MWTM Q&A #23 - Steve Albini
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- Опубліковано 14 тра 2024
- Exceptional Weeklong Music Production Seminars
www.mixwiththemasters.com
The MIX With The MASTERS Seminar Series is a chance for recording and mixing engineers to work closely with A-List record producers, engineers and mixers and improve their skills in music production. The events take place at Studio La Fabrique in the South of France.
At the end of his Weeklong Seminar in February 2015, Producer/Engineer Steve Albini took the time to answer a few questions from the MWTM Facebook Page.
If you find Steve boring, tedious, etc., I´m afraid that is your loss, folks. The guy is a damn encyclopedia of recording (at least for rock music). I can listen to this guy ´til the day I die. He is not shy to share 35 years of his experience for free, and much of his knowledge applies a lot to the modern "project studio" approach. So, if you´re on a budget, starting out, or as he points out, you don´t want to get into a huge debt with a recording school, you might pay some attention to him. He might not be hip or flamboyant, but damn he knows his shit.
And he’s so humble too. It makes listening to his advice and judgment on certain things easier to digest
Who the hell finds Steve boring? I could listen to him talk for hours about anything, and indeed I have... I'm not even into production or anything, I just like listening to him. This guy is crazy smart and admirably principled.
Well said. I prefer Steve's tedium
@@Natural_Bridge3136 He knew more about sound than I ever will. I could never hear or read enough about him. One of the best engineers ever.
To anyone thinking of getting into mountains of debt to attend a recording school I'd highly recommend, instead, that you start building up a small recording studio of your own. It will be much cheaper than student debt and you'll learn ten times more, ten times faster.
not agree. Starting with education will give you a good "basic approach" to start off. I'd recommend joining a music school, then build a career by opening up your own studio. As a proverb says: " School gives you the ability to walk...Masterclasses will make you learn how to run!"
@@Jessie88ITA
That nice proverb left out the part where you spend decades paying off monumental debt. Especially in this modern era of online learning, it is absolutely not necessary to attend a school.
@@conorm2524 am totally disagree...It's an investment in your future career....If you don't have the money, that's another thing, but learning everything by yourself won't give you the right background to make you run a recording studio. I m running my own for over 3 year, but i have attended 1 year of school...Have used all money saved in my whole life, but if you wanna do it, that's the only solution (to me) ;)
@@Jessie88ITA You must be a teacher or working for the school to say this bullshit !
@@christopherdunn317 none of these 2!!! Think you are just another "computer nerd" who believes to be an engineer..
Steve is what professionalism in the music industry ought to be.
0:21 - Have you got any tips on separating two similar sounding electric guitars in a mix?
7:22 - Could you recreate your signature drum sound if you had to work in a basic project studio and how? What if you had to work with samples?
15:10 - What do you think about recording schools? What is the best way for a young engineer to become an assistant to somebody great like you? P.S. Some of the records you have engineered are the ones that inspired me as a musician and mixing engineer.
23:29 - Please talk about the Ghost's first album. I love that record. Such an amazing sound on each instrument. Full, warm and sparkly at the same time. How did you do it?
24:40 - What do you feel the future of recordings holds for us? Do you think the sampling era is coming to end basically, and some sort of classical instruments renaissance is on its way back, even speaking of dance music?
30:41 - What bands are you listening to right now? What's your favorite band of all time and why is it the Ramones?
33:17 - Please describe a few in-session discoveries that immediately influenced and impacted your future recordings. Why do you think much of the community is disproportionately focused on their tools rather than their ability to make a record with them?
39:00 - My college professor at Ohio University showed us a technique you developed for mic'ing the kit, dubbed the "crotch mic". How did you develop this technique?
40:58 - Hi Steve, I love the records you've done. When you are mixing, are you thinking about how the mastering process will affect the final product? Thanks a lot.
45:23 - As an avid user of 2" tape on my MCI JH24, I often wonder if I am approaching my tracking too conservatively and leaving myself more work come mix time. Question: How much EQ and compression will you do on the way in? When combining multiple mics on sources, say kicks and snares for example, are you "treating" each track individually and then "treating" the source to track as well on a sub group prior to hitting tape?
