EQ Magazine - July 2008 - (Page 20)

Analog Tape, Blood Sugar , and Random Bits of Genius funny to have a conversation like this in the digital age, because if we were trying to make a perfect record the tape machine is not how we would go about doing it. The concept of “good” and “sellable” in regards to this album, is closer to the version of what somebody 30 years ago would have accepted in terms of sound quality. It’s a funny context. People ask us if we “fixed” anything on this album. The answer is “yes,” but we fixed things that humans can fix in a human way. Still, you used RADAR on Narrow Stairs to record safety and alternative mixes, as well as using it to assemble two songs. Tell me more about that. The whole idea was to keep everything on tape. But there was one song we recorded at Robert Lang Studios that kept doing really weird sh*t. It seems we’re in the age of aging tape machines. “Pity and Fear” is like seven performances that were all assembled together. I was dealing with 14 takes of the tail end of that song. Typically, when I am doing twoinch cuts, I will mock them up in RADAR or on a half-inch deck. For that song, I had them mocked up in RADAR, and all the performances were cut up between two reels. When I started cutting them together, I got half way into it, and I realized that, somewhere between tracking Reel One and Reel Two, the tape machine had changed levels from +6 to zero. Everything on Reel Two was coming back 6dB hotter than everything on Reel One. This is in the tracking side, and there’s nothing you can do about that with tape. It didn’t seem worth sacrificing that set of takes, so I cut the whole thing together on tape, and then went into RADAR and matched it all up level-wise. It’s a weird effect, because 6dB on a piece of tape is pretty substantial. You end up with places where the song is really saturated and dense, and then it totally empties out, and then it’s really saturated and dense again. The levels are the same, but all the transient information is different. So that was something I had to do in RADAR, as well as the first song, “Bixby Canyon Bridge.” The first minute-and-a-half—before the big change—was actually done in RADAR. That was the only part that was not a tape recording. “Pity and Fear” was the hardest to track, just because of the whole assembly thing. Because I had to mix it out of RADAR, it ran to 29 tracks. You’ve said “people are obviously making great records in the digital format.” But don’t you prefer the sound of tape? I prefer the sound of tape in particular circumstances. I don’t prefer the sound of tape just because it is tape. I grew up in the age where having a Fostex 8-track and a Mackie board made you lucky. As people got careless towards the end of that time, tape started to be viewed as something we had to get away from. But I really loved the Tchad Blake records [Phish, Peter Gabriel, Los Lobos, Tom Waits, Crowded House], so I stuck with it. He was using tape—often with two machines locked together. That is where I got into running reels at 15 ips with Dolby SR. But you ultimately mixed Narrow Stairs in digital, right? No. It’s half-inch Ampex ATR-102 all the way. There is one conversion at the very end—to CD. And the vinyl we are doing for this record is cut straight from the tape. Did you do many edits or punch-ins? There is very little punching-in on this record. For the most part, if there are edits, they are tape edits. On “I Will Possess Your Heart,” the drums, bass, guitar, one of the keyboards, and half the vocal all went down live. Then, we went back and re-tracked piano, and did a couple of bass guitar punches and drum punches. Can you be a producer in the classic Phil Ramone/Phil Spector sense with your own band? I am more of a producer than a band member these days [laughs]. More often than not, it’s about helping your bandmates build a sound from the ground up. Everybody has an idea of what kind of sound they want. They might say, “I am feeling that this part is cloudy and blue.” Then, we move on from that concept. There’s creative input. Take the guitar sound for the first song, “Bixby Canyon Bridge.” Ben had dialed his sound in, but it wasn’t quite right, so I brought out this old Maestro Rhythm ’N Sound—a trigger box from the late ’60s/early ’70s. We set it up so that every time he played a string, it triggered the sound of an electronic clave. And we used its fuzz settings for the “straight” guitar sound—which sounds really beautiful. I think it’s what Spacemen 3 used on their recordings. Anyhow, that’s a gear decision, but it’s also a creative decision. I think that’s being a producer as much as it is an engineer. Is there a general rule of thumb you abide by for getting Nick’s bass sounds? The bass sound is typically a mix of a direct signal from the Summit Audio TD-100 direct box and a signal from an old Fender Tremolux head, or an Ashdown ABM EVO II. We’ll sometimes record bass cabinets, as well, using either a Sennheiser MD 421 or a Beyerdynamic M 88, positioned The Death Cab boys discussing the next RADAR edit. 20 EQ JULY 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - July 2008

EQ Magazine - July 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Louis XIV, Four TET and Steve Reid, Can Your Record Go Gold in the Digital Age Tool Box Death Cab For Cutie Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Propellerhead Reason 4 Sony Acid Pro 6 EDAX Audio Labs VTP-100 M-Audio Profire 2626 Tape Simulator Shootout Tape Simulators Sounds Room With a VU: Infrasonic Sound Recording Company, Los Angeles, CA.

EQ Magazine - July 2008

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