Interview with Rich Costey
by The Gearspace.com Community
5th December 2024
One of the longest-requested Gearspace pro Q&As finally happened in October/November 2024 when the inimitable Rich Costey joined us for nearly a month to answer members's questions! Rich's recording, production and mixing is THE edgy pop/rock/electro sound of the past 30 years, featuring credits that span across a wide range of artists including My Chemical Romance, Muse, Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys, Rage Against The Machine, Ice Cube, Death Cab For Cutie, Blink-182, Linkin Park, Sigur Ros, Bruce Springsteen, Sam Fender, Weezer, System Of A Down, CHVRCHES and many, many more. Rich was very gracious and detailed in his answers covering a wide variety of pro audio topics as seen from the top tier of the industry, and it was a rare treat to be able to have access to this elusive character who is known for only very rarely doing interviews or any media for that matter. Enjoy our recap of that very special Q&A!
I experience it all the time. if you're at a dead end, park it and move on to something else. come back later in the day or the next day and you'll have a totally new perspective
- Rich Costey
There's no sub on the guitars, but I recall boosting 400hz on Tom's guitars on that album which is a bit unusual, using the API 550. It was also mixed from tape and I think printed back to tape, so that's another contributor to consider. The EAR 660s were getting bashed on that one, but that tune is so good any compressor would have sounded great.
- Rich Costey
Most of the records you mentioned were mixed on an SSL J series which has a ton of clarity in the mids and highs. Large shifts between verse and chorus are either done on the console back then, or just done in the arrangement itself. I don't compress drums as a group except on rare occasions, as compression will lengthen the note of the drum and I often don't want that.
EAR 660 Limiting Amplifier
The EAR 660s aren't some magic box - I also have used the Shadow Hills comp, the Manley VariMu, the SSL comp, the Smart.. pretty much anything you can think of. I prefer a slower attack and either quick release or usually auto, depending on the material. Records sound different today because everything comes in with a ton of processing already, and if I undo that processing- which everyone on the project already loves- then they aren't happy. I think a lot of records sound the same these days and oddly it's because everyone is using a ton of processing to try and make their record sound different.
- Rich Costey
I have a pretty good memory of making that record. Dave had been working on it with Danny Saber for a year or so, off and on, before Dave's manager (Andy Slater, who also handled Fiona Apple) brought me in to try and sort it all out. Dave had just gone through extensive rehab and was ready to finish. I found him to be witty, hilarious, brilliant, and very underrated as a creative force.
A fair bit of my job was, first, to go through the Saber stuff and see what we wanted to keep. And then we spent some time making it sound a lot more live, as Danny's work is primarily programmed: so Perkins came in to play on some stuff, Matt Chamberlin played on some stuff, Dave played a lot of guitar, and a couple of different bass players were brought in, including future big shot producer Mike Elizondo (who was great).
Z.Vex Fuzz Factory
Listening to Sunny Day right now- yeah sounds really good, the beat I made on an MPC 3000. There is some kind of rythmic gated guitar in the verses which I remember doing, but not sure what it was. I was pretty into the Fuzz Factory at that point so for sure that's being used but... hard to pinpoint what was being done. I did take a lot of photos of those sessions, maybe I should post them at some point as there are photos of pedals, etc. The guitar solo was cut together from a bunch of different takes, doing what I could to bite some of the Adrian Belew stuff from "Remain In Light"
I've always been super inspired by Eno and his approach to working with bands and how he generally seems to disrupt however they're used to working. When I was younger I must have watched "the making of the unforgettable fire" 100 times
- Rich Costey
Guitars VS Cymbals: this is an eternal battle and there is no easy solution. Both are white noise generators. However, the better the recording of each, the less of an issue. If both are poorly recorded, I would suggest - no joke - trigger the cymbals with something decent sounding, leave the guitars alone except for a touch of compression, and don't stay up late worrying about it.
- Rich Costey
I don't know how I could cram the experience of so many sessions into one space here. Absolution was probably the most fun I've ever had making an album as we just did whatever the **** we wanted with no pressure and no adults involved. We had no idea that any of the songs would be particularly popular and didn't care. At some point it started to become clear that TIRO might have legs so there was a bit more time spent on it.
The guitar and bass setup has changed a lot over the years. When I first worked with them I had Matt use my Diezel instead of the marshalls he'd been using, as I felt they had a lot more clarity. For BH&R I wanted more clarity still, so we had Hugh Manson come to the studio in France and we swapped out pickups until we found some that seemed right. Also, on BH&R, I didn't want to repeat Abso so I pushed for Vox AC30s and other random bits in place of the Diezel.
Kemper Profiler
Chris was mostly using these giant Marshall bass rigs which were split several ways. Recording techniques were straightforward: SM57 and royer into 1073s for the guitars, and for bass a combination of RE20, Sennheiser 421 and NS10 sub with distressors applying very little compression. Since then they've changed their setup a lot. Chris doesn't use the marshalls anymore and Matt tends to use a combination of things including fractals, Kemper, etc. I didn't work on their most recent album at all, can’t comment on it.
- Rich Costey
I have very detailed notes on this which I could prob post somewhere, someday...
Chris at that time had three entire marshall amp rigs: one for clean, one for Big Muff, and one for his Animato pedal. The clean and muff were on all the time, the Animato was only turned on for extra distortion and teeth. I don't think his marshall cabs (maybe they were 4x10?) had horns, so I would have used a combination of Sennheiser 421, NS10 speaker/mic, and prob an RE20 on each of them. Much of the bass sound on Hysteria is actually a synth patch i programmed using the Kyma system, which sounds nothing like any other synth out there, doubling Chris' part.
- Rich Costey
Yeah good question. Sounds to me like an opera sample that we manipulated but I could be mistaken. There are several opera samples on that album.
- Rich Costey
Waves C6
100 percent no. I see this over and over again with productions sent to me and there's no quicker way to kill the vibe than to go on a hunting expedition to quash unruly frequencies. If I find resonances that are disruptive to the track, I'll suppress them, sometimes using a Q3, sometimes using an SSL plugin EQ, and occasionally using a Waves C6.
Interestingly, when recording onto tape or using consoles or some other form of primitive technology, for some reason resonances aren't so much of an issue. I've no idea why, but perhaps when dealing with subpar tracks that are brimming with resonances try that approach first: slap a UAD Studer 800 on every track, or group similar things into an aux and put it there. If you have any hardware available, use it.
Legendary producer Mutt Lange also has a strong hate for resonances, and I once mixed an album he produced: He would use an EQ7 in protools (very basic model) and dip annoying frequencies by hand, automating the dip only when it was offensive. It was painstakingly slow, he spent 8 days just working on the bass guitar for one song. Sounded pretty great tho.
- Rich Costey
I wish I had learned Transcendental Meditation years ago. It helps to keep you from comparing yourself with others and assists with accessing your own intuition. I've been doing it for a few years now and the difference it makes is real.
The artists I've worked with who are the most secure in who they are and what they want, also happen to be the most successful. And these are people I've met from before they were known or in some cases had even made an album. So anything that you can do to help you focus and distill your aims, and anything you can do to shut out the bullshit which surrounds all of us every day but actually has no substantive impact on your life, should be something you maintain and work on, every single day.
- Rich Costey
This was an entirely remote session- I was on a screen in the control room and could converse, while being fed a feed out of the console so I could hear what was going down. So it was a little weird, and I definitely wasn't as involved as I would have liked.
FabFilter Saturn
It was all tracked in Logic and I ended up mixing it using logic, outputted to my analog setup. It was kind of dicey as Logic was unhappy being used in the manner I required, and I could tell the band were perhaps a little frustrated with the process. The entire thing was pretty heavily processed- a lot of Saturn distortion and fab filter in general. There's synth bass in there though I can't recall what it was, and as an aesthetic I was pushing them further into a programmed direction as I wanted to hear a mix of between the live and the programmed. Producing remotely can be cool for specific things, but for an entire session, it can be a challenge. Not impossible obviously, and perhaps it can be good in that the band have more agency than if I'm in the room glowering at them if they pull out a distortion pedal I don't like…
- Rich Costey
I first heard of Mew from my friend Damon Tutunjian from The Swirlies, whom I had worked with on a couple of albums and EPs (actually were the first thing I ever did). Mew were big fans of Swirlies and asked Damon to produce them. Damon called me about engineering but there wasn't money for it- even though this was in the 90s and I was quite affordable. The result was their album "Half The World Is Watching Me". The band caught a buzz from that and got signed in the UK. They called me to get involved, and I went to Denmark and started working with them. I didn't know that much about the band, and after a week or two, they had a show scheduled in a fairly sizable venue in Copenhagen, which I attended. I was shocked at the sound, the visuals, the entire thing- just completely blew me away. I could fill probably a few chapters talking about the band but suffice it to say the sessions were an example of "do whatever you want", which is the best kind of record. We had no idea if anyone was going to listen to it and didn't care.
Neumann KM86
Tech talk: guitar tone was super important so I brought over my amp made by a guy who used to work for Matchless, the amp company was called "Overbuilt". Almost all of the guitars were tracked through that amp, with a tube Echoplex as a front end and mic'd with an SM57 and KM86. I was also using a ZVex pedal called "super hard on" to boost a tiny bit right out of the guitar. I have used that little pedal as a slight signal boost on every single guitar recording I've done since then. The main synth we used was a Roland SH5 and no it doesn't sound anything like the Behringer knock off
- Rich Costey
Sometimes there is a good deal of auto already happening in the session, so on the 4K it's more based on overall gestures in the music. That said, I generally work in absolute mode, though usually with faders off so I can punch in levels I like at a chorus, verse, etc. Turn motors on to get my bearings, and sometimes work in trim with motors on. Yes, def master fader rides. I also use groups a lot, with 7 of the group faders grouped to number 8. I do the same thing in protools. Almost always print with motors on as it sounds better to my ear. I do like the sound of the SSL VCA faders, but the VCAs which are found on an ultimation fader are not the same thing.
- Rich Costey
Spectrasonics Omnisphere
There are loads of things which sound great. UVI, Omnisphere (though it's practically vintage at this point), Serum, lots of NI stuff. The UAD Moog sounds close to the real thing. I've seen some Buchla style plugins but haven't tried them out yet. I think the ones that are more interesting to me are instruments which are moving into their own territory as opposed to trying to recreate, say, an ARP2600. I own an ARP2600 and have never heard anything which actually sounds like it. Other than another ARP 2600.
- Rich Costey
I don't use that philosophy much anymore, but I did for a while. I don't have preferred EQ settings per se, but some things seem to work often: 8 or 10k boost on crunchy guitars, though only a little; 1k boost on kick if you're going for a vintage feel, 5k boost on a vocal for intelligibility, cut 2.4 to ease the pain, and 10k for sizzle and steam. Synths I rarely do much other than clean out low mids if required against something else.
- Rich Costey
One thing to keep in mind is that the album was tracked to tape, then some things were edited in tools and laid back to tape. I mixed from tape, using an Ampex 124 machine (which is one of the best sounding multitrack machines ever made) to the SSL J9000. I did use a sample on the kick drum, which was a 909 sample firing out of my EIVX sampler. Otherwise it was the usual parallel 1176 on the kick and snare and parallel 33609 on the kit. Bass? can't remember but probably pultecs and LA2A ,prob a neve eq in there somewhere. for Tom's guitars I inserted API 550As and only boosted 400hz. No idea why I remember that. I spent almost two days working on the best chain of processing for Chris' vocal, because it's Chris Cornell. I think I ended up with 1073>EAR EQ> GML EQ> 1176> EAR 660. or something like that.
Also the SSL channels on the J have a great sounding compressor and I always hit that a little. Spatial processing was minimal but most of the album has a little bit of slap going on, even if you can barely hear it. There was always a quarter inch machine running slowly in my room, for slap. Mix bus was GML EQ >EAR 660s, linked, on the insert of the mix bus. the J center compressor was usually engaged in responding only a little. I would hit the EARs fairly hard, 4-5 DB.
Yes lots of automation, for rock music it's all about tiny rides to keep it exciting. As far as the over level of the music, it was expertly mastered by Vlado Meller who is the king of making it slam while still being able to breathe. But yes, the mix bus was probably on the edge of overloading. I printed to half inch but also to dig using the Lavry Gold. I can't recall which we ended up using but generally in those days the tape was used.
I don't use that much processing on individual tracks, so if anything sounds 'raw', that's why.
- Rich Costey
I really liked Jerry, we got on very well. We had a lot of good conversations in the hallway of various studios, just bitching about the state of the business. Incidentally I borrowed his Les Pauls for use on Cave-In's "Antenna" album. I recall it was his "steve jones" guitar, in that it was the same color as his and I think from 1977.
Maestro Echoplex
He tracked to one reel of analog Ampex 456, and most of the levels were fairly normal but his guitar tracks were pinned, completely. I had to call him in Vancouver where he was working to see if there was some tech issue, but of course there wasn't, that's just the way he worked. Other than that, pretty straightforward mix on the SSL J9000 with Echoplex, tape slap, and plate along with standard issue compressors. I think the only plugins I was using at the time would be the Waves De-Esser (still good) and lo-fi on occasion. was probably still triggering snare samples from my emulator sampler, can't remember. The 'rawness' comes from not stepping all over everything with processing, pretty easy
- Rich Costey
[top]The Wombats “This Modern Glitch”. I'm fascinated by this album's process, as there were multiple contributions from some of the industry's best and brightest producers, engineers and songwriters.
- Rich Costey
I always have midi mapped out on the drums by my engineer Jeff Citron, down to the sample, prior to starting a mix. I have a couple of old standbys in Battery that will load but generally these days I rely on some standard presets I made for myself in Superior Drummer. I'll use the Slate drum thing if I'm missing that sort of "crack" of attack, and have started adding in Liquid Death Snare for a bit of top end.
Universal Audio 1176LN
The 1176 thing is a combo piece and I have no clear explanation as to why it works. When I was working for Rick Rubin, all of us did it, probably handed down by whomever was on top of the totem pole at the moment which was Jim Scott. There is some kind of interplay that happens which is very different to individual compression. I can't explain it, but it works. Yes I have kick and Snr split out as well. A Pultec in the chain just adds some chunky teeth to the mids.
