that arestraight music. We’ve done installations in artgalleries. We’ve done live shows. And that’sreally interesting to me. I like that betterthan doing one-off records for people.

The thing that’s nice about that isthat you both get to grow in yourown areas.

Absolutely. I have a similar relationship withThe Bali Girls. I did a demo for them and thenwe did a CD. And they’re already talkingabout the next record they want to recordand I’m developing that too. But most rockgroups don’t experiment that much. ClimaxGolden Twins are working on a CD for aJapanese label right now. And the concept isto make it all electronic. And we’re doing it

all on the computer, which we haven’t donebefore. The other stuff we’ve done has beenanalog recordings heavily edited in the computer. But this one is being created totally in the computer. It’s exciting, but ittakes a lot of time, even more, I think, thanrecording analog. Well it’s easy to get suckedinto the micro-tweezing, just because youcan. Yeah. That’s my big job; saying, “Let’sget the basics down first, we can go back andnit-pick at things later.” We’ve got abouttwenty minutes of the CD done. We did thatin about eight sessions, which is pretty good.But we got another twenty to go!

So what’s the process?All three of us have supplied different sounds.

They may be sounds that were recorded separate from the group, or stuff Jeff and Robhave done together, or samples from otherrecords, sometimes 78s. We’re big on 78sright now.

Do you have a 78 player?Yeah, Jeff got a Victrola Low Boy. They’ve

actually released a series of cassettes calledVictrola Favorites. We record them right off ofthe Low Boy straight to DAT. There’s five volumes so far. One is all Japanese. One isthings we like. And I just finished my set,which is a companion to The New SessionPeople CD (Famous Songs From Days Gone By- Amarillo). That CD was inspired by the 78sin my collection. So my set is the actualsongs we covered on that CD. Sometimespeople come over for the recording of the78s. It’s kind of an event. The mic’s live soeveryone just keeps quiet. Every once in awhile a chair creaks, or something like that.But that stays in there, because that was themoment. My mind’s just reeling thinkingabout all the 78s I’ve passed by, especially atestate sales. Oh yeah. You know it’s amazingto hear a 78 played on the Victrola. It justsounds so much different than on a modernphonograph. It sounds so good. We changethe needle every other disc to keep it freshsounding. Setting up to record the 78s I discovered that, oddly enough, the low-endcomes out of the veins at the bottom (of theVictrola’s horn) and the high-end comes outof the veins at the top, even though it’s justone little horn. But there is a difference insonic quality as you go up and down theveins. I took two mics over there one timeand put one up high and one down low. Theother times I’ve taken a stereo mic and positioned it mid-way. For me it’s great tohear my collection this way. It’s always,


TAPEOP

“Wow! I didn’t think that sounded like that,”or, “I never heard that before!” Actually,there’s some later 78s, not the vinyl ones butthe shellac ones, that are amazingly hi-fi. Youcan really hear depth in these full bandrecordings that you don’t hear on a regularturntable. It’s amazing what they were doingwith just a single mic. They were spending alot of time sliding chairs around, adjustingplayers positions. Which I like and wish morepeople would get back into.

I’m into that in a way too. I’m not abig isolation fanatic. It’s like,there’s really no reason to eatyour peas separate from yourmashed potatoes. They just getmixed up in your stomach anyway.So you might as well eat themtogether and enjoy the complexflavor. (Laughter)

Oh, I had a recording technique I wanted to tellyou about. It’s not actually one that I developed, but one I read about and tried.The name of the book is Practical Techniquesfor the Recording Engineer I think. And theguy’s name is Sherman Keene. He’s got a flying microphone technique too*. This technique requires sending a signal throughan amplifier. You then swing two microphonesin front of the amp: one in a clockwise direction, and the other counter-clockwisebut in a bigger diameter, and record what’scoming out of the speaker onto two tracks.

So this is concentric circles parallelto the floor in front of the amp?

Yes. So the microphone comes close to the ampthen further away repeatedly. I used this technique on a Sun City Girls track. We playeda harmonium part through the amp. Then Ilaid on the floor with my head up by thespeaker and my arm straight up and swungthe microphone around my arm. And thenAlan (of Sun City Girls) took a microphone ona pole and swung it around my circle in theopposite direction, and it really worked! Youtake the two channels and pan them hard leftand right and what you get is a sound thatflys around in your head and in the stereospectrum haphazardly. It’s so much betterthan trying to create the effect by panning.

I can see some cool choreographedswinging being used too. Maybeit’s haphazard in the verses butthen the two microphonessynch-up in some way duringthe choruses.

Oh yeah! But it was really hard to do it. It wasa five minute song and my arm got reallytired. (Laughter) I guess you could probablyrig up something that was automated. But Ithink that the human interaction was thekey thing. Because my arm would get tiredand I couldn’t keep the same speed goingall the time. This other thing I wanted totell you about was this Indian music Irecorded. I got to record this guy namedVishal Nagar. He and his mother come to theUniversity of Washington every year or so.She teaches a dance there. When I met himhe was 16 or 17 years old; and he wasalready considered a master on the tabla.He’d already made guest appearances on acouple of releases in India. But he’d neverhad his own solo recording. So my friend, EdPias brought him and his mother into thestudio. While I was setting up I found outthat a tabla sounds better when you placethe mic in between the two drums, pointingdown at the floor, rather than trying to micthe two heads. So I’m using that techniqueand he’s listening to it and says, “No. Idon’t like that.” So we moved it around,tried a few different things, then all of asudden he liked it. But then he says,“There’s no echo on it.” I sat down andexplained to him, “We’re not in New Delhi.We’re in Seattle, Washington, and this is anAmerican technique. I’ll put plenty of echoon here if you want. But what is our goal onthis?” And the goal was to make it soundgood on cassette! And that’s why they putso much echo on their recordings. So I putsome on. Actually, I used a reverb with aslight echo on it. Then he said, “You got toput more on.” So I put a little more on. Andhe said, “I want more still.” So I said, “HeyVishal, why don’t you go in there and play alittle bit? I’ll record it and we’ll throw it ona cassette and see if you like it.” He did andhe really liked it! So we were ready to go.They had an electronic tambura going, andhis mother played harmonium. She wasplaying this one melody line over and overand over again. The run was about 45 to 60seconds long. He performed his premieretabla solo over that; and it was an hourlong! It was simply amazing! And when Iwalked out from the control room after itwas over you could feel the humidity in theair because he was sweating so much!(Laughter)

Did you use much compression?

Yeah. I actually compressed it quite a bit. PlusI had some ambient mics around as well.When you listen to the DAT of it you think,“That’s pretty good.” But when you hear it offof a cassette you go, “Wow!” I was really gladto get to do that recording.

So that was it, one take straight toDAT?