DA REAL MVP
Thanks for this comment, saved me a few 10's of minutes
THANK YOU
thanks bro
Aye, absolutely my pleasure!
Honest to god, you can see in his face how he's considering responding to a question, and then he says the MOST intelligent, kind, thoughtful, encompassing response to every question he's asked. He's a living example of how to be, like, a PERSON.
Legit makes me question everything abt myself
@@spiralations7304If it’s any comfort, I think he got there by being an asshole for many years and learning from his regrets.
He's brutally honest in the autistic sense. And I think that's beautiful.
32:08
The best sound Steve Albini has produced in his illustrious career.
What a humble guy. Clearly a deep thinker, and not just about his craft. Fascinating
RIP, one of the greatest to ever record music.
Steve Albini is based, I would listen to an Albini podcast any day!
Cheers to Steve for knowing and pointing out the situation we have when it comes to for-profit schooling that has promises to provide a magical education but also cost extraordinary amounts of money, indebting either the student or the populous.
Imagine the studio you could start building instead of having mammoth student debt!
The most brilliant/boring man on the planet.
+orangesugarcube your friends must hate telling you jokes.
+orangesugarcube haha you dull dull person, lighten up for god sake
+bassplayerguy jeremy I wouldn't be so hasty to imply that he has friends
I didn't quite catch how does he deal with 2 similar guitar tones....
He prob means in the sound engineering subject now just overall the most brilliant person.
I don't know if you people are watching the same interview I am, or maybe your grasp of the English language is weak. I thought Steve answered very thoughtfully, and even provided examples of what he was talking about. I think is was thorough and has a breadth of knowledge which he very graciously is obviously taking the time to share with the viewers. Otherwise, he wouldn't have done these sessions to begin with, and more than once.
You should have your doubts! :D
dude steve albini is such a cool dude
everytime i watch something with him i realize it once again
I could listen to this man for 8 hours straight, take a half hour break, and then start another 8 hours.
Steve Albini is one of the people I look up to in the industry. Intelligent, dedicated, honest and trustworthy. Plus he captures great sounding recordings. Thanks for doing this interview.
He has a certain vibe to him. One of those "nil bullshit" kinda people who's all about being an engineer, all the way, even the clothes, pen and all.
This is worth listening to, every minute. Thank you, Steve for being so open, and MWTM for not putting this behind a paywall. Total gold.
I find Steve Albini's approach to answering these questions really insightful and empirical as he talks less about specific technology than a lot of engineers do and more about his personal experiences of how he captures great performances.
Definitely a sympathetic and highly thoughtful guy.
For real. He's one of the sweetest, most genuine people I've seen in the music industry. Very grounded and down to earth, too.
if in different youtube video i could just hear what people say that in this material I must watch Steve. He's one of greatest man live on this planet. God bless you.
I couldn't agree more with regards to Recording Schools being nothing but a way to make money and put passionate people in dangerous debts... I had my taste of it. Once I managed to become a studio assistant (NOT BECAUSE OF MY SCHOOL DEGREE, DIDN'T GET ANY HELP TO FIND A JOB IN THE INDUSTRY FROM SCHOOL), I took the "old path" during which I learned 100 times more (under every aspect, from technical to personal interaction with musicians). Steve you're such an inspiration. I do respect you in every possible way: your work and human ethic comes from another world, a better place indeed.
Mr. Albini, thank you for your candor, tact, and expertise on these questions. I have learned much from your video series. They bring a centering and rationale that cannot be purchased via student loan. If only these came about sooner...
Absolutely amazing listening to how thoughtful and knowledgeable he is! Really makes me excited to get back in the studio!
Awesome Episode! Steve Albini is such a brilliant guy. Really appreciate listening to him ...
The segment on “recording schools” hits home for many others I’m sure, in different vocations. For me, I could replace recording school with “culinary school”.
