Interview with Michael Shipley
by The Gearspace.com Community
8th March 2023
The late Michael ("Mike") Shipley was a prolific producer/mixer/engineer who was not only at the very top of the biz thanks to his high-profile work with Aerosmith, Maroon 5, Green Day, Nickelback, Alison Krauss, Def Leppard, Shania Twain, Keith Urban, Queen and The Sex Pistols, but he was also a humble, super nice guy who used to hang out on these very forums on the regular in the early days of GS. After he had been around here a while we finally talked him into doing an official Q&A with the membership "on the record" and it was a blast. We will greatly miss Mike not only because of this, but because despite the long credits list and the three Grammy® awards, he was just one of us. Enjoy the catch-up here and put on your favourite Mike Shipley recording while you read!
Well I could tell you about the time I was editing the 24track and totally fu@#ed it up thereby effectively making an unscheduled arrangement change . Of course it was all their fault 'cos they kept asking me to hear it with the piece in...the piece out...the piece in etc and when they had decided that they wanted it to stay...well by that time I was standing on the piece of tape in question and destroyed it by mistake, but they actually took me seriously when I sheepishly said that it sounded good without it (trying to hide my faux pas). Editing the multi-track was always quite nerve wracking with those guys because of how much was on the tape!!!
Then there was the fun of being on a chair on the drum riser with the band and others doing handclaps and foot stomps for "We will rock you" which was a lot of fun.
- Mike Shipley
We only ever did the moving away from the mic thing , for a rock approach. All the pop BV's that Mutt would do on his own, would be just stacked up 20 or so tracks per harmony, sometimes more , sometimes less. We would bounce them into 4 tracks per harmony and as for panning , we'd pan them pretty much wide all the time. Having used a ridiculous amount of eq to get the right sound. A lot of level riding is also used and editing all the "S's" and hard consonants to line up to stop the flamming.
- Mike Shipley
Well for the Hedd I like the varying the combination of the "pentode" and "tape" processing, it makes a huge difference to me and I think Dave Hill one smart dude!! I also love his Phoenix plug-in and find it indispensable for adding warmth to ITB vocals and instruments that could benefit from mor warmth and size. I think the Hedd is also a great converter whether you use the processing or not.
- Mike Shipley
Crane Song HEDD-192
Well Joe, it's truly a strange record but it was such fun to mix 'cos AWK is such a fun guy . There were so many tracks on each song and very odd sounds because he had recorded the album in a closet in his apartment!!! and on Cakewalk so it was of very dubious quality !!! He did the whole record on Headphones.
I spent ages in the mix changing drum sounds and tightening up the gtrs because he had layered the gtrs with horns, synths, and anything he could to make 'em weirder but it only really works if everything hits at the same time cos it was all very loose and everything was "flamming" etc. Half the fun was Andrews mad ideas and much fun was had by all.
A record like that is so extreme that it's a love/hate thing.
- Mike Shipley
Paul is indeed one of the best muso's on the planet and I've mixed a lot of records he's played on. For "UP" Mutt just shipped all the country players to the Bahamas and recorded them there. We comp'ed them in the mix back in Switzerland. Paul's sound is pretty unique with all the delays and octave devices he uses , so his sound is pretty much already there. We did have to mult the steel up to be able to move it's position around in the mix etc. The editing of so many great lix was the hard part!!
- Mike Shipley
I don't use reverb on drums , like most people have said here that it's better to use the room or overheads for more depth of field. For some of the "Mutt" oriented pop stuff we will use a lot of sounds to make up a snare sound and will use along with the samples etc, some gated reverb and lots of really short delays 'cos he likes the snare to have length to it.
With a real kit though, creative compression is more fun.
- Mike Shipley
As well as mixing the Heartbeat City record I did remixes of Cars songs for a hits package and we had to get Roy's 40 track tape machine out to transfer some of the songs, cos it wasn't very stable at the time. So we transferred the stuff before the machine died.
All his stuff sounded great. I always loved Roy's way of working..he would duct tape all the meter's on the console and tape the machine up so that you went by what the sound was like rather than being technically correct. Everything sounded great...
Of course there is always a problem and at the time we were remixing early song's I was producing a song for them to also go on the hit's package. One day I come into the studio.assistant puts the tape up...a 1kHz tone come screaming out of the speakers so I give the assistant a hard time for putting up the wrong reel...not funny first thing in the morning...only to find out that the maintenance guy had wiped the first 2 minutes of a song that had taken six weeks to record!! and used it to line the machine up with.
Umm. I was pissed...Roy was also there and had the guy up against the wall threatening to beat him up...more fun....had no choice but to salvage what I could and re-record. Fun in the studio.
BTW, the maintenance guy had been on...acid...nice.
- Mike Shipley
The Cranesong Phoenix plugin is fantastic , but doesn't do the same thing as the Cranesong Hedd because the Hedd acts as a compressor across the 2bus because of its processing depending how much you use, but I really like it.
- Mike Shipley
[top]Mutt Lange, what (in your opinion) is it about this guy that makes literally everything he touches turn to Gold (or Platinum)? Is it attention to detail? His ear for a "song"? One hears stories about the way this guy works and it makes ya wonder. You don't ever hear any quotes or anything from him. What makes this guy tick? - d audio
You will never hear a quote or interview with Mutt. He feel's his job is a behind the scenes one and he refuses to give interviews etc. His way of working is very unorthodox and a lot of people don't understand why he does work the way he does. I've already had some people here telling me that Dusty Springfield did it a certain way so what's wrong with Mutt etc , and that's what kinda rubs Mutt up the wrong way. He is not making records for "industry people" to buy and critique, he's making records for the check out girl at safeways, or the guy pumping gas.