Yeah. There’s a couple imperfections in itthough. He would play these incredibly fastruns and at the end of them he’d raise hishands up really fast. And a couple of timeshe hit the mic. I was talking to Ed about it.Ed has a doctorate degree in ethnomusicol-ogy. And I said, “I’d really like to take thosemic hits out of there. But I’m afraid I’mgoing to mess up the music.” And he said,“Ohh, you don’t want to take those out! Youdon’t know how many tapes and CDs I havefrom India where people start hacking uplung in the middle of the performance andthey leave it in because that’s just whathappened. That’s what they’re into.”(Laughter) So I didn’t bother with it. But itbugs me to this day. (Laughter)

Here’s another technique I wanted to tell youabout. It’s called the “SchizophrenicMicrophone Technique”. We used this in twoplaces. One was Dante’s Disneyland Inferno,which is a Sun City Girls record, and theother was on Charlie’s (of Sun City Girls) solorecord, Pint Sized Spartacus. The techniqueinvolves two microphones. I have this oldAKG mic. I don’t even know what the modelnumber is. It’s not a great mic by any means.It’s all crackly and trebly and the top of thewindscreen is missing. I put that on a micstand and then taped a Shure SM 57 on topof it. The 57 was set back a bit behind theremaining half of the AKG’s windscreen. Iran the 57 straight to one track. The AKG Iran into this small tube amplifier and mikedit with a PZM hung from a stand. So Charliewould sing into the AKG for this crackly personality, and then move to the side a bitto get a cleaner sound from the 57. He justplayed with it as he did his vocals. It produced the effect he was looking for andwas really fun for him to do.

*See the Recording Recipes column in TAPE OP

#10 for other flying microphone techniques.


TAPEOP

Butch Vig has created a big namefor himself in therecording world. In1984 he and SteveMarker foundedSmart Studios inM a d i s o n ,Wisconsin, andstarted workingwith tons ofindie bands(like Killdozer,L7, UrgeOverkill), including quite a few albums for records labels like Touch and Go, Slash and Sub Pop. As timewent by his reputation got bigger, leading to work with Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana(Nevermind) and Sonic Youth (Dirty). Then, as if this wasn’t enough, he and Steve put a band togetherwith Shirley Manson and Duke Erickson and called it Garbage. When we got the opportunity to inter-view Butch, it was originally going to be in San Francisco. After some contemplation, John Vandersliceof Tiny Telephone studio and M K Ultra (himself a former Tape Op interview victim) came to mind. Johnruns a very analog orientated studio, so I figured with him chatting up Butch, who works extensivelyin Pro Tools, we’d get some sparks flying. And what happens? They got alonglike peas in a pod...

BButch Vig, Garbage &�Smart Studiosinterview by John Vanderslice


TAPEOP

You started Smart Studios (inMadison, WI) a while ago, andyou used to record a lot. Do youmiss engineering as much asyou used to when you firststarted Smart?

Yeah, I guess I do. Even though we madeGarbage’sVersion 2.0, our guitar tech, BillyBush, by default became the engineer andhe handled a lot of the technical aspects,particularly because this is the first timewe jumped into using the full-on Pro ToolsSystem. But, I still get behind the board allthe time and even now as I’m talking toyou, I’ve got my laptop and a Kurzweil, alittle keyboard, and this Yamaha speakerset-up ‘cause we’re working on some b-sides and we spent most of yesterday pro-gramming some loops and things. I like totinker with stuff. I was never really classi-cally trained as an engineer; never went toany of those schools. I always just did it bythe seat of my pants. I still like to get anew piece of gear and just plug it in andfool around with it; see what you can dowith it.I’m also not a good manual reader.

Did you start Smart to record yourown band? What was the reasonbehind starting it?

Steve and I met in film school and he had afour-track in his basement at the time. Iwas recording electronic ambient things fora fellow film student’s soundtracks.

Yeah, your already un-watchablefilms.

Exactly, they were very un-watchable.But, someof the soundtracks were pretty interesting.They were very inspired by John Cage andeven more accessible stuff like Brian Eno’ssolo things, or Stockausen. I can’t evenremember what I was listening to backthen. I was really into it, and at the timealso playing in bands and we couldn’tafford to go into proper studios. So, westarted doing little demo things in Steve’sbasement and when I finished college,Steve and I had the idea that we couldmake a go of this, so we rented a space ina warehouse and bought an eight-track. Wehad very little gear. I think we had a springreverb unit, we had a handful of mics, all57s or even cheaper stuff than that; thatwas the most expensive mic we had.We hadone DBX-160 compressor that we boughtused for fifty bucks.

You probably used that oneverything.

On every single thing. And we had a RolandSpace Echo. The first board we had was anAllen and Heath. It was all kinda’ to recordour own stuff. We knew a lot of other musicians from the local scene, so we werelike, “If you guys can go out and buy thetape, we’ll charge five bucks an hour just sowe can get fifty bucks for the night so wecan get some money to pay our rent here.We got a lot of work off of that.Everythingthat we started making we put back intothe studio. It was like, “We need to get abetter monitor system, we need to getmore reverbs, we need to get more compressors, we need to get better mikes,”and the list, of course, if you own a studionever stops. Everything we made we prettymuch plowed back in. Over a period oftime, we went to a more sophisticatedeight-track to a sixteen-track to a 24 to a48, to now a full-on Pro Tools System. Itwas a slow evolution. There were a lot ofbands and albums between all those steps.

I checked out your website and Icouldn’t believe all the bands youhad recorded. It was absolutelyphenomenal! You have a Studerdeck, an A827, were you syncingup two of those and doing ProTools on the new record?

Yeah, we recorded most of the tracks into ProTools, then we would edit or process orwhatever we ended up doing, which we doactually a lot, and then when it came timeto mix the rhythm tracks, stuff was alltransferred to the Studers; the drums, bass,some of the guitar and vocals. Any of theweird little sound effect things, if we wereto use them, we would leave them inProTools so we use Microlynx to lock themup, so we had the two 48-track Pro Toolsand the 48-track Studers.

In general, do you use a lot ofcompression when you track?

It depends on what it is. I usually don’t compress drums until they’ve been recorded. I do more compressing post. Alot of times if I’m looking for compression,I want something that really screws withthem or over-pumps them or shreds themout. I always compress the bass and usually compress some acoustic things, likeacoustic guitar, even piano sometimes we’llcompress a little bit. Shirley’s vocals, Ialways use a solid TLA-170. That’s the stun.Whenever she starts singing it kicks down,even if it’s quiet, it kicks down a -10 dB.

Do you mix a song differently if youknow it’s going to radio, or doyou just let radio compression doits job?

“‘We need to get a bettermonitor system, we need to

get more reverbs, we need toget more compressors,

we need to get bettermikes’ and the list, of

course, if you own a studionever stops.”

four photos of Smart Studios


TAPEOP

Years ago I always used to use bus compression.I’ve got a Daking compressor that I’vebeen using lately. I like it a lot. I’ll put itacross the bus sometimes just while we’retracking to make sure if something getsreally loud, it’s not going to blow the monitors up. I will occasionally do mixeswith it, but I have a tendency to wait tillmastering to do that. I always go toMasterDisk and I work with Scott Hall andHowie Weinburg. They’re both really goodand I always go to the sessions there so Ican listen to the EQ and make suggestions,but let them do their thing. I’m well awareof how radio can affect it but I try and alsocompress it, so like Version 2.0 sounds asloud as anything else, but there’s still really strong dynamics. A lot of timesyou’re doing things to trick the compression. Little frequency things orthings that sound like they come in loudand then ease-off right before it comesback in ‘till the next section of the song.

