We’re in the midst of yet another heat wave in Southern California. Ninety degrees in October is unacceptable and I’m getting nostalgic for the fall seasons of my youth in New England. Because my control room is built in a garage, there isn’t any climate control, so by about 2pm on days like this, it gets pretty uncomfortable in here, so I try to get up early and get the bulk of my work done before the temperature rises too much. This particular early morning is special though, because I woke up to a message from Elaine in the UK that all of the mixes for her album are approved and I can start getting them prepared for mastering! It’s always a good feeling when completing any project and the client is happy, but this one is particularly sweet because of how it was done. It was just three weeks ago to the day since Elaine arrived here and we started on her eight song album at my house, armed with her incredible songs and beautiful voice, some of my favorite musicians (and people), and just a vague idea of how to capture it all in a house full of new and untested gear. Now, here I am printing the final mixes. It’s a good day, despite it being ninety bloody degrees in October!
Before I jump back in and pick things up where I left off in the last newsletter, I want to just say a quick thank you to all that have supported me with this endeavor. I have received some incredibly encouraging messages recently from people that have really inspired me to keep it going. Thank you so much friends!
Ok, back to nerdsville. I left off with my mic list and how I ended up using them, but I still needed to figure out headphones for everyone. I looked into a bunch of options, including some expensive systems, like one from Hearback with individual mixers for everyone. I’ve used those types of systems a lot in the past and they are great, but again, my budget (or lack thereof) didn’t allow for something so extravagant. So, I went with a very cheap solution, but it actually worked out quite well. I bought a few little Mackie HM4 headphone distribution boxes. Because of the EVO, I now had 16 outputs as well as inputs to play with, and decided to set up three separate headphone mixes that I could build in Pro Tools with Sends on each channel and send those submixes out through the 1/4” TRS jacks on the 16x4 stage snake. I really just needed something with a volume control on the other end for the individual headphones. The Mackie’s were clean enough sounding with plenty of gain and I could adjust everyone’s individual mix from within the session. It ended up being pretty streamlined and simple solution and I had no complaints from any of the people on the other end of them. I did have to buy some long TRS cables and there was a minor inconvenience in that they all require a wall wart power supply, so I needed to make sure there was power to everyone. But, in the end it wasn’t a big enough deal to worry about and was fine.
Talkback to communicate with everyone was a breeze, again thanks to the EVO’s software setup. It allowed me to actually assign the built in microphone on my laptop as the talkback and route it out to all of the headphone feeds simultaneously using the function button on the front of the EVO unit. That button can be assigned to anything from a speaker dim button to an alternate speaker switch, and of course, talkback. It took me some time to figure out the routing and get it to work the way I wanted, but once I did, it worked like a charm. You can also use an external microphone if you prefer but it eats up a mic pre and the internal mic seemed to work just fine.
Ok, enough of the tech talk. For all intents and purposes, I had a working, living, breathing recording studio and all that was left was to put people in it, hit the red button, and hope it all sounded like music.
Day one with the band started around 10am, and it was immediately clear what one major benefit of recording at my house was going to be. The energy was super relaxed and comfortable. The players, Matt Lynott on Drums and Patrick McClory on bass (more about them later), met Elaine for the first time and the four of us sat and chatted over some coffee and pastries and got to ease into the day and the project as a whole without anyone looking at the time or remotely thinking we were wasting it. It just felt like a nice breakfast hang and everyone got a chance to know each other and get comfortable before we even played a note. This was invaluable. I have been on so many sessions where people show up to the studio and are so worried about how much it costs to be there that they setup immediately and want to get sounds as quickly as possible, then jump immediately into recording takes before anyone even talks to each other about anything they are trying to accomplish. The results are often that the first song takes a long time to come together because everyone was thrown into this bizarre, foreign situation and expected to perform their best. Unless you are a seasoned studio musicians who spends every day doing this, no one is going to be comfortable in that scenario, and the recording often suffers.
After we had a chance to hang for a bit, we started talking about the first song and how we’d like to approach it. Although everyone was isolated for recording, I set a couple of amps up in the living room by the drums so everyone could plug in and run through stuff without headphones. This ended up being really beneficial and worth the extra time to set up. We could continue the relaxed feeling of just hanging out a couple feet away at the dining table, without immediately going off and being isolated from each other. Elaine and I would sit on the couch in front of the drums, Patrick on a stool beside, and Elaine would quietly play and sing the tune and we’d all talk in real time about ideas, parts and approach. We did these casual run throughs before each song and then we’d all go to our prospective isolated places and start to record. The actual recording just became an extension of the conversation and the hang, not some pressured thing. It flowed naturally and for most of the songs we got keeper takes within just a few passes. On at least one of the songs we kept the first recorded take.
