Recording - January 2017 - 17

Yes, and on one of these trips field recording, well, that's
definitely the mic I'm going to bring... because, like you said, I
can get twelve different mics from this one microphone, and it
will work whether I am recording a male voice or a female
voice. For a male voice I might use the C12 and for a female
voice I might use the U47, and it has the ability to shapeshift
into whatever it needs to be for that moment.
Are you concerned about how well the Slate, or any other
mic, copies the sound of a vintage model?
Those vintage mics all have differences between them. Every
47 is slightly different; it'll have a basic sound, but every one of
them has a slightly different character. I have a Telefunken U 47
and I love it, but I've pretty much left it in its suitcase for a while
because so many of the newer mics, like the Mojave, handle
vocal duties so well and the differences are kind of minute.
The older 47 is so delicate and I just don't want to abuse it
any more. I want to be able to just say, "OK, just scream your
head off" and not feel that I'm abusing a $15,000 microphone
[laughs]. But yeah, the VMS is a super exciting new thing; I was
surprised that it's all analog, but it's just perfectly calibrated so the
plug-in software will represent those classic microphones.

Getting Into The Details
Moving on to mixing and editing, I know you are well known
for your work with Tool and other really heavy technical
bands... Can you tell me your thoughts on editing and sample
replacement? I know that it's pretty common in that genre.
The music will dictate how far the editing goes, but generally
anything that is competing on the radio or commercially will be
somewhat quantized. The metal stuff, anything to do with hard
music... I generally will edit it right down to every hi-hat tap.

Do you do that yourself, or do you have assistants that do that?
Well, it depends on who's available, and I'll usually have an
engineer do it...
Because it's tedious! [laughs]
It's tedious and time-consuming, so I'll take over engineering
duties and have my trusty engineer go off into another room
and do the editing on the drums, to keep us on track timewise.
What is your process?
I've done some quantizing with [Avid] Beat Detective, but I've
found it to be very cumbersome and sometimes screws up, so I
prefer to do the editing by hand. I'm still experimenting on ways
to cut the time on that and have it still sound somewhat natural.
I also use samples, but I only use them to augment the live
drums because I do love the sound of live drums. I've started
using the Slate Trigger 2 drum replacement software. I'll use
that on an auxiliary track and just blend that in with the live
drums to augment kick, snare, and sometimes toms.
What are your thoughts on tracking to a click?
I think that if a band or a drummer wants to play without a
click, I'm all for that, but I have to be very careful with how
we'll be able to do overdubs later. "Do we need a count
between breaks if the drums stop playing, how will we do
overdubs through there?" Sometimes after a performance,
when we've recorded drums without a click, I've had to add
clicks in so the band can follow along for overdubs.
No matter what, I want the drums to sound as natural as
possible. Sometimes drummers fear that I'll take the life out of
their performance and the ebb and flow of the song will get
hurt, but I honestly think that it helps more than it hurts to have
a click track in and some quantizing happening.
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