Do you like the sound of radiocompression?

Yeah, sometimes I do. I don’t like it when it’s sosevere; like when a song starts out with avocal and an acoustic guitar and the bandkicks in and the band sounds like they dropdown 20 db or lower.

It’s amazing how radio stationsvary in how much compressionthey use. Alternative stationsseem to use a lot of compression.Sometimes it sounds good andsometimes it just sounds reallyextreme. When you track, do youtrack with a mix in mind, likesay Tchad Blake, or do you try toget good tones down onto tape?

We just try to get interesting sound on tape.Fortunately, we have no idea what the mixis going to sound like when we start and wehave a tendency to record a lot of ideas. Weconstantly cut the song up and chop it upin Pro Tools. “This chorus sucks.Let’s justerase it. Let’s take this sound thing fromthis other song and transpose it to thiskey.” We do a lot of really weird things andit isn’t until the actual mixing processbegins that we define how the songs aregoing to sound. The record took us a yearand the mixing took about six weeks at theend of that. Four or five of the songs hadover a hundred tracks by the time we mixed,so we had a huge puzzle. At that point, alot of the things are kinda defined aroundyour lyrics after we’ve gone through andwe’re happy with our vocal performance. Nomatter what we do sonically, it needs towork around Shirley because she’s definitelythe center. She’s the mouthpiece for theband, so whether we make it noisier, morepoppier, more organic, or weird layers goingon, it somehow has to work with the songsand with Shirley’s vocals.

When you’re not in your own studioand you’re recording anotherband, are you flexible about whatgear is available or do you alwaysbring your own racks with you?

I’m flexible, although there are a few things thatI do like to have. I’ve got an API Lunchboxthat I’ve used for a while that I really like acouple pieces of Summit gear, but the TLA-170, I cannot live without. It’s by far myfavorite compressor. I like that Daking, thatcompressor, that Geoff Daking came outwith a couple years ago. It’s very simple touse but it sounds really good. I will

occasionally use that on some tracking, butI like to leave it on the bus. The other thingI probably always use lately, is I have an oldELA-M, I think from 1957-that’s an old tubemic. It sounds amazing,. It’s one of thesemic’s that has this incredible high-end,“haaah” all the steam and crunch, that goeson the vocals.

What’s the difference between a 250and a 251?

I do not know.My friend has a 251 and those are

Telefunken mic’s right? I don’tthink I’ve even seen one. Ourhighest end mic is a Neuman 67.What dynamic mics, maybe moreesoteric dynamic mics, do you relyon for guitars or drums or otherinstruments?

I love a fat U-47, the big chunky mic. It’s kindadark sounding.

It’s a solid state version of the U-47?Right, but it takes a lot of level on bass and

guitars and kick drums—it’s thumpy. It’s notas clear as other mic’s. I’ve used that on alot of things. We use Audio Technica 4050s,57s and 421s and m88s on guitars sometimes. We have a couple of Colfax mics,but I’m not always a huge fan of those. Theyhave a tendency to be back a ways. And ifyou want something recorded really closely,to me they don’t sound quite as good andthey can’t handle a lot of pressure.

If a band was going to start a studiowith a minimum amount ofmoney, what would you advisethat they spend most of theirmoney on? EQ’s, microphones?What do you think is a reallyessential link in the chain?

I guess if they’re going to be recording bandswith live instruments, you’d almost have tosay it’s the mics and the pre-amps. If you’vegot a good mic and a good pre-amp, and youmove the mic around you’re probably notgoing to have to EQ very much. Sometimesyou can even go directly to tape on whatever you’re recording on. I rememberwhen we first started, we had really shittymics and I had to EQ a lot. I just couldn’tget things to sound good. You’d have to bottom-on, or high-in, or screw around withthe mid-range, whether you’re cutting it orboosting it. Going back to (Nirvana’s)Nevermind , I don’t think I’ve EQed a guitargoing onto tape for 8 years now.


TAPEOP

Do you usually brighten it up on theway back or do you usually tweakit all in the mix?

In the mix, but usually at that point, it has lessto do with EQing, and what we call our processing point, where we take things andre-sample them and change the bits orchange the field person, it might be somestrange EQ or it just might be some effectthat gets put on them that gives them atotally different timbre. I don’t really EQ thebass when it gets recorded and I don’t r eallyEQ the guitars and the same with Shirley’svocals. I don’t EQ those, I just go flat towhatever we’re recording on.

Does the TLA-170 tend to brighten upvocals at all?

It seems to be fairly neutral. I think obviouslyany compression will bring out more sibalence, but that’s just the nature of compression. But, this mic, as I said, has areally soft, nice smooth crunch to it whenthe tubes kind of overload on the high-end.We’ll sample stuff on the Kurzweil 2500sand those get thrown in too. Then we’llprocess them into Pro Tools. We have a tonof programs to do processing, DSPs andthings, plug-ins basically and filters andcompressors and stuff. We’ll use a lot ofthose on just about anything.

For all those people out there whohave 8 and 16-tracks, which areprobably the majority of theTape Op readers, if you had fourtracks to record drums, how wouldyou mic and assign them?

Four-tracks, depending on what the band playslike, if it was a jazz band or something thatwas very quiet, I would probably put thekick on a separate track and then stereo mixthe toms and snares and overhead into twotracks. If it was a rock thing where there’s alot of kick, snare and back-beat, where theywere playing a lot of grooves, I’d put thesnare on a separate track. Possibly take atop and bottom mic and run them togetherand then put the overheads on track 3 and4. I used to do that a lot when we had our8-track. I used to commit drums to stereo.I wouldn’t even put the kick on a separatetrack back then.

That sharpens your skills too.Well, sometimes in the mix early on you realize

you should’ve had the kick a little louder orthe kicks awful loud compared to the rest ofthe drums. But usually you can get it prettyclose, once you’ve got the mix down andthe band is playing together. You can listento it with the bass and the guitar and thevocals. You’re almost kinda listening to aslight rough mix at that point.

Our engineer Greg Williamson,showed us this trick when we weremixing down where he would justsend the snare out through aspeaker into a room and prop thespeaker on top of the snare andget the snare to rattle and thenhe would just mic it and mix itduring the mix and get this reallynice separate bottom snare sound.So, that was like the coolest thingI’ve learned in the past year as faras mixing on drums. It’s nicebecause you save yourself a micand it’s totally clear.

A couple times on Version 2.0, we would take adrum loop or some sort of groove thing, andrun it through an old Auratone, that we’vehad since 1983, that’s pretty blown up. Soany low-end, it just distorts right away. Weput a mic on top of that and run stuff ontoit and re-mic it and send it back into ProTools and get these amazing crunchy mid-range drumloops.

