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FEATURE

SO BEAUTIFUL OR SO WHAT & ANDY SMITH RECORDING

Legendary producer Phil What is it with old guys making good REWIND TO THE BEGINNING music? !ere appears to be a whole swathe In interviews Simon has explained that Ramone recently teamed of famous musicians who reached their marked the beginning of him writing songs to with legendary commercial and artistic peak in their 20s and rhythmic backing tracks and that on the new early 30s returning in their 50s and 60s and he wanted to write songs the way he and close friend Paul Simon rediscovering their muse. !ere are countless did when he started; just him singing with an – again – to construct yet being produced by old rockers that are acoustic , and then adding the rhythms hailed as their best work since, well… a long long and ethnic instruments on, ie. working another classic. time ago. Paul McCartney’s most recent o"ering, top to bottom. !ere’s also an extensive use of Text: Paul Tingen (2007), is inarguably his best samples on the new album, although the sparsely since his solo albums of the , ’s arranged and delicate sounding album appears to recent Le Noise has been billed as “his best in be, in part, a reaction to its slightly overlaboured decades,” pulled o" the trick a couple predecessor, Surprise, on which Simon’s of times with Time Out Of Mind (1997) and songs and ’s electronic treatments Modern Times (2006), stepped arguably resulted in the sum being less than its back into the limelight with Supernatural (1999), considerable parts. !e Stones A Bigger Bang (2005) was “their best THE PRODUCER & THE ENGINEER in years,” Plant revived his career with Anyone with a keen eye for credits will have (2007) and (2010), and noted two other signs that indicate that So so on and, seemingly, on. Beautiful or So What is both continuation and Paul Simon’s recent album, So Beautiful or So recapping of Simon’s career. First it $nds Simon What, appears to be another case in point. reuniting with legendary producer Phil Ramone, Even the usually understated 69-year old who worked on Rhymin’ Simon, Still Crazy A"er singer himself earmarked it as “the best thing All !ese Years and also on Simon & Garfunkel’s I’ve done in 20 years,” while , in famous !e In (1982). !e the CD booklet blurb, calls it a “remarkable, 15-time Grammy-winning Ramone is known for thoughtful, o#en joyful record” that “deserves his work with household names like , to be recognised as among Paul Simon’s very , Charles, Bob Dylan, Frank $nest achievements.” Many critics agreed, Sinatra, , and Paul McCartney. !e illustrated by the fact that the album achieved a other sign on the credits of the new album is the very impressive average score of 85 out of 100 of long-time Paul Simon engineer, Andy in Metacritic’s compiled review ratings. !e Smith. Smith is a city-based freelance only argument that could be o"ered against the engineer who has worked on several of Simon’s above observations is that Simon never sank into projects over the years as well as projects with middle-aged mediocrity, even as Songs from the Simon’s wife and her current band Capeman (1997), You’re !e One (2000), and !e Gaddabouts. Via separate phone interviews, Surprise (2006) are o#en seen as lesser e"orts, Ramone and Smith provided a compelling and in contrast to undisputed classics such as Paul unique insight into aspects of Simon’s creative Simon (1972), !ere Goes Rhymin’ Simon (1973), process in general and the recordings of So Still Crazy A"er All !ese Years (1975), Graceland Beautiful or So What in particular. (1986) and Rhythm of the Saints (1990).

AT !" AT !" Tracking sessions at The Cottage were often a bit of a squeeze, so much so that the flautist seems to have been relegated to the veranda.

