Steve Albini is a well-established recording engineer born in California notorious for having worked with both successful artists alongside many of which many haven’t heard of before.

A staple of Albini’s approach when working with the artists is not necessarily feeling the need to impose his ‘sound’ on an artist’s work, stating “it’s ridiculous to say that my records have a ‘sound'” (Tingen, 2005) – his approach is more so aimed towards capturing the sound in the artist envisions it. “If I’m asked to do something fantastic, then I will try to do something fantastic, but I don’t start from a position that everything needs to be changed from what it was” (Tingen, 2005).

Influenced by English sound engineer John Loder, Albini was shown the importance of “getting the most out of the equipment without making the equipment the focus of attention” by having a “complete working knowledge of his equipment.” Expanding on this further:-

“He showed me the potential for getting the most out of the equipment without making the equipment the focus of attention. He knew how to do things quickly and with great sensitivity to the band, and had a complete working knowledge of his equipment. In any situation he could snap his fingers and do the right thing, because he knew exactly how things worked and what to do.” (Tingen, 2005)

In an interview with Music Radar, Albini touches on his thoughts of “in-vogue production gimmicks”, to which he replied with the following:-

“I don’t want to be saddling a band with clichés that are not of their choosing, you know? So I’m inclined to try and capture whatever is awesome about a band in their own dialect and not concern myself with trying to make it fit in with the current musical landscape” (Mackintosh, 2013)

Evidently, his intentions are not to feel complied to follow conventional norms of the music industry, but do what’s best for the music, irrespective of the day in age and the available technologies to him. Whatever tools he deems best to deal with the tasks are the ones he’ll utilise, opposed to his tools determining how he approaches the tasks at hand.

Discussing his approach on recording guitars, he puts forward that “the most important thing” in his opinion “is to listen to the sound the guitar player is making, then go through your mental image of what different microphones do with different sounds” and try to “make a pairing in your mind that would be flattering to the sound you’re hearing”.

Implementation of Steve Albini’s Production Techniques

Upon having approached the production my own material, I had an idea of the creative direction I wanted to take my songs. I knew that I didn’t want to overproduce the tracks, which would be incredibly easy to do with the amount of software plugins and hardware available. I wanted to make sure that I spent a substantial amount of time prior to the recording process to make sure I had the sound I wanted before capturing it. Albini’s approach of capturing a band’s “organic sound” was a massive inspiration for me approaching my own material as the artists that have helped inspire records I’d drew inspiration from (Death in Vegas, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Charlatans, Beady Eye, Nirvana). This was one of the reasons why I came to the decision to not to limit myself to just the universities studio, but to explore recording at home which I’ve never done in terms of my own alternative/rock/psychedelic songs, try out recording demo drums at Pete’s house (to which we used in the end) and collaborate with musicians in a variety of natural everyday spaces. For me, this would create this ‘organic feel’ and avoid the ‘sterilisation’ and the quest for ‘perfection’ that can come with recording in studios. I wanted the tracks to feel a sense of fluidity and emotion via not over-editing, over-mixing and using dead spaces to remove the sound of the environment.

Paul Tingen (2005) Steve Albini: Sound Engineer Extraordinaire. [online] Sound on Sound. Available from: http://www.soundonsound.com/people/steve-albini [Accessed 26 April 2017].

Hamish Mackintosh (2013) Steve Albini on his gear and recording know-how. [online] Music Radar. Available from: http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/steve-albini-on-his-gear-and-recording-know-how-587015 [Accessed 26 April 2017].

Beck Hansen (Beck) is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer who became well known within the music industry during the 90s due to his unique style of incorporated musical elements from a wide array of musical genres, from acoustic, blues to hip hop and pop, often including sampling techniques to cut between these styles to create his unique style.

Taking a look at Beck’s 1996 album ‘Odelay’, we can have a better understanding of how he acquired the success he has over the years, largely influenced by the pure amount of different relationships he had established with producers and musicians throughout the years. Though Beck was the predominant producer, he did collaborate with The Dust Brothers, Mario Caldato Jr, Brian Paulson, Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf (Music Tech, 2014). Mike Simpson and John King (The Dust Brothers). Impressed by Beck’s ability to skip between different musical genres, The Dust Brothers consisting of Mike Simpson and John King wanted to get an idea of who he was, later to find out they share many of the same musical interests (Spencer, 2011). Inspired by the lack of pressure due to the presumption that Beck was a ‘one-hit-wonder’, the two parties felt a sense of ease when it came to the making of ‘Odelay’.

