An Interview With Producer Butch Vig

Many of you reading this are located in a small town recording the local talent. You think that it's impossible to break out onto the national and even international scene, but producer/engineer Butch Vig is a great example that it can be done.

Here's a great interview of Vig as he explains how his breaks with Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana came about.

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The Foo Fighters And The Beauty Of Analog

There's a great article on emusician.com that has a interview with everyone involved with the latest Foo Fighters album, Wasting Light, which was done in leader Dave Grohl's garage with producer Butch Vig. The album was also a return to recording analog in that not a piece of digital gear was used in its making.

Those of us who grew up in the era of tape machines are all too familiar with some of the things that the Foos willingly put themselves through. First of all, especially back in the 8 track days, you didn't just go for a good drum track when recording basics, the whole band had to be spot on before you moved on. This lead to a lot of takes.

As Grohl says in the article:

“I am no stranger to tape,” Grohl says. “Call me dumb, but the simple signal path of a microphone to a tape machine makes perfect sense to me. There’s not too many options, and the performance is what matters most.”

But not everyone agreed with Grohl’s “analog only” rule. “The first song we recorded, we get a drum take and Butch starts razor-splicing edits to tape,” Grohl recalls. “We rewind the tape and it starts shedding oxide. Butch says, ‘We should back everything up to digital.’ I start screaming: ‘If I see one f**king computer hooked up to a piece of gear, you’re f**king fired! We’re making the record the way we want to make it, and if you can’t do it, then f**k you!’ Nobody makes us do what we don’t want to do. ‘What if something happens to the tape?’ ‘What did we do in 1991, Butch?’ You play it again! God forbid you have to play your song one more time.” 

The good part about this is you're forced to make decisions while you're recording. You get the sounds, the arrangements and performances that work up front. As a result mixes go faster because you don't have so many options that you can get paralyzed.

The other thing is that mixing becomes a performance in itself. Before console automation (which started out only on faders and mutes), you'd get as many people from the band involved with the mix, all with a specific assignment as when to move a fader, or a mute or a send at a specific time. Just like playing, you did it over and over until you got the part right. That made the mix much more of a performance and gave it a much more organic feel.

According to the article:

Everything was mixed with all eight hands (Grohl, Vig, Brown, and mix engineer Alan Moulder) on deck, riding faders in real time to tape. 

There was something that was very pure about those times that's been lost in these digital days. Bravo to the Foos for turning back time if only for one album (it's a great one, by the way).

Read the entire article here. It's long and goes into a lot of depth about how they did it.

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"Rope" - Foo Fighters Song Analysis

"Rope" by the Foo Fighters is one of the best rock songs I've heard in a long time. The first single from their Wasting Light album, the song is currently #1 on Billboard's Rock Chart. As with all song analysis, this one covers the song itself, the arrangement, the sound and the performance.

The Song
"Rope" has a somewhat typical song form but makes it different thanks to an altered feel and some unusual anticipations in the verses, and a very interesting bridge/solo section. The form looks like this:

Intro, Verse, Chorus, Interlude, Verse, Chorus, Bridge/Solo, Chorus, Half-intro, Outro

The song is really quite sophisticated in its creation even though it seems simple on the surface, which is a sign of a mature writer(s).

The Arrangement
This arrangement of the song is very much like a garage band playing, but in a good way. There's a lot of thrashing and energy and a certain amount of freedom in the parts, just like a garage band, but at the same time it's all a very controlled chaos. Of course, this album really was recorded in singer/guitarist Dave Grohl's garage, so maybe they took it to heart.

The song is interesting in that it has a couple of rhythm guitars playing tremolo parts (the intro), then both guitar players banging away on rhythm guitar during the verse and choruses, instead of formulated parts like you hear on most songs. An overdubbed guitar that enters only at the syncopated verse turnarounds is about all the layering you'll find in the song other than the solo.

The bass is free floating and creates a nice tension against the chords in spots that's very cool, as is the drum solo in the bridge (when's the last time you heard one of those?). Interestingly, some of the cool lines that Nate Mandel plays are in the first verse rather then the second, where you'd typically change things up to sound different or develop the song.

Another interesting thing is that the second verse doesn't change much from the first so the song doesn't develop much, but I never notice this when listening to the song.

The Sound
Taylor Hawkin's drums have sort of a high-class garage feel to them in that they sound great, but they also sound like they were recorded with a single stereo mic and maybe a kick drum mic. Notice that one drum, especially the snare, never feels separated from the other drums. That's something else you rarely hear these days.

The vocal seems pretty buried in the mix, but that only emphasizes the band more.

The song is pretty compressed but done well since you never notice it. It's also pretty much in your face ambience-wise with no long reverb tails. I'd venture to say that what you're hearing is natural ambience of the room most of the time.

The Performance
The performance of all the players is what makes the song. Just as you'd expect from a band that's been together 10+ years, they smoke. You can feel the energy and enthusiasm that I wish more tracks had. Want an example of a great rock band? It's the Foos. And great production job Butch Vig.

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Dave Grohl's Analog Home Studio

For those of you who haven't experienced analog recording before, and for those of you old schoolers who only fondly remember it, here's an interesting look at the temporary home studio that Foo Fighter frontman and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl set up to record their latest as yet untitled record.

Even though the Foos have a state-of-the-art facility not far from Dave's house, producer Butch Vig wanted more of a "primal" sound that only a garage can provide, so they set up a small API console and a couple of Studer A820 24 track tape decks and off they went.

You won't hear any music on the following video, but it's a pretty good overview of the way recording used to be (except for the tour of the refrigerator - I could've done without that).

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Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - Butch Vig Dissection

Here's another clip from the VH1 television program Classic Tracks  featuring Nirvana, this time with producer Butch Vig dissecting the song that kicked off their career - "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Last December I also posted the backing track to this song that gives you a slightly different look at it, if you want to check that out as well.

Even though Nevermind (the album that Teen Spirit came from) was recorded by Butch, he didn't mix it. The excellent mixer Andy Wallace was brought in, some say at the behest of the record label and others say secretly by the band. Although Andy did lend his great ears to polish it, you can tell by listening to these videos that he had a lot to work with as the tracks were pretty well put together.

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Nirvana's "In Bloom" Dissection By Butch Vig

Here's a dissection of a big song Nirvana's massive Nevermind record called "In Bloom" by producer Butch Vig. I believe it's from their Behind The Music or VH1 Classics programs, but I like it because you hear about it from Butch's perspective.

The great unsung mixer Andy Wallace mixed the record, and reportedly the band hated it because he made it too polished, but to me it's a big reason for the band's initial success. Yes, they had some great songs and great tracks, but at the point of impact when a band just breaks, they can't be too raw or they'll be inaccessible. Regardless, this clip is short and is a lot of fun.

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