Hearing opinions from Engineers and producers etc about his work methods is kinda old and just beg's for everyone to give an opinion and put a value on it in terms of how "they" work compared to him.
"How can u spend so long , it's not natural , that doesn't sound like a real kit, you do what??'" etc etc . All that gets in the way of what he does .So he chooses to be reclusive to a point and not listen to any one else's opinion, especially the A&R people!! He makes records for one reason only...to sell them. He will rewrite the same song until he's happy with it and that can be a while, he wants every record to have a "sound to it” rather than take for him what is the easy route and that can take some time also.
Yes there are people that work way faster and get the job done to their satisfaction just fine, he chooses a different route and always has. As I said his record sales are between 180 million and 190 million so his way works for him. People have tried to copy him, thinking that all you gotta do is be anal and spend a lot of time...but there is so much more than that. I love working with him because it's always something new.
Shania might not be everyone's cup of tea but I just got a plaque last week from Mutt and the label saying that she is the "First artist in history to have 3 consecutive diamond albums" so they've sold over 10 million each. Actually in total for her it's about 70 million on the three records. Back in Black just hit the 20 million mark. Def Leppard sold around 35 million.etc .
- Mike Shipley
OK, another fun story. The Van Halen song took 4 days to mix...a song with Drums, Bass, a double tracked Gtr and a vocal.
The first day was ok...was not a difficult mix to do (or so I thought)....Eddie and Alex came in and said that the drums sucked....oh good start though I (not). As it turns out when Eddie heard the song put together, he liked the feel and sound of the drums from the demo better but it was a demo and nothing was tracked to it!!! So Eddie and his engineer go back to Eddie's house and spend all night trying to get the drums from the demo to match the newly recorded Gtrs Bass and Vocals.
So we put it all together and see what we got...(why me again god?) and we hobble along trying to make it work. There is a lot more but that's all I can say for now!! Eddie and Alex are great.
- Mike Shipley
I came up thru the English way of engineering which I think is, or rather was, a very different approach than a lot of American recordings, and whatever eq style I use probably is more English in that being aggressive with eq is fine etc. and even when tracking the American way was to be very pure with the signal path and not eq to tape etc. and it was kinda odd to me . We always just went for it whether tracking or mixing. Of course we knew how to get natural sounds because we were pretty much "mentored" by the staff engineers at the studio in all techniques.
As for rules for eq'ing , not for me, everyone of us here has a different way they would hear the same sound and eq it (or not) so my rules aren't anyone else's. I'm sure some engineers here eq the same way, boosting on a very narrow bandwidth and sweeping the frequency until you hit that hideous "masking " frequency and pulling out the offending frequency to make the sound sit better etc.
I was talking to Nigel Godrich about sound and his method of making records is different than most these days, his is more like a 70's English approach in a way in that he likes to get the sounds recorded and eq'd so that everything is committed to tape. Drums on 4 tracks max etc, and he often mixes a song as soon as he has finished tracking it and not leave all his mixing til the end. It's a refreshing way to work and he is just fantastic I think. No 100 channel mixes for him! Experimenting with eq and depth of field is the way to go, have fun!!
- Mike Shipley
yes I am a stickler for delay compensation and it was always a right pain in the @ss!!! But now with the new Pro Tools version I am in heaven 'cos it's easy to get everything focussed properly now that Automatic Delay Compensation, ADC is in the new software.
I usually set up 3 drum busses with different compressors with different ratios and attack time etc. It depends on the sound I'm after in terms of what goes into each sub of course but one will have a very fast attack and release for more depth of field and another will have a slower attack and fast release for added punch if need be. If I'm using plugs it varies a lot but the Ren Comp is ok 'cos it has a very fast attack and I find that useful, but I mess with them all really.
I will get the initial drum sound and after that's working I will mess with the Subs in different sections of the song.
I also set up bv subs etc so I can deal with them as stereo pairs after I've dealt with them individually. One of the better advantages in using something like a Pro control is that unlike an analog console all the stereo instruments can come up one fader so across a whole big mix it becomes quite a manageable size!! Love that.
- Mike Shipley
Sometimes , you just gotta replace or augment the drum sound and that's all there is to it. Hopefully not but sometimes a song just needs a different kind of energy than it has from the drummer, or it's a really crappy recording. I'm all for character so I will only do it if I need to.
If I do add to the original drumsound I will use Beat detective to isolate the regions but not to actually "use" beat detective to move the timing. Then I can use any number of ways to augment.
I can region replace which is fast. If it's to blend a sound, then tuning is very important so I will tune whatever I'm adding with , to the recorded kit. If it has to be a replacement then it's a different story.
Even adding snare ambience only, can do the trick . It is different with every session. Sometimes the oddest drum sound gives all the flavour to a record and technically it might suck but it's smallness or whatever might be just the ticket. So it's a very song by song thing.
- Mike Shipley
That's a hard one because these day's most everyone expects to have a mix a day, no matter what, even get the next one started, whereas a few years ago, if it was a complex mix then a day and a half was the norm.
Record budgets changed the time frame of finishing a mix so even tho you could have no clue as to the state of the Protools files you just received and whether there was gonna be hours spent trying to restore some messed up session etc. which invariably was the case, and then deal with some producer who kept everything and didn't label it properly, something had to change because it was getting out of hand.
