"Same Old Auld Lang Syne" - Dan Fogelberg

Here's my favorite song about Holidays - the late Dan Fogelberg's Same Old Auld Lang Syne. I posted this last year too, but I really love the song and the arrangement, so here it is again.

What I love best about this live version is how well Dan treats his backing musicians at the end. He shows love and respect, as all artists should.

Happy Holidays everyone, and thank you so much for reading!!

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5 Steps To Prep For Mixing

Here's an excerpt from my recently published book "Mixing And Mastering With T-RackS: The Official Guide." In it, I cover the 3 main facets of preparing for a mix, the technical prep, the setup prep, and the physical prep. We covered the physical prep in a previous post, so here's the part about the technical preparation before a mix.
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Technical preparation is the most mundane of all the tasks. So mundane, in fact, that many A-listers either hire someone or have their assistant do all of this work. That being said, the technical prep may be the most important time you spend on some projects, because it’s where you tighten up the individual performances and take them to new level. 

1) Make A Copy Of The Session

The first thing is to make a copy of your session and label it in such a fashion that you can tell what it’s for. Something like “songname edits 4-4-11” or “songname voc comp” tells you exactly what’s happening at a glance. I like to put the date in the name as well. If you have multiple versions of the session in one day, I’ll differentiate one from another  with letters of the alphabet at the end like “songname edits 4-4-11a”, “songname edits 4-4-11b” and so on.

While you’re at it, make a copy of the session file on another hard drive, flash drive, online backup, or any place that you can easily grab it if for some reason you find the file you’re working on is suddenly corrupted.

2) Tweak The Timing

No matter how great the players on the session are, there’s always some portion of a player’s recording that doesn’t feel quite right. The exception being that you have enough time to have the musician play their part until it’s perfect, or you punch in all the suspect parts as you go along.


[Some of the intricacies of tweaking the timing of a track were in this post - 6 Tips For Editing Your Timing - which was also in the book.]

Usually, the timing of the basic tracks will be tweaked right after your tracking session so you have a solid rhythm section to overdub against, but if you’ve not done that or you’re just now discovering some sections that don’t feel right (which happens a lot), prepare for the joys of slipping and sliding time.

Of course, if you’re using loops or MIDI instruments, you’ve probably quantized things to the track by now. If you haven’t, now’s the time.

3) Eliminate Any Noises

Now is the time to clean up each individual track. While the noises might not sound too bad with the rest of the track, after everything is mixed and mastered you’d be surprised how something that was buried can come to the forefront. Also, by eliminating any extraneous noises, all the tracks magically sound distinct and uncluttered.

Trim the heads and tails - Trim all the extra record time at the beginning and end of each track, regardless of whether it was recorded during basics or overdubs. Add a fade-in and fade-out to eliminate any edit noise.

Crossfade your edits - One of the biggest problems for A-list mixers is when they get a session in that’s full of edits to make the track sound tight, but the edits click and pop because they don’t contain any cross-fades. Even if you can’t hear a click or pop, it’s a good practice to have a short cross-fade on every edit to eliminate the possibility of an unwanted noise (see Figure 1.3). 

Delete extra notes from Midi tracks - Delete any extra “split” notes that were mistakenly played. You might not hear them when all the instruments are playing, but just like the noise at the beginning of tracks, they have a tendency to come to the forefront after things get compressed.

4) Do Any Necessary Comping

Comping shouldn’t be left for mixing as it’s something that’s normally taken care of directly after an overdub session for either the vocal, guitar or anything else that required multiple takes. That being said, if you still have some vocal or overdub comping to do, now’s the time.

5) Do Any Necessary Tuning

Inevitably there’s always a note that’s a bit sour and needs tuning. Whether you use Autotune, Elastic Audio, or any other pitch correction plug-in, make sure that the timing isn’t thrown off when the note is shortened or lengthened.

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"Space Oddity" - David Bowie Isolated Vocal

Here's the isolated vocal track to one of my favorite songs, David Bowie's "Space Oddity." The song was recorded in 1969 for the album of the same name, but it didn't become a hit in the US until 1972 after Bowie had already achieved some acclaim here.

