XL Recording Studio Guide 2006

In the mix and out of sight

An ode to engineers

By Michael Corcoran
Thursday, September 28, 2006

There's a joke Bismeaux Studio house engineer Cris Burns likes to tell that sums up the life he's chosen. "An engineer goes outside and sees a bullfrog," Burns says. "The frog says that a kiss from the engineer would turn the frog into a beautiful princess. But the guy just puts the frog in his pocket.

" 'Why didn't you kiss me?' the frog asked. 'I'll turn into a beautiful girl.'

"The response: 'I'm an engineer, so I don't have time for a girlfriend. But a talking frog is pretty cool.' "

Not LOL material, but it couldn't be more true. At a recording session, the engineer is the first to arrive, the last to leave and the one who seems to move the least. The task is to be invisible except for a pair of hands that can feel their way around a recording console with the passion of a blind alcoholic in a liquor store. They have to duplicate the sound at the source — the amp, the drum head, the acoustic guitar, the voice — from behind a picture window and through a maze of machinery. They are asked to be major nerds with awesome people skills. Their job is to not mess up, to not flap.

"It's like being a football referee," says Fred Remmert, whose engineering credits include "Home" by the Dixie Chicks, the best-selling album ever recorded in Austin. "If nobody notices you, you're doing a great job."

On the other side, however, there are artists who like to be challenged by the folks in the booth. "I'd say it's about half-and-half," says Andy Sharp, house engineer for the Music Lane studio. "Some acts want to collaborate with the engineer, with a lot of ideas bouncing around. You end up feeling like an honorary band member by the end of the session. But other times you know to stand back."

A good engineer is the bridge between art and technology, but personality figures heavily in the equation. "You have to make the artist comfortable to get the best out of them," says Burns, who has started billing himself as The Fire. The engineer is driving the bus (with the producer telling him where to turn) and so he keeps his eyes on the road.

"I usually spend part of the first lesson trying to talk them out of it," says Courtney Audain, the longtime Austin musician who mentors audio engineering students at the Coinhead studio he built in the back of his house off Cameron Road. "I tell them the hours are long — musicians expect you to work as long as they want to play — and whatever money you do make, usually goes back into the equipment."

But those who make it to lesson two and beyond will find that Trinidad native Audain is a willful studio rat. He caught the bug, he says, while playing with Timbuk 3, who produced most of their last record at their home studio in Tarrytown.

Most engineers, like Audain, are musicians. Burns is a member of Rockland Eagles and does occasional reunion gigs with the deliciously depraved Pocket FishRmen. Sharp plays guitar in Kissinger. Michael Crow is in Grand Champeen; Will Hoffman in Pushmonkey. Jared Tuten, formerly of Pariah, plays with Broken Teeth. Frenchie Smith's Bubble studio is bursting with guitarists, including Alex Lyon of Zykos.

That's well and good, but those guitarists are much more valued within the scene for the technical support they give to other musicians. This town's lousy with ax-slingers, but when you find someone who knows every aspect of recording, a prerequisite of engineering, that's someone special.

The true legends of the Austin music scene are not in the Flatlanders and never played with the Cobras. They are the get-it-down guys named Dave McNair, Chet Himes, Dave Tuttle, Jay Hudson, Richard Mullins and Larry Greenhill. Ask today's local musicians who they admire and they're as likely to list Fred Remmert, Mark Hallman, Stuart Sullivan, Carl Thiele or Mike McCarthy, as they are anyone named Vaughan.

These hidden heroes are small names on the back of the album, but they're hugely important to the folks whose pictures are on the cover.

That value carries over to the financial side. Someone who's slow on the knobs can cost musicians hundreds of dollars per session. But one who breezes through a project isn't neccessarily preferable, especially if his mind is set on clocking out, not rocking out.

Engineers are like bartenders; the best ones have fast hands and good ears. They also must have undiscriminating tastes. The job is not to tailor the sound more to your liking, but to try to understand the artists' vision and help them make a recording that best translates it.

"There's an element of trust involved," says Burns. "You have to let (the artists) know you're 100 percent on the same page."

His musical preference might be hard rock, but Burns works on everything from gospel to punk. Remmert, best known for keeping the zing in the strings for the Dixie Chicks, Shawn Colvin and Uncle Tupelo, earned his reputation recording speed-metal bands.

The universal truth is that good sound comes from good musicians.

"I learned a lot from James Tuttle," says Remmert, who owns the Cedar Creek studio. "After he moved away, I did everything exactly like he did — same mikes, same set-up — but I could never get his big drum sound. It was frustrating; I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong."

Then one day, Remmert worked a session with noted jazz drummer Steve Meador (Passenger) and the drum sound was big, meaty, perfect. "That was a revelation," Remmert says. He learned, that day, that what happened on the other side of the glass was more important than what happened on his. "It's all about respecting the sound at the source," he says. "My job as an engineer is, basically, don't screw it up."

Every engineer has at least one horror story. For Burns it was the time, just as he started working at Bismeaux, that he almost made Lyle Lovett deaf. The singer was recording a Bob Wills song with Asleep at the Wheel and Burns plugged something into the wrong patch, sending shrieking, earsplitting feedback into Lovett's headphones. The singer threw the headphones down and yelped, "That's the worst thing that's ever happened to me in a studio!"

Burns was crushed. He apologized to Lovett and wondered if he was really cut out for the studio life. But he got over it and is now considered one of the top audio engineers in Texas. And a local studio in-joke was born. Whenever an engineer does anything wrong, even the most minor mistake, like being a mike short during setup, the producer or artist will exclaim, "That's the worst thing that's ever happened to me in a studio!" The smaller the gaffe, the funnier it sounds.

Engineers might not be the wittiest bunch, but when things are going right in the studio, everyone laughs at their jokes.

Job description: Audio engineer

Mark Hallman of Congress House recording studio in Austin tells what it takes to be an audio engineer:

Tools needed:
Ears
Acoustical space
Gear
Patience

Situate:
The musicians arrive at the studio with their instruments. Greet, show them the load-in door. Offer them coffee or tea. Now is the time to decide where everybody is going to perform during the session. The studio has five rooms of various sizes. Do they need to see each other? Do they need to be in the same room? Where will their instrument sound the best? Sitting or standing? Do they need a music stand?

Listen:
'That's a great guitar. Could you play it a bit for me?' Wrap your ears around the instrument. Find the sweet spots to decide where to put the microphone. This applies to all the instruments, although you may not want to get too close to some, or they will blow your head off.

Electrify:
This is where it gets technical. What diaphragm, wires, tubes, capacitors, resistors, transformers and op-amps will best capture (or mangle, in some cases) the sound of the instrument or voice? Microphone, cable, preamplifier, sound processor, tape, analog-to-digital converter, etc. A good engineer has a vast knowledge of recording equipment and hopefully finds him or herself in a studio with a lot of choices.

Expedite:
Be fast, invisible and egoless.

Record:
Capture everything, remember everything, document everything.

You are not human:
Musicians take breaks. You don't. Don't miss anything. Make sure everyone knows you are working for them.

And finally:
Go home, collapse and wait for the call.

Don't take it personally.