The Art Of Mixing with special guest Drew Townson

We talk a lot about Mixing on this podcast, but we’ve never explained what that actually means– until now. Join me and my guest, recording engineer & producer Drew Townson, as we look at the differences between “recording”, “mixing” and “mastering”. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the decisions made in the studio, the challenges faced, and why you can’t really “fix it in the mix”.

TRANSCRIPT:

Greetings, and welcome to another edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. I’m your host, Brad Page, coming to you on the Pantheon Podcast Network.

A while ago, I got an email from a listener who said that we talk a lot about mixing the show, but we have never really explained what mixing is, or how mixing differs from recording. So, let’s do that.

And if we’re going to talk about recording and mixing, I can think of no better person to discuss it with than my old friend Drew Townson. Drew is a brilliant guitarist and songwriter, but he’s also been a professional recording engineer, a studio owner, and a producer. And he’s got the best ears of anyone I know. So I invited Drew to come on and talk with me about recording and mixing, and we touch on producing and mastering as well.

This conversation is a little more technical than we usually get on this show, but not by much. And I think you can all follow along, whether you’re a musician or not. So, let’s take a peek at the inner workings of the recording studio.

Here’s my conversation with Drew Townson.

Brad Page: Well, Drew Townson, thank you so much for joining me on the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast to talk about the art of mixing, I think, first, just kind of give a general explanation to our listeners, who may or may not be familiar with, what exactly is mixing? When we talk about mixing, what are we doing?

Drew Townson: Well, you know, I’ve been listening to a lot of Miles Davis lately, and Miles Davis was a jazz musician back in the 1950s and 60s. And when those kind of groups went in the studio to record, they recorded live. And what I mean by live is, their band stood in the studio and all of them played the song together. And that’s how records were made.

The Beatles would go in the studio, stand just like they did on stage, and play their songs, and the studio would record it. And that started to change in the 60s, to where you could record parts of songs, because they had a new invention called multi-track recording, which is, as you and your listeners already know, is being able to record multiple tracks, not necessarily at the same time. You could record, like, the drum track, and then you could add the bass guitar track and then you could add the guitar track, et cetera. And so the need for mixing these tracks back to make them sound like a live performance again was a big deal. Like, learning how to mix became a thing you had to do.

Brad Page: Right. As you said, back in the original times, the mixing was literally done by, you know, if it was time for the trumpet solo, the trumpet player would step closer to the mic and then when he was done, he would step back, and it was… there was no such thing as “mixing” the way we think of mixing today. As technology went on, it’s a whole different world, where you start to have the ability to record different instruments on different parts of the tape.

Drew Townson: Right.

Brad Page: So you know, if the bass player made a mistake, well, you could go back and fix the bass part without having to re-record all the rest of the parts all over again.

Drew Townson: Exactly.

Brad Page: But then at the end of it, all those pieces have to be put together in a way that makes sense.

Drew Townson: Sounds real.

Brad Page: It sounds real.

Drew Townson: Yeah, yeah, right. Well, you know, if somebody in Miles Davis’s band hit a clam at like, you know, 20 minutes into the song– stop the tape, rewind, let’s record it again, we have to start the song again. You know, that’s what it was like. The whole band had to play the song over again if somebody made a mistake.

Brad Page: Right.

Drew Townson: And so that was what they were trying to get rid of with this kind of mixing and multi-track recording. So what they started doing was they’d record the drums on a track, they’d record the bass on a track, then they’d record the trumpet on a track. So if the trumpet made a mistake, he’d just fix his mistake on his track and that wouldn’t affect what would happen to the bass and the drums.

Brad Page: So recording and mixing, they go together, but they’re two different things. Maybe talk about how you think of those two things, the recording part of it and then the mixing part of it. Because mixing comes after you’ve recorded all of your tracks.

Drew Townson: Right, right. So basically I was a very recording-oriented engineer, which means that all my tracks had to be– you have to have a good microphone, you have to have a good saxophone or whatever your instrument is, and you have to play well. And so, basically, my job was to do, to get the band to record the best possible version of the song. And if you do that, and a good recording engineer knows the right microphones, where to put them, you can have people record at the same time. See, that’s one myth: you can still have people Recording together at the same time. And their instruments all still go on separate tracks.