Although everyone connects this song with Bowie's famous backing band The Spiders From Mars, the players on this recording were different. They included Mick Wayne on lead guitar, Herbie Flowers on bass (who would go on to play the famous dueling bass part on Lou Reed's "Take A Walk On The Wild Side,") Terry Cox on drums, and pre-Yes Rick Wakeman on Mellotron and piano.

Tony Visconti produced the album but felt the single was a gimmick, so he handed it off to protege Gus Dudgeon (who went on to great fame as Elton John's producer for his big albums like "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"). Here are some things to listen for.

1) Although the vocal doesn't start until about 40 seconds in, you can hear David make the sort of mouth noises that every vocalist does from time to time when bored.

2) There's a slight crack in his voice at the end of the first verse, which is probably the type of thing that wouldn't get by today without being replaced. That being said, the vocal is performed well and is remarkably in tune. Engineer/producer Ken Scott, who produced the next 4 Bowie albums after this one (including the exquisite "The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars"), recently told me that over the course of 4 albums, every vocal that David recorded was a first take except for one that he intentionally wanted to sing the chorus a little differently. Remarkable!

3) This isn't what you'd call a "pristine" vocal sound, as it has a lot of fur (distortion) around around it as he begins to get loud. You can hear the compressor working as well.

4) If you listen closely, there's a bit of what sounds like print-through on the 3rd verse. Print-through is a phenomena of magnetic tape where a layers imprint magnetic information to adjacent layers. As a result, you get an echo-like effect with the print-through vocal occurring sometimes even before the main recorded vocal. This effect can be heard most famously on the bridge of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love."

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Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments Of Guitar Playing

Don Van Vliet AKA Captain Beefheart left the building the other day. He'd actually left music a long while back, choosing to become one of the century's most influential painters instead.

That being said, Beefheart was the most influential musician many of you have never heard of, directly influencing punk, new wave, grunge and avant garde with a style so unique as to be indescribable. His music started as traditional blues, but Don quickly decided to go beyond the form, taking it just as far outside as John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman ever did in their most adventuresome periods.

Trout Mask Replica (the cover can be seen on the left) was perhaps his best known and loved album, and it sounded so wrong and off center on first listening that you just couldn't believe that there was anything musically redeeming in its grooves. But each listen opened up a new layer of brilliance until you couldn't get enough of it or the man who made it, if you gave the album half a chance in the first place.

With that in mind, here are Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments Of Guitar Playing from beefheart.com, followed by the first part of a brilliant documentary on the man that says much more about the man better than I could ever write it.
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Budding guitarists take note.
"Though they bear numbers, they are not arranged heirarchically — each Commandment has equal import."

1. Listen to the birds
That's where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren't going anywhere.

2. Your guitar is not really a guitar 
Your guitar is a divining rod. Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you're good, you'll land a big one.

3. Practice in front of a bush
Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush doesn't shake, eat another piece of bread.

4. Walk with the devil 
Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the "devil box." And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you're brining over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.

5. If you're guilty of thinking, you're out
If your brain is part of the process, you're missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.

6. Never point your guitar at anyone
Your instrument has more clout than lightning. Just hit a big chord then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.

7. Always carry a church key
That's your key-man clause. Like One String Sam. He's one. He was a Detroit street musician who played in the fifties on a homemade instrument. His song "I Need a Hundred Dollars" is warm pie. Another key to the church is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty — making you want to look up her dress the whole time to see how he's doing it.

8. Don't wipe the sweat off your instrument
You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.

9. Keep your guitar in a dark placeWhen you're not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don't play your guitar for more than a day, be sure you put a saucer of water in with it.

10. You gotta have a hood for your engine
Keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house, the hot air can't escape. Even a lima bean has to have a piece of wet paper around it to make it grow.

This sound advice can be found in the book Rolling Stone's Alt-Rock-A-Rama (1996).

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The Secret To A Tight Sounding Band

One of the things that I learned early in my musical life as a guitar player is the role that dynamics play in how tight a band sounds. A band that plays dynamically will never be told it's too loud. Even if the playing is sloppy, playing dynamically makes the band seem tighter than it really is, and bigger than life as well.

This applies to both recording and playing live, so I included sections on dynamics in two of my books - How To Make Your Band Sound Great and The Music Producer's Handbook. Here's an excerpt that explains how to play dynamically.
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If you learn only one thing from this book and DVD it’s that playing with dynamics is the greatest key to making your band sound great.  It’s an improvement that both you (the band) and your audience will notice immediately, and will automatically separate you from about 90% of other bands on the planet.