Have you ever used a Shure Bros.Level Lock?

No.It’s like an old PA compressor that’s

really junky. Must’ve been like 20dollars when it came out. Thethreshold is 6 inches, 12 inchesand 18 inches, for the distancefrom the speaker to the mic. If youslam stuff through that, you getjust absolutely bizarre distortedcompression sounds. When yourecord do you always separateinstruments from drums, or doyou like bleed?

No. I mean the bleed is what makes stuff soundcool. When we started tracking on thisrecord, we spent a month. We took a ProTools, a Mackie and all of our live gear andfor a month we basically jammed andimprovised and came up with some songideas. It was set-up very loosely, not

pristine at all. It was like a big parlor room.It had a pool table in the middle, amps wereset-off to the side and the drum-kit waskinda off in the corner. Shirley could sit inthe middle and then basically, we could runtape, record, and bounce around betweenthe samplers and the keyboards and guitarand bass and drum-kit stuff. A lot of thingscame from that, that made it into the finalmix. Might have been a drum loop or a guitar thing or a vocal that made it into thefinal mix. We’re not particularly concernedwith something matching or being pristine.Even vocal takes, if they sound differentfrom day one to day two, we don’t care thatmuch. A lot of drum stuff, tons of drumthings are mixed down to mono on this. It’slike I didn’t even want to bother with doingthings, where I knew there might end upbeing 15 drum tracks on a song. I didn’twant to have 15 tracks with separate bassdrums and snares. So I just mixed drumsdown to mono in a lot of instances. Theygot filtered, EQed, in one or two or four oreight bar loops. It’s basically just thegrooves that work in the context of whatwe’re recording and this is easier to dealwith than a mix. A lot of times when wewould mic them, you’d start putting on allthese little things and I find that I use verylittle effects.I’ll usually use something onShirley’s vocal if it was recorded dry. Use anEventide harmonizer for a double effect.We’ll use the 4000 sometimes for a reverbpatch.We use the Roland Space Echoes for alot of tape-slap type things. The mix is pretty dry. I remember when Billy and Mikehad to do the recall on the first mix, I thinkwe had three stereo effects on them. But,as I said, so many things are processed bythe time you start throwing up all thefaders, all these weird things are happeninglike ambient tracks. A lot of times if there’sa main drum groove that would be down thecenter, which maybe has more of a live feel,I may take another two or three loops andjust pan them all left and the other two orthree loops pan them hard right. They allhave different frequencies and play at different times in the songs, so you’re constantly getting this pretty wide set ofthings coming from the spectrum. I guessgetting back to your question, It dependson what we’re recording. A lot of things Irecord flat, a lot of things we will processonce we get them in there.

““Getting back to yourquestion, It depends on what

we’re recording.”


TAPEOP

When you record, say piano, do youlike things in stereo pairs or doyou like having stuff in monobecause it’s so much easier to dealwith and it also gives a solidity tothe instrument.

Both, I think. For instance, rather than hearinga stereo guitar, I’d rather double track theguitar, left and right because they’re twodiscrete things, and sound even wider whenyou pan them. I do have a Calrec SoundField that sounds amazing. It’s got anincredible stereo mic that works really goodon drums. I ran piano on it, acoustic guitar.We’ve used it on a couple of vocal things,where Shirley’s singing more ambiently. But,I have a tendency to record things on monoand not worry about them.

What records have you heard recent-ly that you really, really likeengineering wise, or sound wise?

I really love Massive Attack’s new album,Mezzanine. The way they approached theirarrangements, it’s all moody and dark andvery atmospheric. It’s great, great late-night-turn-off-the-lights and play-it-really-loud music. I like this band Flick, I like theway their record sounds; like indie recorded,lo-fi fuzzy, power-pop. I like the songs andtheir singing.There’s some elements of BigStar and even the Pumpkins’ mellower songs.It’s a really cool record. It’s walking that lineof trying to do it yourself in the indie-worldand also just approaching greatness, to mixa timeless sounding record.

Who are your favorite engineersright now? And not necessarilyones that are active right now.

I like Tchad Blake a lot, I think his mixes alwayssound really interesting.I’m very partial toFlood’s work. He’s been acting more as aproducer these days, but he’s been an engineer. His recordssonically always have agreat darkness to them. He always lets a lotof the room bleed into the tracks and thatgives them a lot of character. I like the newPJ Harvey record that he did.

Of all the records that you’ve done,which one is closest to your truesonic vision?

God, I don’t know.Or the one that you put on and say,

“Damn, that’s the sound that I wasgoing for?”

It would probably have to be Siamese Dream. Iworked really hard on that record, as didBilly, as did the band. I knew what he kindawanted to do going into that record, and Iknewhe wanted to do a lot a layering. Iknew because I worked with Gish on him.Itwas a really intense album to make becausethey were also under a lot of pressure internally and from outside sources. I particularly remember, when I finished it, Iknew we made a good record.

-band photo by Stephane Sednaoui-portrait by Joseph Cultice-Studio photos by Tony Michels-Garbage can pohtos by John Baccigaluppi


TAPEOP

Bob Dylan:

The Recording Sessions 1960-1994 by Clinton Heylin

In the introduction to Bob Dylan: TheRecording Sessions, Clinton Heylin puts Dylan’s studio methods in sharp relief against those of TheBeatles. Holed up in the winter of 1966-67, thelads from Liverpool labored for 129 days over Sgt.Pepper’s. Zoom out to Dylan who, from 1962’seponymous debut to 1975’s Desire, suffered tospend all of 99 days behind the doors ofColumbia’s studios! With this book, Heylin provides a close look at the successes and failuresof Dylan’s self-described “Go in, cut it, and get thefuck out” recording philosophy.

In his exploration of every available inch oftape touched by Dylan’s voice, Heylin is eminentlythorough without being tedious, and his telling ofthis history is inspired. The book presents onealbum per chapter, each one prefaced with a sessionography culled from Columbia’s cardex system, studio sheets, and even tape boxes. Everytake of every song is listed, noting the date andmusicians present. Following this hard info is thestory of the album’s making. Anecdotes from producers and session players are mixed in withHeylin’s own speculations on what was going on inDylan’s head. Much is illuminated, although thereare more than a few unsolved mysteries as to whoplayed on what tracks, etc.

Although clearly a fan, Heylin spends as muchtime criticizing Dylan’s judgment as he does laud-ing the results. Throughout his recording career,Dylan has made questionable decisions. As early ashis second LP, 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,he has tended to discard songs recorded early-on ina set of sessions. Halfway through recording analbum, he would change the album’s direction andin the process throw away some of what Heylinbelieves to be his finest moments. Later (aroundthe time of Blonde on Blonde), we see Dylan showing up at sessions “with barely more thanfragments of a lyric [and] half a melody,” hoping to“bring it into focus in the studio.” Or still later, dur-ing the Street Legal sessions in ‘78, how he insistedon recording live in the studio with a band usingstage monitors instead of headphones! Not surpris-ingly, the result was a “sixteen-track morass.”

