EQ Magazine - August 2008 - (Page 22)

Here I Am Again pplying copious amounts of compression to ?uestlove’s drum tracks on Lay It Down is a technique lifted from the hip-hop production playbook. It was a calculated move on behalf of the production team with the goal of adding some modern urban attitude to the mix. “The samples you hear on hip-hop albums are basically just an old drum sound that has been squashed,” explains Douglass. “The artist has taken the sound off a record that had been mastered already, and then that sound is stuck into a sampler which squashes it again, and it ends up totally grainy.” “In the mixing stage, I like to overcompress,” adds ?uestlove, who wanted to mimic the sounds of sampled drums. “I go through four or five different stages of compression. I high the signal lightly with a Neve 33609 when we record to tape, and then I compress the signal again—but a little harder. Then I apply bus compression, and, finally, I compress it once more in the mastering stage.” The drummer says his heavyhanded and liberal use of compression gives his snare the large, spreading bottom that is redolent of Al Jackson’s sound on Green’s earlier records. Though ?uestlove’s snare exhibits some distortion, Nichols laughs at the thought that this is indicative of poor engineering. “I’m sure it is distorted,” he says. “I once told an engineer that I wanted something to sound like an old record, and he asked, ‘You want it to sound like a bad recording?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ Having certain aspects of a recording sound imperfect is part of achieving the feel of those old recordings.” A For ?uestlove’s kick drum sound, Smeltz uses a Neumann U47 FET as the outside mic, and an AKG D112e as the inside mic. The Neumann is routed to a Moogerfooger Low-Pass Filter pedal, which Smeltz uses to tune the kick to the bass a little better, and also extend the drum’s resonance. (“That’s the glue that binds the kick drum and bass sounds together,” he says.) The D112e is employed mostly to capture the attack of the kick. As much as Smeltz is a fan of using analog outboard gear and quirky pedals to dial in ?uestlove’s oftentimes bizarre drum sounds, he admits that he sometimes prefers using plug-ins when mixing. “I have all the actual Moogerfooger pedals,” Smeltz says, “but I tend to mix with [Bomb Factory’s] Moogerfooger plug-ins because the recall feature makes my life so much easier. Of course, plug-ins are really cool, but don’t expect a Universal Audio 1176 plug-in to sound like a real 1176. But I don’t really care what a plug-in is trying to emulate if I can get a good sound out of it.” hen it came to establishing a balance between old and new sounds for Lay It Down, having both Smeltz and Douglass working on the project was exactly what ?uestlove and Green needed. Smeltz’s experience runs the gamut from the smooth soul stylings of Teddy Pendergrass to the remixing experiments of King Britt, and Douglass’ ears have been employed by everyone from Donny Hathaway to Timbaland and Justin Timberlake. While the duo worked independently, they both agreed that handling the mix out-of-the-box, and with as much analog processing as possible, was the only way to go. “It just felt right,” says Smeltz, “I mixed at Legacy on the studio’s SSL J9000. They have 24 Neve 1081 EQs right behind the desk, and they also have an old plate reverb that’s dirty and noisy. I loved the way it sounded.” “I tried to avoid using plug-ins,” adds Douglass, “because I wanted to keep the mixes from sounding brittle and harsh. All of my EQ, compression, and effects were from outboard gear.” A dry perspective is another signature of the Al Green sound present on Lay It Down. Recording the W instruments in a dead room was key, and to retain the natural sound, Smeltz and Douglass went light on applying reverb or any other effects that would dramatically alter the sense of organic ambience. “I use slight delays a lot—they give you the illusion of reverb, but they don’t give you the noise and clutter of reverb,” explains Douglass. “There is reverb on the record—I have a Sony DRE777 that I’ve used to sample every room in Manhattan—but you can’t really hear it. My whole thing is that once you can tell there is reverb on the track, you’ve used too much. Reverb is supposed to enhance the sense of space, not take over the sound.” While everyone agreed the amount of bleed and noise on the tracks were a plus, they also wanted to ensure the final mix was clear enough to be marketable in this day and age. “Part of the looseness and openness of the drums came from tracking them mostly with room mics,” says Douglass. “It wasn’t as tightly miked as a lot of drums on modern records. For example, there was one song where the toms weren’t very present, and I had to get them up there to sound like that old Philadelphia kind of pop. ?uestlove didn’t hit them that hard, and if you tried to bring them up, you would be bringing up a combination of mush and sidewash. Those tracks required gating to take out some of the noise, compression to bring up the volume, and EQ to ensure the tones didn’t step on everything.” he fact that ?uestlove and Green’s team all had one foot in the vintage soul camp definitely helped the album deliver sounds that hearken back to the golden age of soul. But for all involved, Lay It Down was more than an attempt to recreate the sounds of the ’70s—it was a unique opportunity to reconcile the recording methods of the present and the past. The team succeeded at integrating tried-and-true engineering practices and stellar performances with modern recording technology, and the end result is an album full of original Memphis sounds lightly buffed for the iPod age. “It sounds like an old record with the veil lifted off,” says Douglass. ccording to Smeltz, ?uestlove’s distorted drum tracks aren’t simply the result of squashing and limiting. “It’s Line 6’s Amp Farm,” the engineer confesses. “I use Amp Farm on his hi-hat all the time. It’s one of his signature sounds. You can hear some of the grind from the hi-hat—which is recorded using a Shure SM81— bleeding into the snare. Sometimes, I’ll even split his bottom snare mic into two channels, and use Amp Farm on one of the channels, assigning it to a separate fader, and layering it under the dry track.” T A 22 EQ AUGUST 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com

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

EQ Magazine - August 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Lyrics Born, Fink, David Kahne on Working with Paul McCartney, What a Future with no Record Industry looks like Tool Box ?uestlove Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Sonar 7 Apple Logic Pro 8 USM Mic Round-Up USB Mics Chameleon Labs 7720 Sounds Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - August 2008

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