So what are dynamics?  Simply, it means playing quietly or with less intensity in certain places in a song, and  louder or with more intensity in other places.  Most bands are oblivious to dynamics and play at one volume throughout the entire song, song after song, set after set.  This gets boring and tedious for the audience very quickly.

Playing with dynamics means playing with less intensity in certain places in a song, and louder or with more intensity in other places. Most bands are oblivious to dynamics and play at one volume throughout the entire song (or all the songs, for that matter), which can get boring for the listener very quickly.

Generally speaking, here’s how you do it.  

• When the song begins, the band plays fairly loudly, about 7 or 8 on a scale of 1 to 10.

• When the vocal or lead instrument (if the group is instrumental) comes in at the verse, the band drops down to about 4 or 5.

• When the chorus comes in, the volume level comes back up to a 7 or 8.

• When the 2^nd verse begins, the band drops down to a 5 or 6 level (notice it’s a little louder than the first verse, but not as loud as the chorus).

• When the 2^nd chorus begins, the band comes back up to a 7 or 8.

• When the bridge, or whatever section is the peak of the song, the band comes all the way up to 9 or 10.

• The band drops down to 7 or 8 for the outro of the song.

• If the song has a breakdown, the level might come down as low as a 1 or 2.

While the level of intensity (and as a result, volume level) may change from the numbers indicated above for each song and depending on what finally feels the best, that’s basically how it’s done.  If the band plays the song dynamically, the song breathes volume-wise. Going from loud to quiet or quiet to loud is called “tension and release” and it’s a basic quality of all art forms (in painting it would be dark to light colors, photography it would be light to shadows, etc.). Tension and release keeps things interesting.  

The Secret To Dynamics

When you play loudly, play as loudly as you can.

When you play softly, play as softly as you can.

There are a few byproducts from playing dynamically too. The vocals can be heard easier because there’s more space and fewer loud instruments to fight against (easier on the singer’s throat as well). Songs become more fun to play because there’s true interaction with the other players to make it work, and as a result, the band automatically gets tighter. 

For a really great example of dynamics, listen to Smells Like Team Spirit by Nirvana where the verses are at about a 5, the pre-chorus at 7 and the chorus just roar at 10.

How to learn to play dynamically

Most bands learn to play dynamically naturally without thinking if just one player is dynamics-aware and the others follow (it helps if that one aware person is the drummer). Usually if a band is together for a long enough time and plays enough gigs, dynamics will magically seep into its playing after the band begins to get some self-awareness of just what it takes to get a crowd going. You can’t spend years of waiting for these things to happen by themselves though, you’re making a record. So just use the following method:

• When the band is going over a song, treat the dynamics as an integral part of the song (because they are) and spend as much time learning them the same way that you would with the chord changes and groove. As shown above, map out each section of the song on a loudness scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the loudest.

• Now the next step is the most important - make sure that each band member agrees on how loud or quiet each dynamic number is. In other words, be sure that the drummer’s 8 level is the same as the rhythm guitar player’s, and the 2 level of the bass player is the same as the lead guitarist. After that’s commonly agreed upon, rehearse the dynamics of a song until they’re second nature, then watch the audience take notice.

Don’t Confuse Volume Level With Intensity

A common complaint from a band that’s being taught dynamics is, “The song just doesn’t drive when we play the verse (or any other section) quietly.”  That’s because it’s easy to confuse volume level with intensity.

Most bands tend to get sloppier the softer or less intense they play. They begin to play the individual beats at slightly different levels and even have slight tempo variations between beats. As a result, playing softly sounds wimpy. Another thing that happens is that the band is so used to playing at one (usually loud) level, that anything compared to that level sounds so different that it’s perceived as less exciting. The same thing happens when you drive your car at 80 MPH for a long time. When you bring it back to 65, it feels like it’s going slow even though it’s still going pretty darn fast. And finally, the internal dynamics of each individual player usually go out the window. Instead of playing crisp yet quiet with the same attack and releases (covered later in the chapter) as at the higher volume level, the attack and releases get relaxed so the playing becomes less precise.

So the real trick is learning to actually play with the same intensity at lower levels. Make sure the tempo is even, the groove stays the same as at the higher volume, and the attacks and releases are crisp and you should sound powerful at any volume level.