But there is also much to be learned fromDylan’s approach, where the focus is on performance over perfection. Sure, he was a longtime in utilizing modern multitrack techniques wetake for granted, like tracking vocals after therhythm tracks are in place. But the speed gainedby cutting everything live freed him up to do multiple takes. And he would use these multipletakes to try out different approaches to a song-altering tempos, trying different accompaniments,

and even swapping verses. Jazz musicians havelong embraced this measure of variety betweentakes, but in the world of rock it remains unusual.You think instead of the Beach Boys or My BloodyValentine going over and over the same stretch oftape, building the layers higher and deeper.Granted, in contrast many of Dylan’s recordingefforts were very hit-or-miss. But he hit oftenenough, and when he did it was thrillingly directin a way that labor-intensive layering cannot be.(New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1995)

-Leigh Marble

The Ex

Starters Alternators CDThe Ex on Touch and Go? While they do seem

at first to be strange company (T & G don’t exactlyconjure images of anarcho-squatters and euro-improvisers), the union couldn’t have been moresuccessful. Perhaps the Ex, knowing their newalbum would be released by one of the more highprofile “indie rock” labels, decided to strip themselves down to their punky roots. No matterwhat the circumstances, the Ex throw themselvesinto this new set of songs head first. It’s less dada,more futurism. There are no guest musicians, andnon-punk influences (free-jazz, world folk musics)have been fully incorporated to produce a tight,cohesive sound. In fact, they haven’t sounded thisfocused since 1988’s Aural Guerrilla. Much creditmust go to Steve Albini, who once again displaysgreat sympathy towards groups he works with. Thisis arguably the best the Ex have ever sounded ona recording. The guitars are scrape-y, piercing andLOUD, bass is round and booming, vocals anddrums sit un-effected a bit below the guitar’s roar,the way one would expect to hear them in a livecontext. The entire production has an amazinglynaturalistic quality, which must be attributed tothe room at Albini’s studio, Electrical Audio. Hiscollection of obscure, high-end mics are anotherelement of this success, so much so that the bandcomically displays them in the CD booklet por-traits. Highly recommended. (Touch and Go, POBox 25520, Chicago, IL, 60625) -Dewey Mahood

TTThhee TTaappee OOpp

RReevviieewwss PPaaggee

There’s million dollarstudios with well-trained staffand full catering that are notg e n e r a t i n g w o r t h w h i l erecordings/albums, whilepeople like Nic crank out tonsof CD projects every year ataffordable rates, with clear,straight-up real sounds - andthese are the records thatmatter; the ones worth a listen.

Two Dollar Guitar

Train Songs CDAccording to the disc technical notes, this

music was “captured by veteran field engineerGene Holder [ex dB’s], in a studio/bohemian flophouse called the Jolly Roger”. Sound is on thelo-fi side of things - condenser mic ambient roomaesthetic - which works well for their lo-budgetfilm score approach to improvisation. This is alllaid back, candles-and-incense type jams, whichoccasionally slip into the dreaded new age synthflute realm. Considering Steve Shelly, of SonicYouth, sits behind the traps in this group, I’d haveto say it’s pretty adventurous. (Smells LikeRecords, PO Box 6179, Hoboken, NJ, 07030)

-Dewey Mahood

Rod Poole

December 96 CDPoole improvises on a Martin acoustic guitar

using an alternate tuning of his own invention. Heis concerned with the perfect fourth, the neutralthird, and the micro uneven intervals between.This ends up sounding fairly reminiscent of JohnFahey’s playing in the 60’s. The music was documented using a pair of Calrec 1050 condensermics, and a Tascam DAP1 digital audio taperecorder. If the serious coffee shop/art scene isyour thing, check this out. (Win Records, PO Box26811, LA, CA 90026) -Dewey Mahood

David Tollefson

New Eyes on the Universe CDI’m a big fan of Brian Eno. Not of everything

he writes, records and produces, but of the way Iperceive that he thinks about music and recording.Systems approaches, how a system (a complexeffects route, for example) is set up and variables(a guitar, as another example) are entered into it,are one of the many recording techniques Eno hasespoused that I use day to day in my own record-ing experiences. Apparently, Tollefson is a big fanof Eno’s as well. All these “mood scapes” were cre-ated from an electric guitar with delays, distortionand other effects, changing the sound of the gui-tar into electronic washes and streaks. Layers werecreated on a four track cassette and more treat-ments and mixing were done later by M. Griffin atChromostatic II. It’s a stately, dreamy, hypnoticrecord but with that “undercurrent of doubt” thatkeeps it from being a “New Age” feel-good wall-paper recording. And it reminds me of Eno’s Apolloor Music for Films, two of his best “ambient” works.(Hypnos, P.O. Box 6868, Portland, OR 97228)

- Larry Crane

A Minor Forest

Ini-dependence LPAMF’s new one follows in the soft/loud direction

of their first record, but manages to keep the some-times generic formula sounding fresh—inspiredeven. They push everything to the extreme; the low-key stuff is ultra melodic and delicate, the rock iscompletely over-the-top ugly metal (CasparBrotzmann with the agility of Rush). BrianPaulson, who worked the magic on Unrest’s ImperialF.F.R.R and Slint’s Spiderland among others, displaysonce again that he is the man for super rich, warmproduction. Whereas Albini and Weston’s recordingsfor Flemish Altruism made AMF sound brittle and abit thin, Paulson comes closer to capturing theGodzilla-crushing-Tokyo blanket of sound of theband’s live show. A note of interest to recordingbuffs: AMF must have picked up a few things fromthe aforementioned engineering wizzes, for onetrack is self-produced, and sounds nearly the sameas Paulson’s work. High quality. (Thrill Jockey, POBox 476794, Chicago, IL 60647) -Dewey Mahood

Holland

Beep, Kiss CD EPIt took me some time to figure this out, but

Holland is our pal, Trevor, formerly the SeaSaw/Magnetophone guy. Holland is in a similarvein - Kraftwerkian drum sounds, lush analogsynths and sad, melancholy vocals. I believe thesefour tracks were done at the home studio Trevor andArchie (Heartworms) have put together inArlington, Virginia. This stuff is a great example ofwhat you can do with catchy tunes, minimal gearand careful arrangements. The actual CD is a treatto look at since it’s only got as much silver on it asneeded to hold the music - i.e., there’s a silver discin the middle of the clear plastic 5” disc.(AudioInformationPhenomena, 1625 OakwoodDrive, San Mateo, CA 94403) - Larry Crane

The Minders

Hooray for Tuesday CDEver since the Apples (In Stereo) made their

self-recorded splash on the indie music scene, alot has been said in praise of Robert Schneiderand his Pet Sounds Recording Studio and we hereat Tape Op have been no exception with thatpraise. The funny thing is, I think this is the bestexample to date of his recording/productionprowess - it is more focused than the kitchen sinkNeutral Milk Hotel records and more psychedel-ic/poppy than the Apples have become (yet). TheMinders are pure English pop (leader Martyn isEnglish) and while there are nods to the Kinks,Zombies and XTC, the record sounds more like awell-recorded Television Personalities, whicharound here is about the highest praise we cangive. (SpinArt, P.O. Box 1798, NY, NY 10156) -Larry Crane