Smith began by charting the very beginnings of and that we duplicated for his private studio. for months. It was a discipline, because it put a the recordings, several years ago, in a room in !ere was also a lot of "oating gear that we would certain kind of pressure on you because of the a cottage at Simon’s property in Connecticut: “I use when recording out in his summer place in money involved, whereas when people use home think it was the $rst time that the bulk of one of , NY, that eventually found a home in studios the discipline disappears in some cases. Paul’s albums was recorded in his own studio. the cottage. !e main challenge of working in the But there are only three big studios le# in New !e cottage was initially an empty house, and we cottage studio was that it’s not acoustically treated York now! So many people are now working gradually built the studio up as the project went in any way, so on several occasions I had to use in their own studio, and it’s important to keep along. We didn’t record all the time. We’d had a iZotope RX so#ware to get rid of extraneous a certain schedule. Paul McCartney will come month o% here and there, and during that time, noises. For example, there’s an acorn tree right into his studio at 10am and stop at 6pm, and we were also upgrading the studio. By the end of above the cottage and occasionally acorns would Paul [Simon] kind of does the same thing. !ere the project we had a pretty well-equipped small fall on the roof. RX quickly becomes one of those was a nice atmosphere at Paul’s studio and the studio and a new album! !e studio now has a pieces of so#ware that you can’t imagine how you discipline to go with it. It turned out to be a really decent mic collection including the Bock Audio ever got along without.” comfortable situation for Paul, Andy, and I. Paul 251s, various high voltage DPAs, Royer R122V, and I are old friends so I was very happy when COTTAGE STUDIO RECORDING SF24, 121s, as well as the basics like Neumann, he asked me to work with him on this project. I By recording most of his new album at his own , Sennheiser and AKG. We gathered opening doors that he may not have thought facility, Simon was de$nitely riding a very current mic pres by Telefunken, Great River, Grace, of, and his mind is so fertile. It was a joy. Paul wave that’s, in part, inspired by the developments Chandler and API; compressors by Purple Audio, and I live close to each other, which meant that I in new technology and in part fuelled by Chandler, API and Teletronix; a ProTools HD could come over when needed, and also do other necessity. Several of the studios credited on his systems with plug-ins by iZotope, Massenburg, projects. We spent a lot of time driving in the car, previous album Surprise have since closed and Soundtoys, Eventide, Oxford and Audio Ease; listening to what we had done and deciding what recording budgets are smaller, even for major two Apogee AD16Xs and one DA16x converter; needed doing next.” artists, making long recording projects in big an Antelope Audio master clock; and Adam S3A studios uneconomical. Phil Ramone, who is TRANSPARENCY monitors. All the wiring was done with Mogami about the same age as Simon, and whose $rst Both Smith and Ramone recounted details of cables and one of the coolest features is that credits date from the late 1950s, has witnessed the the top-to-bottom approach to the recording there’s a Grace 902 headphone ampli$er at each rise and fall of big recording studios extremely sessions. Ramone stated, “In many cases Paul player location. close up. !e producer, who became involved in had 20–30% of the songs ready when he came “Paul previously owned a lot of studio gear, the recording of during into the studio, at least a and some which gave us a good starting point. !ere was the last year of recording, re"ected… chord changes, and then we’d look for what also some gear in my own collection that Paul colours and lyrics should go with it. He was “When Paul recorded albums like Still Crazy o#en used when we recorded in proper studios, exploring di%erent things, like for example and Graceland he would book a studio room out

