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samantha1170
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 Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 06:42 |
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OLD ARTICLES FROM "SOUND ON SOUND" 1999/2000
Hi everyone I posted this on JPP - it was an interesting read so I thought I'd post it here (even though it's an old article)...
THE BIG CHILL
Can an Englishman's home be both his castle and his studio — or is it better to keep business and pleasure apart? Jay Kay of Jamiroquai clearly feels that building his own facility has paid off. Sue Sillitoe heads for his Chillington studio in Buckinghamshire to find out more...
"After recording two albums in London we decided to go residential for our third album, Travelling Without Moving," says Jamiroquai's front man Jay Kay. "That experience inspired me to build my own studio — I wanted to recapture the sense of community that had made the album such a success."
Rock stars buying country houses and building their own recording studios is hardly a new phenomenon. Sting's done it, so has Peter Gabriel — not to mention a whole bevy of bands such as Ten Years After, Status Quo and Pink Floyd, who began the trend in the 1970s.
Back then, building a studio at home was a valid accountancy ploy because artists could offset equipment purchases against tax. But these days, thanks to various governments' efforts in closing tax loopholes, building a pukka home studio is less about tax avoidance and more about retaining creative freedom and artistic control.
Jay Kay's decision to build his own studio was taken in true rock and roll style — mid-flight, halfway across the Atlantic, where he used the proverbial 'back of a fag packet' to sketch out a rough plan of the kind of facility he wanted.
"It was 1997, and we'd just finished a major tour to promote Travelling Without Moving," says engineer Rick Pope, who now runs Kay's studio. "Jay was tired and wanted a break from the road so that he could work on the next album. He'd recorded Travelling Without Moving at the residential Great Linford Studios and had really enjoyed the experience, so after the tour he decided to look for a country house that he could use as both his home and studio. When we got back to the UK he threw himself into house-hunting and eventually found Chillington, which is where we are now based."
Chilling Out
Chillington, for those not familiar with its geography, is located in a tiny hamlet in Buckinghamshire, about an hour's drive from central London. You need a map to find the house, which is tucked away at the end of a narrow country lane. Once owned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the house was built in the early 1700s and has stunning gardens, which were laid out by Capability Brown in 1754. Sadly, I didn't get to see much of the house or gardens because the studio, where I was scheduled to meet Rick Pope, is located in a relatively new building behind the property and next to the swimming pool.
"This was previously used as a leisure area for people hanging out around the pool," explained Pope as I poked about in the studio. "Jay found the house and decided it was ideal, because it was close to London where the rest of the band live and it had space to build a recording studio. When I came to see it I took one look at this building and said 'That's it — that's your studio.' He replied 'Fine — you do it, then.' I dropped myself right in it!"
An Audience With The Pope
Rick Pope's role with Jamiroquai stems back to 1994, when he toured with the band as chief live sound engineer. Having grown tired of handling massive stadium tours for the likes of Peter Gabriel, Pope was attracted to the idea of working with a band that was still relatively new on the scene. "I wanted to get back to smaller and more intimate venues, which were exactly the kind of venues Jamiroquai was playing then. The only problem was Jay. He had a reputation for being Mr. Angry, especially when he didn't get the sound he wanted, so I had some concerns about how our working relationship would turn out."
As time has proved, the relationship turned out just fine. Thanks to years of experience, Pope quickly realised that Kay's disillusionment with his live sound stemmed from the fact that he wasn't singing into the microphone properly. "No one had bothered to talk to him to try and discover what was wrong," Pope says. "I was the first engineer to tell him that the problem was his voice, which wasn't coming across clearly because he wasn't singing into the mike. Once we'd identified the difficulty it was an easy problem to sort out."
Kay was so delighted that he stopped being Mr. Angry and asked Pope if he would stick around for the last leg of the tour in Japan. "We hit it off, maybe because I was straight with him, so I agreed to go. After that, I toured with other acts for 18 months while Jay wrote another album, then I came back to Jamiroquai for the Travelling Without Moving tour and I've been with him ever since. I think I'm part of the fixtures and fittings now, which is probably the closest you get to a pension in this industry!"
Building Blocks
For a man who happily claims no prior knowledge of studio building, Rick Pope proved to be a natural — with, he admits, a little help from his friends. "I'd never built a studio before, but I know plenty of people who do this kind of thing so I called on them for assistance. The main person I involved was Al Smart, who heads up Smart Research and had previously worked for Solid State Logic. I'd met him years earlier and we'd stayed in touch. I told him about the project and explained that, as project manager, I needed someone alongside me who had his set of technical skills and general know-how. I was the interface between Jay and what we needed technically and equipment-wise."
