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“Probably
the biggest challenge is in the mix, to make it something commercially viable,
strong, aggressive and forward, meshing the two worlds and creating spaces
with reverbs and delays that both work, instead of having one sound very
electronic and techno and the other sound lush and beautiful. It’s
not particular to this album; it’s particular to the way Joe hears
music,” says Gellert, who worked with Jackson on his Heaven and Hell,
the instrumental Symphony 1 and mixed the recent Live in New York album.
“I use all the stuff everyone else uses—the Lexicon 480, Lexicon
delays and a combination of vintage compressors and newer compressors. I’ve
been using a new Sony reverb machine [S777], which is an amazing-sounding
unit. It’s this new technology that Sony has been dealing with. It’s
a sampling reverb, so somehow they sample actual acoustic spaces and make
it into a digital reverb you can use. I guess it’s the next generation
of digital reverbs, because it sounds really great to my ears. I mixed this
on a digital console, which adds a whole other level of detail available,
because everything is automatable. You have to think of the digital signal
path in a different way, and you really have to use your ears. It’s
not the same thing as an analog signal path, but it can work.
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Engineer
Dan Gellert at Avatar Studios (click for larger view)
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“The biggest
pro of using a digital console is the level of detail that is immediately
available when you’re mixing,” says Gellert, who, as chief engineer
at Avatar Studios (formerly the Power Station), actually had a hand in
putting the rooms together. “To give you an example, on an analog
console you can do everything. With automation you can do anything you
want, but sometimes it’s a bit of a negotiation. If you have 10 hours
to do a mix, and you want to set up an effect, it can take 15 minutes
to set it up to get it right. You can always do it, given enough patch
cords, but that’s a negotiation. That’s 15 minutes out of a
10-hour mix, whereas with a digital console, because everything is automatable,
15 seconds after you decide you want to do something, it’s done.
Of course, along with that comes a level of complication, but when you’re
at the level of knowing how, it’s a great tool to be able to get
to that detail instantly.”
While the London Royal Academy of Music-schooled Jackson comes in with
completely written charts and scores, he doesn’t really demo his
songs unless he needs to for another singer he may be using on the project.
(Marianne Faithfull sang lead on one track of this album, “Love Got
Lost.”) His own equipment, Jackson says, is pretty bare-bones:
“I have a few synths and a computer with a sequencing program. I’ve
been using Studio Vision, but I think I’m going to be changing, because
the company went bust. I don’t have a home studio—I don’t
like the idea of it. I just have a writing setup, which is my laptop and
Yamaha KX88 keyboard and a few synth modules. I have an E-mu Sampler E-IVx
and a Roland JV-1080, which I like, an E-mu Orbit and a Nord Lead. Of
course, I have a piano as well, which I do quite a lot on, and it is still
the best.”
He says while he has very definite sonic ideas, he is not at all a “gearhead”
and leaves the technical decisions to his cohort, Gellert. “I find
him good to work with. I don’t need a co-producer, as such, but it’s
nice to have someone who is a very good engineer, and who can take care
of a certain amount of stuff that I don’t really want to deal with
on the more technical end of things. That’s why he gets an associate
producer credit—because he does take over a little bit of the production
duties, yet at the same time, the end result is my idea of how I wanted
it to sound. I just think he makes things sound good. And sometimes when
you’re working with a lot of keyboards and sampled stuff, as opposed
to a band and a lot of guitars, it can end up sounding a bit thin or unsubstantial,
but somehow it doesn’t with Dan’s engineering. I’m not
very specific about how to get a sound, but I am quite fussy about how
I want things to sound,” notes Jackson, who adds that even though
his studio savvy has definitely increased through the years, he still
prefers not to become too involved in that respect. “I’m more
aware of what can be done and how to do it, without really delving into
the area of being an engineer, because I believe there’s only so
much you can do. You can’t do everything well, so I prefer to put
my efforts into being as good of a musician as I can be, rather than also
trying to be an engineer. People diversify too much sometimes. I think
I have done that in some ways in the past.
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Reprinted with
permission from 
Magazine, November, 2000
© 2000, Intertec Publishing, A Primedia Company All Rights Reserved
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