SLOW & STEADY

GW: Was it a long process to make the record?

MK: It took us about a year overall. The bulk of the recording was done on and off within probably four or five months, whereas the mixing was done relatively casually and took most of the year. It took us a lot longer than professionals to initially track it all because Adam and I were constantly second-guessing everything. “Is that the right amount of gain level? Are the headphones too loud? Is it too roomy a sound? Can you hear the rain outside? There’s a slight hum, do you reckon it’ll matter?” A lot of it was resolved by a quick phone call to Zac. I’d spoken to him in detail beforehand about how we should do it and whether it was a bad idea for us to go off and try tracking it ourselves. He instilled a lot of confidence in Adam and myself to trust our ears and so, not knowing a lot about what the ‘right’ way of recording stuff was, we did our best to trust our ears out of necessity. From the start, I knew Zac and myself were on the same page with general sounds we were after in the album. We wanted it to be at times raw, stripped back and at other times, fairly produced and complex. So I had a lot of trust in him and his advice. As we were recording I’d check in with Zac to see if the sounds we were getting were usable. He was usually very re-assuring and quite amazing as an overseer to work with. This relationship allowed us enough freedom to muck around and experiment while still making sure we were getting good sounds.

GW: What were some of the hurdles you had to overcome soundwise?

MK: There were some results that were less than ideal. For instance we had an Audio-Technica 3035 above and behind the violin as well as a line out from the violinist’s amp on Very Impressive. But the acoustic sound ended up being way too roomy so we ended up almost exclusively using the line out takes. The guitars at the end of Little Christ were recorded at least three times – each time they were too ‘roomy’ (I was living in a house at the time that was all wooden floors and high ceilings). I took them to Zac twice and both times he suggested doing them again so he had something better to work with. On the third time, I got lucky. I ended up basically burying the mic and amp in pillows and blankets and a mattress.

GW: What gear were the main and backing vocals recorded with?

MK: They were all done with an AT 3035 going into a PreSonus Firestudio interface and then into GarageBand. Zac also used some ribbon mics for the backing vocals on Son and Father.

GW: The acoustic guitars sound great on this record. What were the instruments and the recording chain for that?

MK: There were a few different approaches to the acoustic guitar sounds. Usually I had the mic a few centimetres off the point where the neck and body of the guitar meet (I assume that’s fairly standard) using my AT 3035. All the guitar tracks were recorded mono. It’s a nice sounding guitar to begin with (Yamaha Compass Series CPX) and I usually had a mattress or something behind the mic to play into and most were just recorded in various bedrooms or lounge rooms. For tracks 12 and 13 we actually used an Elliott Smith technique. I’d asked Zac at some point early on in frustration, “How does Elliott get that sound?” So Zac looked it up. It turns out that often he had the mic placed somewhere about halfway between the guitar and his mouth (sitting position) and recorded playing and singing at the same time, and then double tracked it. So I liked the idea and thrill of having that ‘live’ pressure and we gave it a try. It was sounding vibey instantly and we didn’t have to do a lot mixing-wise to get it working. Those takes were actually recorded in a really nice bedroom in the barn. It had a few different angles in the ceiling and was a combination texture-wise of straw/mudbrick, metal, concrete and a rug.

OUT OF THE BOX

GW: The use of beat boxing on the record is really effective, is that something you’ve always done in the band?

MK: Beat boxing was something we definitely had been doing from the beginning. Being heavily into artist’s like Bjork and Radiohead at the time of the band’s inception, I loved the electronic and unorthodox sounds they produced. To me they weren’t at all distracting but refreshing and very interesting. So, not being computer savvy enough to mess around with beat programming and loops, I decided to use the next best thing – beat boxing. Looking back, I’m not entirely sure why, but I wanted to steer away from a typical ‘band’ sound; acoustic drums, bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitars, that sort of thing. So we went with electric violin (Xani Kolac), trumpet, synth and beat boxing. It certainly was a bit of a headache at times for Zac and I. I guess we just wanted to force ourselves to be as creative as we could and try and create something unique. Using odd instruments does often help with this. We actually spent the majority of the first trip up to Nagambie tracking the beat boxing tracks. I can’t express how disheartening it was initially. We discovered that beat boxing, at least the way we were doing it, doesn’t sound great immediately the way drums or most other things do. A fair bit of work has to be done to make them listenable and suitable to record other stuff over. And then they require a fair bit of tweaking as different elements gets added to the mix. There was a point early on in mixing the beat boxing where I just couldn’t keep up with the different compressors, EQs and limiters.

GW: Little Christ seems to be a song that exemplifies the album. Could you take us into a bit more detail and describe the conception, recording and production of that song?

MK: The basic concept for the song definitely evolved, but I knew from the start that I wanted it to be ballsey, dramatic, colourful, and intense. I was really happy when Zac showed me a fairly dark, pared back mix of it which brought more attention to the vocals and guitar parts giving it all a slightly sinister and much more snappy feel. Like a lot of the initial dumpings of tracks I gave to Zac, there was just too much. I believe after messing around a bit in the mastering, he applied a fairly hefty limiter on the loud build up section in the middle. We tried just letting it go without limiting it here at all but we actually really liked the crunch it was getting and that feeling of everything getting squashed. The beat boxing was laid down first in Ed’s bedroom. I believe he used an Audix i5 on this one. Everything else was done using an EV RE20. I think I just got him to lay out the rough form before it was really finished and then we may have looped a section in the end. Then Zac recorded a bass track, and I recorded the guitars and most of the vocals to the first half in a basement of a friend’s house. All brick walls and low ceilings but I liked the darkness and brittleness that the guitars and vocals naturally had there. Violins for this song were done in Adam’s living room. It wasn’t a great room or great acoustic sound in the end but Zac managed to make it work. After it was all roughly mixed I got an old friend to ‘preach’ for a bunch of takes and then speak in tongues. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to describe how weird that was to have him really trying to get into the role in front of me in a bedroom, both of us with headphones on. It was awesome. I think Zac put all the spoken stuff through some sort of reverb or ‘blown speaker’ emulating EQ to try and make it sound like a preacher getting into it in a small church.

