Sound Advice, Session One | Mitch Easter
09|23|14
Mitch Easter has been called a Founding Father of College Rock, the Dr. Dre of Jangle, Sonic Wizard, a true southern gentleman and more. Working with bands as diverse as R.E.M, Polvo, Ben Folds Five, Wilco, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Suzanne Vega, and countless others, Mitch has crafted a unique sonic palette of songs and sounds over the course of 30 years. I recently got to sit down with Mitch and discuss music, guitar pedals and “found art.” (Interview by Rich Stine, Chief Engineer.)
RS: What sparked your interest in doing what you do? Can you recall a first memory of it?
ME: I always loved recorded music and certain sounds intrigued me- the first instance of a sound that I kept thinking about was the electric guitar solo on "Raunchy" by, I think, Bill Justus. I had no idea what an electric guitar was, but the sound of that solo really sent me, as they said back then. And a bit later I was wondering how they did it. I couldn't figure out how George Harrison and John Lennon seemed to be playing acoustic guitars and then there would be a solo on an electric. I decided that somebody must have been standing by in the studio to toss an electric guitar into George's hands just in time for the solo. By this time I knew what an electric guitar was, but I didn't know about overdubbing!
Anyway, it just seemed like a good idea! I started playing in bands when I was 12 and that was great, but what seemed even greater was making records and getting those perfect sounds that you could hear over and over.
RS: Was there anyone that you mentored under while experimenting, or were you learning on your own as you went?
ME: No mentoring, I wouldn't have had any idea who to ask! I just thought about it a lot, put my hands on whatever was around, and went for it! It was difficult to even find anything to read about "recording", per se. You could read plenty about electrical engineering, and there was dB Magazine, which had articles about sessions (sort of) and a bit of anecdotal information, but it was all from a technical standpoint. You couldn't find an article on how to get an awesome kick drum sound or whatever!
RS: How did you first start tackling this interest (and do you recall the successes and failures of, perhaps, experimenting with limited resources)?
ME: By the time I was in high school I had recorded in a very nice studio on a couple of occasions and, while it was all very exciting, it was immediately apparent that just standing there and playing what you did on stage wasn't necessarily enough to make an interesting record. So then I thought, "if only there was a way to have a multitrack tape recorder...", which seemed impossible at that time since the only multitracks were fully professional and very expensive machines. And then Teac brought out the 2340! My friend Chris Stamey bought one of those and we set it up in my basement and it seems like we stayed down there straight until we graduated from high school! We had the machine, 2 AKG 200 microphones, and a little box that let you mix the 4 tape machine outputs into a stereo mix where each channel could be sent to left, right or center. We mixed by turning the output knobs on the front of the tape machine, and we got our "tones" with our amps and mic placement and by running things through an Echoplex. And we got pretty good results!
By the time we were in college we would rent a Tapco mixer from a music store for our "serious" sessions, and that was amazing, it had EQ!
RS: So when you opened up Drive In Studios in your parents garage, what were you recording to? 4 Track, 8 Track, 16 Track?
MS: 2" 16 track. In the 80's there was a lot of action in the "semi-pro" world with tape machines that put more tracks on smaller size tapes, like 1/2" 8tk etc., but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to start with a true "pro" format, like what was used to make commercial records. Although lots of great punk/indie records were made on those small-format machines! But my inspiration was "real" records. I wanted to be able to be a big dog, and I think having that serious tape machine was a plus for us. Also, they still work all these years later! We could take our stuff to any studio and continue working because we were using the standard pro formats.
RS: I know there are a ton of R.E.M. production questions I could ask, but I’m more interested in some engineering techniques and sounds displayed on your solo album, Dynamico. What am I hearing at the top of “Sudden Crown Drop" and how did you create that sound?
ME: I think the fluttery noises may be the countoff whacks on the acoustic guitar, put into some kind of complex echo with some of the echoes reversed, like effects you find on the H3000 series Harmonizers. And the other echo that sounds sort of like an electric guitar- I don't know! Aside from the guitar, it's stuff created while mixing, but in a sort of "found art" kind of way... I don't really remember. It could be Pro Tools plug-ins, too. A lot of that record was recorded on tape but I copied everything into the computer for mixing because it was on various tape formats and it was a lot more convenient to have it all in one place.
RS: "Found art?" Could you elaborate a bit about that process? Do you mean that you took a snippet of something musical, or just a found sound and created something new out of that? Also, you mentioned plug-ins. Do you enjoy working in the new "modern" era of digital recording, or do you prefer pure analog? Or, a hybrid of both?