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6 Reasons Why The Album Format Died

I don't normally cross-post with my Music 3.0 blog, but I feel strongly about his topic and wanted to get it out to the widest audience.

I think it's safe to say that we're at the end of the "album age," and although the format will hold on for a while, it's clearly waning in popularity. I've given this a lot of thought and have come up with what I think are the reasons, but be aware, they're not all exactly what the popular wisdom assumes. So let's begin with the 6 reasons why the album format has, for all intents and purposes, died.

1) It was a visual experience. The album format in the vinyl record age had the advantage of that wonderful piece of cardboard known as the album jacket. The album jacket contained the cover art (still found on CDs), and most importantly, the liner notes on the back, which we'll get to in a second. But one thing that everyone either forgets or has never experienced is the fact that millions of albums were purchased completely on impulse because of the album artwork alone! 

It may be hard to believe, but it was quite common to come across an album cover that was so cool that you'd buy it without knowing a thing about the artist. Sometimes it would be a total loser, but you still had the liner notes to read, and occasionally that would still make it a worthwhile purchase.

2) It was an informational experience too. Those of you too young to have experienced this don't know how much the liner notes meant to nearly everyone who bought an album (the picture on the left gives you an idea how extensive they could be). You could spend hours reading a well-written gatefold jacket, checking out every credit, wondering just where these exotic studios were (Smoketree Ranch in Malibu was the one that always intrigued me the most as a kid), and generally just soaking up any info you could about the artist. Of course, this was way, way before the Internet, so the liner notes were sometimes the only place to find any of info on the artist at all.

To say the least, the visuals and information along with the music made buying an album a total experience that today's album doesn't some close to.

3) The demise of the record stores. Once again, this may seem hard to believe but nearly every community had someplace that sold records, even if it didn't have a record store. There was an entire network set up to supply records to department stores, supermarkets, even diners. You couldn't help but to run into someplace selling records during the course of a day.

But the record store was the place to not only buy music, but to spend hours browsing. Why? Because of the cover art and liner notes. You'd peel through a bin of records, stopping every so often to look at an intriguing cover, which made you want to read the liner notes, and maybe even buy the album as a result. 

But the record store was also the best place for word of mouth. The people that worked the record stores always knew what was hot, what was underground but about to pop, and what was overhyped. You could go into a store and ask a clerk, "What's really good?" and he'd give you 10 choices, most of which were pretty high quality. This is something that the music industry is still looking for today online. Now we call it "music discovery" and VC's still throw big money at anyone who claims to have an app.

4) The price. Albums used to be a bargain. A 45 RPM single used to cost anywhere from $.99 to $1.29 (ironically what a download costs today, except you got two songs then), but an album started at only $3.98, before prices gradually began to increase. Either way, in the beginning the album was a no brainer even for a kid on a tight allowance. For the longest time, the album was priced at $8.98, before it was discounted, which was still a bargain. 

The greed started in the early 80's as the major record labels were taken over by multi-national companies, the attorneys and accountants ruled, and the prices of the album began to rise - first with what they called "superstar pricing," which tacked on an extra dollar for a superstar act (Tom Petty sued his label keep the price at $8.98, a gesture that would be very unlikely today by a big music act).

5) The CD. Then came the CD, and the business went to hell in hand basket. The packaging was different, so the jacket was no longer needed, and as a result, the cover art became less important, and you couldn't really do extensive liner notes because the print would be too small to read. Then the record labels really got greedy, charging outlandish prices (called "technology charges") on a product that eventually cost them less than the vinyl records they previously were making. In fact, prices soared to $19.95 for a front line artist's CD. If you bought one of these and weren't completely and totally satisfied, you were pissed, since dropping a deuce on anything was a real commitment.

And of course, there were no more impulse buys anymore because the artwork behind a 5 inch piece of plastic just doesn't have the same impact as on a 12 inch piece of cardboard.

6) Too much filler. Most vinyl albums are between 35 and 45 minutes long. This was out of necessity because of the physics of a record. Make it any longer and it starts to get noisy, the frequency response suffers, and it won't be as loud. But 40 minutes or so turns out to be the perfect amount of time for listening. There's a time commitment you have to make, but it's well within reason, especially if you like the music. 