GW: What did the mixing process entail?

MK: Overall the mixing on this song was a fair chore – the beat boxing mainly. It went through a lot of different EQs before settling on a fairly dark and stripped back mix in general. This was definitely a song where we pared back the parts to find the least amount that we could work with. Everything shifted around a lot until we finally settled on a balance between the bass and guitars and vocals that worked. Both Zac and I are cursed with a certain pickiness, and the parts and instruments were often tricky to ‘fit’ together.

THE SAGE ADVISOR

The man consistently on the other end of Keneally’s phone, Zac Barter, talks about the mixing process and what it was like to handle the raw material coming in from the barn.

Zac Barter: “Canary was performing the songs on the album well before recording began, so they usually had a clear starting arrangement but they also wanted to experiment heavily. The original plan was for a more conventional studio album but Matt’s rough old demos with a Behringer mixer into a soundcard convinced me that he performed better when he recorded himself. The band started tracking themselves in Nagambie with a few mics and a Firestudio running into GarageBand. The room was well suited to recording with angled walls and played a big part in the sound of the album. For the acoustic tracks Matt found a spot that he liked under the staircase and usually played a Yamaha Compass. I can’t stand the feel of that guitar but love how it records when Matt’s playing it. It’s quite similar to the way Elliott Smith’s Lucky Three video was recorded although we used two takes panned hard to each side. A subtle corrective EQ and a light opto comp were all that I used on these acoustic tracks before riding volumes to match the band. Some of the other acoustic parts were recorded closer and EQ’d more aggressively.

“I recorded Lachie and Ed’s drum parts at my small studio space using Beyer M160s as overheads, an EV RE20 on kick and some Audix and Beyer mics around Lachie’s Gretch kit. I particularly love his 15-inch Zildjian hats and dry K ride. We thought drums wouldn’t work for Be Yourself as the guitars were played quite freely and we wanted to keep them. We persisted and eventually managed to get the drums to fit with the guitars and now it’s my favourite moment on the album. We didn’t want to wait until tracking was completed to see if sounds were working, so Matt gave me files along the way to start editing and mixing. The work ahead became obvious as well over 100 tracks appeared on my screen for a number of the 14 songs. I was blown away by the raw tracks, and confident that the risk of recording rough had paid off. A few tracks needed rerecording, and some ended up muted, but most tracks sounded great and the performances were fantastic. Some of the later tracks were recorded in other houses where the rooms had a harsh ambience that didn’t work on some instruments. We had to redo some parts and get creative with others. Despite the challenges Matt still captured some great tracks.

“I enjoy working with and mixing bands that record themselves, although it is high risk and comes with problems. It’s vital to find the right space and to have a band with great ears and patience. The process will typically take far longer to complete than it would in a traditional studio environment because of the trial and error involved, and it’s entirely possible for the expense to end up greater if things go wrong. It can also place a huge strain on people and bands. Thankfully Dear Universe was a great experience because Matt and Adam are naturally talented at tracking and kept at it, no matter how long it took them. It was also important that my tastes in sound were compatible with Matt’s.

POOR PLATE, EXPENSIVE SOUND

“The album was slowly mixed over the course of a year in my treated room on ADAM A7s. Most songs weren’t complete yet so we kept adding tracks and working on arrangements and sounds right until the end of the mix process. We were determined to be satisfied with the mixes so I spent a great deal of time buying and exploring new plug-ins and techniques until I got the result that I wanted, which was a great learning experience. Decapitator was great for shaping sounds and I typically used Waves SSL Softube channel strips for EQ. A few compressors used were Waves PIE and SSL bus, MOTU’s opto compressor, and the Elysia Alpha. I liked Echoboy and Crystallizer for lots of dirty ambience even on long string parts. I used countless bits and pieces for different flavours of effects and distortion and had a great time trying out some very unusual choices. One of the few reverbs used on the album was a free little plug-in called Poor Plate. It has a really unique rhythm and air that helps to avoid clutter. Matt told me he’d been running my early mix of ‘very impressive’ through poor plate because he really liked it swimming in reverb. It actually worked surprisingly well and after trying a number of altiverb, Softube, and Sonnox reverbs I had to admit poor plate was the best! I ended up using it on the final mix after bussing the beat boxing and bass to a separate output.

BW: How central to your world is the SID chip? Is it really that legendary?

CM: Yeah it’s massive! I think for any chip artist it’s the main attraction. The thing with the SID chip is it has areas that were undocumented and left untapped – until people started messing around with them. Also, the thing that set it apart from a lot of the competition is that it had filters. Plus it had a resonant filter so you could get two channels to interplay and do some really amazing stuff. You’d get these crazy complex-sounding instruments that you couldn’t get on other machines. The filters also have a certain quality to them. Of course they’re extremely lo-fi, but to be able to program filters when other machines could only give you a square wave and a bit of noise was pretty revolutionary for the era. There are two revisions of the SID chip as well – the 6581 and the 8580. The thing is you can play something on one and take it to the other and it will sound completely different. One was a very rounded yet harsh sound, while the other produced a smoother, finer, brighter sound. The filters worked in completely different ways as well. You could take a track from one machine to another, and where one would be playing a filter, the other would almost go to silence. Then, between the Commodores there were different revisions of electronics – different suppliers of capacitors and what-not. All that leads to a slightly different sound with each revision.

