Tim Palmer: Mixing Pearl Jam’s “Ten”, The Death of Artist Development, and Why Grids Kill Vibe

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Golden Age Premier high quality vintage style products at an affordable price point. To find out more, go to golden age premier.com. This episode is also brought to you by F Audio Labs uncompromising emulations of classic and rare studio processors in revolutionary plugin form. For more info, go to Fuse Audio Rams de and now your host, Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:00:32):

Hello everybody. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. I have a great guest today. The dude is a fucking titan. This is a great episode and so inspiring. My guest is Tim Palmer, who's a Grammy nominated producer, songwriter mixer engineer who has four decades under his belt, starting his career in London in the early eighties, usually grabbing tea for artists and engineers like people like David Bowie for instance, and making his way to working on his first number one single at the age of 21. And since then he's worked on records. You may have heard of 10 by Pearl Jam. He's worked with bands you may have heard of like U2 Robert Plant, Ozzy Osborne, tears for Fears, and On and on and on. The guy is incredible and I love his perspective on what your priorities should be as a producer. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the Tim Palmer episode of the URM podcast. Here goes, Tim Palmer, thank you so much for coming on the URM Podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:01:57):

Thank you very much for inviting me.

Speaker 2 (00:01:59):

My pleasure. So I'm just going to get right into it. Four decades into this, is this what you had imagined for yourself and do you still love it the way you always did?

Speaker 3 (00:02:13):

I definitely still love it. I didn't imagine four decades. That sounds pretty scary to me. I must be honest. It's pretty amazing. It's funny because I was thinking about it this morning. I knew that we were going to have a chat, and when I first walked into a studio and began my journey, the engineer told me that he'd worked in the sixties with Dave Clark five. And of course I was immediately impressed, but I was immediately also shocked at how old this guy obviously was. And when I think about it now, back to then, it was only, I mean the Dave Clark five of probably about 1965, I mean the Beatles revolver was 65. So this sort of period seemed such a long way away from where my career was beginning, but yet it was only probably 15 years, something like that from where I was beginning. And now when people look at me, I often wonder what the hell they think about seeing as it's more like 35, 40 years or whatever. It's quite strange.

Speaker 2 (00:03:12):

It's interesting. I wonder, similar source of things, I guess. I was a teenager in the nineties and I remember thinking I'd love Led Zeppelin, those bands and from the seventies and was thinking to myself, this is old music. But now I think back to the nineties, and I just wonder if people in their teens now look to the nineties the same way that I looked to the seventies, as in that was a really long time ago because it really wasn't that long ago.

Speaker 3 (00:03:43):

I know. I think you're probably right, they probably do. I remember in the eighties thinking I would love to buy a vintage guitar but couldn't actually afford it, so I bought a brand new one. In fact, I actually got it as sort of a discount rate because it was actually when I was working with Tin Machine with David Bowie. So I got it through his deal, but I remember thinking, I wish I had the money to have a vintage guitar. And of course now it is.

Speaker 2 (00:04:07):

Yeah. So you did buy a vintage guitar, so was it mind blowing being that age and working with people of that stature?

Speaker 3 (00:04:15):

Well, yes, it definitely was. I was very fortunate enough to start in the way that it was done in those days, which was as an apprentice, I got my break in a recording studio making cups of tea at probably age 19. So it was the old way to learn, and I can't deny that. I was very fortunate to be able to get a job in a studio where there were so many great people coming through, and that was the way you learned. You learned by the things they did, but you also learned by the things that they did wrong.

Speaker 2 (00:04:51):

One of the things that I find to be interesting is that one of the main things that I guess has in my studio career made me not hire an intern has been their, I guess their inability to chill in the presence of a great artist. And obviously you could chill if you started that young and then you stayed in the game, then that means that you obviously knew how to behave around them. But I think that that's actually a lot more difficult than it's seems to people on the outside or people who are wanting to get into it, how to behave. Right. So is that something that you had to be taught or did you just kind of understand it? How was that whole part expressed from your mentor or the bosses?

Speaker 3 (00:05:46):

Well, if I'm honest, I don't think you could be further from the truth as far as me being able, please be honest to know, studio Attica, it was most definitely something that had to be learned. I remember one of the first days that I was in a studio that the engineer on the session had a clever system where he would mark the front on the tape machine if he wanted to clean something up perfectly, he would mark the front of, let's say for example, Tom Toms with a white China graph mark on the two inch tape. And he would mark the end of the tom fill with a white China graph mark, and he would, at the end of the song, he would be able to go through and spot arrays neatly between the China graph marks. So he had a perfectly clean track that had Toms on it.

(00:06:32):

Of course, this is nothing now, of course, with pro tools and files the way that we clean things. But in those days, this was a pretty impressive trick and he did this in front of me, and sadly, he erased between the wrong white marks. So what he'd actually done was he'd neatly erased all the Toms perfectly and left all the spill of the symbols and high hats perfectly. So the session went completely silent because they knew that this has been a horrific error. But muggins here, as we say in England, spoke up, oh, it's okay, Johnny. You can just get him to go out and play the, and I started to voice my opinion and I was immediately told to just get out of the studio. I very nearly lost my job two days in because basically you've got to keep your mouth shut.

Speaker 2 (00:07:23):

What's interesting too is that it's not like you were being a weirdo to the artists or anything like that. You were just trying to help.

Speaker 3 (00:07:31):

I was. And that enthusiasm was definitely part of why I enjoyed being an assistant and the early part of my career, I really did love what I had as my job. I loved it. I didn't want to go home. I remember when I got one of my first breaks later on a proper session as an assistant, I was working for a fantastic engineer who's still working to this day, Neil Dorfman, and we were working on the soundtrack to a movie called Local Hero with Mark Effler. And these were long sessions and I was the tape op and they were used to working in America, but every time Mark would play a selection of guitar solos and things, I would chirp in with what I thought was the best pieces. And it was purely honest, enthusiastic, innocent stuff, but not required on the session. And I can remember Mark and Neil taking me aside and saying, we love the fact that you are so into it, but you're going to have to just not contribute so much to the session. And I went completely bright red and was very embarrassed and kept my mouth shut from that point onwards, but still loved the session. And it was funny because they were really nice to me and they would often have a conversation and then they would turn to me running the machine and say, which one was your favorite, Tim? So they were really cool about it and it was a great session and I loved the opportunity to learn from someone like Neil.

Speaker 2 (00:08:57):

So that's actually kind of interesting to me. So you got somewhat reprimanded for speaking up too much, but then it seems like it also kind of worked in your favor because then they did ask your opinion afterwards.

Speaker 3 (00:09:10):

But I think they were probably just doing it because they were kind people.

Speaker 2 (00:09:13):

Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 (00:09:15):

I dunno how much they took in, how much they listened to it, but it was very nice, all the same.

Speaker 2 (00:09:21):

At what point did you notice that people started to actually, in your opinion, in a serious way, start to request your opinion? What was the transition from this kid's enthusiastic, but please shut up to, we actually want you to give us your thoughts on this.

Speaker 3 (00:09:39):

Well, I think the thing that you first notice is when people request you to be the assistant on the session. I think being an assistant is an incredible opportunity because as I said before, not only do you learn the good stuff, you also can see when a producer handles things very badly, they're putting a lot of trust in you being an assistant, especially in those days because you had to run the tape machine and being an assistant engineer was quite a scary situation to be put in the idea of a band playing a live take, and you've made the decision when the producer turns around and says, we want to do one more take. Do we have enough tape left on the reel? And you look at the reel and think, yes, yes, I think there's enough. And it's purely done by eyesight, and you see the band and they're still in the last choruses, and that tape is getting closer and closer to spinning off.

(00:10:28):

I mean, things like that. And dropping in when the producer turns to you and says, I need to fix one word, and it's on the third bar, and it's this word and it's right before the chorus, I need you to get in and get out. Your heart starts racing when you operate that tape machine and you punch in and you punch out. And it's a skill that has obviously been lost now, but to be somebody who's really good at dropping in, as we call it in England, was a real bonus. And when a producer feels like this kid gets it, I say it, he knows what I want to do, he listens to the conversations in the room. If you hear the producer talking about maybe adding some piano chords to the bridge section, you don't wait around. You get out into the room. And when they start to make that a definite decision, you've already got the piano micd up when you are that sort of assistant, people want you to be around.

