You've found some success recording in the classical world.
It's becoming my niche. I went to a summit in Nashville in November, and I was there as the token one young classical person. They were like, "We need the odd duck to balance this out." It's a funny, weird, little insular world. Forever, it was three old dudes sitting in a room saying, "This year we will make five records with this orchestra, five records with this pianist, and that's what we will release." Now, the label system is adrift, especially in the classical world. There are a lot of these smaller players: PARMA [Recordings], Bridge [Records], and Delos [Productions]. They're doing a lot of great work, but it's not so A&R-driven anymore. It's more artists going out, picking their rep, and then deciding, "It's time to make a record." So, it means there are a lot more of us random engineers popping up and filling in the gap where we can.
Did you grow up on classical music?
Not even close. My family is not musical at all. I come from a family of pilots. I am forever a disappointment, because I don't want to learn to fly! [laughter] I grew up wanting to learn to play the violin, but my parents said, "You have to take a couple of years of piano first because it's cheaper and easier." We had a piano at home. I took a couple of years of piano, and then they asked, "Are you ready to switch?” I said, "I have to fucking tune this thing. I'm not tuning my own instrument," so I stayed with the piano. I was dabbling back and forth between learning to improvise, while also studying classical piano. I had a couple weird little stints playing in some big bands as a teenager. I oddly ended up in audio because I wanted to get a piano degree. My piano teacher called me before my audition at The Hartt School in Hartford, Connecticut, which is where I ended up going for undergrad. He said, "I don't think you're good enough to get in for piano performance, but you have good SAT scores. Maybe you should try to get in for engineering and take piano lessons on the side." I put in for audio engineering and the interview went well. They said, "You can do a double major if you can figure out the credits." I got shoehorned into audio, and this is so much more fun than playing the piano! I'm not isolated for six to eight hours a day. I don't have to be extroverted, but I don't have to be alone. The classical thing happened because I could read scores. If you're a pianist, you're used to reading more than one line of music at a time. Being able to read orchestra or opera score, you have no other choice. The opportunities kept coming. I still dabble. I do singer/songwriter and acoustic pop music, but 80 to 90 percent of what I do is classical now.
What did you grow up listening to?
I mostly grew up in rural Arkansas, listening to country music and classic rock. I was not a kid who walked into a conservatory being able to name off my Köchel numbers – the Mozart cataloging system.
I assume that's not an expectation for your job.
Previously, there was an expectation that sound technicians were often classical musicians who were able to hit some buttons and push some faders. One of my closest mentors, Tim Martyn, was a Juilliard pianist. He puts me to shame. When we work together, mostly on the New Jersey Symphony, it's humbling for sure.
How did you end up in Connecticut from Arkansas?
I was looking to get out of Arkansas. I was looking to be closer to some of the bigger East Coast cities. So, I applied to Berklee [School of Music] in Boston. I applied to NYU and Hartt. Hartford was a great spot; it's three hours to New York or Boston. I could pop out and see and hear different music and stay busy. Moving from a farm in Arkansas to New York City would have been incredibly overwhelming. It ended up being the right place, at the right time.
Is Hartt a conservatory? Is it a university? Is it both?
It used to be a conservatory, the Hartt School. Then it was absorbed into the University of Hartford; a conservatory within this larger university. For audio, you end up bouncing over into some university electronics and math. They have one of the best acoustics programs in the country. That was fun to get to do a semester of acoustics and walk into an anechoic chamber. The whole concept of that undergrad program was learning how to be a performer, even if you're not a performance major, while also doing all the audio on the side.
Do other classical engineers come out of that program?
There have been a few. When I was there, it was run by Justin Kurtz who still teaches there. He's a wonderful teacher. There are a couple other teachers who are more into rock and pop styles. More rock engineers should know how to read music and communicate clearly musically. I've done some rock records, and I love pop music.
It's nice to have some basic sight reading.
