Recording - August 2017 - 24

Af t er a Whi le -

Right Away!

It had been quite a long time since I had
needed to work outside my studio, and
while we did tour a couple of newer San
Francisco Bay Area studios that seemed
promising, Anthony and I felt most comfortable returning to a facility in which I
had previously recorded numerous albums: Fantasy Studios' Studio A.

THE MAP

I first began engineering during the
analog era, and I've been fortunate to
have been in session with some engineering greats (Jack Joseph Puig, Bob Clearmountain, Mark Needham, etc.) who all
share one trait in common-hard work.
Because of that, in an era where track
count is essentially a non-issue other than
the amount of effort it takes to put up and
monitor a lot of tracks, I like to set up a
lot of mic coverage. And when I say a
lot, I mean a lot! As you can see from
my spreadsheet, this meant maxing out
Studio A's 48-channel patching capability.
And I truly wish I had a couple more
inputs, because I would've used them.
I have many reasons why I like a lot
of coverage... and in the DAW era, why
not? Anthony and I agreed that we both
loved the sound of live studio recordings
from the 1940s through the 1960s, and
we wanted some of that flavor on this
album. But we both also knew we'd
want to have a tighter contemporary
sound/feel available in mixing.
Studio A is a beautiful-sounding room-
so why not have a stereo pair (or three
stereo pairs, as it turned out), capturing
the room, as well as close-up mics on all
instruments and middle distance mics on
both the horn section and the drum kit?
I love the difference between the ways in
which condenser, ribbon, and dynamic
mics cover a source-so why not use more
than one mic in many of the positions, to
take advantage of that diversity?
This was especially important for spot
mics on the horn section. Not having
worked with at least a couple of the
players before, I didn't want to have to
choose in advance between ribbons and
condensers. Ultimately I guessed that I'd
want to combine both anyway, to get the
24

RECORDING August 2017

best of both technologies, but I couldn't
be sure at the start that I wouldn't prefer
one over the other. Why should I have
to choose one or the other in advance,
if the equipment and channels are available? (And now that I'm mixing, indeed
I'm finding that I prefer the sound of both
mics together on every single horn.)
Then there's "safety". On a project
where people are flying in from out of
state, where there's so much money
on the line, and where I knew I'd be
deeply involved in judging performances
as well as the sounds while we were tracking, it's not inconceivable that problems
could occur and go unnoticed in any
one of the 48 signal paths, even with
Robert and me paying attention intently.
Better safe than sorry!
Having an optional signal path hasn't
just saved the day for me more than
once, it also almost always leads to a
more creative approach to sculpting the
sound while mixing. With the electric
instruments, why not run a DI? Especially
in a situation like this one, having the ability
to blend DI and amp signal, or re-amp later,
can be a lifesaver. With all instruments
leaking everywhere, if one of the electric
players leaves a spot that has to be
edited, that could mean that any kind of
patching of channels recorded with mics
may end up inadvertently ghosting in an
unacceptable way: re-amp to the rescue!
In the case of the guitar tracks, there
were a few tunes where Anthony needed
a couple of different tones during
the tracking. Rather than holding up
the whole session to get things dialed in,
we knew we could just re-amp later. I've
worked with engineers and producers
who prefer to work within the limitations
that used to define production workflow
in the analog era-destructive punching,
minimal track count, expensive and limited
storage media. I lived through that era
and am unapologetically delighted that I
can keep numerous takes and have what
some would consider wretched excess in
terms of coverage. There's no one right
way to go about producing music in the
studio, but I'll take my 48 tracks any day!

feel, it was up to me to plan everything
about the basic tracks session. I'd need a
complete description of the drum kit, and
keyboards to be used. How would the
musicians be placed in the studio? What
about baffles? Anthony opted to have the
guitar amp speaker cabinet in isolation-
would we remote a speaker cabinet, or
would he want to have his combo amp/
speaker cab more than 50' away from
his position in the room, necessitating
some sort of plan for a cable run that
long? Remember, with a typical passive
electric guitar pickup, cable length of
greater than twenty feet results in high
frequency loss due to cable capacitance.
What kind of miking scheme would
work best? Which preamps should I
use? Would I want to use any compression
prior to Pro Tools? And what about overdubs after the basic tracking session:
since both Anthony's cab and Willie
would be in isolation, would I want to
be able to "patch" (overdub into) either
the vocals or Anthony's guitar later? If
so, then I'd need to be able to recreate
their setups at my studio, which meant
using my own equipment to record them.
I spoke with D'Mar about the drum
kit and Tony about the keyboards to be
used at the session. D'Mar's kit was to
be bare-bones: kick, snare, hat, rack
and floor toms, one crash, and one ride.
Tony wanted to use one of Fantasy's two
Hammond organs (with one of their two
Leslie speakers), as well as their Wurlitzer and Fender Rhodes electric pianos.
Tony also expressed interest in utilizing
a technique that Ray Charles used to
use-a "braked" leslie-meaning that
neither the horn nor the rotor would be
spinning; they'd both be at a dead stop.
I hadn't heard of this technique before,
so I did research beforehand. I learned
that to get this to happen, you have to
literally unplug the electric motors that
cause the horn and rotor movement.
Fantasy was kind enough to facilitate
this, and even had Tony come in prior
to the session to choose between the two
Hammonds and Leslies.

THE LAYOUT

Whenever possible, I like to see a
band perform live before I record them.
I was afforded that possibility in the

Once we had picked the room and
had decided upon our target sound and

THE ROOM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - August 2017