BW: What’s the ultimate Commodore 64 for the music you’re creating?

CM: Well it depends on what you’re writing. I’ve found that playing with the Gameboys for example, you can write a track on it and then flip it across to another revision of the same device and things just aren’t quite the same. It’s quite bizarre how much personality different machines have. Even something like the Commodore Amiga; there’s the Amiga 500, and then the Amiga 1200 which is sample-based, and they’ve each got totally different qualities – from revision to revision.

BW: There’s no Atari ST or STE here I notice. There’s no need for those?

CM: I don’t want to mention the Commodore/Atari war.

BW: There’s a war?

CM: Well, we quietly smile about it now, and to Atari’s credit they’ve got some really good editing software for their YM chip in those machines. What you’ve got to remember is that the Atari was designed to act as a sequencer at the centre of a studio. So on top of the cost of the computer, you’d need your DX7, your Dr. Rhythms, a mixer etc. Then before you knew it you’d spent 20 grand on equipment to make anything happen. So as far as I’m concerned the musical capabilities of the C64 far outweighed the Atari. The Atari became a central hub in MIDI studios thanks to its built-in MIDI ports but as a standalone machine it actually has a kind of cool synthesiser in the YM series chip. It’s a Yamaha chip and it has a really great sound, and you can do quite a lot with it, it’s just not quite as inspiring as the SID chips.

But then there’s the Atari 2600 games machine. They actually have a great sound to them. The cool thing about the Atari 2600 is you can get yourself an EPROM programmer and program your own chips. You rewrite an EPROM, take your 2600 cartridge and modify a few components, put the EPROM into the cartridge and the 2600 will read the EPROM and load your new code straight into the machine. This stuff is cheap and available on eBay, whereas only 10 years ago it was all pretty expensive.

POWERED BY THE GRID

BW: I have to say I’m totally bemused as to how you write music on these things. How do you go about composing? What do you sequence with for instance?

CM: There is a ton of software for each platform but most use tracker-based software. There’s no real ‘sequencing’ capabilities as such. A tracker interface is a cross between a MIDI event list and a spreadsheet, so there’s a row for every tick, and the columns contain the note and a selected effect. An ‘effect’ is anything from a pitch bend, to some kind of modulation, through to arpeggiated chords. The commands vary between software programs, but once you get the hang of tracking, jumping platforms is easy. Tracking is a surprisingly efficient way of writing music because the parts within a chip, usually four or less, are only a quick key-press away. With most tracking software you’ll get every note, every instrument and every controller displayed on the one screen, which can make things much more intuitive than you’d initially imagine.

BW: But obviously there are some limitations to consider?

CM: Absolutely. That’s where the fun begins. The main limitation, apart from the incredibly hobbled polyphony, is that you can only trigger one effect command at a time. So if you want to modulate the pitch of a note, and bend it at the same time, you have to set it bending on one note, then add a modulation to continue what you’d initially envisaged on the following note. Some effects also cancel each other out or only work on certain oscillators, which at first can be quite confusing. You eventually figure it out by trial and error. I mean, whoever reads documentation before using software anyway?! Some platforms allow command programming which can simultaneously trigger multiple effects, like a macro, which for making snares and kick drums is very handy.

BW: Actually making your snares and kick drums from scratch? How do you go about doing that?

CM: All your sounds have to be built from scratch from within the confines of the chip. If you’re making a kick, for example, you’d start with a squared sine wave, quickly diving from a high frequency to a low frequency, add a volume slide toward the end, then maybe add a low-pass filter towards the end just to round it off a little. If it needs to be thicker, you can assign another oscillator and layer it up, although on a C64 that would be two-thirds of your polyphony gone, so it’s not advisable. Snares are similar because the noise generator is ‘pitchable’ on most platforms – you can flick between multiple noise settings really quickly to simulate the snare, and maybe add a quick sine-wave dive at the start to simulate the skin of the snare. Instrument programming can make or beak a tune, and you often end up going down a massive rabbit-hole trying to get new sounds together. But limited parameters mean you can only do so much tweaking, which again is part of the fun writing chip music.

BW: Dealing with the polyphony restrictions obviously becomes quite a challenge then.

CM: Completely. Although every artist finds his or her own methods for dealing with polyphony, it’s probably the most defining aspect of an artist’s sound. But it’s amazing what can be achieved with three notes when you start flipping between instruments and waveforms for each and every note. You’d think it would get boring after a while, but pushing the technical envelope becomes a pretty satisfying personal challenge in itself.

SCRATCHING AN ITCH

Brad Watts: So how are you settling into Paul’s Panic Room, Andy?  

Andy Rantzen: Well, I’d have to say that the one thing I dislike about modern studios, including Paul’s, is that there’s no mixing desk. It’s the funnel that channels everything down. Paul and I found a way around it but we both miss it a lot. No desk, no knobs… it’s like the pot you cook the dinner in, but in this case there’s no pot. It’s just the way technology is going, I guess. People miss analogue tape as well; but that’s mostly gone too now. And in my experience musicians never really talk about this or understand it; it’s something you hand over to engineering guys really.  

BW: Meaning?  

AR: Well, someone like Paul, or many of his colleagues and people he knows, know about the esoteric world of what happens after the mix, what happens in the desk, the technology and the electricity and how it all works together – exactly the stuff AudioTechnology magazine focuses on. That world is very outside where the magic really happens for me.  

BW: So Paul, what moved you in the direction of electronic instruments rather than sticking to, say piano and keys?  

Paul Mac: Well, I kind of took over every other band I was in. It was like a coup every time, which I got quite tired of. The move was certainly due to technology. I used to go to Venue Music where they had a Roland TR606 and an SH101 on display. I had no money so I used to go in there with a set of headphones and just write a song. I remember thinking, “Oh my f**king god, I am master of the universe!” I was actually in control and could do anything I wanted. 