It's funny, because some of the old-school guys can't read scores. It’s a crazy range where we have Juilliard guys and these guys. When we send them edits, we have to send them with timecode because they can't read the score. Now, it's expected that you can at least read through a vocal score or such. I'm working on something right now that's these crazy études, and it's super fast. To make some of these edits, I'm playing it back at 50 percent and thinking, "Did I lose the 16th note?"
When you were at The Hartt School, what type of classical engineering were you taught?
I look at like my time at Hartt as trying as many things as I could to see where I'd fit. Different projects were coming through, and it'd be at this certain skill level. There was quite a bit of having to record bands, which was good for me because it was not easy. There was all the classic conservatory study, theory or training, stacked with electrical engineering, acoustics, and music history. The closest I got to having a fun commercial music history was we had one course that was talking about the history of recorded music – going through from wire recording all the way forward. That got me started, but I didn't flesh out more of that history of recording knowledge until after I finished grad school.
What did you find challenging about recording rock bands when you'd been learning more acoustic and classical engineering?
Maybe this is a controversial opinion, but I think classical recording is not actually that hard. It is making a perfect document, but there's less of that direct creativity where you're making something out of nothing. The group exists or the performer exists, the instrument exists, the space exists, and you're trying to capture it and then enhance it. I always say my ideal classical recording is like the greatest concert you’ve ever been to, where you're sitting in a perfect seat. If I get the placement right, if it's a good instrument, if it's a good space, and if it's a good performer, then it's good. With rock music, you [need] that initial spark of creativity to get a tight and unique drum sound and an emblematic guitar and bass blend. Arrangement is such a huge part of it; it's a lot more instant pressure. Every band is different: Some of them come in and say, "We want you to give us information. What are you hearing?" Some of them say, "We came in, and this is how we always performed it." It's a totally different artist psychology. When you’re in college, you're recording college kids. None of us really knew what we were doing, and we were all pretending to be adults in that scenario. It was challenging.
How do you find the perfect place for a microphone?
I teach a recording class at The New School. I teach them that the further from the instrument, the less important the choice is. Choosing a good performer and a good instrument, especially piano, you have to find one that sounds good and is well tuned and well maintained. But next is the microphone and where it is. From there, choose the preamp, converter, and DAW. All these choices make a little bit of a difference. If you get down to arguing between if it's better to track in Pro Tools or [Merging Technologies] Pyramix, that's a tenth of a percent of what the sound is going to be. There are some guys out there that would probably bite my head off for saying that.
If you picked one thing as an engineer, what would you say is your most important job?
Microphone placement is the big thing.
Are there secrets in the classical world that a rock engineer wouldn't know?
There's a lot more reverb.
I meant with mic choices.
It's different, right? Because there are less directional mics. We're going for all these crazy omnis. For a lot of guys, their dream is to have a matched trio of [Neumann] M 50s and do old-style Decca [Tree mic array]. I think it's less about the microphone itself, and it's more about putting it in the place that's most complementary to the instrument.
How do you approach that?
I use my ears. Nobody showed me this until I got to grad school. One of our teachers there said, "Walk around this piano and put your head all over the place. Put your head under the instrument, put your head over the instrument, go to the tail, and go to the performance perspective." We each had a pair of microphones. It was eight people in a class; small enough that we could do that. Everyone put a pair of microphones where they thought it sounded good. We learned eight perspectives on a piano. That's still how I do mic'ing, especially for instruments that I don't know at all. Jess [Tsang], for example, will bring me the most ridiculous world percussion instruments. She'll ask, "How do you mic this?" I'll say, "Make it make a sound, and we'll figure it out." It really is that simple. The microphone is a dumb ear; it doesn't have a brain attached to it. So, put your ears where it's good. Sometimes you have to put it where they want it. I recorded cimbalom for the first time in November. It's a Hungarian hammered dulcimer that's got a little table and mallets. I listened to him play, and I guessed where the microphone should go. He said, “No, it should go over here.” I said, “Okay. I've never done this. We'll put it where you want it.” It worked. It's so fucking loud.
Would you change the microphone when something like that happens?