A CD is capable of containing a bit more than 73 minutes of music. Unfortunately, artists began to think that it was a really good idea to put all the garbage that they normally would've tossed from a vinyl record, and put it all on their CD. Now instead of having 40 minutes of great music, we had 55 minutes of mediocrity. Even if the artist had some great songs, it was frequently buried under another 50 minutes of crap. Now not only was the fan paying more money, but she was paying more money for less quality. Something had to give.

Which is just about the time MP3's and Napster came on the scene, which eventually helped push the music business from an album business into the singles business that it has now become. Ironically, popular music started with as a singles business, to whence it now returns.

It's easy to say that online music slayed the album, but it was only the final dagger after 6 long swords.

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"Carry On Wayward Son" - Kansas Isolated Parts

Here are the vocal tracks and a little more from the 1977 Kansas hit "Carry On Wayward Son." This particular video seems like it was an extraction of the center channel, since a lot of instruments besides the vocals appear. That's OK because we get to hear inside the track in a way that few have heard before. Here are some of the things that I picked up on.

1) In the intro line, I never heard the left hand organ of the organ doubling the guitar before.

2) The 2nd half of the verse speeds up enough that it starts to feel uncomfortable. It seems a little more so when you hear the vocal mostly by itself. It also speeds up a bit in the 2nd verse, but not as badly.

3) The 3 part harmony on the chorus is very tight, even during the turnaround and ends of the phrase. It wasn't uncommon in those days to have the harmony vocals follow along pretty closely only to break into unison at some point, mostly because the vocalists were harmonizing by ear. You can tell this vocal arrangement was worked out very well before hand.

4) The lead vocal sound is pretty good but gets a little gritty during the bridge and the end of last chorus during the loudest parts. I think it's Steve Walsh singing, and he really has a set of pipes! The reverb is pretty long and thick with what sounds like a very short 15ips tape delay in front of it.

5) My favorite part (being an old Hammond player myself) is the very end of the song where Walsh pushes in the lower drawbars leaving only the higher harmonics, and then turns the Leslie to high speed. Classic!

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Gifts For Your Sound Guy

Clive Young recently wrote this great article in the Pro Sound News newsletter about some ideas for the perfect gift for the live sound person in your family. You can sign up for the PSN newsletter here.

What do live sound guys want? We ask this question every year and of course, the best answers are intangible: More sleep, a little respect, and a living wage. None of those fit in a stocking, however, so here’s our fourth annual gift guide on what to get your favorite live sound pro for the holidays.

To compile this list, we looked for items that would be good for audio pros working local gigs or cranking it out on a 22-bus national tour. Everything had to be small enough to fit in a road case without using a sledge hammer to make it fit, and most importantly, it had to be useful—except for the goofball stuff that was too good to resist.

• Personalized Sharpies: Everyone steals the sound guy’s markers, so short of gluing them to his hand (which would make it hard to mix), this is the best way to make sure they don’t walk. Put any text you want on them, there’s eight colors to choose from, and prices start at $12 for a half-dozen.mysharpie.com


• ETY•Plugs: These earplugs use a tuned resonator and acoustic resistor to reduce levels, not sound quality. PSN editor-in-chief Frank Wells had them at Japan’s Summer Sonic festival: “I was really glad to have a 'full fidelity,' -20 dB plug. You could still hear the music, unlike with conventional plugs.” $12.95


• Leatherman Wave: The top-selling multi-tool of all-time, it features 18 goodies, including wire cutters, pliers and knives that can be set out with one hand. FOH engineer Chris Barclift told us on Facebook, “I can't count the times that having one has saved my [gig].” $62.

• Universal Bier Remote Control: It may not be a Leatherman, but it’s an equally crucial tool for the well-equipped tour bus—a TV remote control with built-in bottle opener. $15. urbanoutfitters.com

• Kaltman Cable Coiler: This motorized handheld unit wraps up a cable in about as long as it takes to read this listing, and its sister product, Cable Slap Ties, clips the resulting coil in no time flat. On Twitter, engineer@SlauBeSharp told us it’s a “brilliant device.” $120.


• iOS Guitar Effect Simulators: Know a roadie with a travel guitar? Put a Peavey AmpKit Link  or IK Multimedia iRig in his stocking; these devices turn an iPhone or iPad into a virtual pedalboard to help get one’s shred on. Check out the Pro Sound News blog for in-depth reviews of each. $39.