Kay's initial aim was to build a room that reflected the way he and the band work when they play live. "Basically, we wanted to replicate that," says Pope. "We approached the project with a view to building a studio that could capture the feel of the band playing live — somewhere that was large enough for everyone to set up and play together as if they were on stage. But, of course, things evolve as you go along so it didn't turn out exactly how we planned. We do have a live room that is large enough for the whole band, but our style of recording has evolved to the point where we don't always have everyone playing in there at once."
The studio has a large live room overlooking the garden, an equally spacious control room and a separate machine room housing, amongst other things, two Studer A827 tape machines. There is a kitchen and bathroom on the ground floor, while the first floor has been turned into offices.
Pope says: "The roof of the control room had to be raised by 1.6 metres to provide headroom for a new air-conditioning system. The live room also needed work. We put in a new floor, treble-glazed windows and a sliding patio door. Unfortunately the floor warped and had to be relaid very recently. Ironic isn't it — all the electrical stuff in the whole studio worked fine first time, but the bloody floor didn't!"
Given that money was presumably not an issue, it's surprising to learn that Pope dispensed with professional studio design consultancies on the grounds of budget. "We designed the studio ourselves, with Al Smart's help, because we were not prepared to pay a name designer to do it for us," Pope explains. "You can easily spend a million building a studio, but my budget was significantly lower than that and I wanted most of that money to go on equipment, not room design. Most of the equipment was bought second-hand, although not crucial things like microphones and tape machines — I insisted on buying them new."
During construction the control room was tie-lined, via 32-way multicore, to the main house, where Kay has a writing room and a newly installed digital studio. "There is a video link running through to the house so that we can see what's going on from the main control room," Pope says. "The house has about 30 different rooms, so we have plenty of recording environments to choose from. There's a real mixture of acoustics, from high ceilings in some to cellars and attics. Having said that, we've only used three rooms so far. The drawback is the distance. OK, we have a camera link and a shout system, but moving a mic means running all the way over to the house, which gets very boring if you have to do it 10 times a session."
Vintage Sounds
In recent months Jay Kay has been investing heavily in vintage synthesizers, using Music Control to source many of the rarer items. The latest additions are a Memorymoog and a Roland System 100M three-rack modular system with five modules in each rack.
"Our keyboard player, Toby Smith, got hold of a Memorymoog from Music Control and that inspired Jay Kay to go in the same direction," says Rick Pope. "We wanted some old-school analogue synthesizers and when Music Control offered us the Roland it looked too funky to resist — the sort of thing you can imagine Stevie Wonder playing. It sounds great and I'm sure it will be used on quite a few tracks."
Kay adds that the Memorymoog is currently his favourite. "It's got some wicked sounds. Now, when I hear Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygene, I think to myself 'So that's how he did it.' I've come to realise that these vintage synth sounds dominate much of the material that I like — albums like Stevie Wonder's Inner Visions, where synths are used extensively. We knew it was part of their sound, so we started buying equipment that allowed us to emulate it. A lot of the older equipment is difficult to find, but we have held out for particular items because the sounds you get from them are not replicated on modern gear. Apart from that they are so much more tactile to work with — big buttons!"
Both Toby Smith and Jay Kay have a wish-list of synths they want to add to their collections — which means buying in duplicate, as Smith usually takes his own gear home at night. "I need to make sure we have gear that matches Toby's," Kay explains. "We certainly had a Prophet 5 and a Roland M100 on the wish-list, and we've recently bought an Oberheim OBX and old Elka string synth, which is blinding. It's got these mad, mad sounds that I really want to work with. No matter how many cards you buy, you can't find sounds like these on anything else.
"When we started using this type of equipment we were trailblazers, because very few people were going down this route. We've definitely had an influence on bands like Moloko, who I swear must have watched a Jamiroquai gig at some point. I see it as flattering that we have been emulated but I also think it's time for us to get radical and reaffirm our corner. That's why we are using these nasty sounds, along with live bass, strings and backing vocals which we're incorporating from the outset — something we've never done before. In the past we've spun backing vocals in later, but with this album we are bringing them in very early and including them in the writing process. It's a question of thinking the project through as a unit, rather than hitting little bits at a time."
