FEATURE

Local Produce .

What WasGreg Left Walker Marty BrownText:

Producerlife’ and– music muso, and Marty family.award-winning Brown, Only, hashis album,‘family’a ‘two-dimensional includes wife . AT finds out how he recorded the ARIA

AT 62 Marty Brown is a busy man. If you’re a MB: I always try to let the songs determine regular gig-goer you might have heard his what the production philosophy for a given distinctive and intricate brush-work behind record will be, within the bounds of whatever the drums with indie faves Art Of Fighting, constraints you might have as well. To allow this or indeed with a variety of other artists such to happen for a singer/songwriter, I’ve found a as Sodastream, the Guild League or the Dirty good approach to take is to do their guitar and Three’s Mick Turner. Add to that a busy vocal takes first. Once you have these sounding home studio in Thornbury, (where great and perfectly releasable on their own, you he regularly produces local artists), frequent can build up the other instrumentation around callouts for session work and his main gig as it and know that the vibe of each particular song drummer and producer with his wife Clare is going to be maintained. Bowditch and his dance card looks extremely For the most part, the songs on What Was full. The cherry on top of all this is the recent Left hadn’t been played live by the band and addition of identical twin boys to their road- were essentially written and arranged while hardened three-year-old daughter Asha. For recording. So we had no choice but to track us mere mortals this may seem like overload everything separately rather than record them but Marty and Clare are already old hands at live – which is my more preferred method – I balancing recording, touring and family life. A guess that was one of the constraints. To do this true husband and wife team, they achieved great then we needed a click track. I don’t believe in success with their second album , fixed tempos, so I spend a lot of time making including a recent ARIA award for Clare, while sure the tempo for each bar is right. A song raising Asha. like Strange Questions that has each section of What Was Left is a fine album that showcases the song in a dramatically different tempo, with the amazing instrument that is Clare’s voice, speed-ups in between, would have required a weaving an exotic and at times lush tapestry hundred-plus tempo changes in the click track. of sounds around her while maintaining a GW: Wow, that’s serious attention to detail! So beautiful sense of space. An analogue devotee, how did you proceed once the vocal and guitar Marty has produced an album that sounds were down? thoroughly contemporary while utilising mainly acoustic instruments and, paradoxically, leaves MB: As a general rule I try to have quite a few you feeling happy though its central theme is different concepts for production. So rather grief. Marty’s work is a great example of how, than following one vibe all the way through an with a modest collection of equipment and a album, we had several different ideas working small recording space, it is possible to produce together. There were a few different (but very high quality recordings using thoughtful studio much connected) lyrical themes on What Was design and positioning of instruments, good Left. The central one was grief, which obviously mic technique, and a disciplined approach to is always concerned with loss. Predominantly instrumentation and arrangement. When I Clare’s songs also revolve around relationships spoke to Marty he was relaxed and enjoying the of various kinds. Then, thirdly, I think Clare’s twins’ first months at home while working on songs are often domestic, in that they’re not Clare’s next album. about unicorns and drug experiences – they’re Laid Back Vibe – Marty about a reality that most people can recognise. Brown in his backyard Greg Walker: Marty, first of all, congratulations studio in suburban So to try and bring these themes out I came up on the ARIA award and, of course, on the Melbourne. Marty is an with a few production ideas. analogue fiend, and the recent arrival of your twins. It’s obviously been Tascam one-inch tape To bring out the ‘domesticity’ I wanted to machine you see pictured a pretty intense time for you both, but you guys is his main recording seem to have the knack for combining raising really capture the sound of the place where medium. children and putting out great records and we record, which is at our home. So I made a touring a lot. Can you explain to AT readers concerted effort to get as many sounds from how on earth you do it? the location onto tape as possible – not only the studio space but also the next-door neighbour’s Marty Brown: The only way we’re able to be dogs, The Greek Orthodox church down the musicians and have a family is that these are road, our squeaky studio door and the rainbow the only two things we do. I’ve been making lorikeets. In fact, the start of the album involves a ‘joke’ for a while now that I have a very me walking from our house to the studio; two-dimensional life: kids and music, that is unfortunately, it sounds a little like a radio play, all – very little time for friends, reading, TV, but I wanted to have it there because that was hobbies, work, going out, and all the other the sound at the start of each day’s recording. things in life that make a person vaguely well To me, these features make the album sound rounded. For the most part Clare and I divide just like us playing music in our shed – which is up so much of the family/music work that it’s what we do! usually the case that one of is working and the other is with the kids. We’ve also had financial Another production thought that I had with support through the NEIS scheme, Vic Arts regards to space was making as much use of the and DCITA grants which has enabled us to put sound stage depth as I could get from my little all our time into our music. studio. So using the back and side of mics to intimate distance for some instruments, close/far GW: On What Was Left, what was your overall miking and also moving mics around during production philosophy with Clare’s songs? Did performances so that instruments drew closer you set out to make a particular type of record (or moved further away) during a song were or did the songs lead you in a certain direction? some of the ways I tried to achieve this. I wanted

