Record Ready

I attended the annual Pacific Northwest NARAS Studio Summit yesterday, at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. The really great day included a panel discussion of local studio owners and engineers on the topic of survival in today’s music business, an interview with producer Johnny K and an interview with legendary producer/engineer Roy Thomas Baker. 

Mr. Baker, who has produced classic albums such as Queen’s ‘A Night at the Opera’ and The Cars self-titled debut, had many interesting things to say, but one thing he said stuck out in particular for me. He observed that back in the earlier days of his career, the bands he was working with (such as Queen and The Cars) would be very concerned about their records/songs sounding too much like their contemporaries’ records. They wanted the music they made to sound unique. He went on to mentioned that many of the bands he is coming across now come into the studio with a stack of already successful CDs and say “we want the snare from this record, the guitar from this record, the vocal sound from this record, etc, etc”. He was obviously promoting the former as the ideal attitude for making lasting records. Innovation over emulation… sounds good to me.

In this last creative gating tutorial a gate is used to make the snare drum pop out in a room mic track, making the room mic cleaner sounding and more usable in the mix. I hope you’ve enjoyed the series. Be sure to add a comment with any questions.

Once again, a special thanks to Max Kunz of Jungle Maps for playing the drums.