Kitting Out
Construction work on the studio began in January 1998, and was completed in July of that year. During this time Pope searched for key pieces of equipment, including the console — an SSL E-Series with G-Series computer — which he bought from a studio in Paris. He says: "Easy maintenance is important, because we're not a commercial facility and don't employ 24-hour maintenance staff. Jay wanted an SSL because they are very reliable — and because it makes sense, given that we are just down the road from SSL's head office. It took a while to track down the right console, which then went to Smart Research for a thorough overhaul. It was given such a good clean that we didn't recognise it when we eventually got it back because it looked brand-new."
Another major acquisition was the monitoring. Rick Pope says the criterion for this was straightforward: he wanted something that could handle a bit of beef. "We looked at a few different models, but although they sounded great they were so expensive that I just couldn't justify the price. No-one mixes on big speakers any more, but we still wanted something that was powerful enough to make you want to dance. Eventually we chose a system that is basically a revamped and souped-up pair of Turbosound Floodlights. They're not true reference monitors but they cost £12,000, including amps and crossovers, compared to £20,000 for some of the others I saw. I was getting quotes from people like Genelec for £50,000! I said 'What, for a pair of speakers? Do I get a truck and crew as well?', because £50,000 to a live sound engineer is enough to pay for a whole tour's worth of audio equipment for six weeks. I wasn't paying that for a pair of speakers, so I went to see Tony Andrews at Function One and he came down, met Jay, did some listening tests and suggested these. They are basically live sound speakers, which goes back to our original concept for the studio — to have a place where we could record as though live."
While the studio was being built, Pope set up a writing room in the main house so that Kay could continue to work. "I'd buy stuff that was destined for the studio and stick it in the writing room," he says. "A DAT player was high on the list and was one of the first acquisitions. We also had an old Mackie 32:8 desk and two Tascam DA88s.
"At that stage we were doing everything 16-track for demo and songwriting purposes only. I bought a couple of reverbs: an AMS RMX16 and an Eventide H3000. We didn't have many compressors, but I bought some gates and then gradually added other equipment as we needed it. We always aimed to collect things and even now we are not averse to adding new equipment when we see something we particularly like or need. The list is very comprehensive and we've got a flavour of pretty much everything."
One vital component of that list is the vintage AKG C12 valve microphone Pope recently managed to track down. "It's the perfect vocal microphone for Jay and he loves it," Pope explains. "When we were building the studio Jay was really keen to experiment and wanted to demo as many microphones as possible. I had a rack of them set up — all sorts of different mics — and he tried them all. The one that sounded like a million dollars was the AKG valve C12. We tried the cheaper, reissued version but it didn't have the same quality, so we set about finding an original. I've just managed to track one down and it took ages — eight months, to be precise. I finally got it through Crystal Pro Audio, a company run by Pete Brotzman who I used to work with at Britannia Row. It was a hassle, but it was worth the effort because it will last Jay for his entire career."
The Digital Suite
The most recent addition to Jay Kay's current set up is the digital suite, which is equipped with a Sony R100 console and a Roland VP9000. Programmer Paul Stoney, who worked at Real World and Nomis before moving to Chillington, operates this room.
"It was Jay's idea to build a digital room, and he also chose the new desk," Rick Pope explains. "He saw a review of it in one of the pro audio magazines, and decided to take a closer look. We'd already decided to buy a digital console, and had looked at Mackie and the Yamaha O2R, but we felt this one was the right choice because it had all the features we wanted without being hugely expensive. Now that we have had a chance to play with it we know we've made the right decision. It has significantly speeded up the recording process, as well as making writing and experimenting so much easier."
Much the same can be said for the Roland VP9000, as Paul Stoney explains: "We're currently using it for writing and for guitars, using a few basic grooves that enable us to experiment when we don't have a guitarist in the studio. We play guitar riffs and Jay gets his guitar ideas down really easily to MIDI. It's very handy because you don't hear the sound difference when you play it across the keyboard."
Stoney adds that the Roland VP9000 has also proved very easy to use. "It's amazing. If you're dealing with an awkward drum loop, for example, you can mess about until you get it exactly how you want it. There are also some very good effects and, above all, it is simplicity itself. So far we've got some great sounds from it. We just did a Kool & The Gang track for their new album, taking all the brass they'd given us and using the Roland to speed it up. It handled this easily without losing any quality. Having a piece of equipment like the VP9000 changes everything because you can use material you wouldn't normally be able to use, and this gives you an opportunity to put down ideas that might previously have seemed impossible."
