Joe Barresi: King Of The Rock Age

complimented the producer on working for the band, and “not for anyone When it comes to the production of volume-to-11 rock there’s else” – an apparent reference to record company pressures. And so, with no-one better than Joe Barresi – the latest offering from full creative control and a much larger budget to work with than before, Homme and Barresi set out to experiment more than ever and, said the Queens of the Stone Age, Lullabies to Paralyze, is latter, “create something unique.” testament to that. Paul Tingen finds out “The band rehearsed the songs at Rancho de la Luna studios [in Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California]” explained Barresi. how this complex, ear-invading metal “When they came back to LA, I sat in on a couple of rehearsals and it monster was assembled. was mainly a matter of me learning the music and seeing what worked, sonically, guitar- and tempo-wise, and so on. Then we loaded all the gear into Sound City studios and spent the first day sorting through it, plugging things in and deciding what would sound good for what parts. We had a massive array of amplifiers, guitars and drums, including some of my own stuff…”

Vintage King When Barresi spoke about “some of [his] own stuff,” he was, perhaps momentarily, under the spell of the British art of understatement, for he’s the proud owner of a rather extravagant collection of assorted boxes, guitars and amplifiers. As he put it, “I have 250 guitar pedals, probably close to 45 guitars, 75 guitar amps (35 combos and 40 heads), and countless pieces of outboard gear. Altogether enough to fill a garage.” To be more specific, Barresi’s gear includes over 30 microphones (from the likes of Royer, Neumann, Shure, Sennheiser), almost 40 compressors (TubeTech, Focusrite, EMI, Neve, Trident, Urei, etc), 30 mic pre’s (Studer, Sontec, Pultec, API, Urei, Joe Meek, Quad Eight, etc), and some more esoteric stuff he’d rather not see in print. The sheer number as well as the nature of these boxes reveals much about Barresi’s approach to engineering, for many affect the front end of recording, and most are analogue, valve, and/or vintage. “I like to focus on things like: how a part is played, what guitar is played, where you position amplifiers, the drums, and the vocalist, what console you track on, the kind of mics and mic preamps you use, and so on,” stressed Barresi. “A few nights ago I spent hours A/B-ing Neve and Quad Eight mic preamps. Stuff like that matters to me. Gear with personality is mandatory and every little bit helps. Analogue gear allows me to experiment and not sound like everybody else. If I was lazy, I’d just put a plug-in on something, but instead I prefer to pick the right compressor or microphone, or get the mic placement right. All this is about the art of making records, which I think is getting lost at the moment.”

Photos: Nigel Copp School of Rock As a keen student of the art of recording, Barresi is an avid reader of recording books, magazines, and enjoys watching any kind of making-of documentary. “What really blew my mind,” he explained, “was watching this documentary recently about the making of Who’s Next and seeing Glyn Johns push up just four faders and hearing what I’ve been listening ack in the 1960s, Phil Spector’s influential approach the paracetamol is a matter of taste, but Barresi is undoubtedly Queens of the Stone Age Producer, Joe Barresi, in the to for three quarters of my life! Amazing. These days everything seems live room at Sound City studios, LA, with Josh Homme to mega-sized production was described by the now setting new sonic standards for the production of turbo-charged, to be about musical ‘perfection’, optimum recording levels, complete on guitar. “We had a massive array of amplifiers, guitars Blegendary term ‘wall of sound’. Forty years later, volume-to-11 rock. and drums”, said Joe, something this picture makes fairly isolation on each microphone, and so on. It’s just ridiculous. I like Californian producer and engineer Joe Barresi is attempting The best-known example of Barresi’s sonic barrage is Queens evident. recording straight to analogue tape without click-tracks and without to inch ahead of Spector with a sound that’s so massive, hard- of the Stone Age. He engineered, mixed and co-produced the listening to whether this particular beat is ahead or behind. And that’s hitting, and in-your-face that it can perhaps best be described as band’s eponymous debut album (1998), as well as their recently what we did with Lullabies to Paralyze.” a ‘wall of rock’. released fourth offering, Lullabies to Paralyze. Co-producer on Further prodding for details of the recording of the latest QotSA A sustained listening to music produced, engineered, and/or both albums was bandleader, guitarist, singer, and songwriter album was met with occasional resistance on Barresi’s part, apparently mixed by Barresi is like surfing a Tsunami and being crushed Josh Homme. Lullabies to Paralyze has been well received out of respect for Homme, who likes to shroud the recording process in by a quarry-load of boulders at the same time. Whether this and in interviews, Homme has described the relationship secrecy. Luckily Barresi was happy to spill the beans on the tricks and leads to an exhilarating adrenaline rush or a desperate lunge for between himself and Barresi as “bordering on telepathy”, and working methods that were his own territory.