ME: Found art means you come across something accidentally or randomly and visualize it as an art piece by putting it in a new context. So, you know, you find a smashed 8-track tape cartridge by the side of the road and spray paint it gold and display it at an art exhibition! Then it can become an ironic statement on disposable consumer culture or whatever. In audio I think of found art as something you stumble upon accidentally which you realize can be a part of your track. You weren't planning on having a weird resonant feedback sound on the vocal, but when you hooked up an effects box and heard the vocal through the funny setting left over from the last session, you recognize that this is a cool sound that you hadn't planned on, and now this is changing the direction of your mix. That sort of thing.
Yes, I like plug-ins and I like recording on the computer! And plug-ins keep getting better. I also like recording on analog tape recorders. It's all just stuff you can use. The process may be a little different from one format to the other, but all I really care about is what my ears hear in the end!
RS: Also, for the guitar nerds out there, what fuzz pedal are you using at the top of “Phantoms of Ephemera?”
ME: That is a Mutronics rack box which contains 4 classic Colorsound effects devices of the 60s... so it's the Colorsound fuzz, recorded straight in, no amp.
RS: Wait?! You mean you plugged your guitar straight into the recording console?!
ME: I plugged the guitar into the Colorsound box and the Colorsound box was plugged straight into the console.
RS: Is there any advice you can give to someone who is interested in doing what you do?
ME: You just have to really like it! Your path to success will be unique. You can't exactly copy people but you have get out there among them and do things that people like and prove that you have something to contribute. Try to get paid! People will pay you if you are obviously very good at it.
RS: What is one current trend in music production that you don't like? Why?
ME: Heavens, I don't know. About technology, I think it's all fair game and the "good" or "bad" comes from the ideas behind what people do with it. The business trends have been unfortunate. Although there are plenty of apologists for "free content", "making your money off merch", etc., all that is just terrible. I hate to think that there is no longer a "middle class" in music, but just like in society, that's becoming true. I hate to think that in the future you can only make music if you are already well-off financially, or just poor.
RS: Gimme a guilty pleasure.
ME: I haven't done this in ages but I used to like to play records I knew well through mega compression, which will reveal things like people tapping their toes, random talking, and other low-level environmental sounds that happened during the session. This doesn't really work with mostly electronic records, obviously! But if there are pianos, drum sets, etc. involved, you might hear something amusing.
RS: Favorite guilty pleasure record that most people wouldn't expect that you enjoy?
ME: I can't answer that too well because I have zero guilt about what I listen to! I suppose that as a "jangle pop" guy I am supposed to be listening to whatever that is all the time, but I don't listen to just one kind of rock music. I really love the older Genesis records, Black Sabbath (especially that 1st LP), Soft Machine's 1st record, modern chill/trance stuff, Bat for Lashes, so I dunno, maybe some of those would be surprising to somebody. But I never have any guilt about anything, including the dumbest bubblegum hit from '72!
RS: What sparked your interest in doing what you do? Can you recall a first memory of it?
ME: I always loved recorded music and certain sounds intrigued me- the first instance of a sound that I kept thinking about was the electric guitar solo on "Raunchy" by, I think, Bill Justus. I had no idea what an electric guitar was, but the sound of that solo really sent me, as they said back then. And a bit later I was wondering how they did it. I couldn't figure out how George Harrison and John Lennon seemed to be playing acoustic guitars and then there would be a solo on an electric. I decided that somebody must have been standing by in the studio to toss an electric guitar into George's hands just in time for the solo. By this time I knew what an electric guitar was, but I didn't know about overdubbing!
Anyway, it just seemed like a good idea! I started playing in bands when I was 12 and that was great, but what seemed even greater was making records and getting those perfect sounds that you could hear over and over.
RS: Was there anyone that you mentored under while experimenting, or were you learning on your own as you went?
ME: No mentoring, I wouldn't have had any idea who to ask! I just thought about it a lot, put my hands on whatever was around, and went for it! It was difficult to even find anything to read about "recording", per se. You could read plenty about electrical engineering, and there was dB Magazine, which had articles about sessions (sort of) and a bit of anecdotal information, but it was all from a technical standpoint. You couldn't find an article on how to get an awesome kick drum sound or whatever!
RS: How did you first start tackling this interest (and do you recall the successes and failures of, perhaps, experimenting with limited resources)?
ME: By the time I was in high school I had recorded in a very nice studio on a couple of occasions and, while it was all very exciting, it was immediately apparent that just standing there and playing what you did on stage wasn't necessarily enough to make an interesting record. So then I thought, "if only there was a way to have a multitrack tape recorder...", which seemed impossible at that time since the only multitracks were fully professional and very expensive machines. And then Teac brought out the 2340! My friend Chris Stamey bought one of those and we set it up in my basement and it seems like we stayed down there straight until we graduated from high school! We had the machine, 2 AKG 200 microphones, and a little box that let you mix the 4 tape machine outputs into a stereo mix where each channel could be sent to left, right or center. We mixed by turning the output knobs on the front of the tape machine, and we got our "tones" with our amps and mic placement and by running things through an Echoplex. And we got pretty good results!