Speaker 2 (00:11:20):

And just to clarify, for people listening who might not understand that we're talking right now about the transition from runner into actual assistant.

Speaker 3 (00:11:30):

That's correct. That's correct.

Speaker 2 (00:11:32):

So it's kind of an exercise in knowing when to speak up, knowing when not to speak up, having the technical skills to not screw the whole thing up, but also being able to understand what their needs are ahead of them actually needing those things so that you can prepare them for them.

Speaker 3 (00:11:52):

Correct. Absolutely. And then the next stage, of course, is to be able to be given the opportunity to be put in control when you become the engineer, that's a big step too. And in the hierarchy of the studio system back then, it required one of a few different avenues. One would be that somebody left and there was the space for you to be able to rise up and become an engineer. Or maybe in my case, there was an opportunity where somebody, his kitchen got flooded, for instance, there was a session booked into a demo room, which was called Studio two, and Sting was actually recording the demos for the, I think it was the Synchronicity album, and he was working with an engineer from our studio. And one day this particular engineer rang in and said, look, my kitchen's flooded. I'm not going to make it. And the studio lady who run our studio, Annie said to me, do you think that you could handle Studio two because Pete can't make it in? And I said, I think I can. I'll do that. So one minute you are assisting and the next minute you're engineering with Sting. And that's pretty freaky as well.

Speaker 2 (00:13:02):

I can imagine that that must have been a trip mentally.

Speaker 3 (00:13:05):

Oh yeah. And you want to impress him, you want to do all the right things, but your nerves are in the way as well. And I can remember at one point as we were doing the vocals on this particular demo, it was a song called Tea in the Sahara, and I was trying to get the reverb to come through these particular tie lines into that studio, and it was quite a challenge to remember how to patch you. And I got a little bit of feedback in Sting's headphones, and he wasn't too happy about it. But yeah, we made it through.

Speaker 2 (00:13:31):

So this elapsed time from when you first got your first runner gig all the way to where you are now in charge of the session with this immense artist like Sting, how long was that?

Speaker 3 (00:13:45):

Well, I was very fortunate. It was probably only two or three years. Another thing, this is an interesting story for you. Sometimes these opportunities come up in the most bizarre ways.

Speaker 2 (00:13:56):

Yes, they sure do.

Speaker 3 (00:13:57):

One of the opportunities that suddenly appeared for me was that I was the assistant engineer on an eighties band, a very eighties band called K Gugu, and the producer was Colin Thurston, and he was also engineering the record, and the co-producer was Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran. And I was the assistant, and I used to work for Colin a lot, and sadly, Colin's no longer with us. I think he died about five years ago. But Colin had worked as an engineer on Heroes and countless other great eighties albums like Talk and Howard Jones and Classics Novo. So he was a great producer to be an assistant for. Anyway, when we were doing the Kaja Ggo record, Nick and Colin, when it came to the idea of doing the B sides for the singles, I dunno if anyone remembers B sides, but a B side was the reverse side to the main song on a single, and it was often a sort of throwaway sort of song.

(00:14:49):

So a lot of people didn't give it the attention that it should deserve. But anyway, so the Kaji Googo guys needed to record the BSides on this album. And Colin and Nick said, look, why don't you just let Tim do the BSides? And the band said, fine, because they were happy with the way that I was working with them. So over a couple of weekends I recorded the BSides with the band and I took the time to ask the band for the demos. I wrote some notes, I had some ideas of how I thought the song should be, I recorded with the band and we mixed it together. And at the end I said to them as you have to sometimes doing this as a job, you have to be brave. You've got nothing to lose. I said, look, I know this is a lot to ask, but I feel that I've contributed quite a lot towards these songs. Is there any way that you could give me some sort of co-production credit on these BSides? And they said, absolutely. That's fine.

Speaker 2 (00:15:40):

That's kind of ballsy.

Speaker 3 (00:15:41):

Yeah, well, I mean I had actually done that, so I felt like the worst that could happen is them say No. So I did it, I did it, and they agreed. And I thought, well, great. I've got my first production credit even if it is a B side. But the great thing was that the label particularly liked one song that we cut, which was an instrumental called Kago, and they said, we want to put it on the record. So I actually went from assisting on that album to producing one of the tracks on the album. Strangely enough, I got my first gold disc right there.

Speaker 2 (00:16:13):

That's pretty amazing. But the thing that I always try to tell people just because noticed this from my own life and from everyone I know who's had any sort of success in music or the arts, is that you have no idea where it's going to come from. I mean, you can plan to do things a certain way, but at the end of the day, you have no idea which of your contacts or which project is going to lead to which thing or how it's going to be accepted by the world you don't know. And oftentimes you can be working with an artist and think this is the one, and then nobody cares when it comes out. And then you can be working with somebody else and think, God, this is crap. And then it gets big, or you just never ever know. Which is why I really think that people especially going in need to approach every situation as professionally and levelheaded. And I guess with that type of enthusiasm you spoke about, because you never know, it'll often come from a place that you least expected.

Speaker 3 (00:17:21):

Absolutely true. I couldn't agree with you more. And in my particular career, choices of artists have come from the strangest reference points. When I remember when I got the opportunity to produce Tears for Fears, Roland had really loved the sound of the Tin Machine records that I'd made with David Bowie, which were Chaotic Loud Live, which was very much the opposite of Tears for Fierce. And yet that was the reference point that he had to work with me. And it just shows you that,

Speaker 2 (00:17:54):

Is that what he wanted for his own record or it's just that

Speaker 3 (00:17:57):

Not at all.

Speaker 2 (00:17:58):

He thought that you captured something in Tin Machine just right.

Speaker 3 (00:18:02):

Yes. He thought it was a great example of what it was trying to be, so that was enough for him. But yeah, you can't ever plan for these opportunities, like you said, because the thing about having a hit record more than anything is it's more than just the great song and the great artist, and they're the two things that are most important. It's more than just that because then you add the great production and then you've got to have the great manager and the great label and the great video. So for something to click, and I'm talking more so of the old school type of thinking, it's all changed now with social media and stuff, but every duck had to be in line. And if one part of the chain was wrong, as you said, you could have made your greatest piece of work and it can be lost.

Speaker 2 (00:18:51):

I think that part of that is still absolutely true. It's just morphed in the way that just the delivery method is different. And there's still, I think one more factor you didn't mention that is the ultimate factor, which is you can have all those things lined up properly, the artist, the song, the production, the mix, the master, the manager, the booking agent, the label, and then if it doesn't resonate with the collective unconscious of the public, it doesn't matter. You have nothing. And that's the part that really is anybody's guess. I mean, some people kind of like with, you see this in the stock market. There's some people who have somehow have this uncanny ability to know where it's going, but really under a lot of scrutiny, even that fails and you realize that nobody really knows. So there's that the element of whether or not the public is going to receive it is anybody's guess. But I still think that now, even if it's a more, I guess amorphous industry, you still need to have, it's almost like a vehicle and it's tires. You still need to have all the tires full of air like manager and if not a label, some distribution method, you need to have all those things lined up or you're driving on a broken vehicle even nowadays. I think

Speaker 3 (00:20:29):

It's true. You're right. I mean, I do agree with what you're saying, but I think that also in the old school way of radio before social media and when the record companies controlled what we heard in a way because they were able to either convince a radio station to play your song or they could pay for a radio station to play your song, whatever method it took, they were able to control essentially what we were hearing and we were seeing on David Letterman, on Johnny Carson, whatever it was. So if you have a song and you managed to get it into people's heads 10 times a week on K Rock, there's a far greater chance that that song will be able to resonate. Because how many times have you heard a song when you think, I'm not sure about it? And then you hear it a couple more times and you go, you know what? I really like it. And the only reason that you've liked it is because sometimes it just takes a couple of plays before it really does click