AT|34 35|AT Barresi’s Guide to Miking up the Volume

Vocals “I never go in knowing what vocal mic I’m going to use. While cutting tracks I’ll put a couple of mics out and see what the singer sounds like. On vocal days I’ll then put up a couple of mics again and listen and do a shoot-out. Sometimes you have the same microphone for the whole record, but on the Queens album we used different mics on different songs. I rented a Brauner VM1 and that worked really well on pristine vocals. It’s a beautiful, very clear sounding mic. I also used the [Neumann] M49 on a couple of tracks, the SM57 on some others, tried the [Blue] Ball, and used the Shure KSM44, which is really good. “I tend to compress when I go to tape. The [Urei] 1176 is my favourite on vocals, but sometimes the [Teletronix] LA2A works really well. If you’re looking for more dirt you can turn a tube compressor up a little more. I’m not opposed to dirtying the signal up and Joe at the Helm of the Vintage Neve console. Almost all of Lullabies to Paralyze was According to Joe, “There [was] nothing on the album that didn’t touch the Neve at some stage.” blending that in with the original. I’m not a recorded through Sound City’s Neve 8028 desk. transparent compressor guy. I may send one compressor into the other as well. That works well if you need a very upfront vocal. “I try not to use the same thing twice. If I used an Echoplex on the first Queens whole song like that, “ it comes from a different When I’m mixing I’ll compress the vocal record, I wouldn’t bring that the second time round. The making of Lullabies was also with a lot of bleed.” we tried to get a different sound for each musical universe. further, perhaps using a [ELI] Distressor and experimental in the sense that we tried to get a different sound for each song, and One song that saw a “We wanted a circus feel,” something that’s a little cleaner and more song, and even for sections of songs, accurate, like an 1176 or the SSL console even for sections of songs, trying out different microphones than the ones I would lot of experimentation stated Barresi, “and you can’t compressor.” normally use. It was like a recording dream, because not only were the songs good, was the album’s trying out different microphones than the have a big rock circus feel. the guys amazing players, and the record fun to make… it was also like going back to lengthy centrepiece, ones I would normally use” So we made it like merry- Guitars recording school.” Someone’s In The go-round type music, with a “I’ll split the guitar signal, using the PCP For each track the group and Barresi would experiment until they were happy Wolf. With its long, swirling feeling. The ‘circus Instrument Distro or more often my System- with a combination of certain instruments, amplifiers, pedals, microphones, and their impressionistic middle section it almost comes across as a guitar’ is a hollow-body through a weird little combo amp and a atic Systems guitar splitter, which can split placements. Then, continued Barresi, “We went for it and tracked the song. We cut slice of 1970s prog rock. “The band laid the song down live bizarre microphone. There was also a mic in the middle of the the signal to six amps. I don’t tend to use them all at the same time, sometimes it’s drums, bass, and two guitars completely live on all the songs. Medication, Little Sister, with the middle section in there,” revealed Barresi, “and we group. I think that intro had only three or four mics. We did the just three or four outputs, and one may go This Lullaby, and Tangled Up In Plaid, were all done in one take. On other songs we did then overdubbed all sorts of studio experiments to it. Josh had whole song like that, but decided that this only suited the intro, to a tuner and another to a DI box. Using six some very minimal editing of different takes. Then we’d punch in anything that needed been reading a lot of Grimm fairy tales, and wanted it to sound so we went back to a big rock approach. The shift from the intro amplifiers is excessive, really! In choosing the amplifiers and speakers, it’s important to to be fixed. The beauty of this approach was that at the end we basically had the bed something like that, with two children locked up, like Hansel and to the big rock section was an analogue tape edit, a hard cut. remember that larger speakers give a more tracks done, and I don’t think we did too many overdubs.” Gretel, and the big bad wolf outside. There were a lot of intentional contrasts on the record in general: compact, tighter sound. A tiny amp turned “So we had Chris Goss come in and he made all kinds