- Rich Costey
I think during mixing it swings back and forth. First phase is to get it sounding good. Next phase is to forget how it sounds, work unconsciously, and get it to feel right. Last phase is to check against reference and make sure it sounds great.
- Rich Costey
I try to just set up a general workflow on the console which might be useable for a majority of projects- a few parallel compressors, reverbs, some vocal treatments, etc. And from there I do a mix of mixing in the computer and then on the console. The hard work is done in the computer and on the desk it's slightly more general. But the analog desk is useable in a lot of ways people might not consider: inserts are analog with no additional conversions involved, bussing and aux sends are analog with no delay comp to worry about. I didn't really go fully in the box ever, so stems were always a slightly labor-intensive process and this isn't any different. Yes, I have to do recalls but I'm rarely touching the outboard so you're just recalling the desk, takes about 5 min. Not so bad. I have found that my actual mixing time can be a bit more efficient because I'm doing less work reducing resonances and finding ways to make the track hang together...because it just does. Biggest issue is keeping an eye on tech issues because it's constant
- Rich Costey
It's made it far easier for artists to develop on their own terms, and that's huge. Artists who developed in home studios: Tame Impala, Billie Eilish, Mac DeMarco for example.
The biggest downside to me is that it makes it easier for musicians to silo themselves instead of collaborating with other musicians. I still believe in the power generated by groups of people, and when it's easier for someone to just not deal with the bass player who annoys them, they don't have to anymore. But they should.
The other (obvious) thing is that many producer/musicians work out of home studios to develop artists, and that would be mostly impossible in a commercial unless that artist or producer was already huge.
I've worked on recordings made at home that sound terrible as well as recordings made in top studios that sound terrible: there's no guarantee that mics are in phase no matter where it's recorded.
- Rich Costey
I do a mix of things. modern records tend to come in with the processing often already chosen by the artist and producer and I'll usually try to preserve that. For my own workflow I have a pile of aux returns in protools with a variety of things parked on them and dedicated bussing set up before I begin. I have one set for vocals only and one set for 'music'. Preparation beforehand is important, if possible, so you can stay more in the flow instead of fishing through plug-in menus.
Lexicon 480L
I also have a couple of hardware units that are used for whatever makes sense - a 480L, H3000 set to modified layered shift, and a couple of Bricasti units.
- Rich Costey
I just tend to prefer to listen to music which feels like a movie. So when I'm working, I think in terms of space and dynamics, and try to keep things wide. I also love old rockabilly records which are recorded in mono so who knows..
- Rich Costey
AMPEX ATR-102
I mixed Renegades on a NEVE 8068 at Sunset Sound in LA, worked pretty long hours on it and spent a fair bit of time dealing with the out - of -time loop for Renegades Of Funk and even put a 3AM tambourine on that one. The general vibe was that it should sound over-the-top, bordering on distortion. A couple of songs weren't even bordering on it, like Kill A Man. Rick hated to hear compression so any time I was compressing drums or guitars or whatever, he would say it sounded "restrained" so I had to find a way around it. Vocals were pretty slammed through 1176 set to stun, slow attack fast release with the 4 and 12 buttons pressed in, along with a couple other parallel compression channels and another channel set to 'mic' in on the board for added distortion, when needed. This was tracked to tape and probably mixed from tape though I can't remember. Def the mixes were printed to half inch ATR 102, using 996.
Rick called me up after I worked on Fiona Apple "When The Pawn..". I learned a lot from him, primarily how to work from instinct instead of intellect. He would often make mix suggestions which I thought were bad ideas but I would of course do them because it's what he wanted, and they worked. He really did listen like a teenager, it was always simply whether or not he was getting off on something. If he wasn't, he'd make very clear suggestions on how to make something better. Sometimes he'd just say the mix sucked and to start over (only once). Sometimes the recording itself had issues and he would just deal with what's there. I think that turned into a serious strength of his- working with what's in front of him. We still keep in touch from time to time.
- Rich Costey
At the time when I mixed this, I was holed up in the back mix room at Cello (now East West) for quite a long time, and this was done in the middle of a lot of other projects so it's difficult to recall much in the way of specifics. It was mixed on a J9000 with my EAR 660s on the bus going into Lavry Gold convertors, which was my standard chain at the time. I would have been using an EAR pultec-style EQ on Jim's vocal, along with an 1176 going into an LA2A. I also ran another 1176 set to 'stun' as a parallel, which gets mixed in depending on what's needed to help the vocal cut. I would also hit the channel compressor for vocals with about 2-4 db of compression, which adds some grip and amazing sparkle. I rarely do very much to guitars other than add some 10k. Sometimes I run a parallel 33609 for glue but most of the time I don't.
SSL J9000
Distorted guitars are already compressed by nature, so I often leave them alone in that department. The definition you're hearing is really just a function of the SSL J. A lot of people talk shit about those boards and I have no idea why they would- vocals for example sound amazing on that desk in a way that you can't get on anything else. The SSL J doesn't have that much headroom so you have to be careful with your levels, but what it brings to the table overall makes your job a lot easier.
One story on the mixing of Futures: Gil Norton was the producer and it was the first time I had worked with him. My mixes often sound like shit until they come together in the last 45 minutes or so, and at one point Gil came in half way through the first song to say hello and see how it was going. The mix sounded like shit so I kicked him out of the control room. He later told me that he was pretty concerned, but had been warned by the A&R person (Luke Wood) about the way I work. He came back three hours later and it sounded great, the album turned out great, and he hired me a couple of years later for The Foo Fighters. So don't let anyone listen to your work until you think it's great!
- Rich Costey
I don't think there is an easy answer to this question. I worked in a lot of places as an assistant early on, but while I was there, I was hustling indie records the entire time. Sometimes connections would come through friends, sometimes it was maybe an indie label I had approached (with almost no credits), and in one case it was because I worked at an ice cream shop with a band member (The Swirlies) while also assisting/interning at a studio. On their first LP "What To Do About Them" there is a song called "Tall Ships": that was my first mix ever for a client, any client. I'd been in studios for a year or two but hadn't mixed anything outside of demos in high school and projects at Berklee School of Music.
I would suggest finding an angle you feel passionate about and pushing the limits of whatever corner that is. Don't be like kids at a soccer game where everyone chases the ball around the field at the same time. Be the opposite of that.
- Rich Costey
This came about because I was producing Kimbra, and she was friends with Stephen at one point he was considered to be a collaborator on some material with her. He came through the studio a couple of times to hang with her and we met... he was intrigued by the notion of a large analog console and wasn't sure what benefits or harms it could bring to his music. So at one point he brought over a track or two and had me do some mixing. It quickly became clear that he wanted to hear pretty much only what he himself does, so I ended up basically running the material through the board and my mix chain without doing much else. it makes sense as he's not a collaborator in any way, and is used to being in complete control. Lots of conversations about MDMA…
- Rich Costey
I never saw myself as a pioneer of anything, and I think all of us in the Swirles camp felt fairly ignored at the time. My own listening habits during that time period were mostly of the UK sort: yes MBV but also The Orb, Underworld, Portishead and Massive Attack, so when I was putting 808s on records for The Lilys and Swirlies, it didn't seem cutting edge in my mind but I knew it was a different texture for them. I don't listen to that much rock music, so when I'm working with a band I generally try to bring in elements from other spaces of music which you wouldn't normally find with a 'rock' band. Sometimes it works really well, like with Death Cab For Cutie "Kintsugi" and sometimes finding success on the production fringe of a song can be more challenging. "Glittering" was a long process, I remember spending way too much time putting mics in front of extremely loud AC30s in the B room at Water Music in Hoboken, which I think didn't have air conditioning. I did a fair bit of drum programming on the record which I think moved the band into some new spaces, but Damon is always pushing forward anyway. We mixed it at Philip Glass' studio on Broadway and raided the synth closet a few times.
- Rich Costey
Yamaha NS-10M
I've gone through a few stages - after the NS10s I tried Dynaudio BM 15s for a minute, occasionally Pro ACs, and then when I started working for Rick Rubin I tried the passive ATC SCM20s and stayed with them for quite a while. I moved to NYC in mid 2000s and found that the SCM20s didn't have enough bottom to compensate for the fact that every single mix room in NYC where I worked had the absolutely shittest large monitors. So I worked on Barefoot monitors for a little while, with mixed success, along with still using NS10s. I moved back to LA a few years later and started using a combination of very large PMC speakers along with NS10s and various other mid-fields, later moving back to ATC 50s. I'm now on ATC 150s and NS10s, which genelec speakers used for occasional Atmos mixing.
- Rich Costey
Absolutely, mixing Frances was nuts.
Omar had the album spread across two protools machines because the track count was so high, and the studio had to be modified to accommodate that number of inputs to the SSL J. Mixing was, in some ways, the first time he was able to hear everything at the same time, so it was slow going and very complex. On the finished recordings you can hear a lot of cross-fades into other songs and then back, or other scenes... those were done during the mix, as you hear it now, all analog on the SSL. I had a lot of small fader automation going, pan automation on the desk, everything was pretty maxed out. We mixed it once and then mixed it again- the second time we could be more focused on the actual mix and less focused on the construction of everything. that process took I think 5 or 6 weeks. Omar and Cedric then left for a tour or something.
ATC Loudspeakers SM20ASL
After a couple of weeks I got in a new pair of ATC SCM20 Actives and listened through to the album. I felt quite sure I could make the mixes better if I recalled the songs and went through them a little bit, in a general fashion. I think I heard Omar puke on the other end of the phone when I called and suggested this. They let me do it and that's what you're hearing. It was without question the most complicated mix I have ever done. It's also my favorite TMV album.
- Rich Costey
A lot to say about this one.
Months and months spent on it, many different LA studios. Tracked to tape except Fiona's piano which I tracked directly to protools. One exception is "On The Bound", where matt's drums were also cut to protools. Everything else went to tape. Lots of time spent experimenting with mic pres, EQ, mics, etc along with of course instruments, pedals, anythign that made sound. Jon is stupidly gifted with incredible taste and vision. The entire album was recorded and mixed only on NS10s. On occasions we would put it on the mains at NRG B because those dynaudios sounded nuts, but all creative choices were made only on NS10s. It's very hard to boil down these sessions into a few paragraphs, as they took place over an 11 month period. And if you take that long to make an album, it better be good.
- Rich Costey
Telefunken ELA M 251
We had many rules during the recording, and one was NO SM57s. We kept to that for the entire project. So on Matt's snare we would use an SM56, doubled with a Km84 or some other condenser. D12 or D20 on the kick... although it depends, we did a few setups.
Fast As You Can was one of the first things we really dove into. It was mostly piano and some other bits at first, and Jon decided to play drums on the halftime/ time sig change/tempo change bridge. I had just been reading an article in Mix Magazine where they were asking big time engineers how they like to mic drums, and Jack Puig said he preferred 251 mic on toms. I found this to be utterly hilarious, as most people will never see a 251 mic and certainly wouldn't have 3 or 4 to spray on a drum set. We were at Oceanway studio 3, so to continue the joke we raided the mic locker for every 251 mic in the building, and Jon set up the worst piece of shit mismatched kit imaginable. I put 5 or 6 251s on it- toms, overheads, prob snare, anything. I then compressed the kit into smithereens and that's what's there. The drums during the fast sections are all Matt playing a toy drum set.
- Rich Costey
I did not have the EAR 660s at that point, the entire album was mixed through a Manley VariMu.
Yes Neve, but a bunch of songs were mixed on the Dal-Con console (now gone, I think Nigel Godrich has it) from Oceanway/Universal Studio B.
Here's a story: the song "I Know" was cut live, with Fiona, Keltner, and Greg Cohen. Vocals were also live. All went TO TAPE and I had to cut four or five takes together to make the master comp. Everyone left and I stayed up most of the night doing it. Tape editing isn't that hard, but I Know is quite soft which gives you almost nothing in the way of transients to find your edit spot. I had bits of recording tape all over the walls, and I would write on them with a grease pencil so I could remember what goes where. It was pretty terrifying because if I ****ed it, there was no way to get that group of players back in to recreate what just happened.
To make matters worse later on, I insisted on mixing it using a vintage UA 610 console. the 610 sounds amazing of course, but I'd get 2 minutes in and one of the channels would crackle, so I'd stop, wind back and try it again. This went on for hours one saturday until I got sick of it, went to Fiona and Paul's (Thomas Anderson) for a party and got drunk. Finished monday morning.
- Rich Costey
usually the production was based around the piano, since that's how she writes, so that went down first, to a click. piano was going to be edited anyway so may as well go to tools.
- Rich Costey
NEVE 1073
I can't tell you much other than it was no different to the rest of the recordings:
Fiona -> 251 mic -> 1073 -> EQP 1A -> Fairchild 670 -> Ampex MM1200 / Ampex 124/ Studer 827 depending on which studio we were tracking at.
- Rich Costey
I don't really have an approach on this, and I will admit that it is extremely difficult. In general I tend to produce artists if I feel like I know exactly what I would like to do with them, and I tend to be selective because of that. When it comes to mixing, I prefer a much broader field of options. At the moment I really am focusing just on mixing, as I'm very happy with how the room is sounding and I've been fortunate enough to work on a number of things this year that I'm excited about. I'm sure I'll produce something again at some point, but for now I'm only thinking about mixing.
- Rich Costey
The signal flow on almost all SSLs is very similar. If you know how to work on a 4k, then a SSL duality is no problem. The automation systems are completely different. the 4k auto was designed over 40 years ago and is very task-oriented without much in the way of frills. It's also fairly bullet-proof once it's up and running. The J and K have similar automation, and the SSL Duality is very different, with the data being stored differently, can control protools faders, etc.