With all this investment in digital, one begins to wonder if Jay Kay is undergoing a fundamental change of direction. "Not at all," he says. "I don't want to lose what we're known for or what we do — and it's never going to be all machines. But at the same time I think we can afford to be more experimental. We've always fiddled around with old synths and to experiment with digital equipment is, in my view, a good thing because it is the way the business is moving. Not that I always like to move when everyone else does, but technology can be very exciting and I'm enjoying experimenting and using it in a way that suits us."
Kay adds that Jamiroquai will always consider themselves a live band and won't go in a musical direction that can't be successfully transferred to a stage. "I'm not going to walk on stage and wheel out loads of samplers, array them all up and sit their with a DJ while trying to do a gig — that sort of thing just doesn't work for us," he laughs. "But I do feel that because we are an experienced live band we can afford to mix some of these sounds in with our own sound. We did it a little with 'Supersonic' on the last album and it was great."
In Synk
The first project to be recorded in the new studio was Synkronized, produced by Al Stone and released in 1999. Jay Kay, who until this point during my visit to his studio had been outside by the pool, stuck his head round the door to see what Rick was doing. Hearing that he was being interviewed for Sound On Sound, Jay decided to join in.
"For a number of reasons, the last album was completed in just five months which is not a lot of time to write and record an entire album," he explains. "But we did it, and when it came out it sold five million copies. As far as I'm concerned, Synkronized proves that it is possible to build your own studio and make the situation work. That was always my intention — to build a studio that we could all enjoy and where I could work whenever I felt like it. The trouble was some people didn't see it like that and there was jealousy, but let's face it, the real reason I bought this house was because it had enough space for a studio. Sure, it's got lovely gardens and a swimming pool but I bought it because it had a set of buildings where I could build a studio for the whole band."
Kay adds that the bulk of the recording is done in the studio, which is primarily analogue. But he also has his writing room in the main part of the house and a digital room, which was installed very recently so that he could be more experimental. He believes that writing and recording are best kept apart because they are two different processes. "With the last album we tended to write and record at the same time, which is an easy trap to fall into if you have a great facility like this," he says. "When you've got drums that can go down to 2-inch at any time, there's a huge temptation to use material without really thinking about it. You're working on something simply because it's there, but you're not getting used to the track or getting the chance to assess it and play it properly, because it's all become too hurried."
That lesson learned, he is approaching his new album very differently. "I'm going to let it take its course instead of hurrying to meet deadlines," he says. "Naturally, we have a deadline — you need something to concentrate the mind — but I want to get it right and that means I want to take my time. The beauty of our current setup is that we can write in one room and record in another. This is important, as sometimes you have something on the board that isn't quite right and you want to be able to leave it where it is while you think about it."
So what about a producer? Al Stone was the man behind the desk on the last three Jamiroquai albums: will he be back for this one?
"We don't have a producer at the moment, because I'm doing it," Jay explains. "I'm not a button-pusher, I'm a listener and a producer in the old-fashioned sense of the word, in that I know what I want where. Eventually I'd like is find someone who is both radical and really good at listening to what we want, so that he can give us the edge we're looking for. There are times when a producer is applicable and I'm sure we'll reach that stage with this album eventually, but until I find the right person I'm happy to go along as we are. I have Rick and Paul working the desk and handling all the programming and for the time being that's all we need."
Jamiroquai's new album may still be a work in progress, but the studio in which it is being recorded is now complete. Three years after he first sketched it on the back of that fag packet, is Jay Kay still happy with his decision to become a studio owner? "Absolutely. It's a lot better than driving to London every day to sit in someone else's studio under time pressure, and being charged much more for the privilege. And anyway, if it all goes tits up I'll still have the studio — then I can make a living renting it out to other bands!"
Source: Sound On Sound
SAMANTHA
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Last edited by samantha1170 on Sat Sep 20, 2008 02:15; edited 2 times in total |
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SweDanFunk
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 455
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| Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 10:36 |
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cool, the most intresting interview ive read actually!
No fucking bullshit about his hat, finaly.
I found it intresting cause ive started to try to write some music sooo....maybee if i got a band in half a year we can go down to jays studio and rent it  |
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russky
Joined: 06 Jun 2005
Posts: 3396
Location: Chester, U.K
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| Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 13:31 |
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nice one sam - i lost this one and it is very interesting indeed!
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samantha1170
Correspondent
Joined: 01 Jul 2005
Posts: 1145
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 14:45 |
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Here's another article that was from the same website, but the article is from Dec 1999...