Ok, i know that people can not agree with everything he sais, but...man this is 50 minutes! This guy loves to share...i'm an Andy Wallace fan but loved Steve's "Q&A style"...Thank you so much!
Steve, simply amazing, straight-shooting answers that are both information dense yet relatable to the average project studio warrior!
Albini is the man! He doesn't bullshit and tells it how it is.
This guy REALLY answers questions. I like this guy
Steve you are a great human. You have worked on my favourite albums ever. Shellac is 💥
You inspire me...thank you!
I love learning from smart, articulate, thoughtful people
Perfect example of his golden touch on the Helmet album In The Meantime. The 1st track is done by him and stands out so much compared to the other tracks on the rest of the album which were not produced by him.
Steves the man. Great console. Great Mics. Super smart techniques
Steve, you are the wisest man on earth
Love Steve's take on the for profit schools. Super sharp.
So cool, thank you very much for sharing this great talk with us!
wow, extremely comprehensive, thanks Steve!
It was a treat to hear him share his recording techniques and aesthetics. He is always enjoyable to listen to because he articulates music and other conceptual mediums in such a clear way. I have been a fan of his for a while now. Thanks for sharing this!
great Q&A. albini’s insight on higher education in the US is spot on
Acoustic treatment has helped my small space, 10.5 ft x 11.5 ft x 8 ft. become a place with an ability to have a decent room sound for acoustic guitar and vocal recording. I also built several Gobo panels that can be arranged for extra isolation. But it's a one person, two at most kind of space. Obviously, it's not a place to record drums, so I program them and part out the drum tracks to a real drummer who tracks in his own studio. There are a lot of ways to do the small space work area. For me, it's just working working working in it in order to get familiar with the limits. Getting to know my monitors and mic setup possibilities is the key for me. And the integral part of knowing my monitors tell me "the Truth" was, first off, room treatment (rockwool. fiberglass in corners, parallel places, cloud on ceiling) It's encouraging to realize our small spaces can be a "good" limitation since it's all that's in the budget for the near future. Thanks for the encouragement!
great Q&A, awesome tips, very humble and professional.
steve has the best philosophy to recording like he says its an archival based approach,..
imagine if alan lomax had steve's microphone collection
As both a drummer and an engineer I know that the top drum head is all feel and the bottom drum head is all tuning. Although there is a direct relationship between top and bottom head in reference to drum resonance, I find great success in placing mics on both top, bottom, and even internally from time to time. 95% of drummers I meet have no idea how to even tune a drum kit or why they do the things they do with a drum key. The same can be said for many engineers when recording drum kits. I think Steve hit the nail on the head all the way
Great video and insight from a true master of his craft.
Steve is smarter than all of us. He nailed it on the head with higher education, those loans kill creativity for musicians, for profit schools are crap
Mr Steve albini is truly a humble guy you really need to listen very hard to this video because he is throwing some huge keywords ,you need to read between the lines to understand one simple word in this video is leading you into 20 books easily if you are serious about recording you can dig deeper alone
I wish people would watch his old interviews 1st before continually asking the same questions over & over. I listened to about 5 interviews last night & he answered the same things in every one w the same responses.
good mix of philosophy and technical advice in all of steve alibini's videos/interviews, even if they don't quite align with or challenge my own beliefs. its good stuff.
For people who don't get what he means about durability of tape, he means that analog tape will be compatible with any tape machine. With digital, if you have a session that was done in cubase, for example, and 20 years from now you want to revisit that session, you would need to have a computer that has a version of cubase on it that will open that project file, you need to make sure that you have your stupid elicenser, and all the proper plugins, etc. If Steinberg is out of business by then and no longer supports Cubase, then you would be out of luck trying to reopen that project.
I don't necessarily agree with this notion because you could just save the stems of the project as universal music formats like .WAV. Its hard to imagine a future where nobody can play back WAV files. Even if WAV files become obsolete, they are so common that you will at least be able to find some sort of tool to play them back , similar to tape machines. Although if you want to keep all the session information like plugins and processing, you're stuck with the whole digital issue above.