• The Duddha Rug: Amazingly, there’s no Spinal Tap 2011 calendar—a shame since it’s gonna be the year that goes to eleven. In lieu of that, abide by this choice item for your favorite cult movie fan/audio Dude—a Big Lebowski-inspired 3x5-foot rug that really ties the mix position together. $300.billgreenstudios.com/products-page/misc

• Mosh Potatoes: Just because they’re called Road Dogs doesn’t mean the crew likes table scraps, so give ‘em this cookbook, featuring fare from famed foodies Megadeth, Type O Negative, Queensrÿche, Dream Theater and more. $10.

• Grado Pro Series SR60i Headphones: A favorite of the audiophile crowd, Grado headphones can run anywhere up to $1,700, but these, sporting an upgraded driver design and improved mass distribution in the plastic housing, will set you back less than a C-note. $79.

• Etch-A-Sketch iPad Case: Your giftee has been blowing people’s minds by using Yamaha’s new StageMix iPad app to remotely run an M7CL console. Make it even more surreal by giving him a case that makes his Apple toy look like the classic plaything. Added bonus: The crowd won’t ask “Do you really know what all the knobs do?” $39.

• Ion Audio Tape Express Plus: Another year has gone by and your pal still hasn’t converted that old box of board tapes because he’s always on the go. Get him this Walkman-style tape player with USB outputs and software for MP3 conversion, and he can copy tapes anywhere he takes his laptop. $49.

• Blue Mics Mikey 2G: If that guitar-toting pal is strictly an acoustic player, give him this second-generation mic with two custom-tuned Blue capsules, which plugs into an iPod, iPod Touch or iPhone to work with any recording app. $69.

• SensoGlove: If there’s two things tour engineers love, it’s analytic data and golf. Combining them both is this digital golf glove, whose sensors read the user’s grip pressure to analyze and hopefully improve one’s golf swing. $89.sensoglove.com

• Healing Back Pain: At PSN, our pains manifest themselves as something we call “Deadlines,” so we can’t attest to the effectiveness of Dr. John Sarno’s book, but the folks at Oradell, NJ-based audio vendor Boulevard Pro (blvdpro.com) told us they swear by it. $7

• Laptop Defender SE-0210: Gigs can take audio pros into pretty dodgy areas sometimes—and then they have to pull out expensive, high-tech gear! Help your pal protect his laptop with this credit card-sized gizmo sporting a motion sensor and skull-splitting 100 dB alarm. $29.

• Zadro Nano UV Disinfection Scanner: Just for fun, guess how many people have used that microphone? Ewwww. Zap 99.99 percent of the germs on it--and any other surface--with this cell phone-sized unit. Not for use on humans or animals (not even the drummer). $69

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Follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating the music business.

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Elliot Scheiner Interview Excerpt

Here's an excerpt of an interview with Elliot Scheiner from The Mixing Engineer's Handbook. Ells has long been recognized as one of the finest engineers working today and has a shelf full of industry awards (5 Grammy’s, 4 Surround Music Awards, Surround Pioneer Award, Tech Awards Hall Of Fame and too many total award nominations to count) from his work with The Eagles, Beck, Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, Sting, John Fogerty, Van Morrison, Toto, Queen, Faith Hill, Lenny Kravitz, Natalie Cole, Doobie Brothers, Aerosmith, Phil Collins, Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand and many, many others to prove it. He's also one of the nicest guys in the business.

In this interview, Elliot talks not only about his approach to mixing but about some of his projects as well.
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Do you have a philosophy about mixing?

Elliot Scheiner:  I’ve always believed that if someone has recorded all this information, then they want it to be heard, so my philosophy is to be able to hear everything that was recorded.  It's not about burying everything in there and getting a wall of sound.  I've never been into that whole concept.  It was more about whatever part was played, if it was the subtleties of a drummer playing off beats on the snare drum next to the backbeat, obviously he wants that heard.  So I always want to make sure that everything that's in that record gets heard.

If you were able to accomplish hearing every single instrument in the mix, that was a huge achievement.  Granted, maybe there wasn't as much information when I started as there is now.  I myself have come across files that have been a hundred and some odd tracks, so it's not as easy to do that today.  