Speaker 2 (00:21:28):

Well. Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:21:30):

I mean, think about an album. I mean, how many times do you meet someone who loves an album and they'll say to you, well, I used to think that tracks seven and eight weren't so good, but now they're my favorite tracks on the album. And that was because they were benefiting from the old system of where we used to give everything a lot of time and a lot of opportunity to grow in our minds. And the way that society has gone now was so quick. Everything has to happen instantaneously. This A DHD culture that we have, there's something that needs a little bit more time to germinate is often

Speaker 2 (00:22:03):

Lost,

(00:22:03):

Or it definitely can be. And what you're saying, I do believe to be true because I mean even down to marketing, there's a marketing cliche. It actually comes from old school print marketing and billboards and stuff from those days. But the idea that you need to see or a consumer needs to see something or come into contact with it somehow or hear about it, it needs to be presented to them a minimum of seven times before they're ready to buy. And whether it's six or eight times or whatever, I'm sure there's outliers that hear something the first time and love it, but just, I mean that idea, marketers definitely believe that to be true, that

Speaker 3 (00:22:48):

Absolutely

Speaker 2 (00:22:48):

You need to hit something multiple times. And marketing aside have two thoughts here. One is that I know that nowadays when I take in music or I notice that somebody else becomes a fan of it, there's still human nature hasn't changed. You still need to come across something multiple times before you take it in. So for me to accept a new band, usually if someone recommends a band, I'm not going to even pay attention the first time. Maybe I'll remember the name of the band that they mentioned and then later on, a few months later, someone else might mention it. Then I might come across their song on YouTube and hear it or not hear it. And then a few months later, a student will request it for Nail the Mix or something and I'll listen to it again and be like, yeah, that's pretty cool. And over the course of many months and coming into contact with this artist and that song multiple times, do I start to develop an affinity for that song?

Speaker 3 (00:23:56):

That's so true.

Speaker 2 (00:23:57):

I definitely think what you're saying is true, and I don't think human nature has changed. And so not having the chance to go through that process, a lot of stuff will get lost. And I also want to say that I do think you're right about the older days. So I do think that it is different that we don't have gatekeepers the way we used to. But so back when I was first discovering metal in the early nineties, we had Headbanger Ball, we had the magazines, and there was maybe college radio, so three, and then obviously whatever my friends talked about. So there were these four methods to discover artists, and then there was Tower Records near me and some mom and pop shop. That's it. Okay, so two methods to buy it. Four methods by which I would discover it. And so within those six different avenues, there's only a limited amount of space that each artist can get.

(00:25:05):

So if there's Mega Death, Metallica, Pantera, anthrax Testament, and then some smaller bands there, you hear all of them because you really only have 10 to 20 bands to choose from. Period. And so even if you don't like a band that much, I was never a big Anthrax fan. For instance, I come from a metal background, so I was never a huge Anthrax fan, but I still knew every single one of their songs because that's all there was to listen to. So I definitely think that the fact that there are no gatekeepers or very few gatekeepers and that labels could just say, you're going to hear this song 10 times a week now had a big part to do with it. Because again, even if I didn't love Anthrax, I still knew all of their songs and obviously I liked some better than others, but you still were somewhat a fan and you still bought the records even if they weren't your favorite band. Whereas now, I mean, if you have 2000 bands to choose from, you're still only going to have time for 20.

Speaker 3 (00:26:16):

Yeah, we got no filter. That's the thing. That's the bottom line is there's no filter and it's sort of punk rock in many ways. I love the fact that people that don't care about genres so much now, they'll just find stuff they like, but in a way to be able to make a band huge, it was easier when we were the gatekeepers of the filter. And now that filter is completely gone. I mean, when you were saying about to be able to connect with the public, that connection did come from marketing a lot of the time as you pointed out, because how many times can we use an example of when a song was re-released for the second time that it became a hit? You'd think that if it failed the first time, then maybe it wasn't any good. But that's not true. They did a better job of their marketing.

Speaker 2 (00:26:57):

No, that's definitely not true. Exactly.

Speaker 3 (00:26:59):

Then they do a better job. I think it happened with Relax by Frankie goes to Hollywood, it became huge on the second time they pushed it and then it became a massive song. This is all really important stuff. We need to hear things more than once sometimes to be able to understand where something's coming from. It doesn't matter, as you said, whether it's food or the opera or whatever, sometimes you turn your nose or something or Coca-Cola. Oh yeah. But I mean, I can remember when I was a young man thinking how embarrassing it was that every time there was olives on a dish, I would always push them to the side. And I thought, well, that's not cool. Maybe there's something to olives that everyone else gets that I don't. So I made a point of saying, okay, well every time there's olives, have a couple and just deal with it and see what happens. And I did it over the space, had one every day, and of course now I love olives, but this is the way that the mind works. You sometimes have to sort of try these things, try it out, go with it, and then eventually you find that you really appreciate something. But at first your nose was turned up to it.

Speaker 2 (00:28:01):

So are you saying I should give avocados a chance?

Speaker 3 (00:28:03):

I think you should, mate. They're really

Speaker 2 (00:28:05):

Good. Little by little

Speaker 3 (00:28:05):

Avocado toast, the trendiest thing you can eat at the moment,

Speaker 2 (00:28:09):

Man, I hate avocados so much. I haven't even been able to, nothing avocado for since I was a kid. But maybe I'll have a little bit of time. It would definitely make my life easier.

Speaker 3 (00:28:19):

You're missing out texturally. Put some olive oil and a little bit of salt on. You'll be rocking.

Speaker 2 (00:28:25):

Alright, I'll give it a shot. Another thing that I think from the older days that also is huge, and we actually might be getting back to this with the do method, I think it got lost in the mid two thousands, but the fact that I know that many artists from older days didn't experience their success until they were about three or four albums in sometimes and they didn't get dropped. It was called Artist Development and it was a part of the deal and records one and two, sometimes three could be somewhat of a bomb. I mean I know that Bruce Springsteen, for instance, that comes to mind, he was like that. And a modern example actually of this still being true is Maroon five Super Bowl performance aside. Maroon five, arguably one of the biggest, if not the biggest band in the world right now, that album that they broke with was out for five years, I believe before it had a hit. They were a failure of a band according to the standard of having a hit right away. And they just toured and toured and toured and toured. Yeah, they really did. And then yeah, what that song called This Love

(00:29:57):

Then eventually became a hit. But that didn't happen right away. And that's a perfect example of what happens when you take the time to develop an artist.

Speaker 3 (00:30:09):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:30:09):

You can have a band the size of Maroon Five.

Speaker 3 (00:30:12):

There's a million examples of that. I mean, Bowie's early albums weren't exactly huge. They took the time to develop him as an artist. I mean, I read an article recently, I'm sure you've probably read the same one about Guns and Roses and how they were literally two days away from pulling the plug on Appetite for Destruction because it wasn't connecting at radio and it wasn't connecting the way they wanted to. And then somebody said, we've managed to get the video for, I think it was Welcome to the Jungle on late night MTV at like two in the morning. They put the video out and the phone started ringing and these kids were saying, we really like this. And he was able to go back into the office and say, just give me a few more days. And of course the rest is history. It's just insane. I mean, that album was almost overlooked.

Speaker 2 (00:30:58):

It's crazy to think about it because obviously we only live in one reality, but there's so many stories like that. It definitely leads me to believe that when people say that it's impossible to have huge artists now in the new record industry, I think they're totally wrong. I think that if people want there to be huge artists, a La Guns N Roses or Bowie or whatever, you need to follow the whether or not it's with the same traditional gatekeepers, that part doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (00:31:35):

No.

Speaker 2 (00:31:36):

But what does matter is that artists are allowed to develop in public view long enough to hit their stride. And you can look to Maroon five as a modern example of that. This still works if you want huge bands. It has to be done, in my opinion, has to be done that way.

Speaker 3 (00:31:54):

Absolutely. I agree.

Speaker 2 (00:31:55):

So music industry I think hurt itself by forgetting that for a little while.