Jamiroquai's recent album Synkronized was the first to be recorded in frontman Jay Kay's impressive private studio. One of the album's high points, and a hit single, was 'Supersonic'. Bill Bruce talks to its producer Al Stone about how the track was recorded.
Jamiroquai's fourth album Synkronized has already gone platinum in the UK, has been number 1 in five countries, and is in the Top Ten in a further 18 countries. Formed in 1992, the band soon created a buzz on well-respected indie label Acid Jazz, and after a massive bidding war were signed to Sony's S2 label. A well-deserved reputation as one of the tightest and most exciting live bands on the planet ensured Jamiroquai -- who now comprise frontman Jay Kay, Simon Katz (guitar), Toby Smith (keyboards), Nick Fyffe (bass), Wallace Buchannan (didgeridoo) and Derrick McKenzie (drums) -- were soon a worldwide phenomenon. The band's debut album Emergency On Planet Earth sold half a million copies in the UK alone, and their second and third albums Return Of The Space Cowboy and Travelling Without Moving were even more successful.
Unlike previous albums, Synkronized was recorded entirely at the new Chillington Studio complex in Jay Kay's Buckinghamshire country house. The sheer amount of thought, planning and equipment which has gone into the studio would give many top-flight professional studios food for thought. The house is set up so that recording can take place in any of 30 rooms, and equipment includes two Studer A827 24-track analogue tape machines, an SSL console and heaps of desirable valve outboard gear. Digital equipment is also plentiful, and includes a well-specified Pro Tools system.
Al Stone
The man with the enviable job of working with Jamiroquai in this dream studio is the immensely affable and easy-going Al Stone, a long-time friend, producer and collaborator with Jay and the band. A gregarious, friendly and modest individual, he started out as a hotel manager, but finding that he hated this job, Stone decided to try and find a new career in the music business.
Like almost everyone else he started on the ground floor, making tea and running off tape copies. Graduating to the Manor Mobile as an Assistant Engineer, he stayed with the Manor for almost two years before landing a job as Assistant Engineer at London's Townhouse Studios. He remained with Townhouse for eight years, before they were taken over by EMI. Under the expert eye of his manager Barbara Jeffries he soon moved into production.
"The engineering side of things is my first love," he adds. "Production is such a vague area -- if you ask a lot of artists what a producer is, the answer is usually that they're a pain in the neck! When I was at the Townhouse it was the late '80s, so we did a lot of 12-inch remixes, where record companies were spending absolute fortunes on white labels. Some artists started to give me a credit with production work, but moving into production is not a natural progression. From Assistant Engineer to Engineer is a natural progression, but the old-school producers I would work with, like Steve Lillywhite or Jon Kelly, were guys who didn't come from an engineering background, but just had a great head for producing, especially for live bands. I didn't ever expect to become a producer. At the start I was lucky -- the three albums which got me noticed were the Stereo MCs' Connected, then off the back of that I did Björk's Debut album with Nellee Hooper and Marius De Vries, and then with Mick Glossop did Never Loved Elvis for The Wonder Stuff. These were all albums which never sold in huge quantities, but achieved notoriety within the recording business.
"Then, of course, I met up with Jay. The first time we worked together on the Return Of The Space Cowboy record I came in near the end, just to finish it off really. We did the vocals and the mix. Then he approached me to make the next record."
The Working Relationship
"He's one of the artists who really pushes me," Al Stone insists enthusiastically, "and I like being pushed. In the studio I don't think you can ever know enough about what you're doing. I think the day Jay learns to use a console we're all going to be out of business. Once he puts his mind to something, he doesn't let up with it. I think he had always been surrounded by engineers or producers who were giving him excuses about why certain things couldn't be done the way he wanted, rather than encouraging him. From my point of view, if an artist wants to try something, then let's try it quickly and see if it's right or wrong.
"The main difference with this record was that there was no demo of any tune. We had five months and the 10 tracks were made from scratch in the studio. It was very much a case of saying 'Well, what will we do today? I have such and such an idea.' We'd have the drummer hanging around, and the band were breaking in a new bass player so everything was done on the fly. It made it hard for Jay because he had to write the songs in a very short space of time, when normally they might be written over a six-month period of touring and being on the road. It was also hard because you have the pressure of having big hit records behind you. It's like, you've just sold seven million records, now go in and do even better!
"Jay's studio is one of the nicest studios I've ever worked in, sonically and kit-wise. He's got a great live room, which sounds fantastic. The good thing about working with a band like this is that if there is any spill, it's all the same performance -- spill only becomes a problem if you've got some nutty guitar part blistering everywhere, and then you have to go back and try to get rid of it only to find it's all over the drum overheads."