I have to admit that the way some people record things today is a bit peculiar.  All of a sudden you'll be dealing with 7 or 8 different mics on the same instrument. Like, for example, an acoustic guitar will all of a sudden have 7 different viewpoints of where this guitar's being recorded.  It's mind boggling that you have to go and make a determination and listen to every single channel to decide which one you want to use.  And if you pick the wrong ones they come back at you and say, "Oh, we had a different combination" or "It doesn't sound quite right to us", but they don't tell you what they did!  So granted, it is a little more difficult to deal with those issues today, but I still take the same approach with every mix.

If you have a hundred tracks, will you try to have them all heard?  Or do you go in and do some subtractive mixing?

Elliot Scheiner:  Well, it depends if that's necessary.  I don't usually get those kind of calls where they say "Here's a hundred tracks.  Delete what you want."  It's usually not about that.  And I have to say that I'll usually get between 24 and 48 tracks in most cases and hardly ever am I given the liberty to take some of them out.  I mean if something is glaringly bad I'll do that, but to make a judgment call as to whether background vocals should be in here or there, I generally don't do that.  I just assume that whatever an artist and producer sends me is kind of written in stone.  They've recorded it, and unless they tell me otherwise, I usually don't do subtractive mixing. 

How long does it take you to do a mix on average?

Elliot Scheiner:  Depending on how complicated it is, it usually takes anywhere from 3 hours to a day.

3 hours is really fast!

Elliot Scheiner:  Yeah, well a lot of time you just get a vibe and a feel for something and it just comes together.  Then you look at it and say "How much am I actually going to improve this mix."  I mean if it feels great and sounds great I'm a little reluctant to beat it into the ground.

For me it's still about a vibe and if I can get things to sound good and have a vibe, that's all I really care about.  I still put Al Schmitt on a pedestal.  Look at how quickly he gets things done.  He can do three songs in a day and they'll be perfect and amazing sounding and have the right vibe.  So it's not like it can't be done.  Some people say that you can't get a mix in a short time and that's just not true and Al's my proof.

Where do you usually start your mix from?

Elliot Scheiner:  Out of force of habit, if there's a rhythm section I'll usually start with the drums and then move to the bass and just work it up.  Once the rhythm section is set I'll move on to everything else and end with vocals.

How much EQ do you use?

Elliot Scheiner:  I can't say that there are any rules for that.  I can't say that I've ever mixed anything that Al has recorded, but if I did I probably wouldn't have any on it.  With some of the stuff done by some of the younger kids, I get it and go, "What were they listening to when they recorded this."  So in some cases I use drastic amounts where I'll be double compressing and double EQing; all kinds of stuff in order to get something to sound good. I never did that until maybe the last 5 years.  Obviously those mixes are the ones that take a day or more.

When you're setting up a mix, do you always have a certain set of outboard gear, like a couple of reverbs and delays, ready to use or do you patch it as you go?

Elliot Scheiner:  Usually I don't start out with any reverbs.  I'm not one for processing.  I'd like to believe that music can survive without reverbs and without delays and without effects.  Obviously when it's called for I'll use it, but the stuff I do is pretty dry.  The 70's were a pretty dry time and then the 80's effects became overused.  There was just tons of reverb on everything.

Most of your Steely Dan stuff is pretty dry, isn't it?

Elliot Scheiner:  It's pretty much dry.  What we used were plates usually.

Real short ones?

Elliot Scheiner:  Not necessarily. In the days when I was working at A&R [studios in New York city] we had no remotes on any of our plates there.  Phil [Ramone - producer and owner of A&R] wanted to make changing them difficult because he tuned them himself and he really didn't want anybody to screw with them. There would be at least 4 plates in every room. Some of them might be a little shorter than another but generally they were in the 2 to 2 1/2 second area. There was always an analog tape pre-delay, usually at 15 ips, going into the plates. The plates were tuned so brilliantly that it didn't become a noticeable effect. It was just a part of the instrument or part of the music. You could actually have a fair amount on an instrument and you just wouldn't notice it.

Is the sound of the A&R plates something that you try to get today?

Elliot Scheiner:  Oh, I'm always trying to get that reverb sound. If I'm using plates either at Right Track or Capital, I'll still use an analog tape delay going into it.


For more of this interview, check out The Mixing Engineer's Handbook.

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