Sonically they are each very different. the 4K G and E even sound different. VCA faders VS Ultimation faders sound different. In short, the 4k tends to be a bit harder sounding in the mids, and is less forgiving on songs with an obscene number of tracks. The J can present a great deal more detail, and I actually prefer the channel compressors of the J, but overall the mids aren't as tough. Vocals on a J sound amazing, in particular. The K is close to the J but seems to have solved a couple of sonic issues with the midrange. The K, to me, can be a bit too clean and transparent at times, but the bottom end presentation is excellent.
The SSL duality, to me, is similar to the K in that it's very clean, but just didn't have the same sonic scope. I also wasn't getting the same joy from the EQs or compressors. I love the design, but in the end just wasn't getting off on the sound as much.
88R is a totally different beast and is the one board that I used to own which I wish I had never sold.
- Rich Costey
EXCELLENT question.
Here is what I look for, in order:
I love meeting new people at studios but will always bring someone from my own situation. The best assistants I've met I ended up hiring, with one exception being Adam Noble. Adam is now a very highly accomplished UK producer, but he was also an assistant at AIR when I first went there to work with Muse. He was just the best- always knew what to set up before we asked, knew where the session was going, and would bring a tray of tea before any of us asked. That kind of stuff seems like trivial bullshit but it's real: if someone can read the room and sense the energy is getting tired, and suddenly shows up with caffeine for the room, that demonstrates their ability to pay attention.
As far as studios, the most important thing is a room where everything works. there are quite a number of excellent studios still in operation, with my favorites being Sunset Sound, RAK, Abby Road, Guilford Sound, and Electric Lady
- Rich Costey
NEVE 88R
The room mics are up pretty loud in this mix and that's mostly what you're hearing on the snare drum. I had just installed in 88R into Studio C at Electric Lady and this was my second mix in the room with this desk, the first was "Desolation Row" from My Chemical Romance. It's a fairly constrained sound, to be honest. I have a selection of samples I rely on, but listening to it again just now, what you are hearing is the existing recording with some amount of channel compression from the 88R. If you are interested in this kind of grainy top end on the drums, I would suggest the UAD 88R plug in (which I still use every day) and getting to know the limits of its midrange and lower midrange. This is definitely not an SSL sound, so if you're into this, dig deeper into the 88R vibes. The 88R plug ins don't sound the same as the console, but they are definitely in the same aesthetic wheelhouse.
- Rich Costey
There wasn't a 'mix treatment" for each instrument, per se. The album was well recorded in a fairly traditional manner, and my job as a mixer was to present it honestly. I do recall that I had a pair of Quad 8 channels across the mix buss, and the rest was some normal situation of opto and VCA compressor. I didn't compress the mix very much, so when the songs kicked in, they really kicked in. I can't give you any tips on how to achieve this in the box other than to only add processing when it's absolutely required. One thing I've noticed over time is that -for whatever reason- I tend to apply more processing to tracks when I'm mixing in the box. So I guess for a similar in the box approach I would suggest using very little in regards to plug ins and doing as much as possible simply with volume rides. Spend some time on this approach, real time, and see if it feels valuable a couple of weeks later. If the commitment is deep enough, you will find progress.
- Rich Costey
It's true I have changed monitors from time to time, just as I have mixed on 8078s, 8068s, 88RS, API 3208, SSL G, SSL E, SSL K and SSL J. I love ProAcs and wish I got better mixes out of them, but I found I loved the sound of the speakers so much I just got lazy with my mix. PMCs are very good- I had a huge PMC set up at my room in Burbank for a few years- but in the end, the speaker which I've had the best results with over the years has been ATC. I still love NS10s, but I can't tell if it's because they're any good or it's because I've used them off and on for a very long time. I used Barefoots for a while because none of the mix rooms I was using in NYC had usable mains, and Barefoot kind of stormed the market with a console-top speaker that had amazingly deep bottom end. In the end it was too much DSP for me on those so I moved on. I heard a speaker in London a couple of years ago which absolutely blew me away, called TPI. They were the most incredible nearfield monitor I have ever heard, virtually no crossover distortion. I would like to give them a try at some point in a serious mix situation but right now I'm very happy with ATC150s plus subs, and some NS10s. Might also be relevant that I tend to mix at a very low volume.
- Rich Costey
EAR EQ 822Q
Bass is almost always boosted heavily at 3.2k on a 1073. Bottom end is sometimes boosted a bit at 100 or even 60, and often some kind of sub generator is used but the main gimmick is the 3.2k boost. Works most times. I have always liked a bright vocal and yes I was using a type A processor, along with an EAR EQ boosting some top. Butch Vig produced that album and I remember him saying how he liked the sound of "steam" on top of a vocal.
- Rich Costey
No Kyma at all, but yes I was using the DBX 500 all the time back then and sent a bit of bass/synth and kick drum into it. In fact I think I'll pull this out of the closet tomorrow and see how it stands up to modern plugs doing the same thing...
The drum sound used during the mix had no close mic on the snare. They kept asking for me to turn down the close mic until it was off, and they liked it that way. Josh is one hard hitting drummer.
Another note is that this was recorded to tape and mixed from tape. Each song was one 24 track tape, no protools and no second tape machine. As a result I had to do a lot of rides and split the returns across a few different channels on the board so I could apply different treatments in different sections. This was also mixed on an SSL J9000. At one point in my room I had borrowed an EMI TG "portable" 24 channel mixer and had it set up in there as a sidecar. Pretty sure it was in there and in use for the Jimmy Eat World "Futures" album, and I think I used it on this album as well. Taylor Hawkins loved this album, by the way, and when I worked with the Foos a few years later he seemed to have a lot to say about it.
- Rich Costey
Shadow Hills Industries Mastering Compressor
A lot of this stuff comes in from the production and the producer, Nick Raskulinescz. On my end I recall that my first couple of passes weren't bright or cutting enough, so I spent a good deal of time with EQ so that it sounded like Deftones. Vocal treatments- again a lot of that was put together in the production process and was already printed. on the drums it was the usual array of 33609, 1176 and lots of EQ, with also some SSL channel compression. I wasn't using a lot of plugins at that point other than Waves. On the mix bus for this one I was using the Shadow Hills Compressor, which partially accounts for the widescreen effect. Sorry this wasn't very informative! The Deftones just sound like themselves, I can't take too much credit.
- Rich Costey
When I'm part way through a mix and it's not working, I start over. I might keep a lot of the eq and processing choices, but i like to pull the levels down and rebuild from scratch. Usually in ten minutes it sounds better than what I just spent hours on.
A lot of artists these days prefer mixes which are close to the reference rough mix that they are used to hearing, so most of the time I start out keeping it fairly close to the ref. Once they feel comfortable we push the song forward together. Finding "glue" on a mix in the box can be a challenge and there's no easy fix for it. I would suggest putting the Unfairchild plugin across the mix buss, pulling your faders down, and starting from there. Genre doesn't matter, the Unfairchild is one of the best glue machine plugins I've heard.
- Rich Costey
We tracked that one at my room in Santa Monica with the band playing mostly live. The control room was also a large recording space and I put Jason McGerr (on drums) into a booth. A lot of the great moments in that song came from Dave Depper and Zach Rae, who are generally full of hooks and interesting ideas. One notable thing on that song is that after mixing it, we all felt that Jason's kit just wasn't as commanding as the song required. So we ended up booking at day at the studio known as Sound City (it's a private studio now) and recutting the drums there on the NEVE 8048. We really wanted to have another singer on the track, and Lauren Mayberry's name came up a few times, both because the band were friends with Chvrches and I mixed the first Chvrches album. She happened to be in LA for a few days so she came through and brought something really special to that song. I mixed the entire album on my SSL Duality (since sold).
- Rich Costey
The EAR 660s have been on more of my mixes than any other piece of gear. I usually put an EQ in front of them, and sometimes again after, and then follow up with a slow VCA compressor of some type, typically an SSL of some sort. Once it comes back into protools I'll apply a few plugins as well, like Oxford Inflator, another EQ, and occasionally a (controversial) plugin called FiDef, and then I have another track where I go through the AOM Invisible Limiter to make refs for clients.
I almost always just use the Auto Release setting number 5, and my ratio is typically set at 10 O'clock, with about 2-3 db of compression.. On my older records I would go with 100ms recovery and sometimes a bit slower, and push 4-6 db of compression. Contemporary recordings tend to come in already processed to a degree, so less compression, of any, is required on the mix bus. I always connect the quarter inch cable in the back so they are running in 'link' mode. Years ago when I mixed Audioslave, I got another one and put it on Chris Cornell's vocal, along with a number of other pieces of gear. They really are fantastic pieces.
- Rich Costey
Rich Costy I came up working on the 4k and always appreciated both the sophistication and the rawness that it offers. I recently had a Neve 5088 which I think is fantastic sounding, but with the lack of recall I found myself just using less and less of it. After that, I gave a good solid go at mixing in the box, and it's just not for me. I understand that for most people it is their preferred approach and I can appreciate that. Loads of great recordings are mixed in the box, but we each follow our own path, and mine led me back to the 4k. I still very much appreciate the SSL J, but at the moment if you have a J and the computer fails, you are ****ed. I had a K for a while and of course it sounds excellent, but in the end I missed the character of the 4k. This conversation could probably go on for a very long time.
- Rich Costey
NEVE 33609 Compressor
High pass filter, then some general tightening compressor (could be waves 1176 or UAD LA2A) and de-esser on the source track, then it goes to an Aux where I'll have an SSL E Series EQ, or the Antares vocal eq, or maybe the Waves C6, then either a UAD 1176, the Unfairchild, or the Antares vocal compressor, then another de-esser, then AudioThing Type A sometimes, and often will finish with Metric Halo Channel Strip which is only doing overall EQ. Sometimes I will run that with a parallel hardware 1176 or LA3A, sometimes I do less compression and eq on the vocal aux and instead run it through some hardware: DBX 902, then Avalon EQ, then a Fairchild 670 or sometimes the ADL 670. I very much like to package vocals into a Neve 33609 as well, typically at the end. As far as FX, usually productions come with it baked in or printed, but my standards are H3000 modified layered shift patch, Lexicon 480 large chamber, Soundtoys Echoboy, UAD plate, Pulsar Echorec plug in, another plugin called 'wires', I could go on for a long time here.
Re: vocals, always dry. if the song comes in with a lot of processing on the vocal then I generally won't do a parallel.
- Rich Costey
Nothing too crazy with drum processing other than a close kit mic with a lot of distortion, some rooms with about 20 ms delay on them (I came across this trick mixing something albini had recorded), and not a lot of close mic compression. It was mixed on an SSL Duality and I think most if not all of the kit went into a Neve 33609 with the kick and snare also being sent to the board dry, so i could position their transients. I recall quite a lot of eq on the kit during mixdown and some amount of trickery on the room mics to give them a bit of a classic power station sound. Not quite gated reverb but certainly leaning toward it.
- Rich Costey
Thank you, I'm really happy with how this came out. I would love to take credit for the distortions, but that was entirely the work of the producers, Connor McDonough, Riley McDonough & Ryan Daly. I mixed this entirely in the box and one of the key things was indeed getting the low end to really speak. A lot of this was handled by a plugin called Bassroom by Mastering The Mix. I was also super careful to not overcompress anything going on in the bottom, and to instead push the low end transient information. I used the Antares vocal eq and vocal compressor on Dove's voice, which I think are incredible tools.
- Rich Costey
Mastering The Mix Bassroom
It's on the mix bus post compression. Transients on low end: watch the amount of compression you're using and i tend to use a slower attack.
- Rich Costey
We spent A LONG TIME getting this to sound right. I'm pretty sure a 33609 was involved. I'm a big fan of this compressor being applied to vocals as it tends to add glue and control harshness, right away.
This was mixed through a Shadow Hills Equinox, which contributed heavily to the detail and warmth of the music. As usual, drums were mostly compressed in a parallel fashion and the bass probably went through a Pair of Distressors, (stereo linked, 4:1, slower attack, adjust release to taste but generally something sort of in the middle, maybe 4 db of compression. On meaner stuff I would use british mode but for bass, not so much) but not slammed.
George Massenburg Labs GML 8200 EQ
I find that with contemporary music if the bass is very compressed, it tends to make the entire track sound compressed. I love the Beatles and I love Paul's compressed bass on those records, but in a contemporary context that kind of thing doesn't always work for me. It's very weird- I can be far into a mix and start to get a vibe that I'm hearing too much compression, and oftentimes if I just back off on the bass compressor the entire track sounds more lively and less stomped on. Ariel produced that song and there was some amount of UAD ATR102 going on in various places to keep transients under control. The mix bus was my GML EQ going into my EAR 660s, which I've used on many records for a long time now.
- Rich Costey
This is a good question and it's something I always try to sort out prior to starting with a new client. I've been fortunate to work with a lot of strong-willed artists, so in most cases they have the final say. Occasionally an A&R person might have some insight into how a song could be pushed further, and if the artist is willing, I'm always happy to explore. On pop projects one normally deals with the producer or producers until they approve, then they play it for the artist. A while back I did a bunch of mixing for Rick Rubin, and on those records I would only deal with Rick, and the band would hear it when the whole thing was done. Maybe there would be a recall or two if someone really had an issue with something, but otherwise the mixing process did not involve the band at all. I don't believe he works like that anymore.
If it's a record that I'm producing, I generally prefer to dial it in to my own taste and then get the artist to hear it. Some artists can get really involved (Sam Fender and Muse come to mind) and others just give more general direction and approval.
- Rich Costey
My setup for mixing this album was pretty nuts and not very smart. I had just moved back to LA from NYC, where I had a room at Electric Lady and was mixing on my NEVE 88R. So now I'm at Record One in LA and on an SSL J, but I wanted a bit more character than just the SSL J. Luckily I also had a 32 channel vintage API console with me, so I put that on the back wall of the control room facing inward and ran just about every track from protools through the API and then into the SSL. I have a photo of it somewhere, and it's among the wrong-est setups I've ever had, and I've definitely had some wrong setups over the years. Recalls were almost impossible, and getting a tight LR balance on a pair of tracks was very tricky, as each channel on the API sounded slightly different. But Blue Sky Noise was mixed on that setup and you're not the first person who connected with that mix so I guess it wasn't all bad. I later sold that API to Ben Folds who put it into RCA Nashville.