of soft versus hard, very dry sections versus very wet sections, dry all the way up will give a more blown-out kitchen noises, like a tea kettle whistling and the chopping of lead vocals and wet background vocals and vice versa.” sound. This obviously also applies to bass Weird Stuff amps and cabinets. To capture Queens Of The Stone Age, Barresi used a combination of his more standard a knife and the rustling of the pages of a recipe book. These Another striking contrast is offered by the bonus track Like “The two microphones I use most for approach to recording guitars, bass, and drums (see Barresi’s Guide To Miking Up The things were recorded on individual tracks and then bussed to a Drug (only included on the album’s special edition CD/DVD recording electric guitars are the Shure Volume box item), and some wild variations on this. He elaborated on some of the one track. So the middle bit of the song has a whole montage of version), which sounds like a psychedelic 1960s number: all SM57 and the Sennheiser MD421, often specifics, beginning with the album’s deceptively gentle opening, the acoustic sounding sounds, and multiple guitar parts. Alain Johannes also played hazy, wistful vocals, jangly guitars, laid-back rhythm section, both, close up, placed at the edge of the speaker, where the speaker centre meets This Lullaby, featuring only Homme on guitar and Mark Lanegan on vocals. Markxophone on the section – a weird little instrument that you and very gentle, open production. Even stranger is that it’s one the cone, or, if I’m looking for a brighter “We tried a million times to capture the right moment, and we finally got it while I pluck which vibrates multiple times. There’s also some slide of the tracks on the album featuring guitarist Billy Gibbons of sound, dead centre. When I want more was already mixing the album. Josh and Mark were in the studio lounge, sitting in the guitar going on. All the slide lap-steel stuff went through a little ZZ Top, himself no stranger to the hard-hitting, wall-of-rock low end, I may have an AKG 414 on there, couch, chilling out, and I had a mic in front of Mark, while I recorded Josh’s hollow body Rivera amp, with an Echoplex and other weird stuff.” approach to music. and when I’m after a little more personality, a Neumann U87, backed up a foot, or a electric guitar acoustically and the guitar amp in the bathroom. Actually, 90 percent of “It’s kind of crazy,” said Barresi. “The four guys and Billy are ribbon mic, like the Royer 122, or an RCA the guitars on the album were hollow body. Josh also did some whispery background Tripped Out all playing together, with Josh singing into an amplifier, and BK5 or 77. I’ll often take the microphones vocals through a mic that was patched through an analogue guitar pedal reverb. While Homme is adamant that Queens of the Stone Age isn’t every mic in the room wide open. That’s where all the space through some Neve 1272 preamps into the desk, and then via an API 550 or Quad Eight Following This Lullaby is the full-on Medication, a shift which is a bit like being a heavy metal band, much of the music on Lullabies To Paralyze comes from. I did two different analogue mixes and loaded them EQ to the multi-track.” whacked over the head with a piece of four-by-two while dozing in your rocking chair. is of the eardrum-assaulting, compressed-to-death variety. It’s into ProTools to line them up to see if I wanted to cut sections According to Barresi, “The song was intentionally made to sound like the first album, it a perfect complement to Barresi’s wall-of-rock approach to from one mix to the other. I then started nudging one of the Bass was like a ‘welcome back’ to the listener. After this there was a lot of experimentation recording. But, as ever with QotSA, there are surprising leftfield mixes slightly ahead or behind, getting a phase going. When I “I’ll record basses via a DI and an amp, in sections of songs. We’d experiment with maybe changing the drum kit around so turns, such as the opening to The Blood Is Love, which with its played the mixes together it totally tripped it out, and was just sometimes two amps blended into one the texture was different, or have everyone in a circle looking at each other and putting three/four time signature, clean guitars (one called a ‘circus the effect we were looking for. So I ended up putting the two track. I won’t normally use a splitter, but a couple of guitar amps in this circle. We might put a mic up in the middle and cut a guitar’), weird sound effects, and cheesy drums, sounds like mixes on top of each other like that. It’s got a vibe.”