Joe Meek and the Blue Men

I Hear a New World CDJoe Meek. The name haunts anyone who

researches record production of the 60’s. His secretive and forward-looking production techniques presaged what many others developedlater on. I mean some of this sounds like earlyPink Floyd yet it was recorded in 1960! Weirdsped-up vocals, strange echoes on the drums andodd tape distortion all give this an unreal sound.Oh, yeah, it’s a concept album about the creaturesthat live on the moon... (RPM, 41 Garfield Road,London E4 70G, UK) - Larry Crane

Plush

More You Becomes You CDPlush is Liam Hayes, a keyboardist, song-

writer, singer and Mellotron fanatic. Unlike hishighly orchestrated singles, we get no Mellotronon this outing - just Hayes mostly singing andplaying piano. If you’re thinking Elton John orBen Folds, forget it. It is more like Leonard Cohenon downers - it’s that sad, defeated loser moodthat makes this work. As for recording, you maythink it’d be easy, but you try micing a piano! Andif he sang live to the piano, well you know... phasechecks. Anyway, it does sound great - Albini,Weston and Konrad Strauss did a great jobrecording this and it was mastered at Abbey Road.The more I listen to this the more I’m drawn in.(Drag City, P.O. Box 476867, Chicago, IL 60647)

- Larry Crane

The Pacific Ocean

Birds Don’t Think They’re Flying (Enchante) CDSilver Jews

American Water (Drag City) CDPeople like Nicolas Vernhes and his Rare

Book Room in NYC are the backbone of honest,real recording in this country. I’m not joking.There’s million dollar studios with well-trainedstaff and full catering that are not generatingworthwhile recordings/albums, while people likeNic crank out tons of CD projects every year ataffordable rates, with clear, straight-up realsounds - and these are the records that matter; theones worth a listen. The Pacific Ocean (Ed for-merly of Versus and Connie of Containe) have aclean pop, early Spinanes feel with understatedproduction, while the Silver Jews record is one ofthe most “timeless” pieces of work I’ve heard inages. This could have been made any time in thelast 30 years and I appreciate that. So, remember,Rare Book Room and Nic Vernhes - and look for abig interview with him soon! (Enchante, 245 East19th Street, #12T, NY,NY 10003) (Drag City, P.O.Box 476867, Chicago, IL 60647) - Larry Crane

When it comes to recordsthough, I don’t think I’dpick music based on who“produced” it.


TAPEOP

Barbara Manning

In New Zealand CDThe first thing I noticed about this CD is that

it is short. Less than 32 minutes, and that mademe wonder. Would I know if it was on vinyl?Between flipping the sides and not having a digitalcounter that shows the absolute time, would Iknow or care? CDs allow 74 minutes (or more) ofmaterial and for an album release that’s way toolong. Hell, 60 minutes is too much. I’m calling fora bit of self-editing and restraint from musicians,something that Ms. Manning has always practiced.Besides being short, this album is beautiful,haunting and I love it. It was recorded all overNew Zealand with Tex Houston at Fish StreetStudio, with David Kilgour (The Clean, who’sWhatever I do is right/wrong Barbara covers here),with Chris Knox (Tall Dwarves), and StephenKilroy. A virtual who’s who of New Zealand ofrecording freaks. (Communion, 2525 16th Street,Third Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103) - LarryCrane

Fiver

Eventually Something Cool Will Happen CDWhen people talk to me about movies, I men-

tion that I follow directors and rarely pay attentionto actors. When it comes to records though, I don’tthink I’d pick music based on who “produced” it.Much of the time, production is just a job, and ifyou look at the body of work of a producer/engi-neer, you will find some real clunkers. For exam-ple, did you know that Tchad Blake engineeredThe Bangles, Different Light album? Anyway, tocontradict all that, Jason Lytle of Grandaddy pro-duced this band of complete unknowns and by thattoken I recommend it! It has the samelooped-out,dreamy psychedelic/post Pavement swagger, com-plete with cheap keyboard sounds and crazy guitareffects, that makes his band great. Plus, I knowthat Jason is super-selective about what non-Grandaddy recordings he works on, so you know heenjoyed doing this, and it shows. (Devil in theWoods, PO Box 11348, Berkeley, CA 94712) -Larry Crane

The No-No’s

Secret Luminaries CDThere’s several ways to run a commercial stu-

dio. You can be outspoken, you can be highly vis-ible on the local “scene” or you can quietly stay inand do some great work. In Portland, I sometimesfeel that there’s a misconception that my Jackpot!Recordings is the only game in town for “com-mercial” indie-rock type recording. Wrong. MikeLastra has been quietly running Smegma Studiosout of his house, recording Godheadsilo, TheSpinanes and many others for many years. The No-No’s are recent graduates of Mike’s recording stu-dio and all the better for it. Where I might haveleaned toward a more drum-heavy, murkier guitartone, he elicits a bright, almost new wave, feel andit gives the band a perfect sound for their skewedpop. More proof that there’s a lot of recordinggoing on in Portland. (Chromosome, 3559 SEFrancis St. #B, Portland, OR 97202) -Larry Crane

TTT hh rr ee ee MM oo rr ee RR ee vv ii ee ww ss .. .. .. ..


TAPEOP

it’s

Get a free subscription to Tape Op. All you have to dois go to www.tapeop.comand fill in the online sub-

scription form and the nextissue will be delivered to you

Offer applicable only in theUS and UK. Other territories

are not free.

TAPEOPThe Creative Music Recording Magazine

Cool ass interviews with folks like Rupert Neve,Tchad Blake, Butch Vig, John McEntire,

Mitch Easter, Fugazi, Steve Albini, Jon Brion,Andy Wallace, Andy Johns, Jim O’Rourke,

Joe Chiccarelli, Rudy Van Gelder, Spot,Alan Parsons, Bob Ezrin, Jack Endino,

Jim Dickinson, Mario Caldato, Ethan Johns,Dave Fridmann, Malcolm Toft, Daniel Lanois,

Geoff Emerick, Hugh Padgham,George Massenburg, and lots more.

Subscribe:Free!

While some of my favorite albumswere made in huge studios with bigbudgets, I’m also very excited aboutrecords made under less ideal circumstances. I find it really inspiringwhen timeless records can be made bypeople with limited experience andresources. For this reason, I find theearly records from Chicago’s Associationfor the Advancement of Creative Music(AACM) exciting. At a time when avant-garde jazz was developing in new directions, without an obvious marketfor these records, no one invested hugeresources in recording them. In the mid-1960s, recording technology was far lessavailable than it is today. The music wasalso drastically different from so much ofwhat had been recorded before that Iexpected it may have presented particular challenges in recording.

RECORDING HISTORY:The AACM and theChicago Avant-Garde JazzScene of the Mid-Sixties by Steve Silverstein

L to R: Malcolm Chisolm, (engineer), Joseph Jarman & musicians listening to playback.


