Rhythm and Noise | John McEntire

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

           
 

FROM POP TO EXPERIMENTAL, IT'S ALL IN A DAY'S WORK FOR ENGINEER-DRUMMER JOHN MCENTIRE

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McEntire’s keyboard analog-synth collection includes the Oxford Synthesiser Company OSCar, the Synton Syrinx, the Elka Synthex, and other classics, as well as digital instruments.

One thing I got recently that's really interesting is the Radial JDX. It's a DI that you put between the amp and the speaker, so you get a totally dry sound with all of the characteristics of the amp. The amplifier sees a reactive load on its output, so it behaves as if it's driving a speaker or network of speakers. The output of the box has a set of filters that mimics the frequency curve of a closed-back 4 × 12 enclosure. So it sounds exactly like a miked amp, except with zero ambience. It's extremely useful and also works well blended with a mic signal. They make another box that does phase adjustment, which lets you really tailor the way the DI and mic signals interact, but I actually don't own anything like that. I'm more inclined to just nudge tracks around in Pro Tools if needed, or try different combinations of reserving polarity.

I see you have the 2-inch machine. With almost everyone jumping ship on tape, I'm wondering if it still sees much use.

Not so much these days, and for a variety of reasons which we all know. I still enjoy using it, though. We used it for a Tortoise session recently and it sounds fantastic. In terms of my day-to-day work, apart from my own projects, the majority of what's been happening here is mixing sessions that were recorded elsewhere, and from an amazing variety of places: Japan, Europe, Australia, South America, and, of course, plenty of projects from all over the U.S. So almost everything comes in as files, and I do the work in Pro Tools. It certainly is easier now that Pro Tools has become the de facto DAW platform.

Once in a blue moon, somebody will want to mix a project that was tracked in [Apple] Logic or [Steinberg] Cubase, but that's pretty rare. If that's the case, I encourage them to print contiguous files so that I can work in Pro Tools. Occasionally we'll get sessions that need a lot of cleaning up and time-consuming maintenance work, but what's been coming in lately has gotten a lot better in terms of preparedness and overall quality.

Tell us how you approach the mixing process.

When I'm mixing, I'll send tracks out individually to the console, and I tend to use hardware processors as much as I can. But obviously, nowadays, sessions can get pretty dense, and when you have 60 or 80 tracks, you have to submix some things, which is fine for, say, backing vocals or percussion overdubs. Since I'm doing so much with the console levels and EQs, it can become a little tedious with recalls. But realistically, that aspect of it is no different than the world was before DAWs. The only difference is that nowadays everybody wants recalls, and they expect them to be instantaneous. So I spend a lot of time charting everything, and the recalls don't happen instantly!

When I use inserts for hardware processing, it's mainly for compression and EQ. We have a fair number of color compressors here that get used a lot, like the Gates SA-39, the “Federal” compressor, and the Spectra Sonics 610. Another box I really like — though it's not a compressor — is the Thermionic Culture Culture Vulture. It's very useful for applying a little — or a lot — of harmonic distortion. It has three different tube modes: triode and two different pentode modes. The great thing, though, is that you can adjust the amount of current (bias) that's hitting the tubes, so you can really choke them off, and you can get these kind of almost gated, dead, decayed sounds. Really useful. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the Empirical Labs Distressor and how multifaceted that unit is, including the distortion functions.

In terms of effects, I went through a kind of renaissance recently with the Eventide Ultra-Harmonizer H3000. I decided I was going to try to make gated reverb work for me! There were a couple of projects I worked on — for instance, the Fiery Furnaces and Small Sins — where it made sense to incorporate those sounds, tucked in under everything else. I actually found it to be really effective. Though if two years ago you'd told me I'd be doing that, I probably wouldn't have believed you.

So you'll still go to a unit like the H3000, even though it's now possible to do similar things in software?

Well, I really like the sound of the H3000; it's got a unique timbre. I think the Eventide Factory plug-in is great also, but again they're pretty different beasts from a sonic perspective. One of the other things I really like on the H3000 is the Stutter algorithm. It takes small chunks of audio and either loops them or it flips them backward and loops them. It also randomly changes the pitch and length of the chunk. And what's really interesting is that it behaves as if it's applying this processing based on the content of the input signal. For instance, it does things that seem like they're in tempo, or based on a trigger threshold. So even though it's random, it tends to make sense musically. There's a good example of this effect on the Fiery Furnaces' song “Wicker Whatnots.” The GRM Tools Shuffling plug-in is basically the same concept, though it's more geared toward granular processing, whereas the Eventide tends to capture longer segments, in the 100 to 700 millisecond range, I would imagine.

Is there a lot of planning involved with your bands to make sure that you maintain sonic space in the mix?

With a band like the Sea and Cake, it's a pretty collaborative experience. If the guitar players know there's going to be some kind of brass or string arrangement going on, they're probably going to lay back a little bit. In terms of mixing, it's not really that difficult, assuming that the other players have left a space for it. Other than that, by simply applying whatever automation or EQ that you need to make it work, it's usually pretty straightforward.

If you're mixing someone else's project, do people mainly leave it to your discretion about how the synths and effects are used, or about whether you might run prerecorded tracks through various filters, etc.?

Some people leave it up to me, sure. And then there are others who are really knowledgeable about the gear and fairly specific about what they want. For instance, they might say, “Let's use the Fenix bandpass filter on the guitar in the bridge, CV'd from the ARP sequencer running at dotted eighths.” They'll just have a laundry list of things that they want, which is great. And other times, the direction can be really vague, like “Let's try to mangle this somehow.” It really runs the gamut.

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