Recording - February 2020 - 25

Do you ever have moments where
you get a mix from somebody, and
you pull up the faders and think, "I
wish I could have recorded this because it would have sounded better?"
Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes not. Usually,
whatever I'm given, I make the best of. On
some of the online forums my biggest complaint has been the mono room mic. I keep
thinking, why did they do that when they
could've put up a stereo pair just as easily?
[laughs] But you know, whatever you get,
like a mono room mic, you figure out what
to do with it. Sometimes the most interesting
mixes are those with poorly recorded tracks.
Cause then I have to work harder to get it
to sound good and end up with a mix that
sounds much better than what came in.

I know you have your own mix room.
I'm assuming you work in Pro Tools.

completely. I'll set the session up in Pro
Tools ahead of time and then route all of
the outputs to the desk. I put the vocal
in the middle, drums and guitars over
on the left, and the keyboards, strings,
and horns or whatever on the right. Then
I'll turn any automation or plugins in the
session off, unless it's something specific
the producer or the artist wants.

Let's talk about your remix of the
1969 self-titled album from The
Band. You had done Music from Big
Pink previously?
That's right.

When you got the tapes, what were
your initial thoughts when you pulled
up the faders?
I actually thought it was a better recording than the first album because it was all
done on eight-track. Four of the songs on
the first album were four-track. There was
a bit more to work with, and you could
tell that the band worked a little harder
making the second one. The first album
was almost a live recording-hardly any
overdubs. For the second album, the basic tracks were all still pretty much live,
but they did add backing vocals and
horns and things like that.

MEET US AT OUR NEW LOCATION:
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Correct, but I don't mix in the box. I have
a 72 input SSL G+ series console with the
G series automation, which I still think is
the best mixing automation ever thought of.

I am assuming you use mostly outboard then. Do you use any plugins?
I use a lot of outboard gear but I use
plugins as well, especially since Apogee
created its plugins. Because I mix in surround and stereo at the same time, my
patch bay is a mess of cables. Sometimes
when I need a compressor on a backing
vocal or something, I'll just click in the Apogee Opto compressor plugin in Pro Tools
to avoid weeding through the spaghetti.
My reverbs are also mostly in the box, but I
send them from aux sends on the desk into
aux channels in the PT session containing
the reverb plugins, then back out to the
desk. So, I use them just like outboard gear.

What is your go-to reverb plugin?
I use Altiverb, and now I've been using
Clearmountain's Domain. It's taken over
for a lot of the outboard that I usually use,
especially since a bunch of my hardware
delays died recently-the plugin was
finished just in time! [See our review of
Clearmountain's Domain and further insights from Bob on page 60.-Ed.]

When you start a mix, do you have
a template you start with, or do you
blindly throw everything up on the
board and see what's there?
I like to start each mix from scratch with
a clean slate. I normal out the console
RECORDING February 2020

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Recording - February 2020

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