Speaker 3 (00:32:02):

I know it's a massive mistake. It's a massive oversight in Austin here we have a charity organization called Black Fret as fret as in guitar. And what we do in Austin is people pay to become members of this organization and they get to see all the new artists in town and their membership all gets gathered together. And at the end of the year we vote on our favorite new artists and they get given grants and the grants are like 10 or $15,000, but it's enough for these artists to be able to make a record or go out and touring and the money has to be unlocked. They get grant dollars that are unlocked. So if they make an album, they can unlock $5,000 say, or if they play a show out of town, they can unlock $500. And it's one of the few artist development ideas that's around. And it's pretty revolutionary when it comes to America because the labels have stopped doing it. But at least here in Austin, there's an avenue there that's available to artists to try and get some money to help them start out in their career and make music, which is what they're supposed to be doing.

Speaker 2 (00:33:02):

I love that it's unlocked due to, or I guess subject to what they do. So it's not just like, here's 15,000, go to Vegas,

Speaker 3 (00:33:12):

Go and buy TV party. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:33:14):

That's really, really great. I think that there should be about 500 more of those grants.

Speaker 3 (00:33:20):

Absolutely. And also they have an advisory board, so the advisory board of people like myself, other people who are in the industry, tour managers, lawyers, managers, and they can access the advisory board and ask for their advice. So if you're an Austin band who's part of the black fret, they often would write to me and say, Hey Tim, we're recording our song and here's what we've got. What do you think? And if I've got some time, I'll of course respond to them, which I do and give them my input. And they have access to this advisory board full of people have worked in the industry for 20, 30 years.

Speaker 2 (00:33:55):

That's phenomenal. I really hope that people listening take that as an inspiration to see how they can get involved in similar things. Because I know that there's multiple organizations all over the country and world that do similar things. I haven't heard of one exactly like that, but who do offer some way to support artists? And I do think that it's hugely important because it's not about, okay, so there's this misconception I think where some people believe that an artist should only have money coming in if the market agrees. And I get it. I understand that kind of thinking. I don't believe in handouts where they're not warranted. However, art and commerce, while they do need to work together, art has to be developed and it can't be developed in a vacuum. There's no church like there was to just support composers or sculptors for their entire lives. There used to be, if we want art to keep developing, we as a society need to decide that it's important enough.

Speaker 3 (00:35:12):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:35:13):

And I don't mean that there needs to be some law about it.

Speaker 3 (00:35:16):

No,

Speaker 2 (00:35:16):

Not at all. I think it's up to private individuals to do it, but we need to decide that we're going to give artists that opportunity because that is the historical method by which artists get great is they're supported.

Speaker 3 (00:35:34):

Absolutely. To be a patron of the arts is something that usually we think of to do with the symphony orchestras or classical music or theater. But why would that be any different to any other form of art? I mean, this is all that black fret is trying to do. It's the same sort of thing, your patron of local music. And I think as you said, this is something that everyone has to accept that to give people an opportunity to start being creative is so vital to our society.

Speaker 2 (00:36:03):

Absolutely. The thing is that you kind have to do it on faith because chances are that while you're supporting local artists, a lot of 'em, they won't get to that next level because let's face it, most bands are not meant for greatness. But since you can't know what's coming up in the future, you just have to have an attitude, in my opinion, of being a supporter of this so that when the right artist gets in that situation, they can then flourish.

Speaker 3 (00:36:35):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:36:37):

Some artists are fortunate in that they are born into a wealthy family or have industry connections that are very, very high powered. That happens too. But that as a leaving, that as being the only way to develop your art without already being big is kind of short-changing where this can go. So I do actually believe that we can have mega artists. I don't think that that has to be over.

Speaker 3 (00:37:12):

Yeah, no, I'm with you. I mean, I try not to focus too much attention on the people who have the connections because nepotism is sort of ugly. But yeah, I think it's very important that we give people this opportunity.

Speaker 2 (00:37:27):

Well, you know what, if you don't mind, I just want to talk about the nepotism for one moment. I do think that while that does exist, I don't think that it would really, for the most part, make anyone's careers. I think that at most it opens a door, but it actually is pretty destructive for an artist's long-term career usually because if you get, I've noticed that if you get a door opened before you're ready, that's actually the career suicide. It's much better for an artist to have opportunities present themselves when they're actually ready to make good on them and to actually utilize resources properly. That's just what I've noticed.

Speaker 3 (00:38:13):

No, you're right. You're right.

Speaker 2 (00:38:14):

So alright, let's go back to talking about you. So just a couple of decades ago kind of had to be in a big lavish studio in order to have the proper equipment to engineer a song pretty much. And nowadays there's way more engineers, there's also a much lower barrier to entry as far as getting gear. Do you feel like the surge in technology has contributed to the market getting saturated or do you consider it a positive thing or negative? What are your thoughts on, I guess the home recording revolution and also and how that's contributed to the demise of, I guess the big studio industry? We talked a lot about the old days, but what do you think of the new days?

Speaker 3 (00:39:07):

Well, I have so many feelings about the new paradigm that we're in now. I mean, first of all, without this technology and the way that it's been developed, if without this we would've really struggled because the way that the finance worked and the way that the money went down and the way that the budgets went down and the way the royalties went down, it would be very difficult to survive and be able to be as creative as we are today without that new technology. So on one hand, the internet was taking away from us because people were sharing files. But on the other hand, we were sharing recording files and being able to mix music that we wouldn't have been able to reach before from say, artists in Australia or India or wherever. And the fact that we could now make professional quality recordings from smaller studios that a lot of us, including myself have at home was a godsend really.

(00:40:04):

And it was a savior to our careers. There was too much compromise being made on the artistic side when the money came out. I remember the first time that I saw this sort of conflict of interest was when labels would start to come to you with a fund of how much money they had to get something done. Because previously to that, an a and r man would ask you to work on a project and then you would work and you would choose and you'd select what studios you felt was right for the artist, how much pre-production time you needed, et cetera, et cetera. And the money really was controlled way above your head and you just asked for what you needed and it was pretty much done. But when the fund occurred, there was some parameters to what you could actually do and hold on. By fund

Speaker 2 (00:40:49):

You mean budget,

Speaker 3 (00:40:50):

I mean budget. It was literally like,

(00:40:52):

Okay, we want you to mix this song. Let's pick a number out the air. We've got $3,000, so we need this done. So your responsibility as the mixer then would be to find the studio yourself, negotiate the rate, negotiate the rent for any outboard gear you need, make sure everything was included, the tapes being picked up, drops back to the label and your own fee. So it was a conflict of interest because when you'd start to work on the song and you'd already got the good rate at the studio, you may feel at the end of the first night that you just needed a little more time, maybe another day just to get things right. Maybe you need a few things that you wanted to work on, but in your mind you're thinking, well, hang on. If I use another day at the studio, I actually won't make very much money at all, which is not going to go down too well with the misses.

Speaker 2 (00:41:40):

That's legitimate

Speaker 3 (00:41:41):

Though. It's legitimate and you have to family to support. So this is no good. This is a conflict right here. I want another day to make this right, but there's no money to do it. This is why the creation of home recording studios and the necessity for the new technology, being able to do this from home was so vital because now I have a setup at home, which is a combination of analog and digital. It's mine. And if somebody comes to me to mix a song, if I love that song, if I've got nothing else going on, I might spend four days on it. And you know what? It doesn't matter because I own all the gear now. And that is the most important thing is that we don't compromise the creativity. And so there's good and bad. As I said, I could talk about it forever, about the way things were in the past.

(00:42:25):

I love the fact that you could walk into these amazing million dollar studios. It was fun times. I loved being able to be eye to eye with the artist and be able to deal with them one-to-one because that was probably 35, 40% of the job was to be able to be somebody that artists wanted to be within a studio and that you could understand what they were thinking and give them what they were thinking and help to make a great record. Now that art has gone completely because we work in isolation. So there's lots and lots of different things that have good and some things that are bad that have come, but the fact is that now at least we can continue to be creative and make music. It's just all be in a different fashion.

