Making "That's Right!"
Page 5 of 5
How many tracks did you use?
Twenty-four, I used 'em all, because we had eight tracks for the drums, two tracks for the bass, guitar was three tracks, three for the brass …
With the bass, you took one direct and one to an amp, or what?
No, actually what I did was they were both direct, but one came out of the preamp out of the back of his [bassist Brad Hallen’s] amp – it was a David Eden amp -- and the other one I took direct out of the guitar and sent it to a Neve preamp. And almost invariably I used the one out of the Neve, but it was a nice combination, because I could get some of the shape sound coming out of his amp. We originally were going to mic the bass amp. I had it worked out so I could do it, but at the last minute, he said, Let’s just listen to it and see if it’ll cut mustard.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Do you ever record bass amps live?
No, almost never. In fact, I don’t think I ever have before, so this was going to be a first.I had a kind of remote room at the opposite end of the building that I was going to put the bass amp in, and covert the signal to line level, shoot it a couple hundred feet, and then back down to instrument level to run it in the amp. And, after he figured out what I was going through to try to set this up, he said, you know what, it’s OK, really. He took pity on me. And it was fun, because he was thrilled with the bass sound, and I think he was convinced that he wasn’t going to be thrilled.
Bass players are among the most often disappointed at recording sessions.
That’s true, because they’re used to hearing it out of an amp. I like the bass amp sound, but it’s just difficult to do it live unless you have a tremendous amount of space or a bank vault for an isolation booth.
So what kind of compression and reverbs did you use?
I basically put it to tape pretty much the way I thought I was going to want it. I didn’t have to do a whole lot of processing outside of EQ'ing it to make it fit in the mix, and compression so it could be a nice, loud, powerful kind of thing.
Yeah, because that’s how the band is.
And it needed to sound that way. I knew it wasn’t going to be like a jazz or classical recording where we would want a whole lot of dynamic range. It had to be loud and in your face, like they are live. If you ever get a chance to see them live, they are one of the best live bands you will ever see. Even if you’re not totally into the music, you’d say, my God what a band. They’re the kind like, I don’t know if you ever watch Conan O'Brien's band, but they’re of that caliber and can play like that.
Were there points during the session when all your levels were good and you were able sit back and listen for a moment?
No. It was so much work getting it set up. I didn’t really have any assistants. We had some people helping me, but I kind of needed to do the stuff that I needed to do. There were many things that I couldn’t figure out until they were actually there.
You didn’t have the benefit of working with them in advance to prepare, and you couldn’t have them come back the next day.
Yeah, knowing that there weren’t really going to be any second chances, that I was going to get one shot at doing this recording and making it really good.
It's like tightrope walking without a net.
It was definitely without a net. All I could do was just keep praying that the Studer didn’t stop. But yeah, there was a moment there when we got everyone’s headphone mixes straightened out, tweaked individual sounds and that kind of thing, and it was like, Push down the talkback button, OK guys, let’s roll a cut and see how the levels are and that kind of stuff. I hit play and record and it’s a record coming back to me out of the speakers. And I’m just getting excited, jumping up and down and going wow, this is really cool. This is why I got into this business. It was really great. And I was a little bit shocked. You just don’t get to make records like that anymore. Everything is building things up from little itty bitty pieces. This was just a great recording of a great artist. I was very privileged to be a part of it. I felt very lucky.
And of course, we got around to mixing it. Initially, Chris had thought he was maybe going to take it back to Rhode Island to have it mixed. And after it was laid down, I said Chris, you have to let me mix this. I was like please, and he said, ohh, OK. And after mixing the first couple of songs, he basically just stuck his head in every couple of hours and said, Everything going OK? I said, I’m happy as a pig in shit.
Where did it get mastered?
I think it was mastered twice. It was mastered somewhere up in Rhode Island. And the label was not real thrilled with the first mastering job. So, I think they remastered it. I’m not sure if they took the already mastered version and adjusted some things, or took my original mixes and remastered it. Actually, the first mastering, the high end was a teeny bit brittle. That’s a taste thing. I don’t know if that’s what they heard or not.
There’s a lot of high end, with the brass, and harmonica and percussion …
Yeah, and I think also everybody got a chance to hear the premastered mixes and completely fell in love with them. And you know, poor mastering engineer, taking something that everybody already loves.
How were your levels during tracking, with all that going through at once?
Well, that’s one of the beauties of tape, it’s very forgiving. And a big part of the sound of that record is the sound of the tape.
The saturation.
Oh yeah. I mean, the guitars were stomping into the meters, and the vocals, and the drums. At one point, I wasn’t really paying attention and I had the studio monitors muted, my ears had been working and it was really late -- we were listening back to the last cut. I rewound the tape with the monitors muted and was playing it back and heard this thwack thwack. I’m like, wow, what the hell is that? I look over, and it’s just the meters slamming against the side. Because the room had been so loud, I hadn’t really noticed it. I’d heard it before, but it had been a long time since I’d heard it. Slam! It’s just a wonderful thing.
I was a little bit on the conservative side knowing that everything was going down, but after the first couple of cuts, I went for it. And these guys know what they’re doing. They weren’t going to make rookie mistakes, like lean into the mic halfway through a song. And I did have a Manley, and a TubeTech and a couple of 1176s and a SHEP/ Neve, which I love, very very cool. But not a whole lot of compression going to tape, the only thing I really compressed going to tape was the vocal and the bass. The other stuff was just like limiter protection. Just a little insurance on the horns, because they put out a tremendous amount of sound pressure level on certain notes, just so the tape wouldn’t get too hot. I wanted to run the levels hot to tape, but I didn’t want to ruin a take. And fortunately, we didn’t lose anything.
You know, I think the title cut on that record may be the very first take we did. I’m not sure, I’ll have to ask Chris and confirm that. But I think that was the first song we did and I think that’s the first take. You could just hear everybody grinning.
Well, let's hope everybody's grinning even wider on Grammy night. Thank you for your time, and congratulations again on the nomination.
Thank you very much.
Prev 1 2 3 4 5
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