Brad Page: Right. And you can argue that that’s still the best way to do it, right? Because of the interplay.

Drew Townson: You know, what that did was that allowed bands to go in the studio, play the music of the track, but not have a vocal. And the singer was, you know, the singer sits in the control room of the studio, smoking a cigarette, while the band is in the main room recording the track. And then later, you can add the vocal track, and it has its own track. And if there’s a mistake, you fix it, whatever. So it’s a way of recording each instrument separately and giving it its own most personal attention. Get that great vocal track, get that great bass track. Uninhibited by anything else. You just play until it’s right.

Brad Page: I think of it as kind of like a cooking analogy. When you’ve got a recipe, there’s two sections to the recipe, right? There’s the ingredients, and that’s the recording side of it…

Drew Townson: Right.

Brad Page: …you know, one cup of drums, a teaspoon of guitar, those kind of things, Right?

Drew Townson: Exactly. Yeah.

Brad Page: And then the instructions– you know, “beat the sugar and the eggs until they’re foamy” or whatever. That’s the mixing part of it. Right? So, the ingredients is, that’s when you’re recording the individual tracks and you’re getting them together. And the mixing part is when you’re actually combining these things in the proper way, and they each have their own kind of unique elements to it.

Drew Townson: That’s right.

Brad Page: And the reality is, if the ingredients that you’re starting with are no good, then the finished product is going to stink.

Drew Townson: Right.

Brad Page: No matter how good the mixing, the combining part of it is.

Drew Townson: Oh, right, right. You can be the world’s best engineer. But if you’re working with a bad, you know, with a low-quality band or artist or whatever, you know, you can’t save it.

Brad Page: Right.

Drew Townson: You can’t fix it in the mix. “Fixing it in the mix” is a myth that does not happen. It really doesn’t.

Brad Page: That’s kind of an in-joke that you hear engineers and producers say all the time, oh, “just fix it in the mix”. But you, you know, there’s only much you can do. It’s garbage in, garbage out.

Drew Townson: Right, exactly. So now you’ve got a reel of tape, okay. You’ve recorded a song on a reel of tape. 20 years ago, that tape had 24 tracks on it. Now it’s digital and there is no limit to the number of tracks that you can record.

Brad Page: There’s literally no limit. You could have, you know, 300 tracks.

Drew Townson: There’s literally no limit to how many tracks you can record. And sometimes you go and see– and it’s like the simplest stupid song and it’ll have like, you know, 100 tracks or something. And it’s, I think it’s more than you need. But that’s just my opinion on that. Yeah, so you’ve got the performance of the song all on different tracks. And people need to know this, too: When you’re recording like a rock band with drums and bass and guitar and vocals, it’s not one track of drum set– it’s one track of kick drum, then the next track is the snare drum, then the next track is the hi-hat, and the next track is the cymbals. And so, it’s not just like drums mixed with bass mixed with guitar; it’s drums mixed with drums, and then guitar mixed with guitar. You know, you do that, you hone each sound. That’s before you actually do the mix. You go into every track, and you work on that sound to make it sound the best it can be.

And to do that, you use something called an equalizer, which I’m sure you guys know what that is” treble, bass, middle, right? So every mixing board has an equalizer on every track, so you can get the best possible sound of that track. And you might want to add a reverb or a delay or an effect or something like that. And those are all easily done when you’re mixing.

That’s, those are mixing techniques. You may say, you know, I want that lyric right there to echo a couple times. And then you can, while you’re mixing, you add the echo to the lyric.

So that’s what all the mixing is. It’s all combining the instruments to make the song sound correct. Again, it has to sound right. You’ve got drums, bass, guitars, whatever, vocals, and then any effects that you want to use.

And you know, I don’t want to get into a whole discussion of effects, because there’s a lot of that. And one of the things that I’m really good at was an effect called Compression. It’s a volume limiting effect that takes the loud parts and makes them quieter, and makes the quiet parts louder. And that’s what compression does. And so, when you hear a vocal on a record, nine times out of nine, it’s compressed. If you notice when, you listen to a record, all the instruments on the record are essentially the same volume, and they stay the same volume, they don’t change. That’s part of the mixing technique.