Sometimes – if I get to know a particular performer's style, the instrument, or the hall – I'll change microphone selection to enhance or suppress sounds that are attractive or unattractive.
What would be an example?
Some violinists play bright instruments. If it's a super bright instrument and a super bright hall, I'm not going to put a DPA 4011 over the bridge because that's the brightest point, unless the performer wants it. There are some performers who play super bright who love that sound. I might try putting a pair of Royer mics out. I might aim more for backplate sound instead of over the bridge sound, so that it's warmer and rounder. Front plate is the top, and back plate is the under part. For that, I'm putting microphones down lower and aiming up. I stole that idea from somebody else. We're all just stealing from each other!
How does placement change as an ensemble gets bigger?
It depends on the situation, budget, time, and manpower. If I'm recording an orchestra, I want no fewer than 24 mics. The ideal is that – using your ears – one could put two to four microphones out and get a pretty good sound. I did a lot of that experimentation in undergrad, where nobody else wanted to do orchestra most of the time. I didn't have as much competition to take those concerts on. The conductor did not want to see mics. If I can only add three or four spot mics, where do I put them to make it a little bit better?
Did you start with three overhead omnis? What was the bare minimum?
I joined the recording studio staff there, which they offered to students at different points in their learning journey. We were doing archival capture of recitals and concerts. Their archival capture was two omni mics behind the conductor, and that was that. I started with that, and then I thought, "This doesn't sound like what I want."
How far did they space them?
Around two and a half feet. That's pretty normal. Sometimes I'm going out further, and especially if I have a center mic, I can go really wide. Center mics are notoriously difficult to put out for concerts because they're right in the middle of where the strings are. The conductor gets mad if we can't hang the mic, and we couldn't hang mics for this. I started out by adding outriggers to fill in that string sound – with collegiate players, a lot of times brass is plenty loud. You won't need spots back there!
Those were still omnis?
I go back and forth. I ended up doing cardioids out there in the end. If it's not an amazing hall, I'll do sub-cardioids because they focus a little bit more in on strings. I find that if I have eight channels to record an orchestra, I'll use four mics across the front. Bass spot [mics] make a huge difference, because it adds that definition that we're used to hearing on CDs. If I can put a pair over woodwinds, that's awesome. If I can put a mic over the timpani, that's pretty excellent. Those eight channels will get me 80 percent of the way there. The spot mics are a lot of cardioids. I'm very content with [Scheops] MK 4s or [Neumann KM] 184s on woodwinds. I'm not pushing them super crazy hard, unless the orchestra is really bad or the hall is bad.
Was there a particular preamp you learned on, or did you develop preferences?
At the top, they're all quite similarly good. Because we're usually going in and building a studio into a space for a week to do a concert, it’s whatever travels well, is easy to troubleshoot, and has a lot of headroom. I've used a lot of Grace m802s. I want to bring Millennia preamps around, but they're fragile. They do not like being bumped around, and if they break that's an expensive fix. I wish I had an eight-channel Millennia [HV-3D preamp] with a Dante card in the back – that would be so slick. But, right now, I've got a Grace for all my mains and a couple of RME 12Mics. It's a newer unit that RME makes.
Is it also transformerless?
Yes. It's a good one. I have happily used the Merging Technologies gear, like the HAPI interface and Horus preamp. Those are also all super clean.
Coming from a rock background, I use transformerless preamps very little.
Yeah, which makes sense, because the transformer sounds like something. Our goal is to have it sound like nothing. I will be honest; I do a little bit of mastering and often I'll get something that's stupid clean. It's all DPA [mics] through Grace [preamps] into Pyramix and then pristinely edited. I’ll have to dirty it up a little bit to make it sound more real. I’ll throw an SSL transformer into the mastering chain. It's not verboten to have transformers.
It's fascinating to me – how "dirtying it up a little" in the classical world is a transformer. [laughter]
Yes, exactly. Some guys will do exciters, and that's crazy.
I like the idea of, "Here's a transformer. That's just enough color to sound more like a recording."