It was not possible to finish the mix in time. I actually got a record to mix...a whole album where the smallest track count was 120!!!!!. The song I tried to start with was 160 friggin tracks!!! (I bailed). That's an extreme but true case so now , at least within the company that manages me, there are guidelines for how pro tools sessions are to be received by us and labelled etc so that we can get straight to the mixing after a quicker set-up.
I can only talk about how I work of course, and I can work totally fine this way and my clients are happy, but the one's I can talk into letting me mix ITB at home and spend the time I really want without them freaking out about the money they would be paying the SSL room is growing. I just like to spend time on a mix and get right into it otherwise you can get a little stale I think, because there is less time for experimenting. I hate that.
There are also many times when its more chaotic in the studio and the energy is very high and the whole team in the studio is in the swing of it then we can easily get a mix done in a matter of hours, if it's the right record , and that is a blast.
- Mike Shipley
For pitch shifting I like the Eventide Harmonizer plugs a lot. For pitch shifting delays I like Pitch Blender and Sound Blender. For delays I like the PCM 42, the Telray plug and a whole bunch I can't remember right now, but I like one's where they can have a stereo spread to them or where I can feed one side back into the other. Reverb is a hard one because nothing sounds like a real EMT Plate, but Altiverb is good and I don't really use a lot of reverb. Sometimes I'll use a little short plate on a vocal. There are all kinds of plugs that are fun for vocals, MondoMod and MetaFlanger for example.
- Mike Shipley
I only think about doing the best mix I can and apply as much energy no matter whether I'm working with a well known artist or whether I'm not. I feel a little pressure when the artist comes in to hear the mix for the first time. Especially if it's a new client, but that's only natural I reckon.
Even that is good energy tho 'cos it's a challenge and another new bunch of people to get to know.
One thing is that having spent so many years working with "perfectionist" producers it became hard to stop fiddling with mixes and actually sign off on them or learn when to stop!! But at a certain point you just gotta let go of it and say that you're done, I'll be cruising along and some instinct just tells me I'm done now and that more fiddling is not going to add anything constructive.
Stressing about it is not happening cos you get all worked up and stops any flow you've got going so if I need anything to help a sticky mixing situation like more time or if I think the track needs some more work or whatever , then I just ask for it and there's no never a problem because it's in the artist's interest really.
- Mike Shipley
Well Shania's vocal sound takes a lot of bouncing and re-bouncing really. In a song like "you've got a way'' she obviously sang it kinda breathy but in order to get that sound in the whole song took a lot of work.
Again with Mutt it is just gonna take as long as it takes to get the sound so for all the vocals on that record (and others with him) I would automate the eq on every consonant/syllable and I did it on that record using the SSL automated eq that they built for the G Console. We had a J so we bought a G+ computer to slave off the smpte of the J so we could run the G+eq!!! There are 2 eq's in one package so I could go out of one and into the other so that I could safely seek out some horrid frequency of one consonant and leave the other eq for the following syllable!!!! It was mind numbingly laborious but was the only way to get rid of masking frequencies in the upper mids and find the area to boost etc.
This would take a day or so per song and as silly as it sounds, really helps. Mutts' opinion is that it's the only way to make the vocal be extra loud and not have offensive frequencies and on that record, it's sold (at the time of writing) over the 40 million sales mark internationally and really believes that songs and sound are important, so it's whatever it takes on both accounts.
There wasn't a lot of compression...an LA2 that works for her and riding the vocal into the track would take about a day...we would ride every nuance to give more character.
It's specific to work with Mutt to that degree, even in the days before DAW's on a Mutt mix I would have a 32 band graphic in my lap frantically doing major vocal eq moves while banging on delays, panning stuff and doing other stuff as the mix went down!
I still pay a lot of attention to the vocal and do whatever I need to get it to work properly in the track and that can still mean a lot of work because of how a lot of digitally recorded vocal's sound in general to me and having gone thru the vocal thing with Mutt and with the help of Pro Tools we've got it down to a fine art so whatever surgery is needed is easily done with the plugs I use.
- Mike Shipley
Aerosmith. About the mastering etc...The brief outline is that I had to cobble a mix studio together in Joe's extra house outside of Boston. We imported a 9k from England and a bunch of gear from OceanWay in Los Angeles. I have had a lot of experience with putting studios in odd spaces and putting in SSL's for short term work due to a lot of the tax exile type bands I've worked for, but this console was gonna stay put for about 3 months. I knew how much AC was gonna be needed to keep the board cool...about 5 tons of AC is normal for a room with a J in it.
I had delegated the responsibility of getting the AC done and the wiring etc cos I was too busy to oversee it all. I wanted to just pitch up and get going after maybe a day of messing around with speaker placement and hanging out with the band to talk etc.
When I got to the "studio"...I found that the dipshit that was in charge figured he knew more than me about SSL 9K's and the AC etc....so he figured it was ok to just pull in cooler air from outside to cool the board down!!! Wrong...that might work for a Mackie or something but not an SSL...so the board was pretty much fried but I had no choice but to work on as the AC was being worked out but the heat had caused the sound of the board to drift wildly and it was severely acting up.
All this going on while I've got a bunch of nutcases in the studio having a power struggle over who's producing the bloody record!!!!
It was chaos and I was trying to steer a rudderless ship whilst wrestling with a pig of a console that was acting up. I called in SSL and it took them a week to arrive to have a look at the console and they were up countless times but they were not able to help as the board was drifting so much that to stop and re service the board would change the sound of it so much..all our work would be lost. AAArghhhh
As for the mastering etc....I mastered Jaded for the single and all seemed well apart from the balance of a couple of small things that the computer had decided to change on its own accord!! That's how far the console was gone.