You basically have to rebuild the band playing the song, right? You get the drums, bass guitars, everybody’s playing, and then you’ll add like the vocal track in, then you can add some reverb or some effects or whatever, and that completes the song. And then what we used to do was, when we would do that mix, you have to mix to stereo, right, because you’ve got, what, 24 mono tracks and you’re making a stereo mix. So, we would mix onto a stereo tape recorder and that would be our finished mix, would be the stereo mix of the 24 track song.

Brad Page: So you’ve got a machine with a tape on it… or these days, it would all be digital, but however many tracks you’ve got, let’s say 24, you are essentially mixing those down to a final product, which is two tracks: a left channel and a right channel. Yeah, that would be a separate tape machine back in the day. Of course, it’s all digital now, but the essential idea is the same.

Drew Townson: Yeah. You know, there are things about modern technology I like, and things I don’t like. But one of the things I really love about modern technology is that you can make that mix, and then you can copy it. You know, you can make many, many copies of it. And then if you decide, oh, you know, that one vocal little part right there, you can actually go in and tweak– not after it’s already printed onto a CD or anything like that, obviously– but while it’s still in the mixing process, basically, even if you’re done with a mix, you can recreate it. That’s one thing that the digital does, it, will recreate your exact mix. Like every single thing you do gets remembered by the computer. And so you can bring that up anytime you. Five years from now, I can play that mix back and it’ll sound exactly like the way I mixed it.

Brad Page: Yes. Now we’re starting to talk a little bit about automation, which is basically the software in the computer can track the movement of the virtual knob, so as you turn something up or down, the bass or treble up or down or whatever, that movement of that knob can be remembered and saved into the program so that it’s reproducible. So, like, you said, you can pull that mix up, that song, five years from now, and if you don’t remember all the little tweaks you did, that’s okay because they’re all saved within that file.

Drew Townson: They’re all saved.  Let me tell you a funny story: There was a company in Great Britain called SSL– Solid State Logic. They build the world’s best mixing consoles. And a “console” is a mixer, it’s a big board, right? With lots of knobs and stuff on it. And they invented “Recall” many years ago.

They actually started out by programming church organs to be able, like if the organist died, there was nobody to take their place. In England, in the 70s, the old lady who had been playing the church organ for, you know, 30 years dies because she’s 85 years old now and nobody could take her place. So this company, SSL, learned how to, “Okay, come on in, Doris, and play all your songs, and we’ll record them into the memory of the organ.” So they built these organs that could remember what you played, and play it back. That’s how they started with church organs in England. It’s funny, isn’t it?

Brad Page: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So let’s talk about maybe some examples of mixing. Some, you know, when you think of like, just a great mix, who do you think of?

Drew Townson: You know, there’s certain producers I like, and George Martin happens to be one of them. And I’m not necessarily talking about the Beatles either. Like, after the Beatles, he continued his career and he was a really good engineer.

Brad Page: Sure, yeah. Besides the Beatles, he produced Jeff Beck; the “Blow By Blow” album, which is my favorite Jeff Beck record.

Drew Townson: That Jeff Beck “Blow By Blow” album is one of my favorite George Martin records. I mean, it is such a good record. It’s such a good record.

And here’s another guy that I’m really a big fan of. Bob Clear Mountain.

Brad Page: Mhm.

Drew Townson: And Bob Clearmountain, he produced Roxy Music’s “Avalon”, which I think is one of the best-sounding records ever made in the history of music.

Brad Page: Amen.

Drew Townson: It really is.

Drew Townson: That was Bob Clearmountain who did Roxy Music “Avalon”. That’s one of the best-sounding records you’ll ever hear. Despite the fact you can’t understand any of the vocals. You know, I tend to like records where you can’t understand the vocals. I don’t know why that is, but like, I love the first three, four REM albums, and I hate everything they did after that. And I realized the first three or four ones was when you couldn’t understand a word he was singing!

Brad Page: Let’s talk about some of the tracks that you’ve worked on, and maybe use those as some examples of some mixing challenges, or what you were going for and how you were able to get to the end result that you wanted.