TAPEOP

The AACM was a nonprofit co-op, led initially by Muhal Richard Abrams, whichhelped to produce concerts of experimentaljazz. The organization evolved in part out ofthe work of the Experimental Band, whichbegan in 1961, also under Abrams’s leadership.The first recording of these musicians was theRoscoe Mitchell Sextet’s Sound, which wasreleased on Bob Koester’s Delmark label in1966. Up until that album, the Chicago-basedlabel had released blues, traditional jazz, andbebop. While Delmark had not previously beeninvolved in releasing such aggressively avant-garde music, Koester did have experience withrecording studios. He was very happy with hisexperience recording at Hall Studios with engineer Stu Black. When Black went to workat Sound Studios, a converted radio station at230 N. Michigan Avenue, Delmark’s businessfollowed. Sound Studios had a Neve board, a 3track recorder, and a good variety of microphones. While the main room at Soundwas neither as large nor as alive as that at HallStudios, it was big enough to comfortablyposition all of the musicians and their manyinstruments.

Stu Black engineered Mitchell’s album atSound Studios, and Chuck Nessa, who managedKoester’s Jazz Record Mart at the time, supervised the two sessions. Despite Black’sexperience as “a journeyman engineer,” Nessasays that “by far this was the strangest stuff he’dever encountered.” Nessa describes his job asproducer “as a liaison between the techies andmusicians, between the money, which wasKoester, and the musicians.” He was not concerned about recording the variety of instruments used on the album (“you can fakeit in the mix later”), and his advice to Black forrecording the harsh overtones used by the reedplayers was “that the music was going to getvery loud, so leave plenty of headroom.”

All of the musicians were in one large room,with some small baffles around the drums thatwould not obstruct anyone’s view. Nessa’s solestrategy to deal with bleed was to try to guesswhile setting up. He feels that making adjustments later “screws up people’s concentration,” and prefers to “go with the decision you made at the beginning and live withit.” This approach illustrates his broader philosophy that “if there’s a choice betweenmusical problems and technical, always err on

the side of the music and deal with the other shitlater.” No overdubs were used on Sound or anyof these records.

Nessa was concerned about the music’s ability to communicate with new listeners, andfelt that achieving this goal was one of his tasksas producer. He explains: “When we recorded“Sound,” the first day, we had run through thepieces. I realized that this was the first AACMmusic to appear and it was the first RoscoeMitchell record. We’d recorded ‘Sound’ and we’drecorded ‘Ornette,’ and there was no place thatyou heard Roscoe Mitchell playing with drumsbehind him. Afterwards, I said to Roscoe, ‘We’regoing to be giving this to a lot of people whodon’t know anything cold about this; they’regoing to be coming to it blankly. To have theleader of the group, who is the saxophone player,never playing when there are any drums playingis kind of bizarre.’ I said, ‘Maybe on ‘Ornette’ youcould do it with drums behind you.’ On the firsttake that we did the first day, it’s a cello behindhim, playing pizzicato like crazy, and it’s wonderful. But I said, ‘Maybe we could do thatwith drums behind you.’ So the next date whenwe came back, he did it again with drums behindhim. And that’s what came out.”

Malcolm Chisolm, moving mic, Charles Clark on cello.Both photos from the “As If It Were The Seasons”album sessions by Joseph Jarman. Summer 1968 at Per-Mar Studios at Chess Records in Chicago. Both photos by Greg Roberts.


TAPEOP

In addition to containing the original takeof “Ornette” described above, the CD reissue contains two separate takes of the piece“Sound,” which were edited into one piece forthe original vinyl. Nessa explains that one takewas too long, and that the parts of the twotakes which they used worked together. Thisfits Nessa’s idea that a record does not need toreflect a live performance. He says, “you can’talways do what you hear in your head on stageeither, or at a rehearsal.“

The next two albums were recorded undersimilar circumstances. Sound had upgraded toa 3M 1/2” 4 track deck before the recording ofJoseph Jarman’s Song For. Delmark’s thirdAACM release, Muhal Richard Abrams’s Levelsand Degrees of Light, was recorded in 1967.While the album’s first session was recorded atSound, the second session was recorded atChess/Ter-Mar Studio, where Stu Black nowworked. Chess had a bigger live room and anAmpex 1/2-inch 4 track.

Chuck Nessa had left Delmark, so Koesterbegan to supervise the sessions. Koester’sapproach to production was even more hands-off than Nessa’s. He says, “Most of those recordswere really produced by the artists anyway.That’s essentially true of any jazz record. I’m nota guy who’s going to say, ‘You play this.’ I can’tdo that; I’m not a musician. I’m a fan, and I’mnot a terribly erudite fan. When it came to theAACM, I was scared to death. I realized quicklythat between the engineer and Muhal and thesidemen, that I had nothing to worry about.”

The big change with Levels and Degrees ofLight was the active use of electronic processing in the mix. The application ofreverb makes it sound very different than theMitchell and Jarman albums, though therecording process was otherwise similar.Electronics were already common by 1966,Abrams says, just not frequently used in jazzrecords. He points out that such effects havebecome even more common today. WhileKoester gives “100% freedom” to musicians onDelmark, he found the reverb “a little bitcorny.” He prefers recordings which moreclosely resemble live performances. When StuBlack once suggested to him moving drumssubtly left or right, Koester replied that “theydon’t put the drums on a cart in a club and carrythem across the bandstand. When they do, I’llmaybe record them that way.”

After leaving Delmark, Chuck Nessa startedhis own label, Nessa, to release Lester Bowie’sNumbers One and Two and Roscoe Mitchell’sCongliptious. These two albums, both recordedby Stu Black, mark the beginning of the corethat would evolve into the Art Ensemble ofChicago. Numbers One and Two introduced theuse of a single overhead microphone, whichNessa felt would “get a blend of what thegroup sounded like.“

Delmark’s next three recording sessionscontinued in the by-now established pattern.Anthony Braxton’s first album as leader, ThreeCompositions of New Jazz, was recorded atSound Studios, with its new staff engineer RonPickup. Koester says that “they’d brought anengineer into Sound from England, who’d oncedone a Beatles demo. That was his claim tofame. He made them re-equip to some extent.”Koester describes Malcolm Chisholm, whorecorded Joseph Jarman’s, As If It Were TheSeasons, as “one of the deans of the Chicagorecording field.” At the session for his secondDelmark album, Young at Heart/Wise in Time,Muhal Richard Abrams was concerned aboutthe recording of Leo Smith’s trumpet. Koesterexplains that “there was a metal horn, and ametal microphone, and he got upset becausethere was a plastic windscreen on the mic. Hethought that was a bad idea, because the metalwouldn’t reach the other metal because of theplastic screen.“

In addition to its own productions,Delmark also licensed an album of AnthonyBraxton’s own recordings. He had bought atape deck in Korea, and used it to record hissolo performances in the basement of theParkway Community Center. The double-album,For Alto, which collects these recordings, cameout in 1969.