So much crap had gone down timewise that I had to stay in Boston and keep mixing while the record was being mastered.the band couldn't go 'cos they were doing some gig...Superbowl or something and I was still mixing and sending what I could finish to the Mastering house. So
I wasn't around for it. In fact all I heard was Jaded and also on the radio and it was ok....vocal was a little quiet but it was ok. As for the album....umm different story really...it sounded very dark to me and was not as it was sent from the "studio"..even though that was dubious anyway!!!
The long and short of it is...it was a done deal....just one of those things...a lesson learnt about a lot of things on that record. Too many cooks in the kitchen.
It was a bugger of a record to mix and the fact that it made it onto a cd in the first place is a miracle to me.
I just wanted to go on vacation and forget about it cos it burnt me out...so I did.
I will never let a record go out before I've heard the mastering, but the band and label and everyone had heard it by the time I got back from vacation and I was onto something else.
That's the bad story....the good story is that as much hell as it was and seeing everyone melt down countless times and have brawl's and stuff in the control room..Steven Tyler and Joe Perry are completely fantastic, I love em...all the shit was worth going thru to spend time with guys who are so passionate and get excited . It was not one of their better records but it was an experience I will never forget.
- Mike Shipley
I mix to half inch (tape) and also into a separate pro tools system thru Mytek converters at 96k as well as back into whatever sample rate the session is in if I'm in the studio and If I'm mixing ITB then I go thru the Roll Folcrom, Cranesong Flamingo and Cranesong Hedd to Pro tools.
- Mike Shipley
Roll RMS216 Folcrom Summing Mixer
Thomas was very involved and we had a thoroughly good time. We worked on "Two wheels good" at a residential studio in England and just had fun. Thomas is very creative and I had worked on 2 of his solo albums and then we kind of hooked up and did a lot together. We would do his records at Pete Townshend's Eel Pie Island studio in London and Thomas would come to work each day by boat as Pete's studio is right on the river, then for lunch we would get in the boat and moor it at a pub and umm....well....not get too much more work done really!
As for the sound...we just did the English thing , messed around in the most unnatural way possible!! Prefab are so typically English in that the music does not translate to the U.S, even remotely.
- Mike Shipley
If I'm working at the studio on a console I have a starting point kind of. It isn't necessarily a "cookie-cutter" template , it's just a way to get going. The problem being that I like to mess around a lot with what I get to mix. I will always start off by getting the rough mix of whatever I'm gonna be working on , as far ahead as possible , first to get into the songs and to see how the band have been listening to it all this time. I will make up my mind on the first listen what I want the sound to be like tho.
If its a rock song or a pop song I will usually have the board laid out by my assistant so that instruments stay in a familiar place on the board.
Some of the sessions that come in nowadays are so damn big 'cos of protools and the lack of decision making that it gets very hard and very tiring to get a mix a day done. Especially if you want to put everything into it on a daily basis.
Inevitably with the drums...there needs to be some help so I've usually got 3 subs set up for the drums with different compressors across the 3 buses to use for different types of compression depending on what part of the song it is.
Same with the vocals, gtrs etc. I like to work on at least a 96 channel console so there's enough room for a lot of multing. It's not always needed, but Just to leave static eq and panning positions for instruments isn't my choice in terms of making space.
The sound and INTENSITY of the drums, to me, should not be the same between different parts of the song and probably wasn't played that way either but when you compress the living daylights out of the ambience or the snare etc, it draws a line thru the song that needs attention to me.
So I will invariably have the kind of comp that makes the chorus be big and punchy but will not use it in the verse, so many records sound like the comp was set to stun and then just left that way for the whole song.
Which is fine..but not my taste. For subs, on comp as I said there will be Distressors or something and another will be to add attack dbx 160's or some such thing. Plus the snare will have been multed also for different sounds if need be.
Vocals will be the same so I can vary the sound of the vocals in a more appropriate way than just one setting.
So far as effects go. I'll have lots of stuff patched up and ready to go but doesn't mean I will use it..just saves so much time to be able to walk in and get going.
If I'm mixing ITB, my starting point is different. I use a Pro control (yes I know!!) and my Protools guy sets it up as a kind of template also.
As odd as it sounds I like to work at home kinda like I do in the studio, as in I have the luxury of having a protools operator to do the mouse work...editing, some of the more laborious automation ie...riding all the "breaths'' down etc on the vocals. My current way of getting going is to have an SSL, an API and a Sony eq across every channel and 3 different comps. So that I can just take my pick. Pretty straight forward though having an operator with me, even though I know protools makes the whole process much more painless as I like to keep the focus on the music and a lot of ITB manipulation can be laborious. So it's kinda cheating really to have my guy there all the time but it's a much more musical way to work for me!
- Mike Shipley
[top]Ship, do you have any interesting stories you could share about Queen? - Enharmonic
Well I could tell you about the time I was editing the 24track and totally fu@#ed it up thereby effectively making an unscheduled arrangement change . Of course it was all their fault 'cos they kept asking me to hear it with the piece in...the piece out...the piece in etc and when they had decided that they wanted it to stay...well by that time I was standing on the piece of tape in question and destroyed it by mistake, but they actually took me seriously when I sheepishly said that it sounded good without it (trying to hide my faux pas). Editing the multi-track was always quite nerve wracking with those guys because of how much was on the tape!!!