AT !" bluegrass in!uences, and we recorded a group of bluegrass musicians at ’s studio in . Paul asked the players how they would play this or that and pushed them to do a lot of interesting things. Also, Gil Goldstein orchestrated Love and Hard Times and we went to Avatar Studios to record that, because I wanted a bigger room.” Smith elaborates, “Working on this album was di"erent than on previous AKG albums I’d done with Paul, because this time he had an idea of how each song would be before we started recording in the studio. With previous albums he’d #rst build an extensive backing track, and then he’d take those DMS 700 recordings and see how they would inspire him to write guitar parts and eventually and lyrics to them. However, this time he pretty much wrote the songs and then came to the studio to record. Paul would usually The new DMS 700 is a revolutionary digital start out by making a click track using a percussion instrument or even just wireless solution designed for the future: tapping out a rhythm on his guitar – he rarely uses an electronic click-track – then he’d play a guitar part that he’d already written and built the song from there. Usually the next step would be to overdub more and percussion. I think it would surprise some people how complete some of the tracks sounded before any other musicians were added. Besides playing The First Professional the majority of the guitars, a decent amount of the core percussion on the album was played by Paul too. In the song Rewrite, the main percussion Digital Wireless System part you hear throughout is Paul’s guitar-tapping ‘click track.’” EXPLORING THE SPACE According to Ramone, the and overdubbing process were framed by Simon’s desire that the album “wouldn’t sound like a studio album. He wanted to have lots of space with lots of atmosphere and feeling, so rather than go for hugely orchestrated ideas he was going, for example, for overtones in and gongs. Where a sax or a kora came in, they’d be there to do something speci#c, not just to #ll in the space. One of the results was that there’s very little bass on the album. Most modern records are bass heavy, and that eats up a lot of the space. It can be a struggle sometimes to work with a singer-songwriter who plays heavy – the guitar and the bass play right in the same audio range. Paul was very happy not having much bass on the album, until the point when he went out to play these songs live, for which he does use a bass. But it’s not huge and fat, it’s more part of an organic guitars section. Paul also liked a certain drum sound that’s not in your face. We added other instruments as we needed them, and then decided what to use and what not to use. $ese additions and subtractions are very much the way Paul loves to work.” Smith added: “$ere certainly was an attempt on this album to keep the arrangements simple. Where we did use bass it’s actually a . t Up to 150MHz tuning range $ere was a conscious e"ort not to have bass, although admittedly, when t 256 bit RC4 signal encryption for secure audio the songs were completely constructed and arranged, Paul did invite in some bass players, but in the end he didn’t like the way it a"ected the transmission simplicity of the arrangements. By that stage he’d grown attached to the t 2-channel digital true-diversity receiver transparency of the sound of the tracks. t No Compander (used in analogue systems): higher “Bells certainly were Paul’s favourite percussion instrument on this album. sound quality He has a large collection of bells ranging from exotic bells and ancient hand t On-board DSP per channel (Compressor, EQ, Limiter) bells to glockenspiels. He’d record an acoustic or and then highlight certain notes by putting bells very faintly behind them to give t Quick setup via infrared data link to the transmitter them some sparkle. We would e"ect the bells, to make them sound like one t Graphical spectrum analyser helps fi nd clear channels with the guitar or in some cases e"ect them to be their own thing, such as t Remote monitoring and control via PC the pulsating high sound at the beginning of Love Is Eternal Sacred Light. $ere are also several tracks that have a standard drum kit, but Paul usually wanted them to sound a bit di"erent. On many of the tracks, Jim Oblon, the drummer, placed towels over each drum so they’d have more of a mu%ed quality, leaving more room for the higher frequency percussion stu". RECORDING SETUP Smith continued, “Much of the material was recorded in the main room of the cottage, although Paul o&en played in the control room when only Phil and I were present. If he played electric guitar we’d have the ampli#er in another room, and acoustic guitars were done right in front of us, which made it easy to communicate. For two songs, !e A"erlife and Getting Ready for Christmas Day, the track was laid down with Paul playing guitar in the control room, while a drummer performed in the main room. We