Recording 'Supersonic'
Unlike many contemporary bands, Jamiroquai record as an ensemble rather than laying down tracks one at a time, and the feel of the whole band is crucially important: "Jay is the main driving force, but he's surrounded by great interpreters and very competent musicians," explains Stone. "It has always been the case that the band go in and the tracks are cut as a band. It has never been, 'let's put down a drum track and then the bass over it'. They bounce an idea around in the studio for a couple of hours and then when it feels good they'll knock it into shape, try an arrangement, change it or move parts around."
Technology has an important part to play in the Jamiroquai sound but, again, the way in which they use it often differs from the norm. Al Stone explains: "For example, we'd have sampled drum sounds, but the drummer Derrick had bought a little MIDI pad kit, so he'd be playing them on his MIDI kit. It was still a performance, but with sampled sounds.
"It was a mish-mash of performance and technology. Jay will never ever sit there while someone types numbers into a Mac. He can't do it, he'd be bored within 10 seconds, and likewise the band around him. They just don't work that way. We never have anything sequenced. For me, it keeps everything really exciting. You can be working with the bass player and drummer, and then Toby, the keyboard player, will add something. Then Jay will walk in and turn the whole thing on its head, and suddenly you're off on another trip. If you were to try that with sequencing you'd get bogged down, with 'Let me just save this, or load that'. These boys can just stop what they're doing and try something new in a flash and that keeps everything fresh. Nothing is ever hammered around too long.
"It all happens relatively quickly, and if it doesn't then the whole song is put to one side. In the past I've worked on tunes with Jay and we've put brass, strings, you name it on the track, and he'll walk in the next day and go, right, keep the drums and we'll start again!"
Some producers might find this kind of behaviour exasperating, but Stone finds it inspirational: "Whenever I've doubted him, he's always proved he was right again and again. He doesn't always have a lyric when we start work; he'll have a title for the song to give the song some kind of theme, but once he's got the tune to a point where he's happy with it then he'll concentrate more on the lyric. Jay and Toby are the main writing force; Toby'll come in with all these old analogue boxes, because he loves making mad noises. As a Rhodes player I don't think there is anyone finer."
'Supersonic' Takes Flight
This idea of the recording session as a sort of controlled jam was integral to the way 'Supersonic' evolved: "On 'Supersonic'," Al Stone explains, "we had Wallace Buchannan, the didgeridoo player, Derrick the drummer and Toby the keyboard player. Derrick was playing the kit, Toby was playing something over the top, and then Jay walked in and started adding a keyboard part, like a bass part. Then bang! The track was there. The four integral parts had begun to take shape.
"The track also had an acoustic guitar part which the guitarist Simon had been mucking about with. But we'd moved on to something else in the meantime and it kind of got forgotten about. So when we came back to it, I took a section of this acoustic part, bunged it in a sampler and mucked around with the pitch wheel to give it a bit of a twang and a bit of a flavour. Then the percussion was laid on top.
"Jay is a man very driven by what he always refers to as 'the boogie', the danceability of it all. He wanted something which was a bit harder than perhaps Jamiroquai are known for; they're usually on that funk tip. This was more club-driven, but then in the middle there was this section where everything falls away and the song is turned almost inside out."
Analogue Heaven
"I love analogue," Al Stone is keen to emphasise. "I don't like recording drums on digital. I learned to record with analogue tape compression present, understanding that when you record onto 2-inch tape you lose a bit of that transient and a bit of the punch that it had when you were listening on input. With digital, if you get the best signal down on multitrack you end up balancing your multitrack at the bottom of the faders on the way back, because all the transients remain. I've always printed to half-inch when I'm mixing; all the Jamiroquai stuff is printed on half-inch and mastered from half-inch. The DATs are just backup. I still don't think the digital domain has got the quality and warmth.
"In the past, I've had the control track on the digital machine go out to lunch, and suddenly you've lost all your audio. If the timecode gets damaged on a piece of 2-inch, well, bummer, but you've still got all your audio. Even with Pro Tools, I've put so much stuff into these systems and got it back with most of the bottom end gone. They are catching up though. I've also been doing some mixes for David Lynden Hall, and they were done from a RADAR machine, which is not a bad bit of clobber for a digital thing. I had used RADAR a few months ago for a band called Ether, and I was quite impressed. It has got quite a nice warmth to it, but 2-inch still outperforms it. I think Jay feels very strongly about the sound of analogue as well. He's got two great Studer machines in the studio, so he has a 48-track option if need be."