Then there was the fun of being on a chair on the drum riser with the band and others doing handclaps and foot stomps for "We will rock you" which was a lot of fun.
- Mike Shipley
[top]I love all the Background Vocals work on Mutt's productions. Can you Share some BV secrets with us? - delcosmos
We only ever did the moving away from the mic thing , for a rock approach. All the pop BV's that Mutt would do on his own, would be just stacked up 20 or so tracks per harmony, sometimes more , sometimes less. We would bounce them into 4 tracks per harmony and as for panning , we'd pan them pretty much wide all the time. Having used a ridiculous amount of eq to get the right sound. A lot of level riding is also used and editing all the "S's" and hard consonants to line up to stop the flamming.
- Mike Shipley
[top]What is your approach with HEDD 192? How and where do you use it when recording? When mixing do you set the saturation controls and mix with it or you add it afterwards? Do you have any particular settings? - Erwinor
Well for the Hedd I like the varying the combination of the "pentode" and "tape" processing, it makes a huge difference to me and I think Dave Hill one smart dude!! I also love his Phoenix plug-in and find it indispensable for adding warmth to ITB vocals and instruments that could benefit from mor warmth and size. I think the Hedd is also a great converter whether you use the processing or not.
- Mike Shipley
Crane Song HEDD-192
[top]Andrew WK. Fantastic mix Mike! First of all, what were your thoughts when you first heard the material? He is somewhat unorthodox in his sound. What involvement did you have, were you purely a mixer, or did you replace sounds and do other types of production work? - Joe Jacob
Well Joe, it's truly a strange record but it was such fun to mix 'cos AWK is such a fun guy . There were so many tracks on each song and very odd sounds because he had recorded the album in a closet in his apartment!!! and on Cakewalk so it was of very dubious quality !!! He did the whole record on Headphones.
I spent ages in the mix changing drum sounds and tightening up the gtrs because he had layered the gtrs with horns, synths, and anything he could to make 'em weirder but it only really works if everything hits at the same time cos it was all very loose and everything was "flamming" etc. Half the fun was Andrews mad ideas and much fun was had by all.
A record like that is so extreme that it's a love/hate thing.
- Mike Shipley
[top]Care to share anything about working with Paul Franklin on the "Up" record? Besides being one of the finest musicians on the planet, as well as one of the nicest, just curious on how you recorded him, editing, effects, etc. - Slantbar
Paul is indeed one of the best muso's on the planet and I've mixed a lot of records he's played on. For "UP" Mutt just shipped all the country players to the Bahamas and recorded them there. We comp'ed them in the mix back in Switzerland. Paul's sound is pretty unique with all the delays and octave devices he uses , so his sound is pretty much already there. We did have to mult the steel up to be able to move it's position around in the mix etc. The editing of so many great lix was the hard part!!
- Mike Shipley
[top]Reverbs on Drums. Assuming you're going for a fairly standard, pop rock mix. What are your starting points and philosophies on using reverb on a live drum kit? - GRiFF
I don't use reverb on drums , like most people have said here that it's better to use the room or overheads for more depth of field. For some of the "Mutt" oriented pop stuff we will use a lot of sounds to make up a snare sound and will use along with the samples etc, some gated reverb and lots of really short delays 'cos he likes the snare to have length to it.
With a real kit though, creative compression is more fun.
- Mike Shipley
[top]Re: The Cars. Did you remix any of the songs from the first cars album? If so, how was it pulling up those tracks from back then? Any surprises? How were those Roy Thomas Baker BG vocals? Were they all comp'd to stereo pairs? - Juniorhifikit
As well as mixing the Heartbeat City record I did remixes of Cars songs for a hits package and we had to get Roy's 40 track tape machine out to transfer some of the songs, cos it wasn't very stable at the time. So we transferred the stuff before the machine died.
All his stuff sounded great. I always loved Roy's way of working..he would duct tape all the meter's on the console and tape the machine up so that you went by what the sound was like rather than being technically correct. Everything sounded great...
Of course there is always a problem and at the time we were remixing early song's I was producing a song for them to also go on the hit's package. One day I come into the studio.assistant puts the tape up...a 1kHz tone come screaming out of the speakers so I give the assistant a hard time for putting up the wrong reel...not funny first thing in the morning...only to find out that the maintenance guy had wiped the first 2 minutes of a song that had taken six weeks to record!! and used it to line the machine up with.
Umm. I was pissed...Roy was also there and had the guy up against the wall threatening to beat him up...more fun....had no choice but to salvage what I could and re-record. Fun in the studio.
BTW, the maintenance guy had been on...acid...nice.
- Mike Shipley
Crane Song Phoenix
[top]Do you find the Phoenix and HEDD similar? Is it really worth owning both, if one does not need the A/D/D/A. - Vudoo
The Cranesong Phoenix plugin is fantastic , but doesn't do the same thing as the Cranesong Hedd because the Hedd acts as a compressor across the 2bus because of its processing depending how much you use, but I really like it.
- Mike Shipley
[top]Mutt Lange, what (in your opinion) is it about this guy that makes literally everything he touches turn to Gold (or Platinum)? Is it attention to detail? His ear for a "song"? One hears stories about the way this guy works and it makes ya wonder. You don't ever hear any quotes or anything from him. What makes this guy tick? - d audio
You will never hear a quote or interview with Mutt. He feel's his job is a behind the scenes one and he refuses to give interviews etc. His way of working is very unorthodox and a lot of people don't understand why he does work the way he does. I've already had some people here telling me that Dusty Springfield did it a certain way so what's wrong with Mutt etc , and that's what kinda rubs Mutt up the wrong way. He is not making records for "industry people" to buy and critique, he's making records for the check out girl at safeways, or the guy pumping gas.
