Recording - September 2017 - 20

RYAN FREELAND:
TRACK FOR THE MIX, MIX FOR THE MASTER

in the outside world gets monitored back
to a record input, so if I have to recall,
we can re-print the effects and it's usually
fine. Things can change, so a recall might
not be possible if you didn't print your effects. The plate's decay time might be different because it got tweaked for another
song, or it might just be finicky and sound
different that day.
Tape is the same way; depending what
it's doing that day, and where you are on
the reel, it might sound different. That's
part of what I love about analog. But it's
caught me once or twice; on this record,
I did some late-night prints once and the
capstan was slipping. I didn't monitor

the mix carefully enough, and they came
back and said, "What's that 'whooop'
at 3:20?" I went back and listened,
and I said, "Son of a gun-the capstan
slipped!" I was thinking, "Man, that's bad
engineering... but it was midnight and I
just said, 'Ah, it's probably fine'." [laughs]

It's refreshing to find out that it
happens to the pros, too! That
leads into my next question: do
you remember any songs where
you ran into things you needed
to fix, or where Paul pointed out
something he wasn't sure about, or
was it a pretty smooth operation?

"Music's an emotional thing,
and I think that mixing should
be just as emotional a part of
the process as anything else."

Most of it was great; Paul's a really
good recording engineer. There was
one song where there was a lot of
squeaking on the two acoustics...

"Philly Sinks?"

That's it. They said, "We love that,
that squeak is part of the cool weird
thing about it," and I said, "Okay..."
[laughs] I did what I could without
getting too deep into it, and when they
listened to it again weeks later, they
said, "What's that weird squeaky thing
that keeps happening?" I said, "That's
the squeaks from the acoustic guitars."
"Yeah... we gotta get rid of some of
those." [laughs]
I had to go in and do edits. We didn't
get rid of them all, but there were a lot
of them. Mic technique does affect that
stuff, but guitars make noises. That was
probably the one technical problem we
had to deal with.

You usually record Americana, not
your typical ultra-tight pop songs...
Paul told me that Aimee does her
own vocal comping from multiple
takes, making sure her melody is
interpreted the way she wanted it,
but I have to wonder: do you do
any vocal tuning or drum quantizing
in records like this? Does one
quantize Jay Bellerose?

It would defeat the purpose... kind of
like sound-replacing him. "We need a
tighter kick, this one's too flabby and
big!" [laughs]

Do you ever have a moment where
you say, "Oh, I'll move that one
hit," or is that a no-no for you?

Oh, I'm totally not a purist with that
stuff. It's never that heavy-handed, but
I'll shift a beat, or if there's a section
that's a little lumpy, I'll just cut the whole
band from a different take where everybody's pocket feels a little better. When
you record all live in a room, it's just
easier to do that. Everybody's playing
to Jay's pocket, you can't just shift him
and have it make sense. It's never "Let's
put this on the grid," it's "Let's make this
feel good in the best way we can."
There's no purity to it; it's recording,
you want to dig in... you signed up for
it, and it's forever. If it bothers you, you
20 RECORDING September 2017

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