AT|36 37|AT … More Miking Up just go through the DI into the amp. The microphones on a bass cabinet could be a Shure SM57 or SM7, or Neumann 47FET. The guys in the Queens turned me on to the Blue mics. The Blue Mouse, Blue Ball, or Red Ball can all be great on bass. If I’m looking for a very full sound, I may back the mic up five to six feet, where it will almost become a room mic. You always use your ears and go from there. Sometimes I’ll re- amp the DI bass track when I’m mixing and add a slightly distorted signal back in.”

Drums “On kick drum I always love a mic inside and out. Inside I prefer the Sennheiser MD421 – I’m not a huge AKG D112 fan. If the 421 doesn’t work, the next choice would be a Shure Beta 52. Outside could be anything, an NS10 speaker, a 47FET, or a Beyer 160, about three feet away. Snare drum would be an SM57 on the top and a 57 or AKG 441 on the bottom. I may also use a Neumann KM86 or a [AKG] 452 taped to a 57, or a QotSA frontman, Josh Homme, sneers into a Brauner VM1. Joe Barresi: “I rented a Brauner 414 at the top. Toms could be 421, or 87 if VM1 and that worked really well on pristine vocals. It’s a beautiful, very clear sounding mic.” I’m looking for a little more low end. “Overheads depend on the studio I’m working in. Sound City has a really good Tape & Tools pair of Neumann U67s. It could also be Almost the entire Lullabies to Paralyze was recorded through Sound City’s Neve 8028 an AKG 414, or a Sony C37 or a 47FET. desk, with ample usage of some of Barresi’s mic preamps, to a Studer 24-track tape Hi-hat and ride are usually something machine, as well as ProTools HD. “I brought in some Helios and Telefunken V76 more condenser-like when I’m looking for a crisp sound, or SM57 or SM7 when I’m preamps,” explained Barresi. “Just fat-sounding boxes. There’s nothing on the album looking for something a little more sloppy. that didn’t touch the Neve at some stage. Also, everything went to tape, but in cases I’ll usually compress the drums to some where I’d filled up all 24-tracks I’d record the rest into ProTools. degree, and blend all the kick mics to one track and ditto for the snare mics; I like the “A lot of the vocals went right into ’Tools as well, through several preamps. Some kick to be under one fader and the same of the vocal sounds were pretty complex. Sometimes they were treated, or I’d use an with the snare.” additional mic that was slightly overdriven, or they were sung through an amplifier or a Leslie cabinet, things like that. I might use two or three microphones on a vocal, and Rooms a lot of times I would print the components separately, so I could re-balance later when “I love to use a combination of a stereo needed. Of course this would eat up a lot of tracks.” and a mono room mic. So nine times out of 10 I’ll have three tracks of ambience. That could be a pair of U87s or PZM or On Tape… a 414 or a Coles ribbon mic. I love to “I love the sound of the analogue tape machine,” says Barresi, “and I don’t use Dolby. put a room mic like a 441 close to the kit Never. For the kind of music I work on it’s hardly necessary. I’m not doing super-hi-fi and highly compress it, à la Tchad Blake. And I’m a fan of M-S and Blumlein stereo recording. I also think that noise is a good thing. The hiss is like reality for me. microphone configurations. For instance, “Another thing I love about analogue tape is that it forces you to commit early. Like, when you’re not getting a very even kick here’s the guitar sound on one track, as opposed to using 15 microphones on a cabinet drum on both sides, I might end up putting and putting them all on separate tracks. I don’t think you can build an idea of how the some Blumlein in the middle, and that can work really well. song is going to sound in that way. To me recording a song is like building a house. “Most times the room sound will be com- There’s a floor and walls, a ceiling and a roof. How can you figure out what your roof is pressed to some extent. Sometimes it going to be like when you don’t know what your walls are made of? When I mix, I get a may be severely compressed, on what I lot of projects that have been recorded on ProTools where I spend ages trying to work call ‘Full Canadian’ setting, with all buttons pressed in and to the right. I like the out what the actual guitar or drum sound is. It bums me out.” EMI compressor for its fast attack. I often use the room mics for reverb, rather than Use Your Ears adding reverb from a digital box. I may have According to Barresi, another issue with recording on computers is that the focus shifts the amplifier or the singer in the bathroom, or use reflective surfaces. At Sound City from the ears to the eyes. “You’re not supposed to look at music! A friend of mine, they have an echo chamber that doesn’t engineer Mark Dearnley, an amazing engineer and avid ProTools fan, did four albums have its speakers anymore, so a lot of the for AC/DC. He once held his hands 30 inches apart and said, ‘imagine this is a piece of time when we were looking for something echoey or chamber-like, we stuck a cabinet tape and here’s the kick drum in the middle. The bass is going to be a little bit behind, or the drum kit in there, or did hand claps over here, and the guitar player will be a bit ahead, over to the right of the down beat, or vocals in there.” and essentially your entire downbeat will sound huge!’ The moment you start looking