Hearing opinions from Engineers and producers etc about his work methods is kinda old and just beg's for everyone to give an opinion and put a value on it in terms of how "they" work compared to him.
"How can u spend so long , it's not natural , that doesn't sound like a real kit, you do what??'" etc etc . All that gets in the way of what he does .So he chooses to be reclusive to a point and not listen to any one else's opinion, especially the A&R people!! He makes records for one reason only...to sell them. He will rewrite the same song until he's happy with it and that can be a while, he wants every record to have a "sound to it” rather than take for him what is the easy route and that can take some time also.
Yes there are people that work way faster and get the job done to their satisfaction just fine, he chooses a different route and always has. As I said his record sales are between 180 million and 190 million so his way works for him. People have tried to copy him, thinking that all you gotta do is be anal and spend a lot of time...but there is so much more than that. I love working with him because it's always something new.
Shania might not be everyone's cup of tea but I just got a plaque last week from Mutt and the label saying that she is the "First artist in history to have 3 consecutive diamond albums" so they've sold over 10 million each. Actually in total for her it's about 70 million on the three records. Back in Black just hit the 20 million mark. Def Leppard sold around 35 million.etc .
- Mike Shipley
[top]You mentioned mixing a new tune for Van Halen...any details you can share? - Ckevperry
OK, another fun story. The Van Halen song took 4 days to mix...a song with Drums, Bass, a double tracked Gtr and a vocal.
The first day was ok...was not a difficult mix to do (or so I thought)....Eddie and Alex came in and said that the drums sucked....oh good start though I (not). As it turns out when Eddie heard the song put together, he liked the feel and sound of the drums from the demo better but it was a demo and nothing was tracked to it!!! So Eddie and his engineer go back to Eddie's house and spend all night trying to get the drums from the demo to match the newly recorded Gtrs Bass and Vocals.
So we put it all together and see what we got...(why me again god?) and we hobble along trying to make it work. There is a lot more but that's all I can say for now!! Eddie and Alex are great.
- Mike Shipley
[top]I was wondering if you could elaborate on your methods/techniques/tips and tricks on achieving that sense of space (every instrument has its place and can be heard) in a dense mix. - TLS
I came up thru the English way of engineering which I think is, or rather was, a very different approach than a lot of American recordings, and whatever eq style I use probably is more English in that being aggressive with eq is fine etc. and even when tracking the American way was to be very pure with the signal path and not eq to tape etc. and it was kinda odd to me . We always just went for it whether tracking or mixing. Of course we knew how to get natural sounds because we were pretty much "mentored" by the staff engineers at the studio in all techniques.
As for rules for eq'ing , not for me, everyone of us here has a different way they would hear the same sound and eq it (or not) so my rules aren't anyone else's. I'm sure some engineers here eq the same way, boosting on a very narrow bandwidth and sweeping the frequency until you hit that hideous "masking " frequency and pulling out the offending frequency to make the sound sit better etc.
I was talking to Nigel Godrich about sound and his method of making records is different than most these days, his is more like a 70's English approach in a way in that he likes to get the sounds recorded and eq'd so that everything is committed to tape. Drums on 4 tracks max etc, and he often mixes a song as soon as he has finished tracking it and not leave all his mixing til the end. It's a refreshing way to work and he is just fantastic I think. No 100 channel mixes for him! Experimenting with eq and depth of field is the way to go, have fun!!
- Mike Shipley
[top]ITB mixing and subs questions. Let's talk about (plugin) delay compensation - are you a stickler? Or do you apply only where needed? - Jho
yes I am a stickler for delay compensation and it was always a right pain in the @ss!!! But now with the new Pro Tools version I am in heaven 'cos it's easy to get everything focussed properly now that Automatic Delay Compensation, ADC is in the new software.
Waves RComp
I will get the initial drum sound and after that's working I will mess with the Subs in different sections of the song.
I also set up bv subs etc so I can deal with them as stereo pairs after I've dealt with them individually. One of the better advantages in using something like a Pro control is that unlike an analog console all the stereo instruments can come up one fader so across a whole big mix it becomes quite a manageable size!! Love that.
- Mike Shipley
[top]When you are mixing a project that you had no prior involvement with, how often do you replace drum samples during mix - and when/if you do, do you augment live sounds or totally replace them? - Hoop
Sometimes , you just gotta replace or augment the drum sound and that's all there is to it. Hopefully not but sometimes a song just needs a different kind of energy than it has from the drummer, or it's a really crappy recording. I'm all for character so I will only do it if I need to.
If I do add to the original drumsound I will use Beat detective to isolate the regions but not to actually "use" beat detective to move the timing. Then I can use any number of ways to augment.
I can region replace which is fast. If it's to blend a sound, then tuning is very important so I will tune whatever I'm adding with , to the recorded kit. If it has to be a replacement then it's a different story.
Even adding snare ambience only, can do the trick . It is different with every session. Sometimes the oddest drum sound gives all the flavour to a record and technically it might suck but it's smallness or whatever might be just the ticket. So it's a very song by song thing.
- Mike Shipley
[top]Do songs take longer to mix now? - Wiggy Neve Slut
That's a hard one because these day's most everyone expects to have a mix a day, no matter what, even get the next one started, whereas a few years ago, if it was a complex mix then a day and a half was the norm.