AT !" Paul Simon playing his exquisite !"-string Epiphone electric. Note the novel way the Andy Smith at work at the SSL. guitar in the background is muted.

would spend a decent amount of time getting during tracking, because Brian Eno likes to use Paul’s guitars right and a!er that there was a Logic. Tchad Blake then mixed that album on an smaller amount of experimentation with other SSL desk. Besides being an amazing mixer, Tchad musicians trying out parts. If these interested was brought in as a fresh pair of ears. #ere were Paul, he would later edit and comp them and so many overdubs on that album that it needed each evening I’d make him a CD of what we’d someone to make sense of them. done, and he’d typically come back the next day “When we began work on So Beautiful or So with a list of notes. During a project, it seems like What I didn’t know where we would be at the he never stops working! end, and who would be mixing it, so I "gured ACOUSTIC SOLUTIONS it would be good to put all the analogue While most of So Beautiful or So What was colouration on during recording, before going recorded at Simon’s cottage studio, Ramone into ProTools, and not count on having lots of explained that the company also went out to mix options in the end. Also, by recording with existing studios a number of times for speci"c e$ects, Paul could be inspired by them while overdubs. Speci"cally, these involved a month in playing and arranging. So many of his guitar Simon’s Long Island studio, Clinton Studios in parts went through pedals like , a NY to record the Indian ensemble on Dazzling Carl Martin compressor, Deluxe Memory Man, Blue, Tony Bennett’s studio to record pedals by FullTone, and so on, as well as some on piano and the bluegrass ensemble, Avatar to plug-ins. We’d print it all, with the plug-ins on record an orchestral ensemble, and Germano a separate track. We were also lucky in that the Studios in NYC for various overdubs, including natural ambience of the room in the cottage was percussion and vocals. #e entire project was quite good, so I used a lot of room mics. #e recorded to ProTools at 24-bit/96kHz. With spaces that you can hear are mostly the sound of Simon being deeply steeped in tradition with his the room. Paul also made quite a bit of use of the love of acoustic guitars, folk and , relatively new ‘Moog guitar’. #e sounds of that Producer, Phil Ramone. one would expect him to be a bit of an analogue instrument worked well with the other sounds on diehard, but according to Smith, the singer the album. embraced digital technology at a very early stage. “When recording we put all the mic pres close “Paul was one of the early adopters of ProTools. to the players so that we only had very short We recorded Songs From !e Capeman to a cables going from the mics to the mic pres. I 3348 DASH machine and then dumped used all Mogami cables for the mics and from everything digitally over to ProTools and mixed the mic pres straight to the Apogee converters it in the box. #at was very early on for a major and then into ProTools. No patchbay or desk was artist to have an album mixed in ProTools. We used – we only had an eight-channel Euphonix SIMON’S PERSPECTIVE ON THE SPACE recorded to the DASH machine because at the Controller for the occasional fader ride. Once we In an interview with the American magazine and website time ’Tools wasn’t stable enough for tracking were in digital, for the most part we stayed there. A.V. Club, Simon gave his perspective on the sense of with a large band in the room. It’s kind of funny space in the new album: “I kept trying to eliminate those MIC DISTANCES now, but at the time we didn’t tell anybody about sounds that I didn’t like. On this record, I said, ‘I really don’t Smith explained that Simon was “very involved” mixing in ’Tools because it was so new and like most of the echo sounds that I hear coming out of in the technical side of the whole recording the technology.’ So I started using bells, and the decaying there was initially some bias against it. You’re process, adding: “He might not know the sound of bells behind lines. It sort of sounded like an echo, !e One was mixed on a Sony Oxford console but with a strange tonality, and it created a sound that exact names of all the mics and preamps and but recorded in ProTools, and with Surprise we was atmospheric – and that’s what I was looking for.” compressors, but he’ll ask for speci"c sounds, locked a ProTools and Logic system together