Speaker 2 (00:43:05):

Hey everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast and you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy, URM Academy's mission is to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if remember you already know how amazing it is at the beginning of the month now the mix members get the raw multitracks to a new song by artists like Lama God eth Shuga, bring Me the Horizon Gaira asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song of the album and takes your questions live on the air. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics and Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for use of your portfolio.

(00:44:07):

So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those who really, really want to step up their game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhanced, which includes everything I already told you about, and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like gain staging, mastering loan and so forth. It's over 50 hours of content. And man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed. Enhanced members also get access to one-on-one office hours sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes on a live video stream, fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. If any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills and your audio career, head over to URM academy slash enhanced to find out more.

(00:45:05):

So on the topic of being able to look artists in the eye, I guess, I mean you still kind of can do that, but obviously there's a lot more remote work. Do you find that that's gotten in the way of learning what the artist wants? Has it, I mean, how do you go about figuring that part out and look, I fully know what you're talking about and I think that being in person, not just for production, I mean there's a reason for why people still fly to business meetings when they could just be on Skype.

Speaker 3 (00:45:44):

There's

Speaker 2 (00:45:44):

This so much communication that's nonverbal between humans that's all about body language and vibe and that shit is so important and that's why deals all the most important deals are done in person. And that's why I believe that you look at being able to look a artist you're working with in the eye and to understand their vision, but how do you get around that now? How do you deal with it?

Speaker 3 (00:46:14):

It's very interesting because once again, this sort of good and bad about that. I mean, one of the things that's interesting is that when you send a mix of a song that you've spent a couple of days on to an artist that you've never met, you better make sure that that is a great piece of work because your personality is not going to push it over the line. It has to be able to stand up for itself. It sorts the men out from the boys. It's all very well that having all the gear, but you've got to have no point having all the gear and no idea you've got to have a vision for this particular piece of music and provide a great mix to them.

Speaker 2 (00:46:47):

You also can't trick them with volume.

Speaker 3 (00:46:49):

No, you can't. You can't. Yeah, you can't turn it up loud, crank it up on the big ones. See they're coming in now. You can't do that anymore. But there is something also by, if somebody walks in the room and you have a connection with them and you can get to from a B much faster when they're sitting next to you because there's none of this, I'd like the guitars to be a little bit more present in the chorus. And when you're in isolation, you go too far and they say, no, no, back a bit. And you go back and they go, no, no. If somebody's sitting right next to you, you sort of look them in the eye and you're moving the fader and you go, yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. And you can sense it. You can see their face light up because that combination of drums and guitar is just where they want to feel it.

(00:47:31):

So it's very fast when you are one-to-one with someone. And I'd say maybe 10% of my clients now still fly into Austin and they come to the studio and we close the mixes together, which is a really nice way of doing things is you get an opportunity to mix a song, try some things, get 'em wrong, much better to get things wrong when nobody's sitting beside you. Get it wrong, put it right, find how the song works best, and then bring them in to make their last few changes. That's quite good. But as I said, sadly, only about 10% of people can either afford or want to actually be bothered to do that. And apart from anything else in the old way of when artists did have to come down to a studio, it was sort of fun really, because if you're mixing for an artist and whether it be Ozzy or David Bowie, who wouldn't want to be in the studio and talk to them and share a few war stories with them and see what they're really like as people, that was part of the fun aspect of being a music producer or mixer is getting to meet the people.

(00:48:31):

So I sort of see that as a loss. Earlier this year I mixed a record for Jeff Goldblum and he made a jazz album and it was the actor. Yeah, he's iss a great jazz piano player and it was all cut. I had no idea. Yeah, it was on. It did really

Speaker 2 (00:48:48):

Well. Many talents.

Speaker 3 (00:48:49):

Yeah, he's really good. And it was recorded as a producer I mix a lot for called Larry Klein, who actually was up for Producer of the year last week at the Grammys. And I mix a lot of Larry's records and he produced the record and he went to Capitol Studios and cut the album in a live setting. They set up the main recording room at Capitol and put loads of chairs in and made it like a live show. Jeff's performs a lot live and they cut the album in two days. And once the album was finished being recorded, the hard drives were sent to me in Austin and I sat all on my own in my little studio, mixing it and having a great time, but on my own. And I never got to meet Jeff and people say, oh, what was Jeff Gilbin like? Usual story. I didn't actually get to meet the guy, which is I think is a bit disappointing quite frankly.

Speaker 2 (00:49:40):

It's interesting to me when people say the, I didn't get to meet him story, but after being on tour with somebody for three months or something, you hear, I've heard, it's interesting, I've heard been friends with an opening band that toured with some mega artists and it's like, what was that person like in real life? Dunno. Never met her. So speaking of gear, you were talking about gear in your hybrid setup. When did you switch over? When did you start to go hybrid and was that a difficult transition for you?

Speaker 3 (00:50:19):

I'd have to say yes purely because it was a fear of the unknown. I can remember I was actually recording an album with Tears for Fears in record Plant in Los Angeles and somebody said, would you like to see a demonstration of, I think it was called Sonic Solutions at the beginning, one of the first digital with the visual side to it. And I went to a demonstration, which was obviously the future of Pro Tools and stuff like that. They showed me the audio being recorded on the screen and my immediate reaction was, I'm sorry, I don't really think I need to see audio and it's not really of any great interest to me. I have some great studios and great gear and no thanks. And I sort of turned my back on it initially. And it was only when I began to see how many other producers and how many records were starting to be made with Pro Tools that I figured out if I don't work out how this Pro Tools thing works, I won't have a career much longer. So it's about time that I figured it out. So I got myself a Pro Tools rig and I set it up in the dining room at my home in Studio City. I was living in Los Angeles at the time, had a few lessons from an engineer that I knew and slowly made the transition into the world of Pro Tools. And I must be honest, I don't regret it at all. I'm actually now one of the biggest fans of the Pro Tools and the creativity that's come with it.

Speaker 2 (00:51:55):

That reminds me a little bit of, I used to know a guy that was, I guess he screwed up his career, but at the time when I was a teenager, he ran the biggest demo studio in Atlanta where I was growing up and he did pre-production for a bunch of bigger bands. So the bigger bands would come to him for a week, sometimes two weeks, do pre-production, then they'd go to the real producer to do the album. I remember that somehow he had gotten involved with Molly Crew or something like that and things got weird because they were one of the first bands that got their own systems and they got computers and started to make their own demos with computers and he lectured them about how computers are for games, not for music or work. Yeah, that's great. And yeah, that was the end of that gig. But it's so fascinating trying to put myself back in that time period and remembering engineers being so against it.

Speaker 3 (00:53:09):

I tell you what, you can romanticize way too heavily about the days of analog. And as somebody who made many, many, many albums on analog, I can assure you that when we set the band up live in the studio and we heard the sound of that band playing live coming through the monitors, we were always disappointed when we heard the playback. And the great thing about Protos now is that you have the control. The fact is that if you want to get that analog sound, if you want that distortion, which is essentially what Analog tape did it, it distorted what you were recording by compressing it and whatever. You can have that. You just need to be in control. You are the boss of the technology. And so many people make the mistake of thinking that, oh, it's the computers and the technology and the pro tools.

(00:54:00):

But no, you are the boss. You have every opportunity when you hear a sound come through your monitors to say, that is not what I want to hear. I want it to be warmer. I want it to be less compressed. I want it to be more compressed. But you are the boss of the technology. And when you sit in that driving seat, you shouldn't compromise. You don't have to use the excuse. I'll give you a perfect example. People will say, well, if you record on Pro Tools and you get a verse that's a bit sloppy in the performance when you're tracking and then you get the second verse, that's perfect, it's got the perfect timing, people will chop in the second verse into the first verse and the whole record starts to sound really boring and too perfect. Well, my argument to that obviously simply is why take the second verse and put it there.

(00:54:46):

Why not use the sloppy first verse and put that in the second verse so your overall performance is a little bit sloppier and cooler. So the technology's actually given you a sloppier performance. You are the one that's making the decision to make it perfect. So never forget that you are in the driving seat. You don't have to use Auto-Tune, you don't have to use Beat Detective. These are things that you make a conscious decision to use and never forget that those two particular things and be detective were never something that was desired by the music listening public. This was something that was useful to us, but people were not bringing back their records because they were a little bit out of tune or a little bit out of time. Always remember to be in the driving seat and it'll be a lot simpler. We want to hear humans and not technology.