Drew Townson: Well, I think a good one to start with might be The Nines. They’re called Muck And The Mires now. Evan Shore, from Muck And The Mires.  I recorded one of his earlier albums and the first, the opening track is “I Can’t Keep a Secret”. And that is just straight ahead, two guitars, bass, drums, rock band playing live in the studio. And they were just rocking out. It was so good. But one thing you’ll notice is the drums, all the sounds are pristine. I mean the drums sound incredible. And you know that, that took some time and some doing. There’s a woman drummer, really good drummer.

And one of the problems that we had was the two-track stereo tape machine that we normally mix to was broken. And here’s just a little bit of 101 information for you: in the world of analog recording, tape recording, the faster the tape goes and the wider the tape is, the better the sound quality. So I had this 30 inches-per-second, half-inch wide stereo tape deck, made in Germany by Studer. I don’t know if it was Germany or Switzerland or wherever Studer is made… Made in Europe somewhere. Gorgeous machine. Went twice as fast as a lot of machines, and the tape was twice as wide as other machines. And that machine sounded stellar.

So I’m mixing this record, and that machine is broken and it’s time to do the mix. And we had this old quarter-inch wide Otari tape machine there that I just pulled out of the closet, and you know, 15 inches per second was the fastest speed.

Brad Page: It’s half the speed of what you wanted.

Drew Townson: It was half the speed and half the width of the tape that I wanted. And so I was just listening to that CD this morning– and it sounds friggin’ great, man! I forgot how good that machine ended up sounding at half speed, half width or whatever.

Drew Townson: You know, that’s what most people did mix to. I was lucky. I worked in a studio Nebury Sound in Boston, which had the half-inch Studer machine to mix to. Most studios didn’t have that nice, those were very expensive machines. And when I say expensive, let’s talk by today’s standards, that stereo recorder in 1988 would have sold for about $32,000.

Brad Page: And required regular maintenance, too.

Drew Townson: Oh, yeah, yeah, Regular maintenance.

Brad Page: They were not inexpensive devices to own and maintain.

Drew Townson: No, that’s the thing. It was broken that day that I needed it.  And we got it fixed and it cost, you know, like a bunch of money to get it fixed.

Brad Page: What other things did you work on that would stand out as maybe some challenges you had to face?

Drew Townson: Some of my challenges were performers that made a mistake, or hit a flat note or a sharp note or whatever. So you’re listening to this song, and you’re hearing there’s a goof in there. You’d have to try to fix that. And the only way to fix it is to either play the bass yourself or call that bass player to come back in and rerecord that part. I mean, that’s what I did sometimes, was re-record stuff as opposed to trying to fix it in the mix. Because as we all know, “fixing it in the mix” is not a real thing. You know, you can’t really fix stuff in the mix. You can make it sound better. You can make it sound better, but you can’t fix it, you know?

Brad Page: Right.

Drew Townson: You know, my specialty was the band would say, “Hey, Drew, we want to record with you.” “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow. Come in the studio.” And they’d come in, they’d set up and they just play and we would record it. That’s what I did a good portion of my life. Live in the studio, recording and then remixed by me later. So, you know, that’s one thing I always liked, was the live recording. Because even when you mix, you know, you’re not going to lose that live feel; that always, that sticks with it.

Brad Page: And that’s important.

Drew Townson: Yeah, it really is. We used to do these blues records that were on a label in New Orleans. And then the guy from the label would come up to our studio in Boston and, you know, he’d stay in Boston for a few weeks, and the artist would stay in Boston for a few weeks, and we’d bring him in the studio and they just set up their gear and play. Like it was just a gig. They just play their stuff, and I would put the microphones up, and I would record every instrument onto its own track and then remix it. But they wouldn’t be doing, like, separate recording. They would just play together all at the same time.

Brad Page: That sounds a lot more simple than it really is. I mean, there’s a skill to capturing that, right? Because you are trying to capture the sense of a performance.

Drew Townson: Right.

Brad Page: And the energy of a performance.

Drew Townson: Right.

Brad Page: And knowing when the take is right.

Drew Townson: Right.