- Rich Costey
I'm back on an SSL G console after trying ITB, couple of different summing mixers, different mixing desks, etc. They're all valid ways of working and it's important for each person to find what works for them on their creative journey.
10 years ago I would do almost all of my automation on a console, but these days most of it’s in the computer. I'll use the desk for bigger, broader moves, largely for holistic dynamic shifts in a song.
There are a million reasons to automate any song, no matter the genre. The most important plug-in is volume. Can't hear the vocal? turn it up. 808s not present enough? try turning them up first. Can't hear the room mics? turn them up. obviously I use EQ, compression, FX etc as well. Sometimes I think about Andy Wallace, who used almost no outboard and relied - according to his former long-term assistant John O'Mahony - almost completely on automation. He said the faders would be moving all over the place, and if you turned the automation off, the mix would completely fall apart. I'm nowhere near that in terms of automation but it's interesting to consider that way of working.
- Rich Costey
Hi Sam. I'm loving your Liquid Death Snare plugin, by the way.
I still use the parallel 1176 on kick and snare for rock stuff. Its slowest attack, fastest release, and both the 4 and 12 ratios are pushed in. Drive the input to taste... I picked this up from Jim Scott who did a ton of Rick Rubin albums. He said he picked it up from Shelley Yakus, who's quite the legend, so it feels like some kind of thing which is moving down through generations of engineers. Other than that, I'll usually run a parallel 33609 for the overall kit. Nothing particularly interesting, I don't think.
On the mix bus, for those records you mentioned and also the record I'm mixing right now, I use both the EAR 660s and the SSL console compressor. The EAR 660s are inserted preVCA so they're before the SSL comp. EAR 660s are generally on preset 5 (similar to the fairchild) but occasionally I've gone with a much quicker release which can kind of overwhelm the track, but when it works it really works. Audioslave's "Show Me How To Live" is one of the few times I recall really slamming the shit out of those things with the 100ms release time. The SSL comp is almost always on slowest attack with the recovery set to Auto.
Those Ross Peterson days at Avatar (now Power Station) were pretty nuts. On Mars Volta 'Frances The Mute" we spent I think six days mixing one 33 minute track. I completely lost myself at one point, I think we all did. I have a video somewhere of Ross and Cedric beating on random things in the live room and making up a song, preschool level of complexity.
- Rich Costey
UnderTone Audio GB Tracker
Absolutely. I've been seeing them for a long time, including on an early version of Coldplay's X&Y album. Things have come quite a long way since then (Amp Farm) and there are a few options out there which I use myself, with my favorite at the moment being the Neural DSP stuff. If you want something to have more character within a mix, to me there is no substitute for the real thing, but sometimes you want that glassy attack as well so if I'm producing I sometimes use both options. When stuff comes in from other folks for mixing I generally just take the same approach with an amp sim that I would take with any other amp- I rarely add much in the way of compression and only EQ as needed. I've seen some producers who process guitar recordings quite a lot, and I have to say that some of them have really figured some shit out and it can sound fantastic. However, when the goal is to make something kind of brutal, to me amp sims tend to sound a little weak. For example on the Ghost film and live album 'Rite Here Rite Now', the amps were some kind of sim coming in from the concert recordings. They sounded good overall but I wanted something more visceral, so I took the DI and ran it out through my Diezel head via the UnderTone Audio GB Tracker II and reamped the entire concert. I then carefully phase matched the material recorded from the show and ended up using a mix of the two. I think it was a significant upgrade from only the sim amps.
- Rich Costey
NUGEN Audio Stereoizer
Widening... yes I've used quite a few things and continue to look into new ways to do it. I did use the Hughes for a while, probably about ten years ago. I use the H3000 daily but not really for widening. Probably my baseline plugin for this is NUGEN Stereoizer, which can get pretty extreme and always sounds sick to me. There are a million different ways to do this kind of thing, even using the plugin alliance basic digital EQ, which is more controllable and sounds excellent. I recently found myself listening to some old records which used Q Sound, and honestly that shit still sounds nuts. They really should make a new version of this system which could be used as a plug-in.
Distortion- way too many to list. Yes to everything you mentioned here, along with most other things you've come across. In case there is a muse fan reading this, the guitar patch for Super Massive Black Hole is "Big Muff w Dead 9v" on an Eventinde DSP 4000.
I've been keeping a close eye on the development of AI in music, and even consulted on one early system which is very different from what we are seeing coming online now. Stem Splitting is a creative tool which I think can be very interesting, but AI used for full creation of tracks is a terrible development for humanity. It will displace loads of musicians, first in the area of music library generation, then in commercials, and will gradually work it's way through the industry. Suno is an example of a company run by tech bros who have been expertly playing the game of public relations, by pretending they have 'the musician' in mind. They don't. They are interested in making billions by displacing real musicians and creatives. You mentioned Udio- that's backed by Mark Andreesen, who is not known for his benevolence.
As to whether these are passing trends, new technology is almost never a passing trend. Tech may shape shift into new forms, and I have no doubt that AI tools will be mastered by some folks as a new creative tool. But no matter the public face these companies put forward, the end goal is more 'content' to sell with fewer people to pay.
- Rich Costey
Sure. The FF record was an interesting one. Coming off the back of their first album, which was a huge hit with incessant touring, they didn't have all of the material rehearsed by the time we were supposed to start recording. So we set up in a house in Moniaive, Scotland, and had an interesting routing where they could play together in a big room at the end of the house to rehearse, using amps in the room with no headphones, and then flip a few switches on some routing boxes and suddenly connect to amps for recording in the other side of the house. We all found it to be a great way of working, basically living together at this property while rehearsing, writing a bit, and recording. One song that changed a lot during the process was the single "Do You Wanna": when the band first locked into that one, the jam was so good that I filled up an entire reel of two inch of them just riffing. We ended up obviously editing it down, and then Alex wanted to tighten up some of the performances as we got closer to mixing so it ended up not quite as loose and grimy, which is probably for the better. The other notable thing was that when we got to NYC to finish overdubs, I found that often their guitar parts didn't sound right when I recorded them one at a time, so we did almost all of them with both Nick and Alex playing together.
Primal Scream: I'm a big fan so for me it was pretty significant to see Bobbie Gillespie sitting in my control room. Not sure if I have any super interesting details on this one, other than I was running a few things through my ARP2600 and occasionally through my modular during mixing, but I was doing that a lot during that stretch. A fair bit of Lex 480 reverb was lathered on, and I think I might have had this huge weird Decca compressor at the time which I was using on vocals.
- Rich Costey
Interesting question regarding potential insufferable guitar/hi hat situation. This is THE question regarding almost all recorded rock music as far as I'm concerned. And it's why, in my opinion, there is no more challenging genre to mix, and make palatable, than poorly played and poorly recorded indie rock. Luckily, Silent Alarm was none of those things. Matt Tong played brilliantly, and Paul Epworth, along with engineers Elliot James and my friend Mark Rankin used ribbon mics throughout during the recording. The rough mixes suffered none of the issues you mention, and so all I had to do was not **** up the recording. I mixed it on the SSL J at Avatar (now Power Station), which makes the job easier.
In regards to 2000 indie aesthetics and if I find myself working on stuff like that right now- not really. This year I worked on an LP for 'nu-gaze' band Julie, who are young but def not New York sleaze. I also just mixed Scowl's upcoming album who are incredible but also not indie-sleaze.
Shadow Hills Industries Equinox
I don't have any strategy for incorporating any kind of vintage sound, but I'm constantly on a quest for making my records sound better, and often times that means using gear which isn't the latest model. For example, after trying to go without for a few years, I've just installed an SSL G+ console in my room. This came about after a big UK client this summer asked me to take a mix which we had done in my room with the Shadow Hills Equinox and plug ins, etc, and pull it up on a full console. So I took the mix, went back to my old room at Power Station (studio G), used a test tone to roughly match the outboard I was using in my own room, and pulled up the mix on their SSL G+. The difference was not subtle, and myself, the producer, and the artist noticed immediately. I now have one in my room. I think I'm done with the 'tone quest' in that department, anyway: contemporary recordings still sound fresh, and drums sound correct to me. Lots of people make great sounding records without ever touching an analog console, and I applaud them for it. We each follow our ears and our instinct, and this is where I've ended up. Again.
As far as a sound that I might dread coming back into fashion... probably late 90's ska. But I don't think we're at risk there.
- Rich Costey
This is really dependent on the production and the source material. It's critical to open a session and have it play back exactly as the producer and artist left it, so I've amassed a huge collection of plugins so that I can open up pretty much any session with a great deal of accuracy.
But sure, I have some things that I tend to reach for. I will use Soothe2 if I can't fix the problem using EQ or a dynamic EQ like Q3. I rarely reach for it first, but on stuff like painful cymbals or vocals with upper mids that you can't control, it can be very helpful. I've seen people use it on the mix bus, which I can't endorse unless something has gone weird with the recording.
Other things I often use: the Undertone Unfairchild plug in is insane and makes almost everything better; the SSL E series plugin is a good place to start as I'm so familiar with its functions; AudioThing Type A on the vocal is helpful; I like Mixhead; pluginAlliance AMEK eqs and compressor (based on GML gear); Pulsar Audio stuff is great; UAD and Soundtoys are still standard; Eventide 2016 reverb is fantastic on drums; I still rely on a few older waves plugins too like Waves C6 and H Delay; I love the Joey Sturgis stuff, it's so over-the-top without getting messy; and as a final limiter to use for making refs for clients, I like the AOM Invisible Limiter. There's also something amazing that Michael Brauer is working on but I don't think I'm supposed to talk about it yet.
- Rich Costey
Gerard is a singular creative entity- when you hang out there are endless ideas coming out of him, often about music but really could be about anything. I mean endless. He's a fairly private guy so I think I won't go into it too much here, but I can say that the band are what I would call a 'band band'. Each person contributes in a unique and powerful way, which becomes really obvious if you happen to have caught some of their live shows last year. They prefer things to sound quite raw, and Gerard likes his vocals to be very compressed with minimal clean up- don't do breath rides, for example. I think a lot of where their creative dynamic went back and forth was trying to find the line between messy stuff they love like The Stooges, while also combining it with their musical wit and precision. And there's always a visual element under discussion and consideration when the musical work is going down. I think one thing that is often overlooked is how good Frank and Ray are, as well. There's not a lot of guitar edit-micromanaging happening on their albums, what you hear is what they played.
- Rich Costey
Oh good one, I love this song. Yeah there wouldn't be any subtractive moves on this mix. Santi had this mixed by someone else before I worked on it- the previous mix sounded good but the drums weren't quite right so I ended up spending quite a while dialing in the drums. Although there is clearly a lot of programming, I wanted to focus more on making them sound live, and the frenetic energy of the hihats are almost more implied than played with the main kit. I did a similar thing with the guitars- they're pretty compressed but I spread them out and made room for everything else so they could still be fairly loud. The drums don't have that much compression on them, nor the bass, so there's plenty of room for them to breathe. The guitars and vocals are really more directly compressed and placed into a particular spot in the image. I tend to prefer that kind of contrast, instead of just everything getting stomped on by gear.
In regards to FX, Santi is pretty strong-willed as to what she wants and what she likes, so I'm sure the delays and reverbs on the vocals came from her. The reverb on the clap sound and whatnot with the drums would have been mine. delay on the keys, reverb and distortion on the other keys- those were baked into the production.
- Rich Costey
Soundtoys Decapitator
Each of those albums had different techniques applied to the drums, and even different mixing consoles. Audioslave: I did the re-amp trick where you put an Auratone on a pair of drumsticks on top of a snare drum, with a couple of mics underneath in order to get a fresh, clean under-snare along with maybe a bit of room. There wasn't a load of trickery on that one. Arctics- probably just Decapitator though I recall those mixes being fairly clean on the 88R, and the tracks came in with a fair bit of saturation already. Black Holes was all over the shop: some songs were relatively clean on the drums and other songs had the entire kit going through the Kyma systems software for distortion.
One other thing on drums is that I don't often compress them all together and use only that for the drum sound. I may do a parallel group but will split out the kick and snare so that I have more control and they have more punch. Hope this helps!
- Rich Costey
In regards to this, for a time it was true. I was doing a lot of mixing on old Neve desks, and the EQ is so broad that I would mostly just boost what I wanted more of. Whenever I needed something more serious to reduce snare ring or kick woof, I would patch in a focusrite or something similar. Foo Fighters "The Pretender" would be an example of this kind of mix. It was mixed on a NEVE 8078, and I would use the high pass a lot, but didn't use much reductive EQ at all. I also wasn't into using plugins much at the time so I would ignore the obvious route of fixing it before it got to the console. A NEVE 8078 also sounds rather good, so one tends to spend less time considering what you would like to get rid of. Yes, there is a big downside to this: my neve mixes were always too hot. On that Foos record, Dave found the pinned meters to be disconcerting, so I put tape over all of them and drew in some nice VU lines right where they should be, if I were a sensible mixer. Clearly I'm not or I would have just trimmed the line amps back and avoided this issue.
- Rich Costey
Interesting choice of material. I wish I had a constructive answer to something like this, but I don't think I do. Deloused was mixed on a J from ProTools and Port Of Morrow was mixed on an E from Logic, so there wasn't really a deliberate pattern of outboard or processing between the two. It just takes a long time. If it's a really serious piece of music like these were, then I tend to spend a while just sculpting tones and relationships, and while you're doing that the balances can go a bit sideways. At that point I just pull all the faders down and rebuild the levels with these new sounds and treatments. Most of the time it comes together pretty quickly on that round. But sometimes it doesn't, and you work for a while and do it again. It's much harder to just pull everything down in a computer as automation can be baked in from the production side. As far as losing sight of the big picture, that can happen. It happened a lot on the second Mars Volta LP, "Frances The Mute". I actually mixed that album three times, the first time was just getting all of the parts together between the two protools rigs (the songs were too big to fit onto one). There's A 33minute song on there, we all got lost on that one.
