RECORDING August 2022 - 32

DANGER IN THE
WORKPLACE
Set-up and Soundcheck at City Winery, NYC.
Photo by: Avraham Bank
With Tentacles, we had to mix five
songs in three days, so it's important
to establish good communication with
the engineer. I believe in collaboration
and working with a core group of people
you can trust and provide different
perspectives. Once Benni finishes the
first mix, I'll send it around. Tony sends
back maybe one or two sentences, and
Pat is the list maker. I have learned a lot
from Pat in this regard. It's a wonderful
way of cultivating communication. You
simply ask for things you would like to
change, and you never say that something's
wrong or discourage other ideas.
Did he mix it all in the box?
Markus: It's a hybrid setup. He works
in the box, but he has analog gear that
he sends stuff through.
Do you send Markus
and Benni stems or
the full multitracks?
Pat: Both. Usually, when we're first
passing ideas back and forth, I'm just
making stereo stems. I'll do a rough
mix to show the other guys how I hear
something. Sometimes it's just an MP3
mix of my part.
In fact, on " Soup, " my drum part is sourced
from an MP3 rough mix that we liked the
sound of, but that we could never get back
to. I sent that to Steven Wilson, who mixed
that track on the record, and that's what he
used in the final mix. Sometimes you just go
with those happy accidents.
32 RECORDING August 2022
Once we get closer, I'll make, or get
an engineer to help make better stems. I
should mention three good engineer buddies:
Bill Munyon, Adrian Benavides, and
now I'm lucky that Machine (Gene Freeman)
lives near me. They're constantly
helping me when they can. For stems, I've
got three mics on the kick drum, and we'll
put that down to one kick channel. We
will make a single snare channel, a stereo
composite of all the tom-toms, stereo cymbals,
and stereo and mono room mics.
Somehow on this last project, wires got
moved around because the mixes came
back, and I quickly noticed that some of
my stereo imaging was reversed.
Markus: That was because a compressor
crapped out in the studio, and Benni
flipped the cables around to see if the
cables were broken and then he didn't
plug them back in correctly. That's how
that happened.
Do you switch drum
kits or kicks and snares
from song to song?
Pat: While I have all the drums I could ever
possibly need. I haven't changed that kick
drum in years. I'll change the microphones
and packing. Moving a snare drum is
easy, but not the kick drum. Years ago, I
wanted to experiment with everything, but
I've experimented enough, and I've gotten
older and a little lazier [laughs]. One thing I
learned from Gavin Harrison was to try and
have a sound rather than one that changes
from song to song.
How does that correlate
to your live sound?
I'm assuming you are
deliberate about your
live drum setup?
Pat: Stick Men always tour with the
same sound guy, Robert Frazza. We
know each other's likes and habits, and
he's another guy who doesn't want to
reinvent the wheel.
Photo by Markus Reuter
MARKUS' MOBILE
RECORDING RIG/
STUDIO FACTS
DAW: Ableton Live 11 on
Apple Macbook Pro 2019
Converter: Focusrite Scarlett 2i2
Effects and Processing: Neural
DSP Quad Cortex, BOSS SY-1
Headphones: Philips Fidelio
X2HR, Ultimate Ears IEM
Instrument: Touch Guitars AU8
RECORDING August 2022

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