Nigel Godrich – Producer

Nigel Godrich is an English recording engineer, producer and musician, well known for his involvement with artists including Radiohead, Beck. After studying at the SAE institute in Australia, he started working at Audio One as a junor staff member. After its closure, he became house engineer at RAK Studios as a tape operator for English recording engineer and producer John Leckie, helping him record albums for Ride and Demin. In 1994, Godrich left RAK studios and established his own studio ‘Shabang Studio’ and within half a year began working with McAlmont & Butler and more noticeably, Radiohead.

When asked by Evening Standard’s Toby Earle how Godrich describes his role as producer to people, Nigel replied:-

“If pushed, the analogy would be with a film director; you have the control and the interface through technology of making a record. You have that vision and, depending on what kind of producer you are, you’re the one who steers the ship and puts it all together.” (Earle, 2016)

This differs from Albini’s approach, who has been documented mentioning ( ) that he believes his role is executing the vision of the artist, as opposed to that of himself.

Godrich mentions in episode 2 of the recording documentary ‘Soundbreaking’ that “an edit done on tape sounds better than an edit done on a computer. It just does” (Martin Norris, 2017) [47:18-47:21] – thus preferring the sonic characteristics of recording sound to tape over that of capturing sound digitally. As documented by ‘the King of Gear’ blog, Godrich used a Otari MTR 90II 2-inch analogue multitrack tape machine, a Studer A80 2-track.

However, in an interview done for Audiohead, Nigel stated that “we mainly used Digidesign’s Digidesign’s Pro Tools’ for editing and manipulating audio” when recording Radiohead – “Pro Tools is an industry standard and has been for years” (Jorgl, 2006). He uses both analogue and software-based technologies when working with artists, both when recording and mixing, depending on the tasks at hand.

 

 

 

 

 

Ed: Ed: Nigel (Godrich) limited us. We had the old blackboard out. Which in the Kid A days had about 60 titles.
Thom: “And I’m the only who knew what they were”.
Ed: And then he came in another day on Kid A and he’d write another 5 songs.
Thom: ‘And then every now and then someone came round and asked, what’s this bit here? ‘ADC-F’. And I’d say: “Oh, well I’ll play it”
Ed: Nigel sorta said: why don’t we hone it down to 15 or 16 songs. By the time we were in the studio with Nigel, we’ve been playing some of these songs for a year and a half. So there was a slight sense of desperation. We had to get rid of them. We had to try to do them as quickly as possible and do them the best we could. So they only way to do that was to really concentrate. To nail it down.
Thom: “I kept coming every Monday night and three days later somebody had wiped them off.”
Steve: “Was it Nigel?”
Ed: “Could’ve been the cleaning lady”

 

Ed: “The big break through was… We’ve done a load of recording with Nigel. We’ve done about 8 weeks before Christmas, last year. And then we came back and listened to a lot of it. A lot of it wasn’t good enough, but the second day in the studio and we basically cut ’15 step’ in a day. Everybody was playing live. That gave us lot confidence.”

 

 

 

https://www.theaudiohunt.com/blog/chasing-your-sound-in-the-studio

http://nigelgodrichproducer.tumblr.com/

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/460693-nigel-godrich-drum-sounds.html

 

 

*******https://citizeninsane.eu/main.html

References

Adriaan Pels (2007) Ed O’Brien & Tom Yorke Interview for BBC 6 Music. [online] At Ease Web. Available from: http://www.ateaseweb.com/2007/11/19/ed-obrien-thom-yorke-at-bbc-6music/ [Accessed 5 February 2017].

Jorgl, S. (2006) Radiohead: In the Studio with Nigel Godrich. [online] Audiohead. Available from http://www.audiohead.net/interviews/radiohead/ [Accessed 4 February 2017].

Martin Norris (2017) Soundbreaking – Season 1 Episode 2. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOGwX_lfL9k [Accessed 4 February 2017].

Toby Earle (2016) Nigel Godrich interview: ‘Radiohead and I have a very deep and profound relationship. [online] Evening Standard. Available from: http://www.standard.co.uk/stayingin/music/nigel-godrich-interview-radiohead-and-i-have-a-very-deep-and-profound-relationship-a3283096.html [Accessed 4 February 2017].

 

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