Electric Engineering | Steve Albini

Oct 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Rich Wells

STEVE ALBINI'S NO-NONSENSE APPROACH TO RECORDING

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Additional Interview With Albini
Photo Gallery With Albini

As far as mixing is concerned, I've always treated it as an extension of the recording process. I don't record stuff that I know sounds bad thinking that I'll make it sound good later. And I don't record stuff that I know is useless thinking that I might erase it later. A lot of people record stuff not knowing whether they want it or not, thinking that they will have an infinite amount of time later to sort it out at the mixing stage. But I know that at the mixing stage, you're going to be making a million critical decisions.

So why record five microphones on the guitar if only one of them sounds good? Or why do ten versions of something and leave them all sitting there when you know that in the end you're going to have to pick one? Just pick one. If you take care of all the trivial details in advance, the more accurate you can be with the more important decisions at the mixing stage.

Like a lot of people, you started by recording yourself on a 4-track. And before Electrical, you had a recording studio in the basement of your house. What are some of the things you've learned along the way about the process of recording?

There's an analogy about recording that came to mind not that long ago. Think of three types of movies: a normal character/content/dialog movie; a super-high-tech movie, like The Matrix; and something technically bone simple, like The Blair Witch Project. Those three kinds of movies pretty much cover the spectrum of the technology of moviemaking.

Now, not every movie can be made on a camcorder. But a lot of movies can. If you took a character-driven film and made it more simply just by using camcorders instead of with big Hollywood production values, you wouldn't lose much of the movie. You'd still get the important aspects. But if you took a movie like The Matrix and tried to fake it with a camcorder, you wouldn't convince anybody.

With audio, it's similar: it's a matter of trying to make your production environment suitable for the music that you're recording. If you're recording music that has certain technical demands on it, and you can't satisfy those demands, you should move the job to another studio. Just be honest with yourself.

As far as the basement studio, it's where I learned how to do almost everything I do now. The whole attic of the house was a control room; the playing areas were in the basement. There was a dead room and a live room, and, while they were quite modest, they both sounded good. But if I tried to do a session with 20 people there, it would be insane. It would be completely inappropriate.

The critical factor for any kind of small studio setup, though, is that no matter what you have, make sure you can get the most out of it. Before I had a 24-track machine, when I was first doing sessions in the basement studio in my house, I used an 8-track machine and a 16-channel board with four subgroups. I got the most out of that desk because I had to be inventive, I had to figure out how to solve problems one after another.

I think it would be good practice for anyone to start small. Start with a 4- or 8-track machine and a couple microphones and a modest mixing desk. Work your way up piece by piece, and learn everything as intimately as you can. And as you gradually accumulate equipment and gradually improve your recording environment, you'll have that same level of comprehension of everything in your studio, because you didn't try to attack it all at once; you've learned it one thing at a time.

When I was first starting out, if I had had a 36-channel board and a 24-channel machine and a raft of microphones and outboard gear and assistants and stuff like that, I would never have learned how to be as resourceful as I have. And I think that that resourcefulness and that willingness to solve problems in unconventional ways, that helps a lot when you go into bigger environments. There, you may be confronted with fewer issues, but the problems you do encounter generally require abstract thinking to solve.

It's very good to get yourself in the frame of mind that you can solve problems. Once problem solving becomes second nature to you, you'll know that you can work through any issue. Rather than coming at it from the mind-set of “There is a solution that I need to ask somebody for, and then I can do it,” you're accustomed to thinking things through yourself.

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Rich Wells oversees the Supreme Reality, a recording studio in Portland, Oregon. Visit his Web site at thesupremereality.org.

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