Brad Page: And then being able to translate that to the final product, the final mix, if you will; it sounds easier than it really is. There’s a whole skill there that you have to master.

Here’s a track that Drew recorded with blues Legend Luther Guitar Jr. Johnson, in 1994, recorded live in the studio. There are a lot of instruments on this song, but notice where each instrument is placed in the stereo spectrum so that each instrument has its own space to occupy. They blend together to create that massive sound of a big band. But if you listen for each instrument, the bass or the horns or the piano, for example, you can easily find them. Capturing the energy and fire of the live band that was part of the recording process; making sure that each instrument blended in but also retained its individual place, that was done during the mixing process.

Here’s Luther Guitar, Jr. Johnson with “Walking With You Baby”.

Drew Townson: Let me tell you something: the most important thing in the studio, in recording, is knowing what mic to use and where to put it. And it’s not the same as your live mics. Studio mics are studio mics, and they start about $1,000 or so for one microphone, and it goes up from there. You can easily spend 20 Grand on a good studio mic. And so, you have to know where to put those mics to capture the sound. Otherwise, forget it, you’re not going to accomplish anything.

Brad Page: And so what are some examples of choices that you would make for microphones? Just to give people an idea of what’s the thought process…

Drew Townson: Sure. Well, these days, most drummers prefer a microphone called an AKG D112. And the D112 is a newer mic, and it was invented to capture super low frequencies. I mean, it captures frequencies below what you want. So I never liked that mic because I always thought it sounded real flabby and tubby. So I use the AKG D12E for the kick drum. It has the most punch, it has a little bit of the click that you’re looking for. You know, everybody wants that like little snap on the top of the kick. If you can find one, they’re cheap nowadays, you can probably get one for like a hundred bucks. And that’s a really good kick drum mic. And then, like a snare drum mic, hat is where you do use like a Shure SM57, because the way that mike is tuned is really good for a snare drum– but not for other stuff, you know, in the studio.

Brad Page: Right, right. And these are the kind of choices that a recording engineer has to make up front.

Drew Townson: Right.

Brad Page: And even choosing, you know, you would choose different mics for vocals, but you would choose maybe one mic for a female voice and another mic for a male voice. So these are all, they’re tools of the trade. Think about microphones as being tools, and each tool has its applications and where it’s appropriate and not appropriate.

Drew Townson: The AKG C12 is the best female mic. Look up that and see how much that mic will cost you to buy now. I’m going to say 12 Grand, minimum.

And then there’s one called the Neumann U47 and the Neumann U67. Those are German microphones. Those are really great for guys.

Or like Linda Ronstadt always used the AKG414. So, we tend to think of AKGs as more female mics and the Neumann’s as more male-oriented mics. But that’s, that’s an important thing to know, right?

Brad Page: As an engineer, these are the things you’ve got to know your tools.

Drew Townson: Right? Right. Here’s what you do. You get the singer in the studio; your first time working with that singer, you put three, four, five microphones in front of him, let him sing, and you listen to each mic and you go, “Wow, that’s the one right there”. You can tell by the sound, you know which one is going to be. And you have to do stuff like that. You can’t just pull up some junk mic and say, “Okay, let’s do the vocal track”. You can’t do that. You’ve got to really listen. You have to.

The number one thing you have to do as a recording engineer is use your ears, not your eyes. That’s one thing the digital guys have not figured out. All the digital engineers, they look at their screen and what they see is what they do.

I used to– actually, this is true, Brad, and it’s kind of silly, but we used to put tape over the meters of the outboard gear in the studio. We would literally cover up the meter with a piece of tape, so you couldn’t see the level that was going into it or coming out of it.

And you know what– I love doing that. Because you’re using your ears only; you know, try to do a mix without your eyes. That’s my recommendation for anybody who’s doing this now is try to do a mix with your ears only.

I did a record a few years ago by a Boston band that was at the time called Girls, Guns and Glory. I forget what they’re called now, they have a different name now. But we did that the first day in the studio; we took masking tape and we covered up every friggin’ meter in the studio because I didn’t want to see any of it. I wanted to hear it only.

Brad Page: Mhm.

Drew Townson: And the record sounds friggin’ great. It’s a great-sounding record.