I agree 100%. In fact, I'm giving some thought to saving out individual tracks on all of my projects from now on in WAV format, because then it won't matter what DAW I used. The idea that digital is bad as a storage format because a CD or SSD might not be readable in the future does not take into account the fact that you can make as many copies as many places as you want, and they'll all be identical to the original. I think the idea of archiving on analog tape is pretty funny, actually, in 2019. But I think Steve is a genius and just because I don't agree with him on this one thing doesn't mean he isn't right about all the other stuff in this video. Brilliant dude.
Yea I think I at least mostly understand his point of view... but I think it’s pretty skewed to his domain. To argue that a physical reel of tape that would have to be doubled to another reel and stored in another location to survive damage including fire, theft, freak accidents, etc. vs. digital files that can be transferred and backed up far more seamlessly to various drives for much cheaper, the cloud, etc. is a pretty sad argument... digital audio will clearly last infinitely longer than tape in the grand scheme of things (of course that’s to say nothing of their aesthetic sonic qualities)
That’s what freezing tracks is for
This was legit. Thank you for sharing.
New Big Black fan here. Been watching a decent amount of Steve interviews and I’m just blown away at how articulate this man is musically and in general. I could listen to him talk about anything for hours. Really laid-back and interesting dude. Gotta love it.
Rest in analog Steve
I'm not nuts about his musical aesthetic but I could listen to this guy talk about production all day long. This stuff is gold if you're really interested in learning how to do it.
For those of us who came up listening to Big Black, there's awesome irony in Albini being associated w/a signature "drum sound"...props to him for giving Mac McNeilly due credit. Great interview.
32:09
I'm going to sample that sound
What great explanations by such an intelligent person!
My old roommate went to college to be an engineer / producer. When he got there they were RIGHT in the middle of switching from OTB to ITB setup. He got barely any knowledge because of it. Dropped out,, and was left with a pile of debt he’s currently working his ass off at a factory to pay. I dropped out of high school, sat and watched UA-cam, videos like this, behind the scenes of my fav bands, etc. I now have my own production company with zero debt.
I do lack a lot of “fundamentals” but the hands on trial and error really gave me my own sound, and drove me harder than any school could have with my interests and such.
Such a great outlook! have been thinking about this a lot myself recently. I've been trudging through hours upon hours upon hours of youtube tutorials and experimenting with every single free plugin I can get my hands on. I've been referencing some pro tracks and honestly -I'd say I'm almost there. I can kinda sorts compete -But, it's different... Haha! It's a different thing -My own thing. I'm not using a lot of compression. I'm not even using simple multiband compression or a lot of plugins and it's a much less layered sound, I would say... have been thinking that I might need an apprenticeship somewhere or to pay for a program or something... Meh...!
+respect for wearing engineering coveralls
Tune and capo up. I do that all the time. I keep my acoustics in E flat and capo to E and it gives such a different color when I'm camp firing or whatever. I don't get a change to record often but he has an excellent point.
I wish more folks had asked questions about all-analog recording and the value + limitations of recording the way he does. As a self-recording artist that loves Steve's work, I have no option but to record digitally. I only hope I can get some material worthy of working with Steve.
Jay Toomuchhustle I think his bottom line with analog is archiving multitrack masters to tape for the permanence aspect, but I’d bet the rest of his reliance on analog outboard gear is down to service/repair convenience. Any competent electrician/tech can fix (or even design and build) an old-school compressor or tube mic preamp, but even digital outboard gear can have microprocessors that were programmed at the factory or basic operating systems on built-in rotary card drives, and are essentially bricked when these sorts of things break out of warranty. Since he stocks his studio to his liking and staffs people to work on the equipment, he’s probably leaned on things that are not proprietary or programmed, and you can buy generic components from lots of places to repair it. I don’t know this for sure, but it has a vague parallel with his views on tape machines and reliability.
GREAT interview!
Steve's very generous with the information.
The Noam Chomsky of sound engineering.
😆 HAHA YES WOW GOOD EAR
best comment! good comparison.