AT !! and o!en try di"erent distances to the mics. He working towards a $nal mix. I bought Paul the likes to experiment with how much room sound small Euphonix controller so I could do vocal to incorporate for certain overdubs. For example, moves and things. Faders still work for me. #ere On several occasions I had sometimes when recording a shaker, he’d ask me are two schools of thought on this: you can do “ to put the mic at the other side of the room, so everything electronically, but for me it takes some to use iZotope RX it gives the e"ect of a shaker going during a live of the spirit out of it when I don’t make the moves recording.” with my hands. I’m not travelling anywhere now software to get rid of without that little mixer! #ere are things I can #is ties in with comments Simon made in the extraneous noises… do with it that continue to make mixing feel like same above-mentioned A.V. Club interview, “#e mixing to me. I don’t want to be struggling for there’s an acorn tree right echoes that I hear on everybody else’s records hours to get to a place by adjusting things one- sound the same because everybody basically uses above the cottage and tenth of a dB at a time.” the same technology. It’s the same with guitars occasionally acorns would – there are lots of really good , but they Andy Smith, who remarked that “it was a great play with the same pedals as everybody else. I experience to see how Phil and Paul work fall on the roof $nd acoustic solutions to those kinds of sound together” takes a more 21st century view than problems, and I think it’s what gives the record a Ramone: “A console and faders allow you to di"erent sound.” work faster, so when speed is an issue, like when tracking a live band, it can be an advantage. But TRACKING & MIXING COMBINED ” with a project like Paul’s that goes on for several Phil Ramone is credited with mixing the album, years, speed is not an issue, and I’m happy to OLD SCHOOL WAYS and he explained that the tracks were mixed work in the box. Because I supplied Paul with Both Ramone and Smith expressed their concurrently with the recordings, in a process a CD every evening of whatever we’d done that admiration for , who engineered and that appeared to involve both Ramone and day, every night we would attempt to make it produced early Simon & Garfunkel albums Smith, and even, on occasion, Simon himself. sound as close to a $nished track as we could. and also several of Simon’s solo albums. Smith Ramone: “We mixed during recording, so there And by the end of the project we found that the explained, “When I worked with Roy, I was would be no surprises. A lot of people wait for mixes were simply done. We didn’t set out to use taught to engineer in the old school way, which that wonderful day when it all comes together in plug-ins sparingly, we just used them when we was using mics and mic placement, rather than the mix, but we all have a good understanding of needed them. #e ambient e"ects, in addition EQ, to get the sound with the frequencies and when things work, so we mixed as we went. Paul to the natural room sound, are pretty much all ambience you wanted, which leads to mixing and I would o!en listen back in the car to judge done with plug-ins, except for when we used mostly being a matter of balancing and panning. where to take things. analogue bucket brigade delays. We also applied On this project, besides the natural ambience, “Typically, I’d work with Andy on stu", and then the old trick of sending a track out to a Dolby a was o!en used to create ambience, as I’d leave him alone to get the tracks into shape. unit, encode it, and then not decode it, to get a well as some plug-in reverbs. We didn’t use any #en I would $nesse it. I would just reach over high sparkle, sizzling sound. Paul particularly de-essers. We did the now popular thing of just and do things – always asking Andy $rst. In the wanted to use this for a vocal section in Love is manually lowering the esses that are too loud. world we live in things are sometimes two- Eternal Sacred Light, where Paul sings in a very Also, having so little bass actually made the handed and sometimes four-handed. And when low, deep voice, and the Dolby e"ect helped it to project a little more di%cult, because the typical you work in ProTools, you’re in e"ect always cut through.” listener expects a full frequency range, and it was harder to make it sound like a $nished album when there wasn’t a great deal of low end. So at times we used EQ to try to draw a little bit more MICROPHONE DETAILS bottom end out of things that normally don’t Smith continued giving details of some of his analogue for which we use both Grace and Millenia mic pres. They have much, like certain percussion instruments signal chains: “The electric guitars were mostly recorded typically went directly into the Purple Audio compressor with the ribbon tube Royer R#$$V going into a Telefunken or sometimes an LA-$A, or API or a Chandler LTD or Paul banging on a guitar. #e go-to EQ for that V%$, then a Purple Audio MC%% going into the Apogee compressor. Again, we used compression for colour. Paul sort of thing was the Massenburg MDW. AD#&X – we think the Apogee sounds better than the Avid also used many of his pedals when playing his acoustic, converters. The MC%% is an update of the MC%&, which going to an amp, and later on we would sometimes re-amp “We also used the dithered mixer in ProTools, is based on the ##%&, and I actually in most cases prefer guitar tracks, putting them through pedals. We did the which not that many people appear to use, but to the MC%% to the original ##%&. It sounds a bit cleaner to same with the clarinet track in Love & Blessings, to give it our ears it sounds better than the non-dithered me and works with a larger variety of sounds than the an old quirky quality. mixer. Also, a lot of the sound sculpting/mixing original. I don’t generally use the compression for control “As I mentioned before, we used the Soundeluxe $"# on of dynamics, but more for a little bit of colour. Paul likes Paul’s voice – now called Bock Audio – going into the was actually done by Paul. He has a clear vision the colour of compression. When recording electric guitar Telefunken V%&, and then the Purple Audio or an LA-$A, of what he likes and he’s been using ProTools for I would also often put a microphone, like the Bock Audio in some cases both. For the backing vocals recorded at so long now that he speaks in tenths of a decibel $"#, in front of the strings, so you can hear the sound of Bennett studios we mainly used U)%s and Neve #'%( mic and will regularly ask for speci$c changes. So the pick against them. We’d record that separately, and pres. The Indian ensemble was recorded with Schoeps, blend the two sounds later. There’s one song, Love & Sennheisers and some DPA !''(s as room mics. The kora slowly, over the long lengths of the projects we’ve Blessings, where we removed the amp sound completely. was recorded with two DPA !''(s; one near the top and done, he’s done a lot of the moulding of the mix All that’s left is this thin sound of the pick on the electric one near the bottom. The percussion was recorded with himself. #en, one day a!er doing vocal overdubs guitar strings. a large variety of mics, based on what percussion was “The way we recorded the acoustic guitars varied. Paul played; sometimes in stereo, with Paul doing the panning and Paul doing a vocal punch in, he suddenly has lots of them so the guitars determined what mics we physically by moving the percussion instrument around said, ‘OK, it’s done. What’s next? Mastering?’ And used. Sometimes I’d use the DPA high voltage mics, like the to where he wanted it in the sound image. On the basic Phil said, ‘yes.’ #e album had arrived at the point !''( small diaphragm, or the !'!#-T$ large diaphragm drum kit, the miking is a little different than normal. A where Paul wanted it to be.” tube mic. I usually place a single microphone aimed at the lot of omni-directional mics are used as well as some of #$th fret. The DPA’s are omni-directional mics, so you can the standards like Coles, Sennheiser and Shure, but the It has been said that “knowing when to stop is the get right up close to the guitar and get all the subtleties majority of the sound is coming from the omnis. The flutes of the playing without having to worry about the proximity and violin were recorded using the Royer R#$$-V tube hallmark of a great artist.” It’s another reason why effect. Some of the high-voltage mics have their own ribbon mic. Paul Simon clearly belongs in the latter category. power supply and some require specific #('V mic pres

AT !"