Well this band, Girls, Guns and Glory, had gotten a small record deal. I think they got about $15,000 to do the record, which was nothing at the time, but it was still enough to, you know, I spend a week in their rehearsal space with them before the record started and the record came out incredible.

But you have to know what to do. Like when you record a drum kit. Does it sound like a recorded kit when you first record it? Probably not. It probably sounds pretty bad. You know, it’s, it’s, that’s what you have to learn is, when you record something, how do you make it sound even better? And that’s hard. That takes some years, that takes time.

Then I have a record I did on the Rounder label by Mickey Honeycutt, and it’s called “Soul Deep”. And she had been a junkie and the whole nine, had lived on the street and everything. And she was in recovery at the time. We did this record in 1989 and it has, her band was Sugar Ray and the Blue Tones, which was a great band from Providence that I had also produced their album at that time. And then we had horns and the whole nine. So this was a big, you know, full-blown blues band with saxophones, trumpets, the whole nine. And we did that record live too, including her vocals.

And one of the things that we couldn’t stop her from doing in this studio was smoking. Like at that time, even back then, we didn’t allow smoking in the studio. But she was a chain smoker and man, she just smoked through like two or three packs while we were recording. It was funny, but she was great. And she has, you can hear, I hear the cigarettes in her voice… but maybe you can, maybe you can’t.

Brad Page: What are the challenges, as a mix engineer, when you’ve got that many instruments, because you don’t want things to step on each other, you want each one to kind of occupy its own space, right?  How do you approach that kind of challenge?

Drew Townson: That is a great question. That is a truly great question. And my answer is– I didn’t. I wasn’t really that aware of that kind of stuff until probably around 1990 or so, early 90s. I worked with a producer, Daniel Rey, who produced, he produced the Ramones. And he was producing a record, and I was engineering, and he told me to record that guitar.

So there was a guy out there, you know, with an electric guitar. And so I did, I recorded it and Daniel Rey stopped me, he said, “No, that’s not how you record guitar.” And then he went to the equalizer and he rolled off all the low end out of the guitar, and then said, “That’s the sound. That’s the sound you want.” And I said, “Why?” He goes, “Because the bass and the kick need to fill the bottom and really punch. And you’ve got to get that guitar basically out of there.”

Brad Page: Right.

Drew Townson: And I was like, “Wow, man, I never knew that”. You know, that was a really big thing for me to learn.

Brad Page: Yeah.

Drew Townson: And as years went on, I learned how to do that. And there isn’t much low end that you use. You take out a lot of bass out of all the instruments except the bass and the kick, and the toms and stuff.

Brad Page: Here’s a song Drew recorded with the legendary Boston guitar player Ronnie Earl and his band the Broadcasters. This track also features guest guitarist Duke Robillard. It’s another fairly large band. You’ve got bass, drums, two guitars, organs and a horn section. But listen to how each instrument is clearly discernible. They don’t step on each other or cover each other up. You can clearly hear each part. Even the two guitars are distinct from each other. That’s what we’re talking about here. This is Ronnie Earle and the Broadcasters with the instrumental “Backstroke”.

Drew Townson: So on January 1st, Y2K, I recorded an album with a band from Salem called the Vic Morrows. And you know, like anything else, I forgot all about it, you know, over the years. And this past summer, the leader of the Vic Morrows who still– I guess they still play out once in a while, they still are friends and they still play out once in a while– he said, “Drew, we put this out on CD back in 1990. I want it to come out on vinyl this time. I want to re-release the album on vinyl.” And I said, “Okay man, give it to me, I will get it ready for you.” And, you know, mastering a record for vinyl is completely different than mastering for CD. And, so, I spent hours remastering this record by the Vic Morrows, and it sounds in friggin’ incredible. It really does.

Brad Page: You led us to the mouth of a pretty big rathole when you were talking about “mastering”. And I don’t really want to go down that rathole, but that’s kind of the third piece, right, where you have the recording, you have the mixing, and then you have what is called “mastering”. And if you could just kind of sum up for the listeners what is mastering, and what is different about mastering than the recording or the mixing piece of it, if you could?

