The Exuberant Engineer

Sep 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Diane Gershuny

If you spend any time chatting with producer-engineer John Paterno, you can't help but notice his over-the-top passion for music and making records. Everything about the creative process gets him pumped — from helping artists find their inner voice to capturing spontaneous performances live in the studio. His fascination with gear, technology, and exploring sonic palettes is boundless. And he considers his other creative pursuits, including photography, to be outlets that enable him to focus more intently on his craft.

A Long Island native, he studied recording at the University of Miami, where his roommate was Joe Barresi. Armed with a degree in music, Paterno headed for the West Coast music mecca of Los Angeles in the early '90s. From assisting on sessions to engineering and mixing to producing, he's risen up the ranks and built a multipage list of credits in a career spanning 15 years.

He developed his studio chops during years of sessions with the famed production duo of Tchad Blake and Mitchell Froom, working on projects for artists ranging from Los Lobos and the Latin Playboys to Suzanne Vega and Richard Thompson. Those productive years and the bountiful connections made during that time prepared Paterno for his multiple projects with TV-music maven Vonda Shepard and work with U.K. phenom Robbie Williams. He also worked on many sessions with artists such as Badly Drawn Boy, Robben Ford, Jeffrey Gaines, Ted Hawkins, Faith Hill, Jackshit, Particle, Bonnie Raitt, Soul Coughing, and the Thrills.

Paterno won a Latin Grammy Award in 2004 for his engineering and mixing work with Colombian singer-songwriter Soraya. He's also engineered or mixed a number of movie soundtracks, including How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Universal, 2000), Steal This Movie (Lions Gate, 2000), and Feeling Minnesota (Fine Line Features, 1996).

How did you become interested in making records?

I've been interested in making records since I was a kid. What fascinates me is that trapped in those bits or rust particles is an energy, and it's always there. One of my favorite examples is the count-off in “I Saw Her Standing There” by the Beatles. I've always been attracted by the fact that records capture energy, and that that energy is available to you anytime you want it.

I've also played guitar in bands and have always been into gear and how it interfaces with guitars. I'm interested in how systems are put together. I was accepted into the University of Miami's recording program, where I earned a degree in music with a minor in electrical engineering.

Why Los Angeles, and what was your first gig?

At the time, I had three choices: I could go to New York, Nashville, or Los Angeles. My friend Joe Barresi, who had established himself in L.A., influenced my decision. On a visit there, while out bowling, I was introduced to the studio manager from Cornerstone Recorders. Six weeks later I was offered a freelance gig assisting at Cornerstone. I continued freelance assisting, which allowed me to work in various studios and experience the different ways that producers and engineers work. A year later Sunset Sound hired me as a staff engineer, and I stayed there for five or six years. That's how I got hooked up with Tchad Blake and Mitchell Froom.

What was it like working with them?

My first time working with Tchad and Mitchell was a two-week stint on a Peter Case record. They barely spoke to me the whole time. All they gave me was their food order! The next project with them was a Los Lobos record. The studio manager suggested I bring a book to read because Tchad did all his own patching. Tchad had come up through Sound Factory [also owned by Sunset Sound], so he knew the rooms extremely well and would work solo. He's a wonderful guy but can be intimidating because he's very intense when he works.

Because I was determined not to sit around for six weeks, I planted myself between Tchad and the patch bay. Sound Factory's pretty small, and I figured that Tchad would either ask me to do things or get up and walk around me. After watching Tchad, I was able to anticipate his needs and set him up so that he could continue working. From this, a friendship and working relationship was born. These were the sessions for Kiko [Warner Brothers, 1992]. The band would show up late, and it gave Tchad and me time to hang out. Our backgrounds were so different, but we shared this common thing — the Beatles. We'd listen to Beatles records for hours and really got on. I worked on all of his sessions for the next four to five years.

At what point did your focus shift from assisting to engineering?

My goal was always to be an engineer-producer, and I was afforded opportunities when Tchad and other producers recommended me for gigs. One of my first records was Ted Hawkins's The Next Hundred Years. I continued to assist while looking for recording opportunities. That eventually led to engineering a record with That Dog (an L.A. band), which signaled the end of my assisting days.

You worked with Vonda Shepard during the late 1990s and early 2000s, when she was involved with the hit TV show Ally McBeal.

Yes. That was right at the time that the show was taking off, so I got to record the TV-show stuff as well. Mitchell recommended me to her. I started out doing some overdubs and ended up recording a lot of stuff for her. She was great to work with. Even though only 30 seconds of a song might end up on TV, we would do whole, or nearly whole, takes of songs. The sessions could be intense; sometimes we had to record five songs in a day, mix them, and have them ready for the next day on set.

I've always been fast, and my approach was to make sure the focus was on the transparency of the recording process. The last thing you want is a musician sitting around getting bored. Boredom is the antithesis of creativity. No matter what my function on the session, I never want to be the slowest guy in the room; I never want anyone waiting for me. The focus has to be on the pace of the artist and the creative process. The TV thing was great for sharpening my skills.

Tell me about transitioning into a personal-studio environment.

For the past several years, I've been mixing more records at home in the computer. There are things I miss about traditional studios — mainly the support staff and the recording spaces. But in a home studio, you don't have the time or financial constraints that you have in a conventional studio. I can take the time to rerecord things at my home studio [see Fig. 1]: I can take a sound, run it through my gear, and record it back to get a sound I'm happy with.

The recall thing is great, too — being able to work on something and open it up later and have it exactly the way you left it. That's huge, because it's something you can't do in a conventional studio. Even when you do recalls on a console, they don't always come back 100 percent.

In a home studio, I tend to work independently. I'll do the mix, pop it up on my iDisk, and the client downloads it on their end. Clients can make better judgments in their own listening environments. Usually I'll get emails with comments and changes, which I prefer to doing verbally because there is a written chain of revisions. I address the changes and upload revisions until the mix is approved.

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