Drums, Bass, Guitars... Action!
With the first parts of 'Supersonic' taking shape, it was time to firm up some of those initial ideas: "That was one of the tracks where we used triggered sounds and Derrick used his MIDI kit," recalls Stone. "Then Derrick went in and added some real kit as well. The pleasure of working with someone like Derrick is that he can go in and play exactly what he's just played, but on a different kit. Sola Akingbola, the percussion player, has to be one of the best percussion players I've ever worked with -- tremendous feel and power. The metallic quality in the percussion was a combination of the type of percussion instruments he uses -- he likes percussion instruments which are a little unusual -- and the weird filters like the Mutronics Mutator, which we tried out for the first time. We tried to get away from the vibe of Travelling Without Moving where everything was very warm and mellow. We wanted to make things brighter and to have the sounds work as an interesting aspect of the song itself, so I got to play around a lot more than I normally would be able to. We used the stairwell outside the studio as a sort of second live room. It was a live-sounding, bright little area which brought out a different feel in the part being played by Sola."
"Recording the kit is always different," reflects Al. "Travelling Without Moving was a three-mic job, not even close-miked -- one mic a few feet in front of the bass drum, one over the drummer's shoulder covering the hi-hat and snare, and another to the side to cover the cymbals. A lot of the drums on that album were recorded straight to stereo, just to get a certain vibe.
"When you're involved in the production of a record you can always be directing the recording to where you want it to go. On this record, I went for more of a traditional miking, spread over seven or eight tracks. But on some of them if it was just kick, snare and hat, then I'd do a nice little balance down to mono or maybe three tracks. We also had two tracks, 'Planet Home' and 'Synkronized', which had entirely sampled sounds played in.
"The bass is always DI'd. I'm not a fan of amping a bass up. You can add a bit of warmth, but it usually ends up a bit blurry, especially for a band like Jamiroquai when the bass is integral. Also, DI'ing cuts down on spill. There would be a bass cab in the live room while the band were running through stuff, but once you'd go for a take, you'd flick the cab off and I'd take the clean feed from a DI.
"With the guitars, some of it was miked on a cab, some was through a little preamp or a pedal, it depended on what the part required. We didn't record tracks and tracks of guitars; Simon would lay a part down, Jay might make a few suggestions, but ultimately it was laid down from top to bottom."
Recording The Lead Vocals
Al Stone shrugs, "I'm not a big fan of any specific mic for any specific job. Even if you've got an old favourite it might be not be right every time. I think a good idea on this record was getting Jay behind a good old valve mic; we used to do vocals in the control room, with a hand-held dynamic with the monitors as loud as you could get without feedback. Then I'd stand right back at the tape remote and he'd just perform in front of the desk.
"This time, though, I wanted to get him sounding as good as I could. He's just never been a fan of headphones, that was all it was. I actually don't mind what method he uses; I've done it every way possible -- NS10s out of phase on either side while they're singing to cut down the spill, whatever the artist needs -- because the have to feel comfortable to deliver. This was just the first time where he wanted to try doing something in a different way. Headphone balance is the key thing -- I never set up a separate can balance, I would always give him exactly what I was hearing. The track has to be in a good shape before he can focus on the vocal.
"We used a good old AKG C12 for the vocals. If you rent three C12s, you'll find them all completely different. Valve Neumann U47s are the same: they all have a character of their own. On one of the vocal parts we added a touch of distortion; Jay went back in and did another couple of backing vocals with the distortion added, and added the 'Supersonic' sung in a harsher way. A lot of the interaction between his own vocals when you track them up against each other is entirely down to what comes out of his mouth. He's not a big one for effects on the vocals, even reverb. At the end of 'Supersonic', when the track breaks down, that effect was done purely with distortion. We actually used a Focusrite EQ for that, but don't tell Rupert Neve. You just whack up the line gain and you get an EQ for your distortion built in, so you get a nice warmth to your distortion."
Didgeridoo Developments
Along with more conventional instruments such as guitars and keyboards, Jamiroquai's line-up includes Wallace Buchannan -- a didgeridoo player whose contribution is prominent in 'Supersonic'. The didgeridoo part was more heavily treated than most of the instruments: "There was a little bit of jiggery-pokery with the Mutronics Mutator filter on the didgeridoo," explains Al Stone. "I played it down and mucked around with the Mutator, occasionally feeding the Mutator parts in and out, depending on whatever else was going on at the time. If you have a lot of stuff going on in a mix then you haven't much room for stuff like that; it just clogs everything up. Toby also had a keyboard sound which was not dissimilar to a didgeridoo, and he wanted to double-track what Wallace had done. Wallace just has a little mic attached to the didgeridoo, which we recorded in the hallway again because it was bouncing around nicely out there. Although we have access to record in any room in the house, ironically on this record we ended up doing everything in the studio in the live room, control room or the hallway."
