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Conversing with Giants

Mar 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Geary Yelton

They Might Be Giants talks about their personal studios, production techniques, and tag-team songwriting.

BONUS MATERIAL
Read "Conversing with Giants: The Extended Interview"
Gear talk with They Might Be Giants

DO YOU TRACK AND MIX IN THE SAME STUDIO?

JF: No, we tracked in a bunch of different places, mostly to get bigger drum sounds. When we do tracking, we are very purposefully thinking, “We've got everything we need here, and now we can move on to the next stage.” It's almost like you're doing yourself a favor to have a process that says that chapter is over.

JL: I think it helps to have a sense that you know what you're doing rather than hope it will all get sorted out at the end. You actually have to put together the whole project in your head. It's how they make movies; you have to shoot everything and know that you've got everything you need, rather than go, “Maybe we'll fix this later on.”

JF: But in spite of the fact that we work electronically in the early stages of what we do, we do a lot of recording in very traditional ways. We'll set up the full band to record and track with everybody playing at the same time.

THAT IS VERY TRADITIONAL.

JF: The reason we started doing it was very practical. We didn't do it until we started doing the incidental music for Malcolm in the Middle, and then the deadlines were so fast, we were basically totally in over our heads. We had way more work to do than we knew how to finish, and so it was just kind of an all-hands-on-deck moment professionally. And then, as we were working in this kind of panic-stricken way, the efficiencies of working that way just kind of appeared to us.

JL: The great thing about our situation now is that we also have these very competent musicians who are deeply concerned about how integrated their parts are with one another. They'll go back and do it again if they feel like the bass and the kick aren't agreeing, if the part's not working, or if the performance isn't working. And all these issues can be [decided] simultaneously to the recording being made. I think that's a really valuable thing about the band.

HOW EARLY IN THE SONGWRITING PROCESS DO YOU BRING THE BAND IN? DO YOU GET IDEAS FROM THEM WHILE YOU'RE WRITING A SONG?

JF: It really varies from song to song. If you have a song that's got a more organic feel, you can leave it in a more skeletal way, and then just present it to the band and kind of work it up together. And what the band will bring to it will really amplify all those qualities.

JL: I'll tell you we always start with something before the band hears the song. We start with some kind of arrangement concept, and then that can be completely thrown out the window when the band gets there. But John and I always demo everything before the band hears it.

DO YOU STILL DO ANY TRACKING WITH THE DRUM MACHINE?

JF: Yeah. “I'm Impressed” is all drum machine.

JL: We also have done a lot of stuff more recently, particularly with the Dust Brothers, where we take the drum loops and use that as the basis for the track. And then, in most every case on this record, we've had Marty [Beller, the drummer] come in and replace the loop with his own version of the loop — in other words, play along and then loop what he's doing — and that becomes the more deliberate [part].

DO YOU WORK WITH BFD OR DRUMCORE OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT?

JL: We actually have worked with DrumCore; that's something that both of us have used a bunch. But again, that's more of a reference material. Marty will eventually be the arbiter of good taste in those situations.

DO YOU USE A SAMPLER FOR MUCH THESE DAYS?

JL: We both have been using [MOTU] MachFive, the software sampler.

I NOTICED YOU HAVE A NEW ROLAND FANTOM X8. I DIDN'T SEE THAT ON YOUR LAST TOUR.

JL: Yeah, that's new. I found out installing third-party chips in the [E-mu] Proteus 2000 does something completely weird to them that more or less makes them unreliable onstage after a couple of years. As soon as they started to warm up, the pitch would get crazy. So in frustration, I finally just completely changed my setup, and now I'm in the Roland world. I used to have the [Boss] Dr. Sample sitting on top, and now it's actually incorporated into the keyboard, so there's the familiar 16 glowing buttons. So the whole thing has gotten a lot more streamlined.

WHAT WAS IT THAT MADE YOU CHOOSE THE ROLAND OVER THE KORG OR THE YAMAHA?

JL: I tried a bunch of things, and that one had the 16 pads, which weren't included on most of the other ones. It seems like the simplest architecture; it's not simple, but I guess I'm just used to the Roland thing from the Dr. Sample. So it's just like what you know. It's like DP; DP is by no means the best.

JF: Easy there, brother.

JL: But I must say, we've been using it for almost 20 years. The guys in our band are all swearing by Logic, and John and I have not made the leap yet.

JF: Personally, I really love all the kooky little plug-ins that come with the new version of DP. That Model 12 thing is superphenomenal and totally came into play on a lot of things on The Else.

JL: There's still a lot of distinct, really useful things that nobody else seems to do that DP has, like Spectral Effects. That's a big part of our lives.

JF: We tried other plug-in versions that do similar things, and none of them have as much character, and none of them track as well.

JL: The other thing that's cool in DP: pitch correction. Nobody else does it that way. It's very interesting; it's a really useful way of doing pitch correction.

ARE YOU A STOMPBOX KINDA GUY?

JF: I'm a stompbox addict.

ARE YOU CONSTANTLY LOOKING FOR STOMPBOXES WITH NEW SOUNDS?

JF: I am. I'm constantly looking for extreme sounds, and that's very frustrating because most of the orientation [of stompbox manufacturers] is towards very orthodox sounds. I'm using a [Electro-Harmonix] POG a lot right now. I guess the things that introduce some form of synthesis to the guitar always kind of catch my ear a little bit more. I've wasted extraordinary amounts of money on fuzz boxes; they all just sound distorted.

WHAT'S THE MOST RECENT STOMPBOX YOU'VE ADDED TO YOUR LIVE SETUP?

JF: I just got this thing called the [Emma] Discombobulator, which is actually like a Mu-Tron envelope-follower box. It's made in Denmark, and it's probably not that different from a Moogerfooger-type thing, but it has a very wide level of control. And it sounds kind of crazy.

I LOVE THE ELECTRONIC INTRO TO “CAREFUL WHAT YOU PACK.” WHAT WAS THAT?

JF: Oh, the sort of ping-ponging keyboard sound is just a delay on a synth.

WHAT SYNTH?

JL: It's the [MOTU] MX4, but there's some backwards drums in there as well, as part of the sound. It's like a loop of a lot of different drums. Some of it is backwards.

JF: That song was written for the movie Coraline for the opening sequence and was cut out of the movie. We contributed a lot of songs to this movie, and the whole movie just changed direction midway through. We were brought in very early, so our stuff has had every chance to be shot down.

JL: Obviously, when something happens over and over again, you start to wonder how much is on your own end. We cooked up a lot of songs, and then we realized that this project was moving at about a tenth the speed that we're used to going. We probably would have been wise to slow down our own engine.