- Rich Costey
[top]How do you deal with mix fatigue? - Dirk Churlish
I experience it all the time. if you're at a dead end, park it and move on to something else. come back later in the day or the next day and you'll have a totally new perspective
- Rich Costey
[top]Audioslave’s first record. I was curious what’s going on in the chorus of Show Me How to Live? I can sense maybe some DBX 120 sub happening. Sounds like they have some really good bottom end to them. Is that just the Ears doing their thing when they get hit hard? - Lonnie5
There's no sub on the guitars, but I recall boosting 400hz on Tom's guitars on that album which is a bit unusual, using the API 550. It was also mixed from tape and I think printed back to tape, so that's another contributor to consider. The EAR 660s were getting bashed on that one, but that tune is so good any compressor would have sounded great.
- Rich Costey
[top]Your records in the early 2000s are constant references for me (Futures, Antenna, Frengers, and Frances ). I welcome any information you can share about your approach during that time. There are a lot of drastic moves between verses and choruses in those records. Can you touch on your use of mix bus processing? Mostly interested in how you work the EAR 660s - Richard Salino
Most of the records you mentioned were mixed on an SSL J series which has a ton of clarity in the mids and highs. Large shifts between verse and chorus are either done on the console back then, or just done in the arrangement itself. I don't compress drums as a group except on rare occasions, as compression will lengthen the note of the drum and I often don't want that.
EAR 660 Limiting Amplifier- Rich Costey
[top]Dave Navarro - Trust No One. Would be interested to hear anything you remember about the making of this album, I’ve always loved it. - Neier
I have a pretty good memory of making that record. Dave had been working on it with Danny Saber for a year or so, off and on, before Dave's manager (Andy Slater, who also handled Fiona Apple) brought me in to try and sort it all out. Dave had just gone through extensive rehab and was ready to finish. I found him to be witty, hilarious, brilliant, and very underrated as a creative force.
A fair bit of my job was, first, to go through the Saber stuff and see what we wanted to keep. And then we spent some time making it sound a lot more live, as Danny's work is primarily programmed: so Perkins came in to play on some stuff, Matt Chamberlin played on some stuff, Dave played a lot of guitar, and a couple of different bass players were brought in, including future big shot producer Mike Elizondo (who was great).
Z.Vex Fuzz FactoryI've always been super inspired by Eno and his approach to working with bands and how he generally seems to disrupt however they're used to working. When I was younger I must have watched "the making of the unforgettable fire" 100 times
- Rich Costey
[top]Do you find you have to notch eq more whistle frequencies with amp sims vs the real thing? Also, do you ever struggle with guitars and cymbals fighting--This seems to always be an issue for me. Any tips to help them work together without neutering anything? - ericemery
Guitars VS Cymbals: this is an eternal battle and there is no easy solution. Both are white noise generators. However, the better the recording of each, the less of an issue. If both are poorly recorded, I would suggest - no joke - trigger the cymbals with something decent sounding, leave the guitars alone except for a touch of compression, and don't stay up late worrying about it.
- Rich Costey
[top]Muse! I was wondering what your most memorable moments with them over the years have been? - Mrpres17
I don't know how I could cram the experience of so many sessions into one space here. Absolution was probably the most fun I've ever had making an album as we just did whatever the **** we wanted with no pressure and no adults involved. We had no idea that any of the songs would be particularly popular and didn't care. At some point it started to become clear that TIRO might have legs so there was a bit more time spent on it.
The guitar and bass setup has changed a lot over the years. When I first worked with them I had Matt use my Diezel instead of the marshalls he'd been using, as I felt they had a lot more clarity. For BH&R I wanted more clarity still, so we had Hugh Manson come to the studio in France and we swapped out pickups until we found some that seemed right. Also, on BH&R, I didn't want to repeat Abso so I pushed for Vox AC30s and other random bits in place of the Diezel.
Kemper Profiler- Rich Costey
[top]Absolution is one of my favorite albums. I’d like to ask about the bass on Hysteria - was there a split to blend a high and low portion based on mics, amps or a mic and DI? - KB Escape Hatch
I have very detailed notes on this which I could prob post somewhere, someday...
Chris at that time had three entire marshall amp rigs: one for clean, one for Big Muff, and one for his Animato pedal. The clean and muff were on all the time, the Animato was only turned on for extra distortion and teeth. I don't think his marshall cabs (maybe they were 4x10?) had horns, so I would have used a combination of Sennheiser 421, NS10 speaker/mic, and prob an RE20 on each of them. Much of the bass sound on Hysteria is actually a synth patch i programmed using the Kyma system, which sounds nothing like any other synth out there, doubling Chris' part.
- Rich Costey
[top]Thank you for mixing/producing my favorite album of all time 'Absolution'. How did you create the whispery background voice (reversed vocal/guitar feedback?) at the 3min mark in 'Endlessly'? It is my favorite sound of all time. - Andria
Yeah good question. Sounds to me like an opera sample that we manipulated but I could be mistaken. There are several opera samples on that album.
- Rich Costey
[top]How do you think about EQ, specifically when fitting tracks together? I find when I sweep narrowband EQ there are many unpleasant frequencies sticking out that I could theoretically cut. Is it the goal to have every sound free of nasty resonances (a full band, smooth representation of it), and then adding EQ to make the sounds sit with each other? "Is it the goal to have every sound free of nasty resonances (a full band, smooth representation of it), and then adding EQ to make the sounds sit with each other" - Gertius
Waves C6Interestingly, when recording onto tape or using consoles or some other form of primitive technology, for some reason resonances aren't so much of an issue. I've no idea why, but perhaps when dealing with subpar tracks that are brimming with resonances try that approach first: slap a UAD Studer 800 on every track, or group similar things into an aux and put it there. If you have any hardware available, use it.
Legendary producer Mutt Lange also has a strong hate for resonances, and I once mixed an album he produced: He would use an EQ7 in protools (very basic model) and dip annoying frequencies by hand, automating the dip only when it was offensive. It was painstakingly slow, he spent 8 days just working on the bass guitar for one song. Sounded pretty great tho.
- Rich Costey
[top]Your work has brought you into contact with a lot of other creative people. What would you tell someone starting out about creativity? - MightyFine
I wish I had learned Transcendental Meditation years ago. It helps to keep you from comparing yourself with others and assists with accessing your own intuition. I've been doing it for a few years now and the difference it makes is real.
The artists I've worked with who are the most secure in who they are and what they want, also happen to be the most successful. And these are people I've met from before they were known or in some cases had even made an album. So anything that you can do to help you focus and distill your aims, and anything you can do to shut out the bullshit which surrounds all of us every day but actually has no substantive impact on your life, should be something you maintain and work on, every single day.
- Rich Costey
[top]Any insights into the mixing process of Futureproof’s “Nothing but thieves”? - Ericemery
This was an entirely remote session- I was on a screen in the control room and could converse, while being fed a feed out of the console so I could hear what was going down. So it was a little weird, and I definitely wasn't as involved as I would have liked.
FabFilter Saturn- Rich Costey
[top]You worked on a couple of records with one of my favorite bands: Mew. I’d love to hear a paragraph or two about your experience working with them and your observations about their creative process and what the sessions were like. Thank you, Rich. Keep doing what you’re doing. - nolanryan
I first heard of Mew from my friend Damon Tutunjian from The Swirlies, whom I had worked with on a couple of albums and EPs (actually were the first thing I ever did). Mew were big fans of Swirlies and asked Damon to produce them. Damon called me about engineering but there wasn't money for it- even though this was in the 90s and I was quite affordable. The result was their album "Half The World Is Watching Me". The band caught a buzz from that and got signed in the UK. They called me to get involved, and I went to Denmark and started working with them. I didn't know that much about the band, and after a week or two, they had a show scheduled in a fairly sizable venue in Copenhagen, which I attended. I was shocked at the sound, the visuals, the entire thing- just completely blew me away. I could fill probably a few chapters talking about the band but suffice it to say the sessions were an example of "do whatever you want", which is the best kind of record. We had no idea if anyone was going to listen to it and didn't care.
Neumann KM86- Rich Costey
[top]Can you talk about how you use the automation on the SSL 4K console? - Clip6
Sometimes there is a good deal of auto already happening in the session, so on the 4K it's more based on overall gestures in the music. That said, I generally work in absolute mode, though usually with faders off so I can punch in levels I like at a chorus, verse, etc. Turn motors on to get my bearings, and sometimes work in trim with motors on. Yes, def master fader rides. I also use groups a lot, with 7 of the group faders grouped to number 8. I do the same thing in protools. Almost always print with motors on as it sounds better to my ear. I do like the sound of the SSL VCA faders, but the VCAs which are found on an ultimation fader are not the same thing.
- Rich Costey
[top]What in-the-box instruments have you found inspiring in recent years? - great laker
Spectrasonics Omnisphere- Rich Costey
[top]I have been quite intrigued by your boost-only philosophy. I have read you mentioning that 3.2k neve boost on bass works frequently for you. Do you have preferred "settings" for specific instruments? - Gio P
I don't use that philosophy much anymore, but I did for a while. I don't have preferred EQ settings per se, but some things seem to work often: 8 or 10k boost on crunchy guitars, though only a little; 1k boost on kick if you're going for a vintage feel, 5k boost on a vocal for intelligibility, cut 2.4 to ease the pain, and 10k for sizzle and steam. Synths I rarely do much other than clean out low mids if required against something else.
- Rich Costey
[top]I have been obsessed with the audioslave album you mixed since the first time I heard it. Do you mind sharing your approach and techniques for these mixes? How did you manage to get the instruments and the vocals so big and powerful while maintaining them also raw and "natural"?. - Gio P
One thing to keep in mind is that the album was tracked to tape, then some things were edited in tools and laid back to tape. I mixed from tape, using an Ampex 124 machine (which is one of the best sounding multitrack machines ever made) to the SSL J9000. I did use a sample on the kick drum, which was a 909 sample firing out of my EIVX sampler. Otherwise it was the usual parallel 1176 on the kick and snare and parallel 33609 on the kit. Bass? can't remember but probably pultecs and LA2A ,prob a neve eq in there somewhere. for Tom's guitars I inserted API 550As and only boosted 400hz. No idea why I remember that. I spent almost two days working on the best chain of processing for Chris' vocal, because it's Chris Cornell. I think I ended up with 1073>EAR EQ> GML EQ> 1176> EAR 660. or something like that.
Also the SSL channels on the J have a great sounding compressor and I always hit that a little. Spatial processing was minimal but most of the album has a little bit of slap going on, even if you can barely hear it. There was always a quarter inch machine running slowly in my room, for slap. Mix bus was GML EQ >EAR 660s, linked, on the insert of the mix bus. the J center compressor was usually engaged in responding only a little. I would hit the EARs fairly hard, 4-5 DB.
Yes lots of automation, for rock music it's all about tiny rides to keep it exciting. As far as the over level of the music, it was expertly mastered by Vlado Meller who is the king of making it slam while still being able to breathe. But yes, the mix bus was probably on the edge of overloading. I printed to half inch but also to dig using the Lavry Gold. I can't recall which we ended up using but generally in those days the tape was used.
I don't use that much processing on individual tracks, so if anything sounds 'raw', that's why.
- Rich Costey
[top]Is there anything you can share about the Box Car Racer album? What was it like to work with Jerry Finn? - Andrea_caccese
I really liked Jerry, we got on very well. We had a lot of good conversations in the hallway of various studios, just bitching about the state of the business. Incidentally I borrowed his Les Pauls for use on Cave-In's "Antenna" album. I recall it was his "steve jones" guitar, in that it was the same color as his and I think from 1977.
Maestro Echoplex- Rich Costey
[top]The Wombats “This Modern Glitch”. I'm fascinated by this album's process, as there were multiple contributions from some of the industry's best and brightest producers, engineers and songwriters. - What are your thoughts on this type of collaborative effort? Pros, Cons, Surprises, Disappointments?
- What is your preferred way to make a record (Engineer&Mix vs. Produce, Engineer & Mix vs. Mix only or Produce only, etc...) and how has it changed over the years?
- Will there be more opportunities to see interviews and/or educational videos with you in the future? You have much to offer in the way of experience and education. - DaveStudio
- it's not unusual to see acts work with multiple producers and/or mixers these days, in fact it's more usual than not. As to whether it's a good thing, depends on the goal of the act and the end results. Traditional band 'albums' tended to have one team across the whole thing but that was ages ago. Generally, I prefer doing a whole album because there are times when you won't all get along or agree, and those times are critically important for development. If you're concerned that they'll take the track to someone else, you won't push as hard, and neither will they. That's bad. Applies to mixing as well.
- At the moment I'm enjoying just mixing, but if the right project comes along, I can get excited about producing. I pretty much always mix when I produce- not because I think I'm a better mixer than everyone, but more because I already know what I want to hear. Sometimes it can be great to hear what other mixers do with the production, sometimes not so much.
- I don't know, I've been asked about doing a few different things and haven't committed. I don't have a systematic approach like some mixers and producers do, so it's harder for what I do to translate to someone else's work. But who knows. Maybe I do have a systematic approach, and I don't realize it.
- Rich Costey
[top]Can you go into a little more detail about how you used and use drum samples? Also the 1176 Kick and Snare scenario. How does the Pultec work in that chain? Are you looking for more transient detail or low end impact or both? Have you had any luck splitting the kick and snare into their own chains or does them sharing a mono 1176 have a unique interplay that you prefer? - SamPura
I always have midi mapped out on the drums by my engineer Jeff Citron, down to the sample, prior to starting a mix. I have a couple of old standbys in Battery that will load but generally these days I rely on some standard presets I made for myself in Superior Drummer. I'll use the Slate drum thing if I'm missing that sort of "crack" of attack, and have started adding in Liquid Death Snare for a bit of top end.
Universal Audio 1176LN
- Rich Costey
[top]I’m curious about where you aim for between how a mix sounds versus how it feels. We all want both to be great, but are you more focused on one over the other at different points during mixing? - Ratti
I think during mixing it swings back and forth. First phase is to get it sounding good. Next phase is to forget how it sounds, work unconsciously, and get it to feel right. Last phase is to check against reference and make sure it sounds great.