Speaker 2 (00:55:37):

I think it's a very convenient thing to do, to blame other factors for bad results. But I think it's super empowering when you are reminded or when you remember that you are in control. But it's also, I guess, scarier for lots of people and they can't say, well, I don't have that vibe, so this isn't going to sound good. Now they can control how much or how little of that vibe there will be on it. And it puts a priority on intentionality. And with intentionality there comes responsibility. And I think that it's a lot easier to say, well, I just can't do it with this gear that the magic's gone,

Speaker 3 (00:56:33):

That's bullocks

Speaker 2 (00:56:34):

Than to say, I am now in control of how much or how little of that magic is. And through my decisions it will either be great or not. And shit, I'm now in control. I think that that's scarier for people,

Speaker 3 (00:56:48):

But as we said, it's all about decisions that you make. You can use this technology to your advantage. Well, I mean there's so many things that you can do with it nowadays. I can remember still running mixes and thinking, I don't like the sound of the dsr. I'm going to manually turn the filter on the top of the channel so that I get rid of those harsh Ss. So as it went to tape, you'd be turning the filter. Now, of course, with Pro Tools, if there's an S that you don't like, not only can you req it or turn it down, you could put your own S in which I've done a few times and make a nice smooth, bright S and just slot it in and no one will ever know the better. I mean, the control is outrageous of what you can do now.

(00:57:29):

And as I said, once again, always be in the driving seat and then you'll be in good shape. It was actually, I think in many ways the bands, they got it quicker than the producers because the producers were so, as I said, romantically linked to analog and the past. But I found, I did a record with Goldfinger. I produced a record and John Feldman was the guitar player, and he's obviously a very successful producer now, but he got it very fast and he sort of showed me about Pro Tools we would argue and fight about drum takes, and he knew about Beat Detective before I did. So as producer, I learned a lot from him about that. And I also did a record with Switchfoot fairly early on, and we did all and Pro Tools. And those guys would be, you'd do two or three bass takes and the bass player, I remember Tim saying to me, oh, can you just send me those three bass takes? I'll just be in the lounge. I'll pop together a comp. And they knew the technology and were using it faster than the producers were in that time.

Speaker 2 (00:58:26):

So do you think then that some of these older records came out great and succeeded despite the technology?

Speaker 3 (00:58:38):

I think that my overall view of records and their success sadly, is simply that people enjoy songs and performances and they enjoy them in a manner of different presentations. I don't think that people enjoy music anymore or any less now because of Pro Tools. I agree. You can record something terribly in Pro Tools or you can record something really well, the technology has got fuck all to do with people's enjoyment of the music. When you think about a sound like the Muscle Shoals sound or the sound of Phil Specter, that sound wouldn't mean anything if he hadn't recorded a good song. You'll only remember the songs that were great in the Phil Specter sound. The sound itself is irrelevant until it's connected with an artist, a performance and a song. The song is the King. And that's my piece of advice to any young producers and engineers is be very conscious of the artists and the music you make because no one's really going to care how well something's recorded if they don't connect to the actual music that you're making.

(00:59:54):

And a lot of that is unfortunately down to luck. I mean, I've been very fortunate to work with some great songs and I will probably be known by those songs rather than the mixes themselves, but I was 21 years of age and as a studio engineer, and this is not because they looked out for me and went for me. This artist cutting crew booked Utopia Studios and I was the house engineer, so I mixed, I just died in your arms tonight. And that was a very important record for me to be involved with in the eighties because it was the number one in America. But that was the important thing was the song, not Me. And I was the guy who was lucky enough to balance it and hopefully I feel I did it as proud and it sounds pretty good, but it wouldn't have meant anything if the song wasn't as good as it was.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):

And a question about the analog days, do you think that emphasis on the song was, I guess in some ways more at the forefront with engineers just because they were that much more limited with the gear? If there's no Beat Detective and there's no autotune and there's no easy quick way to comp and delete the space between Tom Hits, and if that doesn't exist, then what are you left to focus on? Maybe it is the song. Do you find that maybe it was that way?

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):

No, I don't think so. I think that as an engineer and a producer or a mixer, you're trying to bring the best out with what you have and with what tools you have. In those days, there were a particular set of tools and people made amazing sounding records with analog. There's no doubt they might be worried about how much level they were putting onto the half inch tape or how well the maintenance engineer had lined up the machine. And art, that's obviously non-existent anymore now, but you could go to a studio and the maintenance engineer would be able to line up the machine. So you've got an amazing low end. We had a different set of technical and things that we worried about, but ultimately we were trying to craft the best possible piece of work that we could with the song. Anyone who loses sight of the song, whether it's with Pro Tools or in the Old Way will have the same results. You're going to fail, but if the song is what's driving you and you use the tools that are around you, whether they're the old tools or the new tools, you'll be successful.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):

I think that that's great. Great advice. I want to change track a little and talk about some specific albums you've worked with and a couple questions about 10 by Pearl Jam. I think I was 13 when that got big. And I remember how that was one of those records that along with Nevermind, really Changed the World, really changed rock music. People that didn't experience that shift from the eighties to the nineties, maybe they might not understand it that well, but it was a massive, massive cultural shift, massive. Can you talk a little bit about your work in that era and maybe anything specifically that you remember about that record?

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):

Yeah, I'd love to give you some of the context of how that all went down. I ended up mixing Pearl Jams 10 because I already had a relationship with a couple of the members of the band from working on the previous band that they had, which was called Mother Love Bone. I mixed their album Apple in Los Angeles a couple of years previous, sadly, Andrew Wood, the singer for Mother Love Bone died and a couple of the members of the band decided they would form a new band and that band was called Mookie Blaylock and they'd found a new singer from San Diego called Eddie Veda. He was like a surfing dude who had this incredibly unique voice. Anyway, we took a little meeting together, we went to see some basketball and in the end it was decided that I would mix their new project, which eventually became Pel Jam's 10.

(01:04:09):

I wanted to get out of Los Angeles. I'd been there mixing for a long time, and we decided that we would mix the album in the Surrey countryside in a studio called Ridge Farm, which is a very old farmhouse with a lovely Neve console and accommodation. So the band all flew over from Seattle and we basically got to work and we did a few small overdubs, we did some guitars on a live, we put the solo on and Mike basically blew us away in one take on the second morning, I added some percussion, we did a few bits of vocals with Eddie, but basically the record was done and it had been recorded very well. The album was actually recorded in Seattle at London Bridge Studios with Rick Par as the producer and Dave Hillis had engineered it and everything sounded really good. It was a very traditional band recording.

(01:05:04):

It was recorded over three or four weekends, drums, bass, guitars, vocals, backing vocals with a little bit of keyboard. So in fact, there was actually a lot of opportunity for a mixing engineer to really elaborate on what they'd done. There was a lot of space for being able to create atmospheres, have a section where you kill the room, make everything really dry, then go deep again with the reverb, backwards, reverbs delays, all those sort of things. So it was a great opportunity for me. And having the band there was great too because we would basically mix one song a day. It was a very low or no pressured sort of album because there was very little in the way of expectation. No one knew what was to come. All I knew was that this was a great band from Seattle with some really cool songs and a great vocalist, and I was mixing the record, didn't really think too much about it, and we weren't being looked over by a and r every day.

(01:05:58):

Michael Goldstone, who signed the band, came in at the end. So we just had fun and the band would check the mix every morning and we'd make any changes that needed to be done. And it all went very smoothly in the context of what was going on in Seattle. As I was living in Surrey in England at the time, I was not aware of the Seattle sound and the sound that was around at that time was of course bands like Poison Tesla, Motley Crew, et cetera, et cetera. I can remember I used to often enjoy a break from mixing by when the rewind button was spinning the tape back to the beginning, I'd often put the MTV on and just hear what was going on. And I remember Scorpions Winds of Change was the song that was on MTV all the time. But anyway, the music that was being mainstream, although was mainstream at the time, certainly was not the way that the grunge movement was about to become.