It puts a little stamp on it, where it's like, "This was made by people."
Jumping back to your story, you ended up in grad school after that?
I worked through undergrad. For the first summer, I was lucky – I got to intern for a local mix engineer and guitarist, Jim Chapdelaine, who was doing a lot of PBS Austin City Limits-style recordings in the Connecticut and tri-state area. That was super fun. It gave me a little bit of idea of how to deal with broadcast. That, ironically, helped me the next year. I put in an application to go to the Banff Centre [For Arts and Creativity] for four months, which I really had no business doing. I was 20. I looked back at that time the other day [when] I was peeling through hard drives to get to an old project. I opened one that had the portfolio that I sent in for my application. They should not have let me in, but they let me in. I found out later it was because I had that radio and TV experience. They had just opened a radio station at the Banff Centre. I came in with all these other 25-to-40-year olds and, spent the summer following people around asking, "How do you do everything?" I was doing 5 a.m. calls for radio. It was learning as you go, and fixing things as you go. There were not a ton of technical people in the radio areas – it was a lot of producers. A lot of those people that I was there with had done the McGill Graduate Program [in Sound Recording]. I ended up meeting two of the profs at McGill who came to lecture over the summer: George Massenburg [Tape Op #54, #63] and Richard King.
Who is Richard King? I certainly know George.
The easiest way to sum it up is he's done every Yo-Yo Ma record for the past 15 years. He was brought in to replace Bud Graham, who was their big classical guy. Richard said, "You're 20. So, you're not looking at grad schools, but when you get there, you should keep in touch," which was super kind of him. After that, I developed a good relationship with the person who is running the audio program at Banff, and I ran into her the next year at AES. She said, "Well, what are you going to do now? You have two more years of school, and then what happens?" I was like, "I want to go try working at Tanglewood [Music Center] by the time I'm a senior." She said, "Why would you go as a senior? You could just go next year." She sent me off to go meet Tim Martyn, who was running the program there, and 30 minutes later I had a job for the summer. I did two summers there. I was working with different guys at McGill at the time, half of whom were like, "You should totally go do it," and half of whom were like, "You don't need to go do it." I got to the end of my undergrad, and it wasn't that I felt I couldn't work, but it was that I wanted to get much better. The program is structured where you go and you record your fucking ass off. You record day and night. You go to class during the day, and you record at night and you record on the weekends. There are always outside projects, and there's a ton of work to do. But then you come out of it and somehow you are supposed to know what you're doing. You're constantly working, and you're learning electronics with Robert-Eric [Gaskell] or studying recording with George [Massenburg]. Learning how to compress guitars with George was super cool. We were learning [Dolby] Atmos. We got to test a lot of 3D microphones. The grad school was like a playground; a really painful playground. [laughter]
Were you recording rock or classical?
All of it. In place of a thesis, each year I had to give them about 50 minutes of music that I had recorded and that was the grade. It had to be all different styles. Mine was super heavy with my classical work that I felt good about, but then I had to put in some rock, pop, and acoustic folk.
Is it a line of performers wanting to record for free? Like the way people get their haircut for cheap at a student salon.
It is sort of that vibe, because it's Montréal. There's an amazing music scene. And everybody knows about this program because it's an excellent studio space that they have. "How do I get into the studio? I don't care what poor sleep-deprived schmuck is behind the board."
Is it one studio that everyone shares?
They have a couple, but if you're going to do pop rock style there's one space that has all the amps, booths, and the fun outboard gear.
What's the console with that one?
They used to have a big API, and they got rid of it right before I came in. Now, it's all in the box. I was mad. My wife, Noëlle Byer, did the same program two years after me, and she got all this fun gear that I'd asked for when I was there. Now it's an [Avid] S3 [control surface] in there. I was pissed. We had the Euphonix from three years before. I hated the initial unboxing and having to map everything. I have an S3 at home now. It's the tactility instead of going in and drawing something like a fader ride in with your mouse.
Is that for the pop music you do, or the classical?