Drew Townson: Okay, sure. First off, if you’re going to do mastering, you have to have really good ears. If you have any issues with your hearing at all, you cannot be a mastering engineer. You have to have perfect hearing to be a mastering engineer. And that’s what I’m doing now, much more than before, is mastering. I like mastering because you’re taking, you know, sometimes it was recorded by somebody else. You know, very often mastering engineers are different guys, because in an ideal world, you don’t want the same guy recording, mixing and mastering your stuff. You know, you want different ears to get involved.

And so what mastering is, is essentially taking those final track mixes and putting them on CD or record or whatever the, whatever the final format is. You have to prepare the tracks for that format. And it’s, there’s something to it, it’s not just, “Let me just track this up.” No, you have to know what you’re doing. So, you have to EQ and compress and all that stuff. And it’s a whole nother level of, after the mix is done. We don’t have to get into it, but…

Brad Page: Yeah, yeah, but it is a really specific specialty and there’s not a lot of people that. do it.

Drew Townson: There are many fewer people doing mastering than anything else.

Brad Page: Right, right.

Drew Townson: And with the resurgence of vinyl, and I should say, you know, I still have a really nice record collection, and I listen to it every day. You know, with the resurgence of vinyl, mastering has started to grow again. Because, you know, when records were gone, there weren’t nearly as many mastering engineers. Because mastering, that’s one thing. Like, if you were going to not master for something, it would be CD that you would not master for. Vinyl is more specific. You know, tape is all those things are more, they have a sound of their own that you have to deal with.

Brad Page: Right.

Drew Townson: You know, vinyl has a sound that you have to compensate for, basically.

Brad Page: Yeah. Limitations that are different than a CD, that it’s different from a cassette tape or an eight-track or whatever it was at the time.

Drew Townson: Right.

Drew Townson: Producing– Let’s talk about what that is for a second.

Brad Page: Sure.

Drew Townson: Producing is telling the musicians, you know, help them play the song or help them develop the song. You know, if the song needs a backup vocal here, or a chorus goes too long, or not long enough, or it needs a bridge or… you know, you’re actually working with the song itself. That’s what a producer does, is develop the song.

So I produced the Vic Morrows album. And what that means is, I didn’t just sit there twiddling knobs. I actually play guitar on the record. You know, I was part of the making of the music. And I really like the way the record came out. I really do.

Brad Page: Yeah. A producer, it’s somewhat analogous to a director of a film. But not exactly.

Drew Townson: Right.

Brad Page: Not exactly…

Drew Townson: Not exactly.

Brad Page: …but a producer, you know, it’s a big picture thing.

Drew Townson: Right.

Brad Page: Whereas the recording engineer is more in the weeds, right? Like the director of a film will say, “Okay, I want a wide shot here and a close up here.” But it’s the director of photography and the cameraman who figure out, “Okay, what lens do I use and how do I light the scene?” The director doesn’t typically get involved in that level of detail.

Drew Townson: Exactly.

Brad Page: He’s stepped back and looking at the big picture. And that’s kind of what a producer does versus a recording engineer.

Drew Townson: Right.

Brad Page: A producer can help to choose the songs that end up on the record. You know, you might record 20 songs, but only 12 of them are going to end up on the album. And the producer helps to figure out what are the best, you know, help to choose the song. Like you said before, is going to help in the arrangements. Like “I think this song needs a better intro” or, you know, “What you have as the chorus would be a better verse. Why don’t you use that as the verse and then write something new for the chorus.”

Drew Townson: Or as often happens, they’ll have a chorus, then they’ll have a verse and then they’ll have another part of the song which sounds as good as another. It could be a whole nother song.

Brad Page: Uh-huh.

Drew Townson: You know that chorus right there, that extra chorus that you have in this song, is another song. So let’s drop it out of this song and let’s build a whole nother song around that chorus.

Brad Page: Right.

Drew Townson: I mean, I would meet, I would get together with a band up to two weeks before we go in the studio, and I’d start going to their rehearsals with them. You know, every night, I’d go to their rehearsals and we just sit there going through every song.

Brad Page: And that kind of work that you’re talking there, that’s what you’d call “pre-production”, right?

Drew Townson: That’s pre-production. Right.

