Do you use different mics and gear depending on the type of music?
MB: I've actually done research on blues recording at Chess in Chicago, and Rudy Van Gelder, his style of recording jazz for Blue Note and Riverside — things like that. I think it's a good place to start if you're doing music that has a historical precedent. Start there and see how it works. Don't be afraid to be old fashioned! People who were recording in the '40s, '50s and '60s really knew what they were doing. Feedback from the musicians is a really important part of it. The more specific they can be about the sound, the better. When they say everything sounds good right off the bat, I wonder if they're really paying attention.
BT: Most of the music I record is pretty much in the same genre — fast and loud. A lot of dynamic mics and crushing guitars, maybe one room mic for the drums, depending how fast the song is, because if it's really fast then it's just going to get all muddy. I can't use as many older condensers as I'd like because it won't sound right or historically accurate. They want it to be in your face, they want it to be punchy, and that leaves out a lot of equipment sometimes.
Do you ever have bands telling you you're doing something wrong, something counter to what so and so does?
BT: Not as much as you might think. I'm kind of surprised. They're all pretty well-versed in the recording process now, but I think that a lot of bands realize that recording at home — with 4-tracks or 8-tracks or whatever — and coming into the studio are completely different things. The best thing for them creatively is to let me run this whole end and tell them when they're fucking up or whatever. And the best thing on their end is to play the song and try to be comfortable. Leave this part up to me. I do think it's really important to get the trust of the band in the first 15 minutes.
MB: That's hard to do. There are a lot of engineers out there who maybe don't have a lot of social skills. They may be great at engineering but they may not be so good at addressing the various psychological aspects of having a band in the studio.
Especially if the band is feuding! Make my bass part louder versus you're stealing all my guitar frequencies!
MB: And the engineer is the only person really hearing the music!
BT: I think a lot of the bands who come in here expect you to give them some feedback. You know, "We went to this other studio and the guy didn't say anything!" Never be shy about giving the bands feedback. If they think you're full of shit they'll let you know, and if they like it, they're totally going to like you. Once you realize that they do like the suggestions that you're making, you can figure out what they really want.
Do you guys have any favorite guitar amp micing techniques?
BT: I like to use a good old SM57 and any kind of Sennheiser, like a 421ora441,whichiskindofahi- fi 421. Then you find the best speaker on the amp — on any 4x12 cabinet there is one speaker that will sound better than the others. They don't even have to play. If the guy has any noise or static coming out of the amp then you can tell right away.
MB: So you listen for the brightest speaker?
BT: Mainly one that seems like it has the most tone, the widest range. So you get the two mics, cross them over each other like an x-y pattern, but right on top of each other. I put them half way between the cone and the outside of the speaker — it usually has the most tone right there — then I'll compress the 57 with a LA-3 or an LA-4. The LA-3 is a lot nicer but most people don't have that kind of thing, so any kind of compressor will work. The 57 is aimed more at the center of the speaker, the 441 towards the outer edge of the cone because usually the Sennheisers are a lot brighter. So compress the 57 and print them to different tracks — that way you've got a lot of range from those two mics, and they're always phase coherent so it's really punchy.
Yeah, your guitar sounds are consistently monstrous!
BT: To tell you the truth I don't really do anything — it's usually that setup, or if I run out of microphones, a 57 right on the cone. People come in and say, "What if we put a mic back in the room a bit?" and a lot of times it just doesn't work. It washes out the guitar sound — it can work if you can find the right mics to do it — so we'll try things for about and hour and it turns out the guitar sound they wanted was a 57 right up in the cone.
MB: I never use 57s for anything.
BT: See, he's the hi-fi guy! [laughter]
MB: Not that I'm against them. I think the Beta 58 is a great mic, I just have other mics I like to use on guitars. It just goes to show that there are no rules.
So what mics do you guys reach for first for vocals?
BT: When I use the same thing over and over again, it doesn't sound good after a while. After a couple of weeks it just doesn't sound right anymore — your ears have adjusted and you have to try something else to get it back to right again. The one mic I really like is that Oktava — the square one.
MB: The 219?
BT: Yeah. You can compress it hard, and it compresses really evenly if you have a vocalist who is loud, a screamy punk rock kinda vocalist. I've found the problem with some of the nicer mics — because I like to use that LA-4 for compression for vocals — is you're getting so much more bandwidth and dynamic range that they just don't compress down to a nice manageable level when you're trying to smash them into all these cranking guitars. When you use the Oktava it's really super smooth and it still sounds hi- fi, but you can get it so that it fits in the mix really well. Myles is lucky in that respect because he gets to use all the better mics!
How do you get the kick and the bass to be punchy and defined?
BT: That's funny because I totally agonize about the whole mixing process — is it good? Is it right? I'll be listening to it on headphones, those AKGs [pointing to AKG 240s] at some point. And I try to always make a cassette and listen to it on a little boombox which I trust, just to see if the mix is working. I'll walk down the hallway, about 20 feet from the speakers. It seems like the low end is always the hardest thing. I might just be lucky.
Do you compress the bass?