The 101 had a 64-note sequencer that you could trigger from the 606 and I eventually worked my arse off at McDonalds and bought it. Then I realised it had two trigger outputs so I bought a Roland JX-3P which had a 128-note sequencer. At that point I had the bass and drums covered, so it was like, ‘sorry band, I’m taking over’.

Suddenly there was no need for a drummer. You know that guy that’s always annoying you to get his reggae track into the set? (Laughs) The music seemed to bloom right there in your hands without having to deal with anybody! I could have a vision and create it on my own or with one other person, so suddenly the machinery represented freedom for me. You just got a bass synth and went for it.  

BW: Sure, but you were an accomplished musician as well of course; you’re a great player. It’s presumably relatively easy for you to pull stuff like that together. 

PM: But still, for me, the revolution was Kraftwerk and Public Enemy. Up until then I’d been listening to Rick Wakeman where the more notes and faster you could play the better musician you were. When those two acts came into my sights it changed everything for me, and that’s how suddenly people like Andy and I became musical ‘equals’. Plus, at the time, I remember music suffering a real split. There was the paisley shirts faction and that whole ’60s vibe, which really horrified me. I remember thinking at the time: “Have you not heard Kraftwerk? Why are you replicating something that’s been done before?” For me, the idea of futurism was always the answer.  

BW: What brought you two together then? The Evening Star days? I remember that’s where I used to see the Pelican Daughters and The Lab [Andy and Paul’s respective bands at the time. They played in one of Sydney’s premier alternative pubs during the ’80s – the ‘Evil Star’].  

AR: …a Pelican Daughters album actually, although we’d met briefly before then. We’d met once or twice and I remember Paul saying we should do something one day – that was about 1989. But I honestly didn’t think we’d do anything.  

PM: Once again I shovelled my way in. Andy wanted to borrow my mixing desk. One gear-swap led to another and it was like: ‘You’ve got a 303? Cool! I’ve got an 808, let’s sync this stuff up and do something’. So we eventually combined gear and got something happening.  

AR: And about this time we both started getting into acid house (this was slightly before techno) – but none of our bandmates or friends were. So eventually they all drifted away because they didn’t like what I was doing. As far as we knew there were only two people in Sydney that wanted to play dance music with a twist. We’d been doing obscure stuff for years really. The Pelican Daughters was going since ’84, and The Lab and Smash Mac Mac went back to ’83. So we’d been around and had a few bands before we started working together. 

SYNERGIC EFFECTS

BW: What’s made the relationship so beneficial in a musical sense?  

PM: Well, Andy has always got ideas, and I know how to make them happen. I don’t always know if my ideas are as good as Andy’s, but together we’re quite useful.  

AR: Yeah, often I’ll think of something, and instead of trying to play it, I’ll just sing it or do it with my mouth and Paul fills it out.  

BW: Yeah I was quite surprised when you were explaining the notes in Sweetness and Light to me – you sang them in what sounded like perfect pitch.  

AR: I don’t have many talents, but one of them is that I can hear things very clearly, and another is that I know who’s good at what, and really, that’s all I rely on.  

BW: Has the way you write music together changed much over the years?  

PM: Well, we actually had an argument last week about the final track on the new album – Andy wanted to change it, and I loved it just the way it was. Years ago we would have had a massive argument about it. These days it’s a case of, unless both of us whole-heartedly agree with the track, it’s not going on the album.  

BW: But you’re both comfortable enough with each other to have that stoush.  

AR: Well, that’s just the thing. It wasn’t a stoush this time; it was more of a ground-giving exercise. I think the edges have washed off us both. We’ve become more like pebbles and less like jagged rocks. I tell you what the difference is – and back then the stoushes did happen – I would have become more and more cross in my mind, creating completely imaginary dialogues and getting angrier and more upset. Then, by the time I’d have rung Paul, I’d be in such a state that I’d be angry and aggressive from the start. Nowadays we’re a little older and we understand how each other works.  

PM: I think in the early days we both felt undervalued by the other. Back then, to me they were my musical notes, and Andy would be like, “But that was my idea!” Of course, I’d be like, “But mate, I made it happen!” It was just a nightmare. Nowadays, it’s way more like, “Great idea, I’ll make it happen.” I think we recognise each other’s skills now and we’re comfortable working with that. 

It’s all about finishing each other’s sentences musically, which I reckon I’ve only experienced with two people in my whole career. One is Andy, the other is Daniel Johns. It’s exactly the same level of communication.  

BW: Dare I ask if anyone prompted you to get Itch-E and Scratch-E back together? No cajoling from your management?  

PM: No, I think Andy was way more vigilant about our legacy than I was for a long time, and he really protected that eventuality. There have been plenty of opportunities to cash in on our older material – plenty of times when I’ve had DJ’s or producers begging to do a remix of Sweetness and Light for instance. Andy always stuck to his guns and said: “No f**king way!” and I was always like, “fair enough.” Then these rave reunion type shows started coming up…

BW: So why were you so against it Andy?  

AR: I was just being pig-headed really. I thought we needed to create some space and time around it – leave it alone for a while without polluting it. Then I had a kid, got divorced, got bored, had a new relationship, rent in Sydney went up, and I started thinking, ‘Actually, this is my job as well’. So, in retrospect, it was probably a moment of weakness. It’s more about whether we wanted to leave this alone, or take it somewhere fun and meaningful.  

PM: Actually, I think it was even lazier than that… not that I’m discounting Andy’s comments. But the fact was we simply didn’t (and don’t) have our Ensoniq samplers anymore, or the floppy disks or the multi-tracks for Sweetness and Light. In order to do anything we needed to sample the stereo masters and try to rebuild something out of that. The amount of effort involved in that made us decide to simply make some more music. To do a rave set was ridiculous.