😂
This video turned me on to Dead Rider back in 2020 during lockdown. They are so fucking excellent. Thanks Steve!
i prefer more sculpting producers, but for live-capture, he's the man
Nailing it on everything, what a guy.
On the third question, Steve leaves out the word 'great' because he doesn't want to refer to himself as such. Modesty is rare in the music industry, and is another reason why he IS great.
great interview
Insanely useful information. It's crazy this video is free.
Also... Albini is wearing a calculator watch. I love this dude.
Great political views. I really appreciate this interview.
Excellent caveat on for-profit trade schools. I've worked for a couple of them; also at University of California. Start with an internship at a studio. Start by learning to make tea, coffee, and efficient ways to clean the lavatory, organize cable, answer phones professionally, dusting (no wet mops), so food runs, and be reliable which includes being on time.
For the two-guitar question, I would think changing pickup position on the same guitar would help separate them. I have used this effectively for a double-jangle part, where one performance is more toward the neck pickup, and the other is more toward the bridge.
"complex feelings"
based man, rock on
Love the capo idea!
i love the ghost and own their first record. i had no idea he recorded it but makes sense since they're from chicago
speed x1.25 is a must. Second the Chomsky of sound engineering comparison.
omg he is chomskyyyyy
In a word, thorough. :)
Really has a wealth of knowledge
me gusta, steve es un grande
Yes or no question Steve. Do you like music? Steve: "Well, in my experience.........( one hour later)....short answer, yes. I could listen to Steve Albini and Rupert Neve talk all damn day.
With all due respect to Mr. Albini, analog tape has a definitive shelf life.
Steve Albini, Raw and Real; Love and Thanks - PREXENTS #prexents
Crotch mic question might be referring to the "fat mic" technique too. Mic placed between the bass drum foot and snare with a steep LPF.
I am by no means an analog purist. I love me some compression. I don't necisarily aim for "narturalistic" as a matter of course like Albini.. I barely agree with much of his philosophy on recording. but I could listen to that guy talk about calibrating tape machines or setting up microphones all day.
I think Steve could literally talk about tape storage for 24hrs without having to pause or sleep
Humble guy. Rare.
Love the responce about schools! Very smart man! I bet he is an INTP...with all the detailed answers.
intj
21:15 Holy cow you nailed it here. Education IS the new commodity without any question. People are so easily beguiled and want to know that all they have to do is lay down $80,000 to get an $80,000 (or more) a year job. Easy peasy right? Not reality folks and there is an entire industry Federally designed to separate you from your money for a product that may or may not have any value commensurate with the financial cost involved. Steve, you are brilliant in many ways. And well spoken.
grande uomo, intelligenza e diforismo al tempo stesso
He even skipped the word ”great” in one of the letters!
13:55 is such an astute thought. The deeply primitive part of our brain, when it knows its being lied to, does some weird stuff. Sometimes it creates a fight or flight response, others it creates deep disinterest or disgust. This is something we need to know as engineers, because when you enter the uncanny valley, it's very hard to get out of it.
Though he is long-winded, I do appreciate his in-depth analyses on the questions asked.
I think different speakers can give you very different tones in a guitar even if you are using the same instrument. Guitar speakers can sound so different.
whatever happened to that awesome recording you made with Cheap Trick years ago? It should have been made into a new album!
I think it's worth noting that another way to differentiate double tracked guitars is to record each with a different pickup selected.
A different amp tone as well.
@@markfarrell1476 Yes, that's why a very classic trick is to put an acoustic with an electric, or a semi with solid. The other thing he talks about is using different positions and inversions which is fun too.
On the first EP I ever did the engineer asked me to double the chords on one song with a cheap beater tele that was in the studio in Nashville tuning, and it brightened up the chords of the chorus with all these tinkly overtones.
Drum machines are great. You dont have to feed them. They dont talk back. If they screw up, its because YOU screwed it. Theyre an absolute god-send imo!
Anyone know the song that plays in the intro?
Legend
what a wise man!
Wonder what his thoughts are of Martin Hannett's approach to drums?
Very unique engineer.