In 1969, with the Art Ensemble of Chicagoand Braxton’s Creative Construction Companyleaving for Europe, many of the AACM musicians had left Chicago. The last threeDelmark productions were two records byKalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, Humility in theLight of the Creator and Forces and Feelings, andMuhal Richard Abrams’s, Things to Come forThose Now Gone. When the Jazz Record Martbought a building, funds were no longer available to produce records which took so longto recoup their expenses. Delmark did licensetwo final AACM releases, after which Koestersays, “we went to sleep for a long time.“

In 1975, Nessa released Old/Quartet,which included basement recordings of earlyconfigurations of the Art Ensemble. More ofthese home recordings appeared on Nessa’s1993 CD box set The Art Ensemble 1967/68.Journalist Terry Martin recorded many of thesepractices solely for his own listening. He hada Wollensak 2 track reel-to-reel which he’dbought for playback. The deck came with 2microphones, which went direct to stereo.Martin recorded with these mics, and ran thedeck at its fastest speed, 7 1/2 ips.

Bob Koester now runsRiverside Studio. Here’s somechoice observations on therecording sessions that takeplace there and the state ofmusicianship these days.

> Only our clients ever putdrums in the drum booth,and some of them take thehint and don’t.

> It seems they keep findingmore reasons to use more micsand more channels on drumsevery year.

> ’20s jazz mixes itselfbecause we didn’t have thedisadvantage of sophisticatedpublic address systems. Theyhad to mix it to play it. I justwish jazz would go back tothat way, we could save hoursof time.

> Musicians come out ofcollege knowing more abouthow to record than they doabout how to play sometimes.We have guys who look at ourstudios and kind of snicker.

> Layering, I hate layering.I hate isolation booths. Jazzis not the kind of music youcan manufacture that way.

> You spend half your timedeciding who you can believein as an engineer and thenyou spend the other timetrying to keep him from bob-bugging the musicians.


TAPEOP

Martin claims no credit in the good soundof the recordings. “It had nothing to do with myabilities. I just used common sense in setting upthe two mics.” Nessa describes the site of theearlier recordings as “a big square Victorianhouse, with a large basement, brick walls, woodstud ceiling.” Martin says that the room was“acoustically very suitable.” With only twomicrophones, he “had one mic overhead, whichwas picking up the horns, mainly, and thedrums.” He put the mic slightly closer to thereeds than the slightly louder brass instruments. The other mic “was directed towardsMalachi Favors’s bass, that could also pick upsome of the drum sounds.” He also credits the“musicians’ ability to interact and form their owngroup dynamics” as contributing to the recording quality.

Nessa describes the site of the laterrecordings as “a more modern townhouse with afinished basement and a finished ceiling.”Martin found that room inferior sonically. “Thesession would not necessarily have been so promising,” he says, “except there was a largegroup of musicians coming into a fairly smallspace.” The musicians’ bodies reduced the echowhich would otherwise have been prominent.

While I didn’t find as much naivete as I’dexpected, I was excited by so much of what Idid discover about these records. I had knownnothing about Ter-Mar or Sound Studios, andlearned that they were well-equipped studiosstaffed by experienced engineers, rather thanthe more naive settings I’d visualized. Withouttoday’s abundance of cheap and small equipment, it’s not surprising, in retrospect,that such facilities really were the only available option. Given the cost of these fullyequipped studios and the labels’ tight budget,it’s impressive that so many records did getfinished. Joseph Jarman’s gratitude in describing Stu Black as an “excellent engineer”was especially nice to hear. Most exciting ofall, for me, is learning that people involvedwith making these records still do recording 30years later. Delmark now has Riverside Studioin its own building, and Bob Koester supervises sessions there. Chuck Nessa doesrecording and mastering work. Terry Martin is“still interested in amateur recording.”

If not in the ways that I expected, I findthe early AACM recordings even more inspiringnow that I know so much about them.


TAPEOP

“People that I workwith, in general,are making music

because it means a lot to them”

-Steve Albini in Tape Op No. 10

Photo by Chris Carnel

Tape Op getsa lot of CD’s inthe mail. Someare great, andwe play themto death, butmany just plainstink. Why?

Maybe nobody is listening.The recording process is great.You can create amazing soniclandscapes that draw the listener in. You can bolster themood of a song with greatoverdubs and studio tricks thatwould be impossible in a livesetting. There’s just one problem. You must have agreat song to begin with.

(ENDPAGE RANT) JUST LISTEN!

The songwriting process is beyond the scope of thisshort column, but it’s obviously the most importantelement. Recording only exists to capture the song andmusic and is not the most important part! It seems thatmany songwriters, especially in the “indie/alternative”rock world, have incredibly small record collections ora really narrow perspective on what they plan toachieve with their music. This is a big problem. I’m notsaying that schizophrenic genre hopping is cool(`cause it usually sucks) but one thing I’ve noticedabout all great artists is that they draw inspiration frommany diverse sources and often times the music theycreate is vastly different from what they listen to.Songwriting should be familiar without being obvious.If you can guess, on first listen, what lyrics are comingup or what chord progression the chorus will use, thena song is predictable and weak. If the lyric line followsthe chords so close that they’re nearly one-in-the-same, then the whole tune feels one-dimensional.Arrangements are very, very important too. Cutting out‘dead’ spots in the songs is very crucial, as can berepeating an earlier part in order to reinforce thematicelements or to give a sense of resolve. All of the abovecan be learned by listening. When you put on yourfavorite record, listen to how the songs are structured.How do the vocal melodies fit the chords? What’s thesong structure? You’ll be surprised at how simple somesongs are and how complex some that appear easy really are. Listening is also incredibly valuable to theengineer/producer/recording geek. Maybe even more

valuable to the recordist than the artist. When I hearpoorly done home recordings, what usually strikes mefirst is how the piece doesn’t sound ‘right’. This ‘right’isn’t a rule laid down by some god of music, it’s whatwe’ve grown accustomed to hearing from the last 90years of recorded music. Not that I’m saying rulesshouldn’t be broken, but if you’re trying to get someone to listen to a recording of a band, it shouldsound similar to records by bands that pursue a common aesthetic. What I hear is people trying toohard. Every piece of the drum kit has been close mic’dand EQ’d drastically and the bass has been tamperedwith until only the lowest lows (“Make it sound deep,man!”) and highest highs remain. What bugs me is,that with a proper amount of listening and perspective,all this could be avoided. Just as a songwriter shouldlisten to the music of others to know what works andwhat doesn’t, recordists should listen to records, a lot,to know what makes them tick.

Personally, I’d be wary of working with anyone,engineer or artist, who hasn’t done a lot of listening.If you’re gonna bend the “rules” of songwriting orrecording, you have to be familiar with the “rules”. Ifyou haven’t put in the time at home listening torecords, how fine tuned will your ears be when it’s timeto mix an album? It’s music, and it all starts with keeping your ears open.

-Larry Crane

Photo by Chris Carnel


TAPEOP

tape op - donutsdocshare01.docshare.tips/files/25172/251729790.pdf · neutral milk hotel tape op a...

Documents