At The Mix
'Organic' is the sort of word bandied around when Jamiroquai's records are discussed. It's a description Al Stone readily agrees with: "I'm not a nut for effects. Rather than have a reverb on throughout a track, I'd rather flick it on and off throughout a song in two or three places. That's what an effect should be. If it's on all the time it cancels itself out. People say I don't use a lot of reverbs, but when I do use them, I blend several. I hate the sound of something which appears to have something stuck on it, but if you can make it feel natural, then it's very effective. I'll usually have one long reverb, like a Lexicon 480, and perhaps a short one-second reverb from a Yamaha REV7, a good old 12-bit reverb. I also use a TC Electronic delay unit which is a really nice warm delay; you can pan it and suppress the delay until the vocal line is finished so it doesn't clutter.
"I think compression is great. It's not something I rely upon, but I love it. On the SSL you have it on every channel plus the Quad on the way out, so I guess you apply it as needed. With the vocals I may add a little compression from a Dbx 160RM, which is fantastic for vocals. It's not an excessive compression, and with someone like Jay who has such a natural dynamic in his vocals, you don't want to squeeze all the life out. I'll use a Quad compressor to help rein in those little peaks which might push things over the edge. I'll have the compression set for the bass and drums, get it punchy and vibey, then punch in the final Quad compressor till it's just tickling the peaks.
"The only piece of gear I insist on working with is actually a Quad 405 amp to drive my NS10s, 'cause they're so crap. For me, they've been a standard for so long, and everywhere you go they've got them. When I was at Townhouse we always had the Quads on the nearfields, so to me those speakers and this amp let me hear exactly what is going on. There's nothing worse then getting home, playing a mix and realising the bottom end has gone! The Quad is the only thing that drives the NS10s hard enough to bring the bottom end out on them.
"With Jamiroquai, everything is done on the same desk, from the first thing I cut, from getting a balance up to the final mix. So by the time Jay does the vocal I'm a good 50 percent of the way towards the final mix. Then it's just a case of tidying things up. The final mix takes a few hours rather than days and weeks. It's usually very light on the EQ; on the monitor mixes I'll keep the EQ flat, perhaps one delay or reverb, but it's important to keep your monitor mix clear so when you come to a final mix you can just bring things in and blend them together.
"The SSL desk is the best desk in the world. Maybe I'm a bit biased because I've spent 13 years on one, but I love the ergonomics, and you can stand in front of a 72-input console and see exactly what is going on. I know the desk inside-out. I usually put the automation into action for muting more than anything. I'll"I'm not a nut for effects. Rather than have a reverb on throughout a track, I'd rather flick it on and off throughout a song in two or three places. That's what an effect should be."
set up a static balance first, and then when that's working well I'll play around with fades and pushing little feels or licks here or there."
Master Strokes
When asked if the final mastering process is something he takes much interest in, Al Stone nods vigorously. "I always attend the cut. There's a wonderful man called Mike Marsh at The Exchange, who cut the Jamiroquai album, and all he added was a little EQ here and there. When you're working in a place like Jay's there really shouldn't be much more to be done at the mastering stage.
"This album was the culmination of quite a few years' work, because when we first met there was always this talk of Jay getting his own studio, and now that has come to fruition. So it was a testing time in lots of ways; I had to make sure his studio was capable of doing everything that might be necessary, and to be honest, the guys who put the studio together made a fantastic job of it. I can't wait to get round to the next album!"
Source: Sound On Sound
SAMANTHA
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Last edited by samantha1170 on Sat Sep 20, 2008 02:14; edited 1 time in total |
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Dye
Correspondent & Expert
Joined: 16 Nov 2003
Posts: 5146
Location: Planet Home; Buenos Aires, Argentina
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| Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 19:52 |
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Yeah I have those articles since long time ago, I think are one of the best out there. It talks about almost everything that I'm interested in!
Thanks for posting 
D! |
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Catalonia is not Spain
Joined: 12 Jun 2005
Posts: 566
Location: Edinburgh
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| Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 21:43 |
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Very interesting!! Thanks Samantha!!!! |
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