- Rich Costey
[top]Would you mind explaining how you handle modern day recall requests while mixing on your SSL. Any tips on how to make console mixing workflow more efficient in modern times when recalls are routinely expected with fast turnaround times? - rosecrud
I try to just set up a general workflow on the console which might be useable for a majority of projects- a few parallel compressors, reverbs, some vocal treatments, etc. And from there I do a mix of mixing in the computer and then on the console. The hard work is done in the computer and on the desk it's slightly more general. But the analog desk is useable in a lot of ways people might not consider: inserts are analog with no additional conversions involved, bussing and aux sends are analog with no delay comp to worry about. I didn't really go fully in the box ever, so stems were always a slightly labor-intensive process and this isn't any different. Yes, I have to do recalls but I'm rarely touching the outboard so you're just recalling the desk, takes about 5 min. Not so bad. I have found that my actual mixing time can be a bit more efficient because I'm doing less work reducing resonances and finding ways to make the track hang together...because it just does. Biggest issue is keeping an eye on tech issues because it's constant
- Rich Costey
[top]Do you see the ubiquity of home studios in the box as a benefit or detriment overall to the quality of music being generated? - Seethelight
It's made it far easier for artists to develop on their own terms, and that's huge. Artists who developed in home studios: Tame Impala, Billie Eilish, Mac DeMarco for example.
The biggest downside to me is that it makes it easier for musicians to silo themselves instead of collaborating with other musicians. I still believe in the power generated by groups of people, and when it's easier for someone to just not deal with the bass player who annoys them, they don't have to anymore. But they should.
The other (obvious) thing is that many producer/musicians work out of home studios to develop artists, and that would be mostly impossible in a commercial unless that artist or producer was already huge.
I've worked on recordings made at home that sound terrible as well as recordings made in top studios that sound terrible: there's no guarantee that mics are in phase no matter where it's recorded.
- Rich Costey
[top]Do you tend to have dedicated reverbs and delays that you choose to send everything to, or do have separate ones for each instrument? - Fairchildren
I do a mix of things. modern records tend to come in with the processing often already chosen by the artist and producer and I'll usually try to preserve that. For my own workflow I have a pile of aux returns in protools with a variety of things parked on them and dedicated bussing set up before I begin. I have one set for vocals only and one set for 'music'. Preparation beforehand is important, if possible, so you can stay more in the flow instead of fishing through plug-in menus.
Lexicon 480L- Rich Costey
[top]Something I admire about your work is the imaging you are able to create. I find it a very elusive thing to create in my own work. Do you have any tips or insight to developing that skill? - Albertross
I just tend to prefer to listen to music which feels like a movie. So when I'm working, I think in terms of space and dynamics, and try to keep things wide. I also love old rockabilly records which are recorded in mono so who knows..
- Rich Costey
[top]Could you please tell us about the mixing process of Rage Against the Machine’s “Renegades” album? Also, could you tell us more about working with Rick Rubin? How did you first meet? - Magnus
AMPEX ATR-102Rick called me up after I worked on Fiona Apple "When The Pawn..". I learned a lot from him, primarily how to work from instinct instead of intellect. He would often make mix suggestions which I thought were bad ideas but I would of course do them because it's what he wanted, and they worked. He really did listen like a teenager, it was always simply whether or not he was getting off on something. If he wasn't, he'd make very clear suggestions on how to make something better. Sometimes he'd just say the mix sucked and to start over (only once). Sometimes the recording itself had issues and he would just deal with what's there. I think that turned into a serious strength of his- working with what's in front of him. We still keep in touch from time to time.
- Rich Costey
[top]I'd love to hear any insight into the mixing process working on Jimmy East World “Futures” Vocals, guitars and drums especially.I love the way the whole thing rocks so hard, but the lead vocal is never lost, nor too much at any time. - Flowerpiercer
At the time when I mixed this, I was holed up in the back mix room at Cello (now East West) for quite a long time, and this was done in the middle of a lot of other projects so it's difficult to recall much in the way of specifics. It was mixed on a J9000 with my EAR 660s on the bus going into Lavry Gold convertors, which was my standard chain at the time. I would have been using an EAR pultec-style EQ on Jim's vocal, along with an 1176 going into an LA2A. I also ran another 1176 set to 'stun' as a parallel, which gets mixed in depending on what's needed to help the vocal cut. I would also hit the channel compressor for vocals with about 2-4 db of compression, which adds some grip and amazing sparkle. I rarely do very much to guitars other than add some 10k. Sometimes I run a parallel 33609 for glue but most of the time I don't.
SSL J9000One story on the mixing of Futures: Gil Norton was the producer and it was the first time I had worked with him. My mixes often sound like shit until they come together in the last 45 minutes or so, and at one point Gil came in half way through the first song to say hello and see how it was going. The mix sounded like shit so I kicked him out of the control room. He later told me that he was pretty concerned, but had been warned by the A&R person (Luke Wood) about the way I work. He came back three hours later and it sounded great, the album turned out great, and he hired me a couple of years later for The Foo Fighters. So don't let anyone listen to your work until you think it's great!
- Rich Costey
[top]What are some pointers to begin attracting clients and getting chances to mix for other people? I have a website with my portfolio, I have references and such, it seems that the start-up rock market these days is super DIY. Which is fine, but I really want to help people take their music to the next level. - Lucasgu32
I don't think there is an easy answer to this question. I worked in a lot of places as an assistant early on, but while I was there, I was hustling indie records the entire time. Sometimes connections would come through friends, sometimes it was maybe an indie label I had approached (with almost no credits), and in one case it was because I worked at an ice cream shop with a band member (The Swirlies) while also assisting/interning at a studio. On their first LP "What To Do About Them" there is a song called "Tall Ships": that was my first mix ever for a client, any client. I'd been in studios for a year or two but hadn't mixed anything outside of demos in high school and projects at Berklee School of Music.
I would suggest finding an angle you feel passionate about and pushing the limits of whatever corner that is. Don't be like kids at a soccer game where everyone chases the ball around the field at the same time. Be the opposite of that.
- Rich Costey
[top]I would be very happy to know more about the work you did with Stephen’s Flying Lotus “You’re Dead!” - this is one of the records that I keep on coming back to, being a fan of his music… - MrVenceslas
This came about because I was producing Kimbra, and she was friends with Stephen at one point he was considered to be a collaborator on some material with her. He came through the studio a couple of times to hang with her and we met... he was intrigued by the notion of a large analog console and wasn't sure what benefits or harms it could bring to his music. So at one point he brought over a track or two and had me do some mixing. It quickly became clear that he wanted to hear pretty much only what he himself does, so I ended up basically running the material through the board and my mix chain without doing much else. it makes sense as he's not a collaborator in any way, and is used to being in complete control. Lots of conversations about MDMA…
- Rich Costey
[top]I'm going to see Swirlies this week, so I thought it would be a perfect time to bring up something from the beginning of your career. I remember being absolutely blown away by their "...Glittering Worlds of the Salons" when I was a kid. What can you tell us about your early days as a creative engineer, specifically the Swirlies record? What inspired you in the beginning? What inspires you today? - Cacophony
I never saw myself as a pioneer of anything, and I think all of us in the Swirles camp felt fairly ignored at the time. My own listening habits during that time period were mostly of the UK sort: yes MBV but also The Orb, Underworld, Portishead and Massive Attack, so when I was putting 808s on records for The Lilys and Swirlies, it didn't seem cutting edge in my mind but I knew it was a different texture for them. I don't listen to that much rock music, so when I'm working with a band I generally try to bring in elements from other spaces of music which you wouldn't normally find with a 'rock' band. Sometimes it works really well, like with Death Cab For Cutie "Kintsugi" and sometimes finding success on the production fringe of a song can be more challenging. "Glittering" was a long process, I remember spending way too much time putting mics in front of extremely loud AC30s in the B room at Water Music in Hoboken, which I think didn't have air conditioning. I did a fair bit of drum programming on the record which I think moved the band into some new spaces, but Damon is always pushing forward anyway. We mixed it at Philip Glass' studio on Broadway and raided the synth closet a few times.
- Rich Costey
[top]You mentioned in an interview with Andrew Scheps a while back that “When The Pawn…” was mixed almost entirely on NS-10’s. I’m curious how your monitoring set up has evolved over the years. - SaschaP
Yamaha NS-10M- Rich Costey
[top]I recently watched If This Ever Gets Weird, the film about Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala, which rekindled my love for The Mars Volta and especially Frances the Mute. The film depicts the recording process as a cathartic chaos following the tragic loss of a close friend and collaborator. I’d love to hear about your experience mixing the record – I'm sure there are some wild stories to tell! - Stevenlopez
Absolutely, mixing Frances was nuts.
Omar had the album spread across two protools machines because the track count was so high, and the studio had to be modified to accommodate that number of inputs to the SSL J. Mixing was, in some ways, the first time he was able to hear everything at the same time, so it was slow going and very complex. On the finished recordings you can hear a lot of cross-fades into other songs and then back, or other scenes... those were done during the mix, as you hear it now, all analog on the SSL. I had a lot of small fader automation going, pan automation on the desk, everything was pretty maxed out. We mixed it once and then mixed it again- the second time we could be more focused on the actual mix and less focused on the construction of everything. that process took I think 5 or 6 weeks. Omar and Cedric then left for a tour or something.
ATC Loudspeakers SM20ASL- Rich Costey
[top]Fiona Apple’s “When the Pawn” is an endlessly fascinating record. There's so much going on, but it never feels overbearing, yet there always seems to be new things to notice each time I go back to it. I'd love to hear about anything and everything you can share about the making and mixing of this record. I always imagine you, Jon Brion, Fiona Apple, and Matt Chamberlain being both relaxed and intense. - Drumsound
A lot to say about this one.
Months and months spent on it, many different LA studios. Tracked to tape except Fiona's piano which I tracked directly to protools. One exception is "On The Bound", where matt's drums were also cut to protools. Everything else went to tape. Lots of time spent experimenting with mic pres, EQ, mics, etc along with of course instruments, pedals, anythign that made sound. Jon is stupidly gifted with incredible taste and vision. The entire album was recorded and mixed only on NS10s. On occasions we would put it on the mains at NRG B because those dynaudios sounded nuts, but all creative choices were made only on NS10s. It's very hard to boil down these sessions into a few paragraphs, as they took place over an 11 month period. And if you take that long to make an album, it better be good.
- Rich Costey
[top]Fiona Apple's "Pawn" album. Drums? - Silver Sonya
Telefunken ELA M 251Fast As You Can was one of the first things we really dove into. It was mostly piano and some other bits at first, and Jon decided to play drums on the halftime/ time sig change/tempo change bridge. I had just been reading an article in Mix Magazine where they were asking big time engineers how they like to mic drums, and Jack Puig said he preferred 251 mic on toms. I found this to be utterly hilarious, as most people will never see a 251 mic and certainly wouldn't have 3 or 4 to spray on a drum set. We were at Oceanway studio 3, so to continue the joke we raided the mic locker for every 251 mic in the building, and Jon set up the worst piece of shit mismatched kit imaginable. I put 5 or 6 251s on it- toms, overheads, prob snare, anything. I then compressed the kit into smithereens and that's what's there. The drums during the fast sections are all Matt playing a toy drum set.
- Rich Costey
[top]This album is a desert isle level of excellence for me. Care to share any stories or recording/mixing revaluations? Were you using the EAR 660s back then? - mcsnare
I did not have the EAR 660s at that point, the entire album was mixed through a Manley VariMu.
Yes Neve, but a bunch of songs were mixed on the Dal-Con console (now gone, I think Nigel Godrich has it) from Oceanway/Universal Studio B.
Here's a story: the song "I Know" was cut live, with Fiona, Keltner, and Greg Cohen. Vocals were also live. All went TO TAPE and I had to cut four or five takes together to make the master comp. Everyone left and I stayed up most of the night doing it. Tape editing isn't that hard, but I Know is quite soft which gives you almost nothing in the way of transients to find your edit spot. I had bits of recording tape all over the walls, and I would write on them with a grease pencil so I could remember what goes where. It was pretty terrifying because if I ****ed it, there was no way to get that group of players back in to recreate what just happened.
To make matters worse later on, I insisted on mixing it using a vintage UA 610 console. the 610 sounds amazing of course, but I'd get 2 minutes in and one of the channels would crackle, so I'd stop, wind back and try it again. This went on for hours one saturday until I got sick of it, went to Fiona and Paul's (Thomas Anderson) for a party and got drunk. Finished monday morning.
- Rich Costey
[top]Why was the piano recorded directly to Pro Tools? - Drumsound
usually the production was based around the piano, since that's how she writes, so that went down first, to a click. piano was going to be edited anyway so may as well go to tools.
- Rich Costey
[top]What can you tell us about the vocal session for “Paper Bag”? - dick swifter
NEVE 1073Fiona -> 251 mic -> 1073 -> EQP 1A -> Fairchild 670 -> Ampex MM1200 / Ampex 124/ Studer 827 depending on which studio we were tracking at.
- Rich Costey
[top]Do you have an approach as to how you balance your time between production and mixing projects? And if so, how has that changed over the years? - Rosecrud
I don't really have an approach on this, and I will admit that it is extremely difficult. In general I tend to produce artists if I feel like I know exactly what I would like to do with them, and I tend to be selective because of that. When it comes to mixing, I prefer a much broader field of options. At the moment I really am focusing just on mixing, as I'm very happy with how the room is sounding and I've been fortunate enough to work on a number of things this year that I'm excited about. I'm sure I'll produce something again at some point, but for now I'm only thinking about mixing.
- Rich Costey
[top]Since you're of the rare species to have worked extensively on basically every SSL console since the 4k, I think it would be great to hear from you about the big and tiny differences between all of them.Let's preserve some of that wisdom! - Kosmokrator
The signal flow on almost all SSLs is very similar. If you know how to work on a 4k, then a SSL duality is no problem. The automation systems are completely different. the 4k auto was designed over 40 years ago and is very task-oriented without much in the way of frills. It's also fairly bullet-proof once it's up and running. The J and K have similar automation, and the SSL Duality is very different, with the data being stored differently, can control protools faders, etc.