Record budgets changed the time frame of finishing a mix so even tho you could have no clue as to the state of the Protools files you just received and whether there was gonna be hours spent trying to restore some messed up session etc. which invariably was the case, and then deal with some producer who kept everything and didn't label it properly, something had to change because it was getting out of hand.
It was not possible to finish the mix in time. I actually got a record to mix...a whole album where the smallest track count was 120!!!!!. The song I tried to start with was 160 friggin tracks!!! (I bailed). That's an extreme but true case so now , at least within the company that manages me, there are guidelines for how pro tools sessions are to be received by us and labelled etc so that we can get straight to the mixing after a quicker set-up.
I can only talk about how I work of course, and I can work totally fine this way and my clients are happy, but the one's I can talk into letting me mix ITB at home and spend the time I really want without them freaking out about the money they would be paying the SSL room is growing. I just like to spend time on a mix and get right into it otherwise you can get a little stale I think, because there is less time for experimenting. I hate that.
There are also many times when its more chaotic in the studio and the energy is very high and the whole team in the studio is in the swing of it then we can easily get a mix done in a matter of hours, if it's the right record , and that is a blast.
- Mike Shipley
Eventide H3000 Factory
[top]Pitch shifting, reverb, and delays. Curious as to what boxes or plugs you use and prefer for pitch shifting, reverb, and delays, maybe directed at vocals? - Doug_hti
For pitch shifting I like the Eventide Harmonizer plugs a lot. For pitch shifting delays I like Pitch Blender and Sound Blender. For delays I like the PCM 42, the Telray plug and a whole bunch I can't remember right now, but I like one's where they can have a stereo spread to them or where I can feed one side back into the other. Reverb is a hard one because nothing sounds like a real EMT Plate, but Altiverb is good and I don't really use a lot of reverb. Sometimes I'll use a little short plate on a vocal. There are all kinds of plugs that are fun for vocals, MondoMod and MetaFlanger for example.
- Mike Shipley
[top]How do you manage the stress of having such a reputation and keeping it for so many years? - Jose Mrochek
I only think about doing the best mix I can and apply as much energy no matter whether I'm working with a well known artist or whether I'm not. I feel a little pressure when the artist comes in to hear the mix for the first time. Especially if it's a new client, but that's only natural I reckon.
Even that is good energy tho 'cos it's a challenge and another new bunch of people to get to know.
One thing is that having spent so many years working with "perfectionist" producers it became hard to stop fiddling with mixes and actually sign off on them or learn when to stop!! But at a certain point you just gotta let go of it and say that you're done, I'll be cruising along and some instinct just tells me I'm done now and that more fiddling is not going to add anything constructive.
Stressing about it is not happening cos you get all worked up and stops any flow you've got going so if I need anything to help a sticky mixing situation like more time or if I think the track needs some more work or whatever , then I just ask for it and there's no never a problem because it's in the artist's interest really.
- Mike Shipley
[top]One thing that I have tried to achieve is your lead vocal sound in 'You've Got A Way' on Shanias' 'Come On Over' album. There is so much air and breath on the Lead Vox it almost sounds like someone is whispering along with the Lead vocal. How did you do it on that track? - Shan
Well Shania's vocal sound takes a lot of bouncing and re-bouncing really. In a song like "you've got a way'' she obviously sang it kinda breathy but in order to get that sound in the whole song took a lot of work.
SSL G+ Console
This would take a day or so per song and as silly as it sounds, really helps. Mutts' opinion is that it's the only way to make the vocal be extra loud and not have offensive frequencies and on that record, it's sold (at the time of writing) over the 40 million sales mark internationally and really believes that songs and sound are important, so it's whatever it takes on both accounts.
There wasn't a lot of compression...an LA2 that works for her and riding the vocal into the track would take about a day...we would ride every nuance to give more character.
It's specific to work with Mutt to that degree, even in the days before DAW's on a Mutt mix I would have a 32 band graphic in my lap frantically doing major vocal eq moves while banging on delays, panning stuff and doing other stuff as the mix went down!
I still pay a lot of attention to the vocal and do whatever I need to get it to work properly in the track and that can still mean a lot of work because of how a lot of digitally recorded vocal's sound in general to me and having gone thru the vocal thing with Mutt and with the help of Pro Tools we've got it down to a fine art so whatever surgery is needed is easily done with the plugs I use.
- Mike Shipley
[top]I have a question about Aerosmith’s Just Push Play album. How did your original mix sound compared with the final mastered version? - Delcosmos
Aerosmith. About the mastering etc...The brief outline is that I had to cobble a mix studio together in Joe's extra house outside of Boston. We imported a 9k from England and a bunch of gear from OceanWay in Los Angeles. I have had a lot of experience with putting studios in odd spaces and putting in SSL's for short term work due to a lot of the tax exile type bands I've worked for, but this console was gonna stay put for about 3 months. I knew how much AC was gonna be needed to keep the board cool...about 5 tons of AC is normal for a room with a J in it.
I had delegated the responsibility of getting the AC done and the wiring etc cos I was too busy to oversee it all. I wanted to just pitch up and get going after maybe a day of messing around with speaker placement and hanging out with the band to talk etc.
When I got to the "studio"...I found that the dipshit that was in charge figured he knew more than me about SSL 9K's and the AC etc....so he figured it was ok to just pull in cooler air from outside to cool the board down!!! Wrong...that might work for a Mackie or something but not an SSL...so the board was pretty much fried but I had no choice but to work on as the AC was being worked out but the heat had caused the sound of the board to drift wildly and it was severely acting up.
