Townsend Labs Sphere - My choice microphone - because In
conjunction with my Twin - I can emulate with incredible
accuracy any one of a 100 different microphones and get
a wonderful variety of tonality recording on the go
Describe your work day
I like to come in and listen to music for a half an hour at least
before I get started on work. It helps me get the juices flowing
and re-adjust my ears. This will be a combination of music
that I know very well (so I know how it sounds everywhere)
as well as compulsorily at least one track in any genre I have
never ever heard before. Work wise, I like to get Mixing and
Mastering done before my ears get too tired. As my ears start
to fatigue, I take a break (maybe read a book - I have a vast
collection of music / production related books) and then
switch over to production/beat making or recording. I tend to
find peace of mind to work either very late at night or early
morning - so that's when I do most of my mixing. A set of my
tablas are always left open for me to take regular breaks and
just play. Breaks are very important as a mix engineer.
Philosophy or reasoning behind gear choices
I'll make it very clear - For me - There is a charm and joy
that comes with working with analog gear that ITB can
never create. A part of that lies in the fact that often times
great analog gear never functions the same way twice,
something blows up, something adds crazy harmonics
while malfunctioning, but that pushes you creatively
to do things, and commit to ideas. In the box, you don’t
commit often enough (there’s always going back and
changing it ) and that influences the way you build your
music as well. Nowadays we strive too much for technical
perfection and in that pursuit we sometimes let go of the
organic quality of how sounds interact with each other
musically. ITB technology has progressed incredibly and
no doubt, you can recreate anything an analog device
can do in the box today. But the essential word here is
recreate. Your whole thought process and work flow is
different in the analog realm and I love to experiment.
In terms of conveniences and the way I have to deal with
clients and constant changes between multiple simultaneous
projects, its a lot more efficient to do most of my work
completely in the box. So, Universal Audio plugins are a life
Saver for me in that workflow. They have emulated with
incredible likeness several of my favourite pieces of gear.
In the box is also an asset for when im on the road to make
quick changes to projects etc. Once im back in the studio
though, I like to run my final mix/master through a little bit
of outboard gear just for some overall color, saturation and
harmonics. In this neat and clean digital world, sometimes
even incredibly dense musical arrangements don’t sound
full because all the harmonics have been filtered out with
over-precise technical workflows. So its nice to come back
to the analog at the end of it all and resupply that color.
So, I have the Neve summing mixer and the new SSL
Fusion which are both essentially full of character and
harmonic color, that gives a nice rounding off to mixes.
What’s your next buy for your studio?
A dog.
The
Score Magazine
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