Brad Page: Before you even get in the studio, a smart producer, a smart band would do that work so that you’re not wasting time in the studio and burning money.

Drew Townson: Exactly.

Brad Page: Anything else you want to add or wrap up with?

Drew Townson: The most important thing for any– I’m not going to say “engineer”, because I’m going to use the word “recordist”, because I wasn’t even really an engineer… before me, like, the 1960’s is when guys that worked at Abbey Road and whatever, like those guys were actual sound engineers. They had gone to school for engineering and all that.

So I’m not saying an engineer, I’m saying recordist: you need to make sure the tracks are good.  Do all your hard work recording the tracks, getting the tracks to sound good. Because if the tracks don’t sound great, forget it, you’re done already. That’s my biggest number one bit of advice. Yeah, mixing is great, but recording is even greater.

Brad Page: Yeah. Again, when it comes to mixing, if somebody just hands you a bunch of poorly recorded tracks, you can only do so much. You know, if somebody hands you a bunch of really well-recorded, really well-balanced tracks, the mix gets so much easier, right? It almost mixes itself.

Drew Townson: If you’ve got tracks that are good, it almost mixes itself. That is very true. It almost mixes– It doesn’t quite mix itself, but it almost makes it itself.  It needs you for, like that last 10% or whatever, you know?

Brad Page: Right, right.

Drew Townson: Yeah, but it really does. It’s amazing when you, you know, when you’re recording a band. This is one of the things I used to do. I’d be in the studio, I’d be recording a band; push up the faders and get it to sound like a band where I’m sitting. Get it to sound like I’ve got the best seat in the house, and I’m just, you know, listening to the band playing. That’s the best thing you can do, is just really capture it, you know?

Brad Page: Yeah.

Brad Page: Drew Townson, thank you so much for joining me on this episode for this conversation. This has been a lot of fun. I could talk for another hour.

Drew Townson: Me too.

Brad Page: But I think we’ve given people a good idea of what a recording engineer does, what mixing is, what producing is, all of those kind of things. I hope this answers some questions that people may have had and were afraid to ask.

Drew Townson: Yeah, like producing is more musical, mixing is more technical. Just make it simple like that, you know?

Brad Page: Yeah. Well, this has been great. Thank you so much, Drew. I love you, man.

Drew Townson: Love you too, buddy. Great, great talking to you.

Brad Page: Thanks to Drew Townson for joining us for this episode. It’s always great to catch up with an old friend, and I hope that this gave you some insight into the recording process and the thinking behind what goes into a mix. And I hope you enjoyed listening to some of those great records that Drew worked on.

I’ll be back again in about two weeks with another new episode. Until then, you can catch up with all of our previous episodes on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com. You can also find all of our shows on your favorite podcast app, whether it’s Apple, YouTube, Amazon, Spotify, Google, Pandora, PocketCasts, we’re available on all of them.

Support this show by going to oldglory.com and buying a T-shirt or some merch from your favorite bands. They’ve got a ton of stuff on their site, and if you use our discount code LoveThatSong, you’ll get 15% off and you’ll help to support this show. That’s oldglory.com, discount code LoveThatSong.

And don’t forget to tell a friend about this show. Your word-of-mouth support is worth a lot. So thank you.

On behalf of everyone here on Pantheon, I thank you for listening, and I’ll see you next time here on the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast.

Let’s close out this episode with one last track that Drew worked on. This is from an album that Drew recorded and produced for The Fathoms. They’re a Surf Rock band out of Boston, and this is one of my favorite records that Drew worked on. Recorded in his studio back in 2007, and just listen to how good this recording is! Enjoy and I’ll see you back here next time.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Drew Townson:
https://soundcloud.com/drew-townson

George Martin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Martin

Bob Clearmountain:
https://www.mixthis.com/

AKG D112:
https://www.akg.com/microphones/dynamic-microphones/D112MkII.html

Neumann U47:
https://www.neumann.com/en-us/products/historical/u-47

Solid State Logic (SSL):
https://www.solidstatelogic.com

Studer:
https://evertz.com/solutions/studer/

The Fathoms:
https://thefathomsofficial.bandcamp.com/

Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Johnson_(Guitar_Junior)