We did try and recreate some of it at one point, but it was just so boring filtering out kick drums and hitting new ones in and all that shit. It was like ‘who cares’. Plus, once we started to hang out together as friends again we realised we should create something new, not try and rebuild the old stuff. It’s all about the future once again. I hate to keep hammering that point, but for me, modern electronica should always be moving music forward. The thought of spending a year recreating our old live set was just awful.

THREE CHAPTERS – ONE SONG

But forget all that, let me play you some of the album. The first track I’m gonna play you is Other Planets. The story behind this is that we’ve been working on this project for a year or so. We were using Andy’s philosophy of ‘let’s spend 45 minutes on this, and when that magic moment happens, save it and move on’ – rather than my usual regime of, ‘I’m gonna spend six hours on this – therefore it will be better’.

So, Part A of the story behind this track is that every week we’d get together but not discuss how we were going to work or what we were going to do. We’d go to the pub, then come to the studio and have a few ideas ready to go. This particular night I closed both doors to the studio so Andy couldn’t hear what I was doing, and got this Eno-esque soundscape thing happening. Then I muted everything, told Andy the track was in B Minor and asked him to do his thing. Initially it sounded kind of ordinary, but we listened to it after a break and then Andy decided he’d play a new bass line. Now Andy – who isn’t a great player – is fumbling around on it, and then just quantises it into something I would never have come up with – and it sounds amazing!  

AR: I pretty much rely on quantisation and accidents!  

PM: He does… but instead of hearing 16th-notes, I was hearing triplets. So then I quantised it to 12/8 instead of 4/4. I reckon this was possibly the quintessential moment of the album. We both listened back and went, “Quantised 12/8 triplets. Whoah!” For me a cardinal rule is you never do triplets; it’s so Gary Glitter. But this really worked and went on to become the funkiest bassline on the album.

Part B of the story actually began five years ago while touring through Europe with The Dissociatives. We’re in Paris and this kid comes up to me and asks if he can show me around Paris. We can’t speak French, we’ve got no idea where to go, so we agree to hang out. Then we end up having this awesomely crazy night in Paris with him.

Part C of the story then goes something like this: last year I’m in New York, and I go and see The Field and Juan MacLean. I go outside for a cigarette and this kid comes up to me and says, “Remember me?” I’m like, “Yeah… Paris right?” So we ended up hanging out and becoming good friends. On the final night I’m in New York and I end up back at his apartment in Brooklyn watching the sunset come up over Manhattan, just hanging out with him and his girlfriend. He’s a rapper and he plays me some of his music. I pretty much hate white rap, but I really loved his stuff. So when I’m back in Sydney, we send it to our friend in New York and he sends back four rapping vocal tracks: three were great, but one was amazing. Freddy the rapper came through!  

BW: The track certainly carries some attitude gentlemen, and it’s most definitely ‘forward’… very progressive indeed.  Have a listen to Other Planets (featuring MDNA) via the AudioTechnology website: www.audiotechnology.com  

BACK TRACK

AR: But to get back to the track’s inception. I find it’s often more creative to limit yourself in a different way each time you start a track. For example, what would it be like if one of us wrote a bass line not knowing what the other person had done, or what would it be like if we tied one hand behind our back, etc.  

BW: It’s almost a way of tricking yourself into doing something more instinctive, fooling yourself not to use your usual arsenal of playing skills.  

AR: I agree with that, I definitely agree with that. 

BW: So who came up with the ‘other planets’ lyric?  

AR: Ahh, the lyric isn’t mine. I stole it. This story always sounds so pretentious, but I did, so I may as well mention where it came from. I ‘repurposed’ it from a poem by a 19th Century poet called Stefan George. The poem was later appropriated by Arnold Schoenberg for a piece called Ach du Lieber Augustin, but it was the line itself that really stuck with me. I steal shit like that, and that particular gem I really wanted to steal. I think the original prose is; ‘I feel the wind of other planets’, or something like that, so I’ve melded it to suit my own perceptions. I knew I wanted to use the line someday, and when Paul did his Eno thing I knew that was the moment. It’s the most progressive thing we’ve done I think. That triplet thing was like splitting the atom for me. I’d never have thought of a groove like that in a million years!  

BW: What did you think of when the lyrics turned up?  

PM: Our jaws just hit the floor, we loved it. You’ve really gotta grab those moments, and make sure circumstances allow them to happen. 

Text: Gavin Hammond

Gavin Hammond: So how did you get a break in London?

JS: After a year of being in London I still hadn’t landed a job in a studio. I had blanket bombed every studio with a CV and even entertained the notion of doing post production sound for TV, but I had no luck. I’d become friends with the very talented Katie Noonan (the singer in George and Elixir) at university and when I came back to Australia briefly after 10 months away I caught up with her and she mentioned a guy she knew who ‘knew someone who knew someone’. Four degrees of separation later I got in touch with a writer/producer back in London who took me on as his assistant.

GH: How did you progress from that first break to where you are now?

JS: He did a lot of pop work at the time, which was a great introduction to being around the creative process in a studio. However, being in a production studio meant I didn’t get much exposure to big consoles and bands, which was something I was pretty keen on. So after 12-18 months of working full-time for him I became a freelance assistant at a couple of studios, which was a fairly precarious life. Luckily, Olympic in West London needed a regular freelancer at that time, so for the next 12-18 months I was in and out of there assisting on various sessions.

From there, I slowly met other producers, writers and artists and for the next few years did a lot of pop vocal sessions with various girl and boy bands. It wasn’t the music I loved but I got pretty good at pop vocal arranging and production. Thankfully in the past two years there have been a lot more drums and guitars involved, which is much more up my street.