Seeing how Beck had approached the creative process on his successful 2013 album ‘Morning Phase’, a considerable amount of the included instrumentation is predicated on the involvement of a range of creative minds coming together. During the recording stage, Beck “recorded the basic tracks for most of Morning Phase [..] in three days of tracking”, whereby after he spent “almost half a year on his own” trying to figure it all out and thinking about “how to make it all work” (Frick, 2013).

Incorporation of Beck’s production approaches/techniques in my own production

Inspired by the way Beck approached the production process for ‘Odelay’, I very much want to replicate the idea of ‘sampling’; chopping up, editing and manipulating audio in a variety of different manors to achieve something new. I’m extremely excited about working with this technique; having a plethora of musical objects to which I can trial and error with. Seeing whether a cabasa could be placed within a particular section of the chorus, editing parts of collaborative vocals to see if a low hum fits underneath an acoustic guitar verse – just experimenting with the musical instances I have to create something I wouldn’t necessarily have thought of.

I will also be incorporating the collaborative efforts Beck introduces within his work to the production side of my tracks too. Most of the artists/creative minds I am working with for this project are all individuals I have known for years that know me, know how I approach music and are just enthusiastic minds with great ideas. I want to get a grasp of how they hear the music, what ideas they have and bring these ideas into the tracks, so they’re not just my songs, but the people that help support me as well. An instance of this can be found for example in Session #2 of ‘Sessions with Pete’, where I had heard a particular way in my head of how the rhythm of the drums would be for ‘Wait’, but I much preferred how Pete was playing it during the verse sections. The drums were originally supposed to be rimshots during the verse. but I felt his take on the verse was much better than mine, so we stuck with that. As Pete, Thomas and Anthony all have different musical tastes, they’ll all have different ways of approaching my music, based on their prior experiences, tastes, and emotions, so for me I find it important to incorporate these into my records in the same way Beck has over the years.

In terms of a stylistic approach, I love the clarity of the acoustic guitars on Beck’s ‘Morning Phase’ album, more specifically the song ‘Morning’. His acoustic guitar has a very smooth, even frequency response and was recorded incredibly dry, yet has a lovely reverb placed on it during the mixing process that compliments the low-end frequency content of the acoustic guitar. I am very much inspired by this, yet want a slightly more distant, relaxed acoustic guitar sound for “You and I” – so it’s not directly in your face, yet the top end clarity is clear and crisp.

References

David Frick (2013) Beck’s Long Road to ‘Morning Phase’. [online] Rolling Stone. Available from http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/becks-long-road-to-morning-phase-20131121 [Accessed 16 March 2017].

Music Tech (2014) Landmark Productions: Beck – Odelay. [online] Available from: http://www.musictech.net/2014/11/landmark-productions-beck-odelay/ [Accessed 26 February 2017].

Rex Otaegui (2014) Beck – Morning [HQ w/Lyrics]. [online video] YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvKbBkiYN9Y [Accessed 26 February 2017].

Roy Spencer (2011) The making of Beck’s Odelay: Dust Brother Mike Simpson’s track-by-track guide. [online] Music Radar. Available from http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/the-making-of-becks-odelay-dust-brother-mike-simpsons-track-by-track-guide-401512 [Accessed 26 February 2017].

Anton Newcombe is a Californian singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist, most known for his psychedelic rock band ‘The Brian Jonestown Massacre’ (from now on referred to as ‘BJM’).

In an interview with Tenement TV (2016) [3:05-4:58], Newcombe mentions that he has been inspired by a variety of Scottish musical personnel. He states that he is really loves the approach Jesus & Mary Chain took towards the creation and production process in what he calls ‘do-it-yourself culture’ – this being the idea of creating your own songs, having a vision of what you want them to sound like an executing this, regardless of finances/resources/equipment. The whole organic nature of creating music according to how you feel, using it as an expressive medium more-so than one with alternative motives seems to be integral to how Newcombe has worked over the years, for better or worse.