(01:06:55):

So interestingly enough, I was not afraid of reverbs, I was not afraid of delays and things like that, which it became not a cool thing to use later. But at that time I was certainly not afraid of being adventurous with things like that. And the band didn't seem to have a problem with it. So it all went very smoothly. Now looking back, of course the sound changed very much. We had a lot of success with the record, but our record was wetter than a lot of the other records that came out of the Seattle scene. It was one of the first of course, but that's exactly why the scene hadn't quite evolved yet. But the band later had the opportunity to revisit that album with Brendan and they probably revisited it, I dunno, many, many years later. But as you know in the music industry, everything goes round in circles.

(01:07:47):

And by the time they revisited it and dried the whole 10 album up and made it more raw music had already come back to being about reverb again. So in fact, the album that I mix suddenly sounded more contemporary than the new one in my opinion. And secondly, when you make or you mix music, you are responding to that moment in time, whether you like it or not, it should be left that way because it is what it is. It represents that moment in time. Another thing that's interesting about the 10 album I find is that its presentation was a really nice bridge across to the new sound that was coming. It wasn't an extreme jump from the hair metal bands of the eighties into the dry gargy Sound of Seattle tend, not intentionally, I must say, but it's turned out that it worked very well because it elements of the old and the new all joined together. It was a sort of stepping stone as you will across from the metal to the grunge scene. Yeah, I have very good memories of making that record and I was very fortunate to be part of it. That's for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):

I wonder if there's a deeper lesson here about that reverb story because just tell me your thoughts on this, but oftentimes, and I agree with this, that you hear artists, songwriters, great producers, even film directors just say, don't chase trends. You have to do what feels right to you when you're making the art and be true to the art. And because if you chase a trend who knows by the time what you're doing is released, that trend might be over anyways. Absolutely. So it kind of tells me that you were just pursuing what seemed right for the record, the reverbs, but like you said, by the time it was re-released, those reverbs were back in. So in a way you were on the cutting edge, but you can't predict that stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):

No, I mean, I've said this before, but you can't go back to your high school photograph and Photoshop your haircut as much as you'd like to. That's the way you looked. That is the way you looked at that moment. That is the way that record looked to us at that moment. And we were responding to everything that was around us and everything that we'd listened to that point. And that's what came out and we were pretty happy with it at the time. And when everything changes and everything goes dry, it's very easy to go, oh, I wish. I wish I can't go there. I mean, I listened back to records from sixties and seventies. I wouldn't change a thing. In fact, when technology got better and people started to remix things and make them sound better, how many times do we not like the better version? Even if it is technically,

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):

I can't think of a single time.

Speaker 3 (01:10:45):

No, exactly. I mean, this is the thing is that there's an expression that we use in the industry called demo, and there was a period in time when people would say, oh, they've fallen in love with the demo. That's all it is. It's demos. What you've done is better. It's always difficult to better something with a cover version, say even if you do it better musically, sonically, people will love a song the way that they are presented to them the first time because it has an emotional connection. And if the first time you fall in love with a song, it's a bit sloppy and it's a little bit out of tune. If it is emotive and you fall in love with it, you don't want to hear it played properly and you don't want to hear it in tune, which is why so many great songs are not perfect.

(01:11:31):

We strive for perfection when sometimes perfection isn't what's required. Leave things alone when you're recording. I learned this a long time ago. If you're recording something, try and beat it. If you can beat it, great. If you can't import the demo, import the demo guitar. It's got a really cool fucked up sound that was recorded through a plugin. It doesn't matter. It has something magical about it and learn to accept it. Put your ego aside, import it, and then better the whole thing. I mean, I remember Jimmy Ivy, I worked with him and he used to often go back to demos. I found that out through people that worked around him and they'd say, oh, Jimmy recorded it twice and went back to the demo and at the time thinking, oh, he'd failed. But I realize now he was on the case because it's a far bigger man to accept the fact that there's something special that you haven't recorded and use that than to try and push something onto the public that's just substandard.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):

That goes along with something. I've always said that part of being a great producer is knowing when to get out of the way.

Speaker 3 (01:12:33):

Yeah, absolutely. Sit at the back and smoke a fast cigar. If they're great, if they're rocking, take all the credit for it. Let them do their thing. If you know that what they're doing is great, sometimes that's happened. Sometimes you actually literally in there replaying guitars when they've gone home dropping in every high note, it's going to be swings and roundabouts. Some projects are going to be easy, some aren't. But absolutely don't change things that don't need to be changed just because you feel that you need to be able to show what you added.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):

So speaking of adding stuff and how you approach a project, but you've obviously worked on a huge wide variety of artists and all the way from something like Porcupine Tree to Ozzy. Would you take a different approach with something like Porcupine Tree then an Aussie record?

Speaker 3 (01:13:26):

Not in my head. The artist is obviously going to lead the way with the material that they create. My job is to help them make the best possible version of what they're trying to do. And it was a conscious decision on my part years ago to work with different types of music. And in the last few years I've even made quite a lot of jazz records, but it would be really dull to be just the guy that makes new metal or jazz or whatever. It's far more fun to be able to work on different types of genres of music. And particularly growing up in the UK where our radio was based around the idea of all music as opposed to genre based radio stations, that was something that was never a problem to me. I like lots of stuff, so I like working with different types of music.

(01:14:11):

And not only that, but if you know something about heavy metal, you could actually bring that knowledge to a jazz record and the artists say, oh, wow, I hadn't thought of that before. But you, because you've made a lot of records in other different styles. So there's a lot to be said for being able to work with different genres of music. And as I said, it's all about the song. That's the most important thing. How do I make this song the best it can be? Is it the vocal? In which case the instrumentation must not get in the way of what he's trying to say? Is it the lyric even more so let's make sure that I don't lose a word. Is the lyric poor, but the groove's good? Okay, let's get the vocal to be an instrument. It's almost like part of the groove because I want the groove to be the whole thing. Every single thing that you listen to, you're making a conscious decision about what you think is the important aspect of that particular song. And if you follow that lead, then it all seems to make sense.

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):

That's a great answer. I guess with an artist like Porcupine Tree, what I'm wondering about is how much of yourself do you bring to the table when you're dealing with, I guess that level of brilliance plus skill? I think that not every artist has that much ability, I guess.

Speaker 3 (01:15:32):

Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. There are certain your input is tempered by the people that surround you. There's no doubt about it. I mean, I found it hard to suggest to David Bowie that maybe he could possibly redo something. But I can imagine these people, if they're really great and was, they don't have a problem with listening to input at all. It's often the more insecure people who are not open to ideas. But with the Porcupine Tree, for example, I mean, they had actually made a great sounding record already. I mean, it did sound really good, and my job was to try and just sometimes mixing is bringing something from 70 to 90. You're just bringing up the quality of what they've done. It's fine tuning, it's chiseling out frequencies to let things speak. It's allowing things to drop down and other things to speak in their place, small, subtle things like that.

(01:16:31):

And other times as a mixer, it's a hatchet job. You are starting from scratch. You're like, okay, and this happens sadly more often than not these days is you think, okay, well the drums are terrible, so I'm going to replace the snare drum. I'm going to add my own room sounds. I'm going to replay the bass. I'm going to add a new part in the chorus. I'm going to fix that vocal and tune it in the pre chorus and you can do so much. So once again, it's all about looking at what's in front of you and saying, what do I need to do to make this the best it can be? And sometimes that journey is really long and other times it's really very pleasant and very simple. I mean, I think that porcupine tree was sort of to the end of the time when people would spend maybe a couple of months making an album and they'd make an album with somebody who had made a lot of albums before, a reputable producer, they'd be in a studio that was a great studio.