GH: Was it harder moving to London than you thought?

JS: I didn’t know a soul when I came here, which I found hugely liberating. I was 22 and I found the energy of London really inspiring. Not finding any music work for a year was a little demoralising at times but I had some IT experience which kept me working. You have to leave all your friends and family, move to somewhere that generally has terrible weather and start at the bottom and earn very little in a very expensive city. On paper it sounds like a daft proposition. In the end, you have to want a challenge to be here – and like it both professionally and personally.

CROWDED STUDIO

GH: More recently you worked on last year’s Crowded House project. What did you do for them?

JS: My management put me in touch with Steve Lillywhite who was looking for someone to engineer for him on the Crowded House sessions. We spoke on the phone a few times and then met on the first day of the session. Together we worked on four tracks for Time On Earth, which I engineered, he produced and we shared the mixing duties.

Steve was approached to produce four tracks for the album, the rest having been produced by Ethan Johns. We recorded and mixed all of them in Studio 1 at Rak in St John’s Wood, not too far from Abbey Road. Rak has been there since 1976 and is one of the last great privately owned tracking studios in London. They have a fantastic API console in Studio 1 that’s as old as I am and sounds superb. The live room sounds great and the control room has almost floor-to-ceiling windows onto the street, so you don’t feel too isolated from the outside world. It’s a great place to make a record.

GH: Can you talk about the gear you used for tracking?

JS: Everything was tracked through the API console except the vocals for which I used some Neve 1073s. We recorded directly to ProTools at 88.2k and laid the masters to ProTools as well. The API isn’t an in-line console so we split the inputs and the tape returns either side of the centre section. I looked after the inputs and Steve drove the monitor balance on the other half of the console.

By the end of day one, I had most of the band set up on the various inputs and used the same recording path for each mic for the rest of the session; tweaking compression and EQ as required for each song.

Steve plays a lot with the monitor balance during tracking, getting different vibes as the production progresses. He’s the first to admit complete ignorance of anything involving the computer and only ever wanted to see 24 faders’ worth of tape returns, which is an interesting discipline and a good one. I think the luxury of having almost infinite tracks on a computer stops people from making decisions.

It’s easy to forget that some of the best records ever made were done on four-track or even cut straight to acetate in mono. So while the ProTools track count generally exceeded 24 tracks, I was sub-mixing a few things internally back to the tape returns. As the production progressed certain elements were bounced down, but I always retained all the drum mics separately for options at the mix. It was good to think about it on the board as a 24-track but still retain the option of rebalancing some things at mix time.

GH: Did you record the tracks live or with lots of overdubs?

JS: It was mostly overdubbing. Because some of the songs were still evolving in production, most things actually started with Neil Finn on acoustic and we went from there. The order of the overdubs varied with the evolution of the songs. Studio 1 at Rak has a retractable wall that cuts the space in half, so we had the drums in the far section and everyone else set up in the near half. With that arrangement we could have tracked the beds live quite successfully but it didn’t evolve that way. We had a guitar line run into the control room, which was really good for guitar and bass overdubs. We would drag a pedal board into the control room and Neil Finn or Nick Seymour (and also Johnny Marr who was on the record), would rock out in front of the monitors.

It made communication a lot more fluid when there were various ideas for overdubs being considered. Most importantly, no-one prefers listening on headphones to a set of speakers, so generally most players have a better time in the control room in my experience.

GH: Do you think tracking at 88.2k is necessary – can you really hear the difference?

JS: Very simply – yes. It’s a hot topic for debate but in the end it’s completely subjective. For me, 88.2k is more open and lot a smoother in the top end. I go for 88.2 instead of 96k because it’s twice the CD sample rate and apparently the maths works out better for sample rate converting down because it’s exactly double and produces less artefacts… so I’m told! I’m definitely not saying I can hear the difference in that regard but like everything in creative technical industries, it’s a mix of theory and practice.

CROWDED MIX

GH: How do you approach your mixes?

JS: I will always prefer to mix on an analogue console with real faders. Sonically it’s always superior to ProTools mixing. It’s great to stop looking at the waveforms on screen and just think about what’s coming out of the speakers.

At the start of a mix I like to push everything up and see what’s there to start with. I get a bit familiar with the multitrack and start to form a vision in my head for where the mix should go, getting some rough balances and some general EQ and compression sorted out. If there are banks of backing vocals or the like I’ll usually try to reduce the track count by bouncing things at this point.

After that, there are certain basics to take care of, like getting the bottom end working between the kick drum and the bass, making the snare deliver like it should, and getting the vocal sitting right. There are no hard and fast rules but I will often get the drums, bass and vocals to a place that works then start adding everything in around them. I’ll usually set the mix bus EQ fairly early on in the mix but leave the compression out until I have most of the elements in place.

If there is any editing to be done, I’ll usually do it at this point when everything is in its right place. After that it’s time to turn on the mix computer and start doing fader rides.

As I mentioned, I was outputting to only 24 faders so generally all the fine detail compression and EQ was achieved in ProTools. I’m a big fan of the Waves SSL compressors and the Sonnox Oxford EQ plug-ins and they’re a regular feature on these mixes. I took the opportunity on this session to compare the Waves API EQs with those on the desk and was impressed by how good they were.

Though I generally like to sub-mix the drums through some overall EQ and compression, on this project that wasn’t possible due to the output configuration. On Don’t Stop Now the weird piano chords in the middle eight were achieved with the Voce Chorus/Vibrato plug-in.

In the analogue domain, most of the effects were run from ProTools, although we had Rak’s lovely EMT plate reverb on the send from the desk because no plug-in will ever replace the real thing.