AT|38 QotSA’s Troy van Leeuwan plays some lap steel while joe makes some minor adjustments to the amp. Josh Homme records vocals and guitar.

at music you start lining things up and your down beat gear and two great Studer 24-track tape machines. starts to shrink, which threatens to remove the push Also, I use this thing called a PCP Instrument Distro, and pull that makes music come alive. which allows me to take three XLR signals off tape “The whole idea of perfect music is just ridiculous to and convert them to ¼-inch jack. It allows me to set up me, unless you’re making dance music and you want three pedals in a chain, and have them as three mono that hypnotic effect. I find playing to a click and then outboard boxes. gridding things insane. You find yourself fixing things “The ProTools rig that we had didn’t have many as opposed to listening to the music. We never used a plug-ins on it, which was perfect. There are a couple click track with the Queens. of plug-ins that I like, but in general I’m not a fan. And “Doubling music with VocalAlign or using AutoTune besides, I don’t need Bomb Factory’s emulation of an on a vocal is equally ridiculous. The whole idea is to 1176 when I’m surrounded by real 1176s! If I use any use your ears and double things until they sound good. kind of plug-in, nine times out of 10 it will be a de-esser, because they’re quick and very controllable. I have to say that I do love [Audio Ease] “The whole idea of perfect music is just ridiculous Altiverb [convolution reverb] too. But in to me, unless you’re making dance music and you general I don’t think there are enough unique-sounding plug-ins out there. I have want that hypnotic effect. I find playing to a click and three Boss overdrive pedals, and they all then gridding things insane” sound different; analogue effects have much more character.” When nagged further about the ins Listen to old records. I think that some people these and outs of his wall-of-rock sound, Barresi soon days decide that when they hand in a project that’s landed on a not-so-secret ingredient. “I use a lot of perfectly in tune and time, they’ve done their job as a compression, obviously: the EMI TG12413, Focusrite producer. But at the same time they’ve taken the life Red 3, TubeTech LCA 2B, dbx 160, Neve 33609 or out of it and made things perfectly unmusical. What’s 2254, things like that. I also spend a lot time riding the point of that?” the faders when I’m mixing, so I can retain some dynamics and separation and the individual sounds Mortar Mix are still recognisable and hard. I’m a big fan of parallel It’s at the mixing stage that a number of important compression, so I’ll often mix in non-compressed secrets of Barresi’s volume-to-11 trade came to the sound with compressed sound to maintain the fore. Analogue outboard gear and guitar pedals play transients. Or I may use the console compressor on crucial roles here too, explaining why he opted to the SSL on an individual channel and bus my whole mix via an analogue desk to half-inch tape (among drum kit to a TubeTech compressor or something. several other formats including ProTools, DAT and Also, in general I try not to over-EQ stuff, unless it’s to CD). “I mixed the whole record at Bay 7 Studios in get a particular sound. I’d rather get the sound I want Los Angeles,” Barresi explained, “because of their G+ out of the microphone. It does start there. It all starts series SSL. They also have a lot of vintage outboard at the source.”

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