(01:17:27):

They'd have microphones that were really top class microphones. So when it came to the mixing, there was a vision that had already been clearly marked out, and you didn't come in and stamp all over that vision because it didn't need to be. It was already sounding great. Nowadays, an artist can often be, given we've only got this amount of money, let's get into a studio and get it done. So they're working in a studio that may not be so good. The microphones may not be so good, then performance may not be so good, they might not have time to try things. So at the mixing stage, you've got a hell of a lot to achieve because you've got to get it up to the level that we did before. And yeah, it's challenging. That's for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:18:11):

I want to key in on something you were just saying that given the power of tools these days when you get something to mix, you can go ahead and just redo the base, re-edit this, add that, replace this other thing, and it's almost borders on secondary production or a secondary production process. How do you feel about that?

Speaker 3 (01:18:39):

Well, I feel simply that when I finish mixing something, if I've added a lot of things, I'll say to the artist, could I get a co-production credit as well as the mixed credit?

Speaker 2 (01:18:49):

Fair enough.

Speaker 3 (01:18:50):

And nine times out of 10, if they love what you've done, they will be absolutely fine with that. And I always make a point of saying to anybody that I work for or mix for, look, I'm going to try some things. I'm going to give you everything I've got, and if you don't like something, it's one mute button and that part is gone. But I'll put it on there anyway because I feel that I deserve to at least give you that. And then you can make your decision. And any artist would be happy to at least hear something.

Speaker 2 (01:19:21):

Yeah, I think as long as they feel comfortable with their ability to say no if they don't like it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:26):

Yeah, absolutely. Of course. Yeah, I mean it's a whole different time now. So producers are often they last, producers are often mixers. Now, like myself, I very rarely produce things. So a lot of bands are very happy to have a producer who's mixing the record at the end, and if you need to add some percussion or whatever it is that you're going to add it, and if they don't like it, as I said, it's a simple mute, but it just seems to be the way that mixing has gone these days.

Speaker 2 (01:19:54):

So we've talked a lot about modern mixing versus old school, mixing modern production versus old school. One of the other things, and I guess we touched on be detective in autotune, but yeah, one of the things that also is hugely different now is the ability to edit. And that's a whole other can of worms, I think, by which you can really make something great or make it terrible. What are your thoughts on, I guess, the ability to edit the life out of a track now versus just do some very basic things like in the old days, a lot of people bag on modern productions because of that ability and they say that everything is fake and edit it to hell and back, and that it just destroys music. What do you think about that aspect of things?

Speaker 3 (01:20:49):

Well, I think I've got an opinion on that, that's for sure. I mean, a lot of the time when people listen to music and they're the sort of person that complains, what they seem to be hearing is not people but technology. And I understand that a lot of records to me sound very small, and part of that is because of the technology. They seem to get away with it because of what we talked about earlier. Because even if it's a great song, even if it sounds a bit small, people don't really care because they want to sing along. So luckily they get a pass. But as far as the production of it and the technology, it has a lot to be desired. And the technology has given us this opportunity, like we said, to use our eyes and our eyes can make us make some very poor decisions because nowadays we often tend to see something as being wrong rather than listen.

(01:21:37):

I know it's something that a lot of people do, and I'll say it anyway, but when I mix things, I often, when it gets close to being where I feel it's right, I'll turn the monitor off or close my eyes. But generally speaking, I find it easier to turn the monitor off and just listen through the speakers. And it's amazing how when you stop doing, you don't engage your eyesight into the process. It's almost like part of your brain gives more emphasis on the ears. I like to think of it as the Stevie Wonder approach, but basically you are concentrating on nothing but the sound and you hear things very clearly because no one else is going to see it like you do. But we make a lot of decisions upon our eyes, and I think that's a mistake drum wise, a kick drum and a snare drum or a Tom Phil, if they don't hit exactly at the same moment, you get a slight pH flam.

(01:22:35):

But that flam is what other people would call as the size, the way that a kick drum and a bass guitar and a guitar line up. If you listen to a great rock recording and put it into pro tools and analyze it, the guitar may be slightly ahead of the kick and the bass might be a little bit behind. And between those three things is something that's fucking massive. And if you put those pieces together individually and line them all up to the kick drum and they all hit your ear at the same moment, and guess what? It sounds pretty small. Why is that? Because it's not hitting your ears. It's not wide. It hasn't got that big round sound, so be detective and stuff like that. You have to be careful. I find actually, strangely enough, I find a lot of my mixing, I move things nudge things around to get that, to feel that size come back.

(01:23:27):

Sometimes guitars can be just too on the beat and you nudge 'em back a bit and then suddenly it starts to get some sort of feel together. People have been doing that a lot with vocals. They nudge them back on the back of the beat. But you'd be surprised how much of mixing you find that I've got the first verse sounding of it, but the second verse doesn't. And if you just nudge a couple of things around, you go, okay, now the mix is fine and you haven't changed any levels. You just changed the placement of where the sounds are hitting the ear. So all that stuff is really important. And the same thing applies with tuning. I'm a bit like a broken down record talking about tuning, but if you think of it like this, in the sixties and seventies and even eighties, people would tune up against each other and basically, if you could imagine that the a four 40 perfect pitch line, it was pretty thick because everyone was a little bit out with each other.

(01:24:18):

So the guitar might be a little sharp, the bass might be a little flat, the keyboard might be in the middle. So this area of so-called Intune was wide. So when somebody went out to sing, whether it be Robert Plant or whoever, if they bend a little bit in their performance, it sounded fucking cool. It was called emotion because they were able to go above the note and beyond the note and still be in tune. So if you think of the opposite to nowadays, you put everyone in tune perfectly and you tune it up. The line of tune is so thin that when you go to sing, you go slightly sharp through your emotion and it sounds like crap because it's out of tune. There's nowhere for you to go. So what you do, you end up tuning the vocal as well. Then everything is in the same point, which is the complete opposite of what an orchestra does. I mean, the reason that there's eight on however many violins is because between them all, you get this big sound and we're sort of working the opposite way. I think people nowadays are a bit smarter about it, and they're sort of figuring this out. But for a while, records were so overt tuned that it was quite shocking.

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):

I think that's a great answer, Tim. I think that this is a great place to wrap this up. I just want to ask you one last question, which is, we kind of touched on this, but just a good way to wrap it up is if you have any advice for people that are now just starting their studio business or are starting to transition into making a little bit of money with one and who really kind of see this as their path, is there anything that you would tell yourself from now or that you would tell them?

Speaker 3 (01:26:03):

I think I would tell them to be confident in themselves. I think a lot of my career, I worried that what I'm doing, I'm not as good as this guy or I can't play guitar as well as this guy, but you have to really follow your heart. You have to really go after great artists. Don't ever forget that we're driven. People are driven by great musicians who and great performances and great songs as we've discussed many times on this conversation. But that is what's going to make you stand out above everyone else, is if your show real as great songs, they're going to stay in people's heads. It's more important than anything else. No one's going to be interested in your well-recorded and mixed version of a very poor performance and poor song.

(01:26:51):

The main thing is to be extremely determined to not give up and use the social media and have a plan as much as you can. I mean, it's so important these days not to just sit back and hope that it'll all happen. You have to get out there and meet as many people as you can because unfortunately, our industry is reliant upon contacts and friends. You may be the greatest mixing engineer in the world sitting in somewhere in the middle of America, but unless you get out and meet the right people, no one will discover you. So just really go for it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:22):

I really want to just echo everything you just said. I think that the being a human being that knows people and can interact with people, it's just as important as your skills because without that, you're nowhere really. Nobody cares if you're just a technician. I feel like it's almost assumed if you're at the table, if you're going to be considered for a gig, your skills are almost assumed that, I mean, obviously you're not going to get the gig if you're not good at what you do or you shouldn't be getting the gig. You're not good at what you do, but I feel like your skills are assumed. It's that other stuff that makes the big difference.

Speaker 3 (01:28:05):

It is. I mean, leave your ego at the door. Remember, remember that you are not the song. You're not the word. You're the highlighter. Pen.

Speaker 2 (01:28:14):

Thank you very, very much, Tim Palmer. I appreciate you being so generous with your time and just it's been great talking to you. Thank you for coming on.

Speaker 3 (01:28:23):

Thank you so much for having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:28:25):

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