The mix bus had an SSL C1 compressor and a GML 8200 stereo EQ over it. The only other thing that ran analogue was Neil’s vocal sound which I ran as an analogue insert on ProTools so I could still do rides post-compression. The chain was a Teletronix LA-2A, a Urei 1176, a dbx 902 and a Focusrite EQ. I used the LA-2A for colour more than compression. I had it set to ‘Limit’ but only had it tickling the vocal. In contrast, I used the 1176 a little more savagely with both the ‘4’ and ‘8’ ratio buttons pushed in and achieving around 5dB – 10dB of compression. This doesn’t work on every voice but it was a good thing in this case.

The dbx 902 is the only de-esser worth its salt; I wish someone would write a plug-in version that was as good. And though the Sonnox EQs are really good, I had a Focusrite EQ (the blue and yellow faced one) at my disposal, which was even better.

Steve has an ethos of making mix decisions as the production progresses, so by the time we actually came to mix we had a lot of the sorting out already done. I had certain sub-mix balances set up in ProTools and I would take photos of Steve’s fader balances (the API has no automation) so we could come back to each tune fairly quickly.

For each tune I would usually start the proper mix on my own, working from where we had left it in tracking. At that stage I would do ‘the basics’ as I talk about, lifting the mix up past where we had left it at tracking. Once most of the sounds are worked out I would get Steve in, and between us we would finish the mix doing final rides and tweaking any sounds as required. Steve quite enjoys doing manual rides at mix time though we put most of them into ProTools by the end of the mix. Plate reverb send changes were always done live by necessity.

FINAL PRODUCT

GH: Talk about mastering and how you felt about the finished result.

JS: Mastering is a tricky subject. Steve and I share a dislike for the ‘louder is always better’ school of mastering engineer who really work their digital limiting. I accept that for radio this might be required to a degree, but in that case I am in favour of doing a separate cut for the radio release. I was doing a road trip to somewhere recently and something from Neil Young’s Harvest album came on in the shuffle on my iPod. It wasn’t as loud as the preceding track but once I turned it up a little I loved how big the sounds were. The record sounded enormous because it retained enough of the natural dynamic range of those instruments.

You can certainly mix for loudness but I think taking a mix that is still fairly dynamic and slamming it through a digital limiter does it no favours. The mastering guys I like understand this. If you mix for loudness then they will do their loud thing, but if you mix something to have more punch and dynamic, then they will respect that and not destroy the depth of the mix by pounding it. Time On Earth was cut by Bob Ludwig at Gateway and in my experience he’s always really good. He did a good job of marrying up songs from two different producers and three different mix engineers.

Text: Gavin Hammond

GH: Tell us about your home studio…

BG: I built a studio with my buddy Gareth ‘Gigpiglet’ Stuckey in his Redfern basement. I worked in a spare room of my flat in Bondi for 10 years, but I used up all the magic in that room and it was time to have a definite workspace outside of home. I met Gareth on a Tascam Internet forum in 2000 when we were the only two people in Australia who owned a Tascam MX2424 digital recorder.

My studio is basically three rooms all tied together: I have a room with my stuff in it, he has one with his, and there’s a live room. Between us we’ve got some stuff; I have more instruments, he has more mics and outboard.

Gear-wise I have an iMac G5 running ProTools 7.1 with Tool Kit, Logic 7 and a Digi 002. I got Logic because that’s what Felix liked working with, but mainly I work in ’Tools. Outboard-wise I have a pair of Quad Eight preamps (the red ones) mod’ed by Joe Malone in Brisbane, a pair of Universal Audio 6176s, a two-channel TLA tube mic preamp compressor, and a Focusrite 8 analogue/8 ADAT in/out interface.

Mic-wise I’ve got an AKG C3000, AKG C12 (on extended loan from a friend), Sennheiser 421s, 441MD, a pair of Oktava 012 pencil mics, some EVs, Shure 58s, and Felix’s AKG D12 (better come and get it mate). Gareth has a range of Oktava mics, and in particular a ribbon that I use all the time, and 57s, Beta 57s & 58s and lots of other bibs and bobs.

One thing I use all the time is a Sony micro cassette dictaphone. I remember reading about a Los Lobos recording done at Ry Cooder’s home studio in LA where they used a ghetto blaster as an overhead pair for the drum kit. Cheap, nasty, ultra-hard knee compression – the little dictaphone, or ‘Mr Slurpy’ as I like to call him, is even uglier! I use it all the time on drum sessions – it doesn’t matter where you put it; I generally just hit record and throw it on the floor near the front of the kit. It does wonderful things to cymbals, and has quite a rhythmic effect because the compression is so hard and the release so slow that it feeds back on itself – it’s very musical and adds a nice crust to things. I’ve used it on vocals and guitars as well. The intro to my song Tidy Town is recorded on Mr Slurpy.

GH: How do you go about getting inspiration for a track with so many options?

BG: I am inspired by people like Nick Lowe who have a 360-degree view of music creation and production – likewise, I have an idea while I’m writing a song of how I think it should sound when I put it down. I don’t really write songs, I write excuses to put words and music and noises together!

GH: Can we speak more specifically about how you record guitars, for example?

BG: I’ve spent a lot of time recording acoustic guitars and I don’t stray too far from engineering orthodoxy – a good condenser mic positioned about 30cm from where the neck meets the body of the guitar and angled towards the sound hole… that’s for dreadnoughts, etc. For nylon-stringed guitars (or ‘nun’s guitars’ as Tex Perkins calls them) almost head onto the sound hole; Dobros and arch tops generally behind and out from the bridge.

Basically, I look for the voice of the guitar and follow it. Depending on where the guitar lives in the song (is it the primary motivator, picked, strummed, one guitar or three?).