When asked a question about sustaining his level of creativity over the duration of his career, Newcome introduces the concept of creating your own culture (Tenement TV, 2016) [6:03-6:54] by connecting with people, developing an “ecosystem” – a “little community” of people creating something that brings people together – forming a “folk” culture. A lot of this stems from him just “bumping into people” [9:09] and figuring out who exactly the person is behind the music and using his music as a platform for that person to find themselves. This approach to collaborating with individuals in an industry is one of the distinctive aspects of not only who he is as a creative mind but also of the music itself, as you can very much hear this collaboration across BJM’s music. Using their fourth album ‘Their Satanic Majesties’ Second Request’ album as an example, their liner notes are the following:

“acoustic guitar, sitar, clavs, mellotron, tambora, echoplex-feedback-generator, electric guitar, dumbek, tablas, flute, farfisa, recorder, tape loops, drums, acoustic bass, shinni, chanter, didgeridoo, vox jaguar, French horn, viola, tuba, SMS serge, 12-string electric guitar, harmonium, tambourines, cabasa, conga, jimbe, accordion, celeste, glockenspiel, bells, fish, piano, hammond, cello, wolf horn, maracas, weird-fucking-Chinese-shit, tyco drum, vibes, woodwinds and other top secret crap.”

This level of collaboration is what exactly provided Newcombe with the sound he was looking for. This album was recorded at Bloody Angle Studios in San Francisco, produced by Dave Deresinski and Naut Humon (Discogs, 2017).

During an interview Newcombe participated in for Louder Than War, he mentions that he often wants to create an “album experience” when creating his albums, as opposed the disjointed, singles-driven market we live in today (Stanley, 2014). This explains why many of his tracks feel like they belong together – it’s because he didn’t create them in isolation, they were always meant to be listened to collectively.

How does his production approach inform my own?

The idea of ‘do-it-yourself’ culture has a big appeal to me with this project – I feel like there is the chance to overproduce the tracks to the extent that its devoid of the emotion I’ve put into making the songs, and more so just turning into a ‘commercial mix’. Though I believe the mix will be commercially viable, I don’t want it to share some of the qualities of modern mixes, including every sound sounding ‘full’, rhythms being clinically constructed and being rigid in nature. I want my mixes to have a real sense of rhythm, not DAW ‘grid-induced rhythm’ and this can be achieved by having the drums recorded as well as they can be in one take and in time. Obviously, there will be edits between takes and to correct early/late rhythmic elements, but it’s more of a correction tool as opposed to an overhaul tool. In terms of not every musical instance sounding ‘full’ I’ll be using the full extent of the audible frequency spectrum, having low-end thumps from boxes and perhaps Cajon to carry the sense of rhythm, to guitars played through converted radio amplifiers to give a crunchy lo-fi distortion to thin weedy guitar hooks. This way the mixes will be audibly pleasing due to the full utilization of the audible frequency spectrum (we don’t live in a world where the ‘overall mix’ of sounds is mixed with a HPF at 50 kHz and a LPF at 8 kHz), which we as humans sound satisfying. Compression won’t be overall ‘heavy’ throughout – for some instances of electric guitar I may decide to compress them heavily to get a particular sound, but it will be more so for the effect I want as opposed to just ‘what you do’.

I also will be adopting the approach of using a wide array of physical instruments, from the voice, guitars, and drums, to less western instruments including djembe, didgeridoo and cabasa. This for me would be a great approach to emphasise the emotional content I am trying to push behind each song and create a multi-cultural sound, similar to the likes of BJM.

His take on collaboration is very inspiring for me – something I very much want to ingrain within my music. It’s great for me to create my music, but if I’m creating music with others it’s very much theirs as much as mine, so I want to use my music as a vehicle to connect with passionate people and use it as a means of shining a light on interesting people with interesting views and ideas.

Bibliography

Carl Stanley (2014) Louder Than War Interview: Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. [online] Louder Than War. Available from: http://louderthanwar.com/ltw-interview-anton-newcombe/ [Accessed 20 February 2017].

Discogs (2017) The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Their Satanic Majesties’ Second Request. [online]. Discogs. Available from: https://www.discogs.com/The-Brian-Jonestown-Massacre-Their-Satanic-Majesties-Second-Request/release/3643344 [Accessed 20 February 2017].

Tenement TV (2016) TTV TALKS: Anton Newcombe The Brian Jonestown Massacre Barrowlands 2016. YouTube. [online] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1eEuE1-JA0 [Accessed 20 February 2017]. 

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].