Sonically they are each very different. the 4K G and E even sound different. VCA faders VS Ultimation faders sound different. In short, the 4k tends to be a bit harder sounding in the mids, and is less forgiving on songs with an obscene number of tracks. The J can present a great deal more detail, and I actually prefer the channel compressors of the J, but overall the mids aren't as tough. Vocals on a J sound amazing, in particular. The K is close to the J but seems to have solved a couple of sonic issues with the midrange. The K, to me, can be a bit too clean and transparent at times, but the bottom end presentation is excellent.
The SSL duality, to me, is similar to the K in that it's very clean, but just didn't have the same sonic scope. I also wasn't getting the same joy from the EQs or compressors. I love the design, but in the end just wasn't getting off on the sound as much.
88R is a totally different beast and is the one board that I used to own which I wish I had never sold.
- Rich Costey
[top]Do you have any insights into choosing an assistant or studio? When booking a studio, do you rely on the house staff, or do you bring your own assistant or team? What qualities do you look for in a great assistant or studio? Also, are there any favorite studios or people you've enjoyed working with? - Ekedmo2
EXCELLENT question.
Here is what I look for, in order:
- Someone I can trust.
- Someone who knows more about software than myself
- Someone who will surprise me with their dedication
I love meeting new people at studios but will always bring someone from my own situation. The best assistants I've met I ended up hiring, with one exception being Adam Noble. Adam is now a very highly accomplished UK producer, but he was also an assistant at AIR when I first went there to work with Muse. He was just the best- always knew what to set up before we asked, knew where the session was going, and would bring a tray of tea before any of us asked. That kind of stuff seems like trivial bullshit but it's real: if someone can read the room and sense the energy is getting tired, and suddenly shows up with caffeine for the room, that demonstrates their ability to pay attention.
As far as studios, the most important thing is a room where everything works. there are quite a number of excellent studios still in operation, with my favorites being Sunset Sound, RAK, Abby Road, Guilford Sound, and Electric Lady
- Rich Costey
[top]I've always loved the sound of the snare drum in Paramore's Decode. Could you write about your processing of the snare drum, or possibly the whole drums from that mixing period? - Jonson_Nurth
NEVE 88R- Rich Costey
[top]The Foo fighters pretender is my favourite Rock mix of all time. Would you mind talking about the mix treatment for each instrument in and the vocals in depth and what the master buss compressor was used? - Rushjake
There wasn't a 'mix treatment" for each instrument, per se. The album was well recorded in a fairly traditional manner, and my job as a mixer was to present it honestly. I do recall that I had a pair of Quad 8 channels across the mix buss, and the rest was some normal situation of opto and VCA compressor. I didn't compress the mix very much, so when the songs kicked in, they really kicked in. I can't give you any tips on how to achieve this in the box other than to only add processing when it's absolutely required. One thing I've noticed over time is that -for whatever reason- I tend to apply more processing to tracks when I'm mixing in the box. So I guess for a similar in the box approach I would suggest using very little in regards to plug ins and doing as much as possible simply with volume rides. Spend some time on this approach, real time, and see if it feels valuable a couple of weeks later. If the commitment is deep enough, you will find progress.
- Rich Costey
[top]I noticed you had several pairs of speakers over the years, from Proac’s, ATC’s small PMC’s, NS10’s… was it a struggle over the years? - Stéphane
It's true I have changed monitors from time to time, just as I have mixed on 8078s, 8068s, 88RS, API 3208, SSL G, SSL E, SSL K and SSL J. I love ProAcs and wish I got better mixes out of them, but I found I loved the sound of the speakers so much I just got lazy with my mix. PMCs are very good- I had a huge PMC set up at my room in Burbank for a few years- but in the end, the speaker which I've had the best results with over the years has been ATC. I still love NS10s, but I can't tell if it's because they're any good or it's because I've used them off and on for a very long time. I used Barefoots for a while because none of the mix rooms I was using in NYC had usable mains, and Barefoot kind of stormed the market with a console-top speaker that had amazingly deep bottom end. In the end it was too much DSP for me on those so I moved on. I heard a speaker in London a couple of years ago which absolutely blew me away, called TPI. They were the most incredible nearfield monitor I have ever heard, virtually no crossover distortion. I would like to give them a try at some point in a serious mix situation but right now I'm very happy with ATC150s plus subs, and some NS10s. Might also be relevant that I tend to mix at a very low volume.
- Rich Costey
[top]What methods are you using to process bass guitar other than EQ and compression? I've noticed that your bass mixes are often quite bright and the attack of the bass is usually heard very easily but there is still great low end. On the vocals of Against Me's “New Wave” there is a really interesting grit and presence on the top end of the vocal, did you use a Type A style processor on this? - Halfstackstudios
EAR EQ 822Q- Rich Costey
[top]“First Wave Intact” by Secret Machines. I realize this is going back, but any recollections? Room sound of drumkit with that crushing bass drum? subsynths? Were the fx baked in or Kyma? such a great sounding record in whole? - bjonesAAB
No Kyma at all, but yes I was using the DBX 500 all the time back then and sent a bit of bass/synth and kick drum into it. In fact I think I'll pull this out of the closet tomorrow and see how it stands up to modern plugs doing the same thing...
The drum sound used during the mix had no close mic on the snare. They kept asking for me to turn down the close mic until it was off, and they liked it that way. Josh is one hard hitting drummer.
Another note is that this was recorded to tape and mixed from tape. Each song was one 24 track tape, no protools and no second tape machine. As a result I had to do a lot of rides and split the returns across a few different channels on the board so I could apply different treatments in different sections. This was also mixed on an SSL J9000. At one point in my room I had borrowed an EMI TG "portable" 24 channel mixer and had it set up in there as a sidecar. Pretty sure it was in there and in use for the Jimmy Eat World "Futures" album, and I think I used it on this album as well. Taylor Hawkins loved this album, by the way, and when I worked with the Foos a few years later he seemed to have a lot to say about it.
- Rich Costey
[top]RE: Deftones “ Koi No Yokan” I still come back to this for the satisfying songs and sonics. Can you share any insight into the mixing? - B Elgin
Shadow Hills Industries Mastering Compressor- Rich Costey
[top]If you're knee-deep in a mix, and it's just not feeling right coming out of the speakers, where you typically look to get the mix to glue? Specifically, how do you get your kick/snare/drums/bass to glue together to really solidify the groove of the mix? - Lucasgu32
When I'm part way through a mix and it's not working, I start over. I might keep a lot of the eq and processing choices, but i like to pull the levels down and rebuild from scratch. Usually in ten minutes it sounds better than what I just spent hours on.
A lot of artists these days prefer mixes which are close to the reference rough mix that they are used to hearing, so most of the time I start out keeping it fairly close to the ref. Once they feel comfortable we push the song forward together. Finding "glue" on a mix in the box can be a challenge and there's no easy fix for it. I would suggest putting the Unfairchild plugin across the mix buss, pulling your faders down, and starting from there. Genre doesn't matter, the Unfairchild is one of the best glue machine plugins I've heard.
- Rich Costey
[top]Death Cab For Cutie - Northern Lights Anything you can share about the tracking and mixing of this song would be awesome. - Skeleto972
We tracked that one at my room in Santa Monica with the band playing mostly live. The control room was also a large recording space and I put Jason McGerr (on drums) into a booth. A lot of the great moments in that song came from Dave Depper and Zach Rae, who are generally full of hooks and interesting ideas. One notable thing on that song is that after mixing it, we all felt that Jason's kit just wasn't as commanding as the song required. So we ended up booking at day at the studio known as Sound City (it's a private studio now) and recutting the drums there on the NEVE 8048. We really wanted to have another singer on the track, and Lauren Mayberry's name came up a few times, both because the band were friends with Chvrches and I mixed the first Chvrches album. She happened to be in LA for a few days so she came through and brought something really special to that song. I mixed the entire album on my SSL Duality (since sold).
- Rich Costey
[top]I was wondering if you could share your mix bus settings for the EAR 660’s and how much compression you were usually aiming for. They are tricky beasts to tame. - syra
The EAR 660s have been on more of my mixes than any other piece of gear. I usually put an EQ in front of them, and sometimes again after, and then follow up with a slow VCA compressor of some type, typically an SSL of some sort. Once it comes back into protools I'll apply a few plugins as well, like Oxford Inflator, another EQ, and occasionally a (controversial) plugin called FiDef, and then I have another track where I go through the AOM Invisible Limiter to make refs for clients.
I almost always just use the Auto Release setting number 5, and my ratio is typically set at 10 O'clock, with about 2-3 db of compression.. On my older records I would go with 100ms recovery and sometimes a bit slower, and push 4-6 db of compression. Contemporary recordings tend to come in already processed to a degree, so less compression, of any, is required on the mix bus. I always connect the quarter inch cable in the back so they are running in 'link' mode. Years ago when I mixed Audioslave, I got another one and put it on Chris Cornell's vocal, along with a number of other pieces of gear. They really are fantastic pieces.
- Rich Costey
[top]So what's the deal with getting the new 4k? - Clip6
Rich Costy I came up working on the 4k and always appreciated both the sophistication and the rawness that it offers. I recently had a Neve 5088 which I think is fantastic sounding, but with the lack of recall I found myself just using less and less of it. After that, I gave a good solid go at mixing in the box, and it's just not for me. I understand that for most people it is their preferred approach and I can appreciate that. Loads of great recordings are mixed in the box, but we each follow our own path, and mine led me back to the 4k. I still very much appreciate the SSL J, but at the moment if you have a J and the computer fails, you are ****ed. I had a K for a while and of course it sounds excellent, but in the end I missed the character of the 4k. This conversation could probably go on for a very long time.
- Rich Costey
[top]What does your typical vocal mix chain look like in terms of eq, compression, fx? Eq before compression, etc? On the vox parallel, do you add any of your verb/dly sends or is this typically dry? - Jamieboss1
NEVE 33609 CompressorRe: vocals, always dry. if the song comes in with a lot of processing on the vocal then I generally won't do a parallel.
- Rich Costey
[top]Re: Of Monsters and Men - Vistor Drums. This whole song sounds great but how did you capture and mix this drum sound? Thanks in advance. - Skeleto972
Nothing too crazy with drum processing other than a close kit mic with a lot of distortion, some rooms with about 20 ms delay on them (I came across this trick mixing something albini had recorded), and not a lot of close mic compression. It was mixed on an SSL Duality and I think most if not all of the kit went into a Neve 33609 with the kick and snare also being sent to the board dry, so i could position their transients. I recall quite a lot of eq on the kit during mixdown and some amount of trickery on the room mics to give them a bit of a classic power station sound. Not quite gated reverb but certainly leaning toward it.
- Rich Costey
[top]Re: Dove Cameron « Lethal woman. That song is one of my favorites from your latest work, especially the low end which sounds gigantic and beautifully controlled. I love the overall use of distortion on distinct tracks. Would you mind sharing about that one? - Stéphane
Thank you, I'm really happy with how this came out. I would love to take credit for the distortions, but that was entirely the work of the producers, Connor McDonough, Riley McDonough & Ryan Daly. I mixed this entirely in the box and one of the key things was indeed getting the low end to really speak. A lot of this was handled by a plugin called Bassroom by Mastering The Mix. I was also super careful to not overcompress anything going on in the bottom, and to instead push the low end transient information. I used the Antares vocal eq and vocal compressor on Dove's voice, which I think are incredible tools.
- Rich Costey
[top]The low-end in the mix is amazing! How you were using Bassroom - on individual tracks or the mix bus? and how you bring out the transients in the low end - any techniques? - Jenzii
Mastering The Mix Bassroom- Rich Costey
[top]Re: Haim’s “something to tell you” I really love what you achieved on the lead vocal and drums, fx and overall sound. Do you remember any choices you made mixing that song? - Stéphane
We spent A LONG TIME getting this to sound right. I'm pretty sure a 33609 was involved. I'm a big fan of this compressor being applied to vocals as it tends to add glue and control harshness, right away.
This was mixed through a Shadow Hills Equinox, which contributed heavily to the detail and warmth of the music. As usual, drums were mostly compressed in a parallel fashion and the bass probably went through a Pair of Distressors, (stereo linked, 4:1, slower attack, adjust release to taste but generally something sort of in the middle, maybe 4 db of compression. On meaner stuff I would use british mode but for bass, not so much) but not slammed.
George Massenburg Labs GML 8200 EQ
- Rich Costey
[top]Who in the production process decides, or has the final say on how the mixes on the albums will sound? - Kraku
This is a good question and it's something I always try to sort out prior to starting with a new client. I've been fortunate to work with a lot of strong-willed artists, so in most cases they have the final say. Occasionally an A&R person might have some insight into how a song could be pushed further, and if the artist is willing, I'm always happy to explore. On pop projects one normally deals with the producer or producers until they approve, then they play it for the artist. A while back I did a bunch of mixing for Rick Rubin, and on those records I would only deal with Rick, and the band would hear it when the whole thing was done. Maybe there would be a recall or two if someone really had an issue with something, but otherwise the mixing process did not involve the band at all. I don't believe he works like that anymore.
If it's a record that I'm producing, I generally prefer to dial it in to my own taste and then get the artist to hear it. Some artists can get really involved (Sam Fender and Muse come to mind) and others just give more general direction and approval.
- Rich Costey
[top]One of the albums that you mixed really stood out for me is Circa Survive - Blue Sky Noise. All instruments and vocals just sound great - big and wild. Would like to know any info or stories about mixing this album. - Alex_danilov
My setup for mixing this album was pretty nuts and not very smart. I had just moved back to LA from NYC, where I had a room at Electric Lady and was mixing on my NEVE 88R. So now I'm at Record One in LA and on an SSL J, but I wanted a bit more character than just the SSL J. Luckily I also had a 32 channel vintage API console with me, so I put that on the back wall of the control room facing inward and ran just about every track from protools through the API and then into the SSL. I have a photo of it somewhere, and it's among the wrong-est setups I've ever had, and I've definitely had some wrong setups over the years. Recalls were almost impossible, and getting a tight LR balance on a pair of tracks was very tricky, as each channel on the API sounded slightly different. But Blue Sky Noise was mixed on that setup and you're not the first person who connected with that mix so I guess it wasn't all bad. I later sold that API to Ben Folds who put it into RCA Nashville.