Say, with my Gilet Everly Bros acoustic, I often use some other mics (in combo with the principal condenser, which is usually an Oktava O12, or, if I’m playing away from home, a U87 or similar): a D12 or a 421 60cm or so out and back from the bridge; or a ribbon pointed at the back of the guitar body; or all three.

Depending on the guitar I generally roll off some bottom-end – especially if it’s a big-bodied guitar – otherwise it blows out any compression I’m using. I usually apply compression of around 3 to 5dB at about 4:1 ratio unless I’m going for a really slamming aesthetic, which is rare. I generally favour mic position over EQ – I’m old school. I don’t go in too close; I like a lot of air around the guitar. I might just use the condenser in a mix but at least I have some choices… better to be lookin’ at ’em than lookin’ for ’em.

GH: Can you talk us through a track on the album, step by step, to give us an idea of how you work?

BG: There’s a track on my album called Black Swan Song that moves through some changes. It starts with a strummed nun’s guitar put down first (top to tail, two mics as described), then a guide vocal (everybody plays better when they hear a vocal).

Next, a double bass part recorded with a condenser near the bridge over the F-hole and a ribbon mic at shoulder height of the player looking down at the body of the bass (played masterfully by Dave Symes).

I’ve been doing some production workshops at the Australian Institute of Music in Q Studios (formerly Rhino) and so I had the chance to record a piano part there on their Yamaha baby grand and also a string section. I’ve made many records with Stu Hunter, a first-call keys man, and he’s done great horn and string arrangements for me as well, so he wrote a part for three violins, two violas and two cellos. We recorded them together as sections (i.e., a condenser mic on each set of instruments) a stereo X/Y pair two-three metres back and above, and a far room mic in the adjoining live room (the INXS snare space) about 8 to 10 metres away.

I had a friend’s weirdo ’70s Yamaha rotating speaker box (it rotates vertically, not horizontally like a Leslie), so I did an acoustic guitar part through that. Felix did a little brushes drum part on his tambourine snare and my water bottle kick drum (a 15-litre plastic water cooler bottle mounted in a frame) and I added some shaker and tambo.

Jess Ciampa added some vibraphone, and the final touch was some piano ‘soup’ – one of my favourite things. Basically, I mic up a piano and play the fundamental tones of the song with the sustain pedal on and record the resonant decay. Then I find the best bit of swirling resonance, copy it, reverse it and crossfade it with the original piece of resonance and then loop it. I do this independently of the track so that when I slot it under the mix it becomes a random effect. It’s usually way back in the mix but it adds a quite discernible sonic halo. I like adding a random element to a take. To me it’s the essence of Quincy Jones’ maxim: “…leave enough room for the Lord to walk through”.

When I mixed the song I used a lot of delay and not much reverb. I mix pretty dry. I had a Sun Studios kinda slap-back (Mooger Fooger plug-in) with a lot of repeat and a bit of EMT medium plate courtesy of TL Space – I’m a fan of plates, they just sound musical to me.

The song really relies on performance, arrangement, a bit of EQ and a lot of work on panning… balancing really.

GH: Can you expand on your mixing ideas a bit more?

BG: I usually mix quite dry, with a bit of compression, and minimal EQ, unless I want to really mess up a sound. I try to keep it to a minimum of takes as well. Generally, one take straight through, a second with drop-ins and pickups and a third, once I think I’ve got it in the bag, to improvise a bit. Then I comp it.

When I hear of people, who should know better, doing 63 bass takes I’m appalled: why give yourself that many decisions to make? Once I have a comp I delete all the other takes – that way I can’t go back, just like ‘Cortez The Killer’ burning his ships when the Spanish landed on the coast of Mexico so they could never go back, they were committed.

When I mix, I spread the tracks over groups and into 16 channels of my TAC console then stereo out of there into my MX2424. The highest track count on my album was around 45.

Generally drums and percussion are grouped into four; everything else is in stereo pairs (keys, FX, etc) and mono (vocals, bass). If I can, I use EQ on the board, I like the idea of winding stuff in and out with my fingers – much more wholesome – but if I need to, I’ll use plug-ins.

Breaking it out through the desk adds a lot of real estate, more dimension (some people say that there’s no difference between mixing ‘in the box’ to putting it through the desk, but sorry folks, I don’t agree). I set the faders at unity, pan stereo groups left and right and do all the volume automation, etc on the 002.

GH: How do you approach mastering? Suggestions and tips for preparing?

BG: I love mastering; it’s the best day of the year. Send out for breakfast while someone else polishes your work and makes it sound like a record. I have been going almost exclusively to Don ‘Is Good’ Bartley (now at Benchmark) for 15 years or more. He’s a legend.

He always approaches my stuff as a piece of music, not so much as a sonic event. He has all that stuff up there in the bio-computer to refer to, but he works instinctively. Like Charlie Parker said: “… learn it all then forget it”. If I can mix to half-inch tape I will, otherwise 24-bit/96k on my MX2424. I often ring Don up before I mix and ask what he thinks.

As for tips? Well, check what software people are using, I turned up somewhere recently with a 7.1 Tools project and they had 6.3. Doh!

GH: Any big-picture tips as a result of doing this solo project?

BG: Spend the money on the beds – good drums, good players, good rooms, good mics, good engineer. Even though 95 percent of what people hear on a record is emotive, technical excellence shouldn’t be sacrificed. There’s ‘loose’ and then there’s ‘sloppy’; there’s ‘lo-fi’ and then there’s ‘just-sounds-like-shit’.

GH: Finally, what would you nominate as your ‘desert island’ gear?

BG: Mr Slurpy, a guitar, some chopsticks, a six-pack of Sapporo beer to put sand in and shake after drinking them to create the mood!