All this going on while I've got a bunch of nutcases in the studio having a power struggle over who's producing the bloody record!!!!
It was chaos and I was trying to steer a rudderless ship whilst wrestling with a pig of a console that was acting up. I called in SSL and it took them a week to arrive to have a look at the console and they were up countless times but they were not able to help as the board was drifting so much that to stop and re service the board would change the sound of it so much..all our work would be lost. AAArghhhh
As for the mastering etc....I mastered Jaded for the single and all seemed well apart from the balance of a couple of small things that the computer had decided to change on its own accord!! That's how far the console was gone.
So much crap had gone down timewise that I had to stay in Boston and keep mixing while the record was being mastered.the band couldn't go 'cos they were doing some gig...Superbowl or something and I was still mixing and sending what I could finish to the Mastering house. So
I wasn't around for it. In fact all I heard was Jaded and also on the radio and it was ok....vocal was a little quiet but it was ok. As for the album....umm different story really...it sounded very dark to me and was not as it was sent from the "studio"..even though that was dubious anyway!!!
The long and short of it is...it was a done deal....just one of those things...a lesson learnt about a lot of things on that record. Too many cooks in the kitchen.
It was a bugger of a record to mix and the fact that it made it onto a cd in the first place is a miracle to me.
I just wanted to go on vacation and forget about it cos it burnt me out...so I did.
I will never let a record go out before I've heard the mastering, but the band and label and everyone had heard it by the time I got back from vacation and I was onto something else.
That's the bad story....the good story is that as much hell as it was and seeing everyone melt down countless times and have brawl's and stuff in the control room..Steven Tyler and Joe Perry are completely fantastic, I love em...all the shit was worth going thru to spend time with guys who are so passionate and get excited . It was not one of their better records but it was an experience I will never forget.
- Mike Shipley
[top]Mike, what do you mix down to? - Toddro
I mix to half inch (tape) and also into a separate pro tools system thru Mytek converters at 96k as well as back into whatever sample rate the session is in if I'm in the studio and If I'm mixing ITB then I go thru the Roll Folcrom, Cranesong Flamingo and Cranesong Hedd to Pro tools.
- Mike Shipley
Roll RMS216 Folcrom Summing Mixer
[top]Prefab Sprout. Did T Dolby have a lot to do with the mixing or was it your baby? - Theom
Thomas was very involved and we had a thoroughly good time. We worked on "Two wheels good" at a residential studio in England and just had fun. Thomas is very creative and I had worked on 2 of his solo albums and then we kind of hooked up and did a lot together. We would do his records at Pete Townshend's Eel Pie Island studio in London and Thomas would come to work each day by boat as Pete's studio is right on the river, then for lunch we would get in the boat and moor it at a pub and umm....well....not get too much more work done really!
As for the sound...we just did the English thing , messed around in the most unnatural way possible!! Prefab are so typically English in that the music does not translate to the U.S, even remotely.
- Mike Shipley
[top]Do you use effects templates as a starting point when you start a mix? - Doug_hti
If I'm working at the studio on a console I have a starting point kind of. It isn't necessarily a "cookie-cutter" template , it's just a way to get going. The problem being that I like to mess around a lot with what I get to mix. I will always start off by getting the rough mix of whatever I'm gonna be working on , as far ahead as possible , first to get into the songs and to see how the band have been listening to it all this time. I will make up my mind on the first listen what I want the sound to be like tho.
If its a rock song or a pop song I will usually have the board laid out by my assistant so that instruments stay in a familiar place on the board.
Some of the sessions that come in nowadays are so damn big 'cos of protools and the lack of decision making that it gets very hard and very tiring to get a mix a day done. Especially if you want to put everything into it on a daily basis.
Inevitably with the drums...there needs to be some help so I've usually got 3 subs set up for the drums with different compressors across the 3 buses to use for different types of compression depending on what part of the song it is.
Same with the vocals, gtrs etc. I like to work on at least a 96 channel console so there's enough room for a lot of multing. It's not always needed, but Just to leave static eq and panning positions for instruments isn't my choice in terms of making space.
The sound and INTENSITY of the drums, to me, should not be the same between different parts of the song and probably wasn't played that way either but when you compress the living daylights out of the ambience or the snare etc, it draws a line thru the song that needs attention to me.
So I will invariably have the kind of comp that makes the chorus be big and punchy but will not use it in the verse, so many records sound like the comp was set to stun and then just left that way for the whole song.
Which is fine..but not my taste. For subs, on comp as I said there will be Distressors or something and another will be to add attack dbx 160's or some such thing. Plus the snare will have been multed also for different sounds if need be.
Vocals will be the same so I can vary the sound of the vocals in a more appropriate way than just one setting.
So far as effects go. I'll have lots of stuff patched up and ready to go but doesn't mean I will use it..just saves so much time to be able to walk in and get going.
Avid Pro Control
As odd as it sounds I like to work at home kinda like I do in the studio, as in I have the luxury of having a protools operator to do the mouse work...editing, some of the more laborious automation ie...riding all the "breaths'' down etc on the vocals. My current way of getting going is to have an SSL, an API and a Sony eq across every channel and 3 different comps. So that I can just take my pick. Pretty straight forward though having an operator with me, even though I know protools makes the whole process much more painless as I like to keep the focus on the music and a lot of ITB manipulation can be laborious. So it's kinda cheating really to have my guy there all the time but it's a much more musical way to work for me!
- Mike Shipley