Fortunately, I had some time before the session to work on getting sounds, so we didn’t have to spend a lot of time on that when it came time to record. Matt brought his kit over the day before Elaine arrived and we set up and got levels and sounds then. Elaine and I worked on her vocal and guitar setup the night before the session, and even recorded part of one of the more stripped down songs so on that first morning, all that was left to do was get Patrick’s DI going and balance everything and adjust everyone’s headphone mixes to their liking. Again, another huge benefit of being in my house and not at a studio where you wouldn’t have that luxury. As a result of the setup and run through with everyone first, the first song went down relatively quickly. I want to say within three takes. As we all stood around my small control room and listened to that first playback, I began to feel all the tension in my body I had been building for the weeks leading up to this begin to soften and I let out a huge sigh of relief. This was going to work. Not only was it going to work, but it was sounding really good!
That first day we ended up getting the basic tracks for five of the eight songs. Let me clarify, not just basic tracks, we ended up with final takes of drums, bass, and all of Elaine’s rhythm guitars on all five songs. All were done live together with maybe a couple of really small punch-ins on a couple songs. In addition, many of those live vocal takes ended up being the final takes we used on the record. This was amazing and a huge testament to Matt, Patrick and Elaine’s incredible musicianship and instinct. A lot of things went right with the way the studio came together and the gear choices, but none of it would have made any difference without these amazing musicians performing the way they did. It was as if they had been playing these songs together for years. Without them, this would have been a very different kind of story.
The next day was just Elaine and I working together and we did a few lead vocal passes, but mainly it was time for me to add my guitar parts. While I can’t say I nailed everything in the first take and it was all perfect, it did actually go pretty quickly. The foundation that was laid the day before left me feeling inspired and ideas came together fast. Matt and Patrick and I have played together in various projects for many years, so finding the pocket with them is fairly automatic at this point. So, it was just a matter of finding parts that added to the equation and didn’t take any of the focus away from Elaine’s beautiful vocals. I also knew that we would be adding Pedal Steel and maybe some piano and strings to a few songs, so I wanted to leave plenty of space for those things. As far as how I recorded my guitars, I wanted to keep the feel of a real band in tact, so I setup a single amp mic’d with a Shure SM7b (a Dr. Z Carmen Ghia Head with a 1x12” cab loaded with a Celestion Creamback, for any guitar nerds out there), my pedalboard with a few key effects (an EP Booster, a modified Boss EQ pedal, a Greer Lightspeed overdrive, and a Line 6 HX Stomp for reverbs and delays), and rotated between a few guitars for different songs or parts. Mainly a Yamaha Revstar with P-90’s and a Bigsby, A Gretsch 6120, and an old Squire converted to a Baritone. I wanted it to feel organic and not too slick or over produced, so I tried to keep the parts down to a couple per song. Sometimes it was just one, others I didn’t play on at all. Elaine’s feel on guitar is so good, I didn’t have to worry about holding down the fort, I just had to add the right color to it. I did end up adding some acoustic guitar with a Gibson J45 on some of the songs, just to reinforce the rhythm in some spots and open up the choruses with a bit of brightness here and there. I mic’d the Gibson with an old modified Oktava MC-012 that I’ve had for years. It looks like hell, like it was unearthed by a hound from some ancient burial site, but it’s probably one of my best sounding mics.
The second day with Matt and Patrick went even smoother and faster than the first. We wrapped up the last few songs in just a couple hours and had time for a nice lunch together with some delicious sandwiches and espressos, and then they rode off into the sunset like the rock star heroes they are. Variety is the spice of life and I love that I get to work on different music with different people every day, but honestly, I would gladly make records with those two guys every single day and be happy. They are amazing musicians, of course, but they are even more amazing as people and the hang is paramount in creating a great recording experience. Their energy, positivity and rapport with Elaine was every bit as important to the album as what they played and there is no doubt in my mind it would not have come out as good as it did without them. I am eternally grateful to them both.
Well, I had hoped to wrap this thing up in three parts, but that clearly isn’t going to happen. I still need to talk about the incredible contributions by a few other musicians that came in and go over a bit from the mixing process of this album. I have so many other subjects I want to get to for this newsletter, and have had so many wonderful suggestions from people, but I really want to document this experience with this album fully. Thanks so much for reading along.
Take care everyone,
Mike
About The Author
Mike Butler is a professional mix engineer, guitarist and producer currently based in Southern California. His list of credits range from The Rolling Stones, Phoebe Bridgers, The Pretenders, The Shins, Ray LaMontagne, Five For Fighting, Reba McIntire, Fleetwood Mac, The Doobie Brothers, Eminem and many more. He recently mixed the music for the hit HBO animated series, “Batwheels” and has produced music for commercial clients including Shure Microphones and Progressive Insurance.
As usual . . .