- Rich Costey
[top]Are you mixing solely ITB now or are you mixing on a console? Any thoughts you'd like to share on this? - Pyeguy
I'm back on an SSL G console after trying ITB, couple of different summing mixers, different mixing desks, etc. They're all valid ways of working and it's important for each person to find what works for them on their creative journey.
10 years ago I would do almost all of my automation on a console, but these days most of it’s in the computer. I'll use the desk for bigger, broader moves, largely for holistic dynamic shifts in a song.
There are a million reasons to automate any song, no matter the genre. The most important plug-in is volume. Can't hear the vocal? turn it up. 808s not present enough? try turning them up first. Can't hear the room mics? turn them up. obviously I use EQ, compression, FX etc as well. Sometimes I think about Andy Wallace, who used almost no outboard and relied - according to his former long-term assistant John O'Mahony - almost completely on automation. He said the faders would be moving all over the place, and if you turned the automation off, the mix would completely fall apart. I'm nowhere near that in terms of automation but it's interesting to consider that way of working.
- Rich Costey
[top]I’m a huge fan of your mixes on Bloc Party, Mars Volta, Doves, and Renegades records. They’ve left a lasting impact with their incredible depth. I’m curious about the consistent techniques you used during that time. You previously mentioned using Pultec and 1176 in parallel for kick and snare. What other tricks did you apply to the drum and mix buses? Any go to approaches with drums and how did you like setting your 660 for mix bus? Ever use the SSL on mix? - SamPura
Hi Sam. I'm loving your Liquid Death Snare plugin, by the way.
I still use the parallel 1176 on kick and snare for rock stuff. Its slowest attack, fastest release, and both the 4 and 12 ratios are pushed in. Drive the input to taste... I picked this up from Jim Scott who did a ton of Rick Rubin albums. He said he picked it up from Shelley Yakus, who's quite the legend, so it feels like some kind of thing which is moving down through generations of engineers. Other than that, I'll usually run a parallel 33609 for the overall kit. Nothing particularly interesting, I don't think.
On the mix bus, for those records you mentioned and also the record I'm mixing right now, I use both the EAR 660s and the SSL console compressor. The EAR 660s are inserted preVCA so they're before the SSL comp. EAR 660s are generally on preset 5 (similar to the fairchild) but occasionally I've gone with a much quicker release which can kind of overwhelm the track, but when it works it really works. Audioslave's "Show Me How To Live" is one of the few times I recall really slamming the shit out of those things with the 100ms release time. The SSL comp is almost always on slowest attack with the recovery set to Auto.
Those Ross Peterson days at Avatar (now Power Station) were pretty nuts. On Mars Volta 'Frances The Mute" we spent I think six days mixing one 33 minute track. I completely lost myself at one point, I think we all did. I have a video somewhere of Ross and Cedric beating on random things in the live room and making up a song, preschool level of complexity.
- Rich Costey
[top]Just wondering if you have had to deal with any guitars recorded purely digitally in the amp sim world? - Xenozeno
UnderTone Audio GB Tracker- Rich Costey
[top]Are there any specific tricks or pieces of gear or plug ins you use to widen your mixes Or any distortion tips? Also, I'm curious about your thoughts on the development of artificial intelligence music tools and how they might change the way music is produced in the future. As a seasoned producer, do you embrace these tools, or do you see them as a passing trend? - Ekedmo2
NUGEN Audio StereoizerDistortion- way too many to list. Yes to everything you mentioned here, along with most other things you've come across. In case there is a muse fan reading this, the guitar patch for Super Massive Black Hole is "Big Muff w Dead 9v" on an Eventinde DSP 4000.
I've been keeping a close eye on the development of AI in music, and even consulted on one early system which is very different from what we are seeing coming online now. Stem Splitting is a creative tool which I think can be very interesting, but AI used for full creation of tracks is a terrible development for humanity. It will displace loads of musicians, first in the area of music library generation, then in commercials, and will gradually work it's way through the industry. Suno is an example of a company run by tech bros who have been expertly playing the game of public relations, by pretending they have 'the musician' in mind. They don't. They are interested in making billions by displacing real musicians and creatives. You mentioned Udio- that's backed by Mark Andreesen, who is not known for his benevolence.
As to whether these are passing trends, new technology is almost never a passing trend. Tech may shape shift into new forms, and I have no doubt that AI tools will be mastered by some folks as a new creative tool. But no matter the public face these companies put forward, the end goal is more 'content' to sell with fewer people to pay.
- Rich Costey
[top]I'm particularly curious about your experiences producing Franz Ferdinand's You Could Have It So Much Better and mixing Primal Scream's More Light. Any details you could share about those projects? - Alvaro Laguna
Sure. The FF record was an interesting one. Coming off the back of their first album, which was a huge hit with incessant touring, they didn't have all of the material rehearsed by the time we were supposed to start recording. So we set up in a house in Moniaive, Scotland, and had an interesting routing where they could play together in a big room at the end of the house to rehearse, using amps in the room with no headphones, and then flip a few switches on some routing boxes and suddenly connect to amps for recording in the other side of the house. We all found it to be a great way of working, basically living together at this property while rehearsing, writing a bit, and recording. One song that changed a lot during the process was the single "Do You Wanna": when the band first locked into that one, the jam was so good that I filled up an entire reel of two inch of them just riffing. We ended up obviously editing it down, and then Alex wanted to tighten up some of the performances as we got closer to mixing so it ended up not quite as loose and grimy, which is probably for the better. The other notable thing was that when we got to NYC to finish overdubs, I found that often their guitar parts didn't sound right when I recorded them one at a time, so we did almost all of them with both Nick and Alex playing together.
Primal Scream: I'm a big fan so for me it was pretty significant to see Bobbie Gillespie sitting in my control room. Not sure if I have any super interesting details on this one, other than I was running a few things through my ARP2600 and occasionally through my modular during mixing, but I was doing that a lot during that stretch. A fair bit of Lex 480 reverb was lathered on, and I think I might have had this huge weird Decca compressor at the time which I was using on vocals.
- Rich Costey
[top]Re:Bloc Party “Silent Alarm” and Cycles in music aesthetics. How did you get this one so thrashy but also listenable? It feels like the guitar / hihat situation should be just insufferable. Also: these 2000s indie aesthetics are back - are you working with any younger artists who are directly referencing your work from this time period, and if so, how are you approaching these projects? Are there any specific sounds / patches / whatever that you're revisiting? Do you have any particular strategies for incorporating dare I say 'vintage' sounds into modern records? Or maybe a more fun version of this question: What's a sound you dread coming back into fashion? - Supercuts
Interesting question regarding potential insufferable guitar/hi hat situation. This is THE question regarding almost all recorded rock music as far as I'm concerned. And it's why, in my opinion, there is no more challenging genre to mix, and make palatable, than poorly played and poorly recorded indie rock. Luckily, Silent Alarm was none of those things. Matt Tong played brilliantly, and Paul Epworth, along with engineers Elliot James and my friend Mark Rankin used ribbon mics throughout during the recording. The rough mixes suffered none of the issues you mention, and so all I had to do was not **** up the recording. I mixed it on the SSL J at Avatar (now Power Station), which makes the job easier.
In regards to 2000 indie aesthetics and if I find myself working on stuff like that right now- not really. This year I worked on an LP for 'nu-gaze' band Julie, who are young but def not New York sleaze. I also just mixed Scowl's upcoming album who are incredible but also not indie-sleaze.
Shadow Hills Industries EquinoxAs far as a sound that I might dread coming back into fashion... probably late 90's ska. But I don't think we're at risk there.
- Rich Costey
[top]What are some of the digital tools you use nowadays. I’m talking about things like Soothe2 and gulfoss etc. - Mattias78
This is really dependent on the production and the source material. It's critical to open a session and have it play back exactly as the producer and artist left it, so I've amassed a huge collection of plugins so that I can open up pretty much any session with a great deal of accuracy.
But sure, I have some things that I tend to reach for. I will use Soothe2 if I can't fix the problem using EQ or a dynamic EQ like Q3. I rarely reach for it first, but on stuff like painful cymbals or vocals with upper mids that you can't control, it can be very helpful. I've seen people use it on the mix bus, which I can't endorse unless something has gone weird with the recording.
Other things I often use: the Undertone Unfairchild plug in is insane and makes almost everything better; the SSL E series plugin is a good place to start as I'm so familiar with its functions; AudioThing Type A on the vocal is helpful; I like Mixhead; pluginAlliance AMEK eqs and compressor (based on GML gear); Pulsar Audio stuff is great; UAD and Soundtoys are still standard; Eventide 2016 reverb is fantastic on drums; I still rely on a few older waves plugins too like Waves C6 and H Delay; I love the Joey Sturgis stuff, it's so over-the-top without getting messy; and as a final limiter to use for making refs for clients, I like the AOM Invisible Limiter. There's also something amazing that Michael Brauer is working on but I don't think I'm supposed to talk about it yet.
- Rich Costey
[top]I would like to hear of any interesting stories or impressions you may have in interacting with My Chemical Romance and Gerard Way. - AfterViewer
Gerard is a singular creative entity- when you hang out there are endless ideas coming out of him, often about music but really could be about anything. I mean endless. He's a fairly private guy so I think I won't go into it too much here, but I can say that the band are what I would call a 'band band'. Each person contributes in a unique and powerful way, which becomes really obvious if you happen to have caught some of their live shows last year. They prefer things to sound quite raw, and Gerard likes his vocals to be very compressed with minimal clean up- don't do breath rides, for example. I think a lot of where their creative dynamic went back and forth was trying to find the line between messy stuff they love like The Stooges, while also combining it with their musical wit and precision. And there's always a visual element under discussion and consideration when the musical work is going down. I think one thing that is often overlooked is how good Frank and Ray are, as well. There's not a lot of guitar edit-micromanaging happening on their albums, what you hear is what they played.
- Rich Costey
[top]Disparate Youth is one of my favourite records of all time, from both an emotion and technical perspective. I'm wondering if you could talk about getting this one from the rough to the final record. - Supercuts
Oh good one, I love this song. Yeah there wouldn't be any subtractive moves on this mix. Santi had this mixed by someone else before I worked on it- the previous mix sounded good but the drums weren't quite right so I ended up spending quite a while dialing in the drums. Although there is clearly a lot of programming, I wanted to focus more on making them sound live, and the frenetic energy of the hihats are almost more implied than played with the main kit. I did a similar thing with the guitars- they're pretty compressed but I spread them out and made room for everything else so they could still be fairly loud. The drums don't have that much compression on them, nor the bass, so there's plenty of room for them to breathe. The guitars and vocals are really more directly compressed and placed into a particular spot in the image. I tend to prefer that kind of contrast, instead of just everything getting stomped on by gear.
In regards to FX, Santi is pretty strong-willed as to what she wants and what she likes, so I'm sure the delays and reverbs on the vocals came from her. The reverb on the clap sound and whatnot with the drums would have been mine. delay on the keys, reverb and distortion on the other keys- those were baked into the production.
- Rich Costey
[top]You have previously mentioned you use guitar (?) amps to distort drums, especially snares. I'd like to know a bit more about your technique for drum distortion. Your drum sounds are natural yet incredibly punchy and present at the same time! Is amp or other distortion an important element of your approach? - GiO P
Soundtoys DecapitatorOne other thing on drums is that I don't often compress them all together and use only that for the drum sound. I may do a parallel group but will split out the kick and snare so that I have more control and they have more punch. Hope this helps!
- Rich Costey
[top]For a long time, people would say that you only boosted with EQ for the most part, rarely cut. If true, could you go into more detail as to why that was and what the results of it are to your ears? - CEB
In regards to this, for a time it was true. I was doing a lot of mixing on old Neve desks, and the EQ is so broad that I would mostly just boost what I wanted more of. Whenever I needed something more serious to reduce snare ring or kick woof, I would patch in a focusrite or something similar. Foo Fighters "The Pretender" would be an example of this kind of mix. It was mixed on a NEVE 8078, and I would use the high pass a lot, but didn't use much reductive EQ at all. I also wasn't into using plugins much at the time so I would ignore the obvious route of fixing it before it got to the console. A NEVE 8078 also sounds rather good, so one tends to spend less time considering what you would like to get rid of. Yes, there is a big downside to this: my neve mixes were always too hot. On that Foos record, Dave found the pinned meters to be disconcerting, so I put tape over all of them and drew in some nice VU lines right where they should be, if I were a sensible mixer. Clearly I'm not or I would have just trimmed the line amps back and avoided this issue.
- Rich Costey
[top]I loved how you managed a lot of different textures and built a world for The Mars Volta on Deloused in the Comatorium and The Shins on Port of Morrow. So I was really wondering how you go about building up mixes for those records. - CEB
Interesting choice of material. I wish I had a constructive answer to something like this, but I don't think I do. Deloused was mixed on a J from ProTools and Port Of Morrow was mixed on an E from Logic, so there wasn't really a deliberate pattern of outboard or processing between the two. It just takes a long time. If it's a really serious piece of music like these were, then I tend to spend a while just sculpting tones and relationships, and while you're doing that the balances can go a bit sideways. At that point I just pull all the faders down and rebuild the levels with these new sounds and treatments. Most of the time it comes together pretty quickly on that round. But sometimes it doesn't, and you work for a while and do it again. It's much harder to just pull everything down in a computer as automation can be baked in from the production side. As far as losing sight of the big picture, that can happen. It happened a lot on the second Mars Volta LP, "Frances The Mute". I actually mixed that album three times, the first time was just getting all of the parts together between the two protools rigs (the songs were too big to fit onto one). There's A 33minute song on there, we all got lost on that one.
- Rich Costey