By the time we were in college we would rent a Tapco mixer from a music store for our "serious" sessions, and that was amazing, it had EQ!
RS: So when you opened up Drive In Studios in your parents garage, what were you recording to? 4 Track, 8 Track, 16 Track?
MS: 2" 16 track. In the 80's there was a lot of action in the "semi-pro" world with tape machines that put more tracks on smaller size tapes, like 1/2" 8tk etc., but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to start with a true "pro" format, like what was used to make commercial records. Although lots of great punk/indie records were made on those small-format machines! But my inspiration was "real" records. I wanted to be able to be a big dog, and I think having that serious tape machine was a plus for us. Also, they still work all these years later! We could take our stuff to any studio and continue working because we were using the standard pro formats.
RS: I know there are a ton of R.E.M. production questions I could ask, but I’m more interested in some engineering techniques and sounds displayed on your solo album, Dynamico. What am I hearing at the top of “Sudden Crown Drop" and how did you create that sound?
ME: I think the fluttery noises may be the countoff whacks on the acoustic guitar, put into some kind of complex echo with some of the echoes reversed, like effects you find on the H3000 series Harmonizers. And the other echo that sounds sort of like an electric guitar- I don't know! Aside from the guitar, it's stuff created while mixing, but in a sort of "found art" kind of way... I don't really remember. It could be Pro Tools plug-ins, too. A lot of that record was recorded on tape but I copied everything into the computer for mixing because it was on various tape formats and it was a lot more convenient to have it all in one place.
RS: "Found art?" Could you elaborate a bit about that process? Do you mean that you took a snippet of something musical, or just a found sound and created something new out of that? Also, you mentioned plug-ins. Do you enjoy working in the new "modern" era of digital recording, or do you prefer pure analog? Or, a hybrid of both?
ME: Found art means you come across something accidentally or randomly and visualize it as an art piece by putting it in a new context. So, you know, you find a smashed 8-track tape cartridge by the side of the road and spray paint it gold and display it at an art exhibition! Then it can become an ironic statement on disposable consumer culture or whatever. In audio I think of found art as something you stumble upon accidentally which you realize can be a part of your track. You weren't planning on having a weird resonant feedback sound on the vocal, but when you hooked up an effects box and heard the vocal through the funny setting left over from the last session, you recognize that this is a cool sound that you hadn't planned on, and now this is changing the direction of your mix. That sort of thing.
Yes, I like plug-ins and I like recording on the computer! And plug-ins keep getting better. I also like recording on analog tape recorders. It's all just stuff you can use. The process may be a little different from one format to the other, but all I really care about is what my ears hear in the end!
RS: Also, for the guitar nerds out there, what fuzz pedal are you using at the top of “Phantoms of Ephemera?”
ME: That is a Mutronics rack box which contains 4 classic Colorsound effects devices of the 60s... so it's the Colorsound fuzz, recorded straight in, no amp.
RS: Wait?! You mean you plugged your guitar straight into the recording console?!
ME: I plugged the guitar into the Colorsound box and the Colorsound box was plugged straight into the console.
RS: Is there any advice you can give to someone who is interested in doing what you do?
ME: You just have to really like it! Your path to success will be unique. You can't exactly copy people but you have get out there among them and do things that people like and prove that you have something to contribute. Try to get paid! People will pay you if you are obviously very good at it.
RS: What is one current trend in music production that you don't like? Why?
ME: Heavens, I don't know. About technology, I think it's all fair game and the "good" or "bad" comes from the ideas behind what people do with it. The business trends have been unfortunate. Although there are plenty of apologists for "free content", "making your money off merch", etc., all that is just terrible. I hate to think that there is no longer a "middle class" in music, but just like in society, that's becoming true. I hate to think that in the future you can only make music if you are already well-off financially, or just poor.
RS: Gimme a guilty pleasure.
ME: I haven't done this in ages but I used to like to play records I knew well through mega compression, which will reveal things like people tapping their toes, random talking, and other low-level environmental sounds that happened during the session. This doesn't really work with mostly electronic records, obviously! But if there are pianos, drum sets, etc. involved, you might hear something amusing.
RS: Favorite guilty pleasure record that most people wouldn't expect that you enjoy?
ME: I can't answer that too well because I have zero guilt about what I listen to! I suppose that as a "jangle pop" guy I am supposed to be listening to whatever that is all the time, but I don't listen to just one kind of rock music. I really love the older Genesis records, Black Sabbath (especially that 1st LP), Soft Machine's 1st record, modern chill/trance stuff, Bat for Lashes, so I dunno, maybe some of those would be surprising to somebody. But I never have any guilt about anything, including the dumbest bubblegum hit from '72!