AT 63 “ I’m really glad I went down the analogue home recording road and I strongly recommend it to others”

to set up a tracking dolly system like they use in feet, play the melody with my right hand and films at one point, but never got around to it… rotate the boom with my left so the mic would Funky Junk – Marty (top) swing nearer and farther from the organ, which among some of his studio’s GW: So you’re actually physically moving the inspirational doo-hickies and mics around? Can you give us an example on added a nice swirly element to the sound. And nick-nacks. Marty recently finally, for a few solo instruments, I was moving picked up an Amek 9098 the record where you did this? And what mics preamp and EQ (“Amek gear do you do it with? the mic around while people were doing their is going cheap on eBay at take – for example, Libby’s French horn in the the moment”) which now MB: I mainly used it on background shares rack space with an bridge of Just Might Do, or the musical saw in On ART TubePac, a Behringer instruments, so the effect is quite difficult to This Side. Suppressor, TC M-One, hear most of the time – I really wish I’d used Yamaha SPX90 and a dbx 120 GW: I know that track, and the saw isn’t loud Subharmonic Synthesiser. it on a few more upfront instruments as well, (Below) A rack of mostly in hindsight. I usually use an AKG C414 or but it definitely cuts through! [No pun intended, Alesis and Behringer Rode NT2 going through the Universal Audio I presume – Ed.] How did you tackle the theme compressors are inserted of grief from a production perspective? into the Soundcraft 500B 6176, and setting the compressor so that it’s not signal path. affecting the signal at the furthest distance, only MB: Producing an album largely about grief kicking in as the mic moves closer to the sound is quite difficult in that you don’t want to be source. That way the level of the instrument to morose all the time. Emotions are multi-faceted the tape recorder stays basically the same, all so we wanted the album to be that too. This that’s changing is the actual effect of the mic took a lot of planning by mapping out the song getting closer to the instrument. order before recording began and making sure Probably the biggest use of this approach was the album had a strong sense of progression the opening of the album, moving from our and movement to it, that the darkest songs house out to the shed. Libby started playing were introduced so that people were led her opening French horn note as I was walking into the depths, and that there was both a with the mic from the house to the studio. As simultaneous positive ending with a sentimental, the door to the studio (then the door to the live longing aftertaste. I reckon that was my best room) opens, you hear the French horn appear contribution to the album. and then get louder until the mic rests in front of MUSICAL TAPE-STRY it and stays there for the rest of the take. I used GW: You’re one of the few people I know who the technique on a lot of the percussion tracks, still works more or less entirely within the for songs such as Just Might Do, Oranges and analogue domain. Tell us about your setup and The Thing About Grief. On each of these songs the reasons behind it? I would play the verses away from the mic and move in close for the choruses or a bridge, solo MB: I use a Tascam one-inch 24-track tape or whatever. Similarly for Libby’s backing vocals machine and a Soundcraft 500B mixer, in Winding Up, I double-tracked her walking which desperately needs fixing. I have a around the microphone for her little solo “do UA 6176 preamp/compressor and enough do doo’s”. We had pump organ on the songs other compressors to handle most situations, Starry Picking Night, Which Way To Go, Winding mostly Alesis. Recently I got an Amek 9098 Up, Thing About Grief and Miss You Like The pre/EQ and dual compressor, and Genelec 8050 Rain, and on most of the takes I had the mic monitors. I don’t use many effects but I have a on a boom stand with the boom positioned Yamaha delay to sort out phase problems with horizontally. Then I’d pump the organ with two bass DIs and a TC Electronic M-One. Actually,

AT 64 looking over this list, a lot of it was purchased of those three spaces in such a small room, after What Was Left where I was using and making use of them really adds depth and much cheaper Alesis monitors and far fewer distinguishes instruments from each other in the compressors and gadgets. final product. I learnt pretty early on that if you use the same mic, the same distance, in the same I’m really glad I went down the analogue home room for all the instruments in a track, you end recording road and I strongly recommend it to up with a flat and one-dimensional recording. others that are starting to put a studio together. I started messing about with demos on a cheap GW: What Was Left has a great sense of space TEAC 1/4-inch four track in the mid ’90s with in the arrangements and all the parts carry a Clare in our first band Red Raku. Even though lot of weight. Do you think going to tape with the recording was terrible, people liked the the discipline of just 24 tracks helps keep the songs and it ended up becoming quite popular arrangements focused? in our little folky community. Towards the MB: Yeah it does a little. I mapped out a end of that project I started using computer template of what tracks would be used for each recording for the first time. 16-bit/44.1k with a song across the whole album. So, for example, cheap soundcard didn’t sound pretty. Nor was it Tracks 2-4 for acoustic guitar, 5-7 for bass, 8-14 stable. I did an album with a friend on computer for the drums, 15-17 for vocals and so forth. and it crashed at least once a day. And you could Tracks get used up very quickly and if you want just hear how cheap and digital it sounded at the an over-the-top production you have to plan end. I also do a lot of session drumming work for it quite early and bounce tracks down. I’ve for both home and studio recorded albums and done that with strings before, recorded a part the way people use computers really frustrates six or so times early on, while there are tracks me as a musician. Firstly, I’ve yet to hear my free, and bounced it down to a stereo track, but drums sound great on computer, where they I didn’t need to do that with What Was Left; I always do on tape. Secondly, I hate the ease with fitted everything I needed into the 24 tracks. which you can edit on computer. Consequently, 24 is quite a lot really, especially when you musicians and producers don’t try as hard for compare it to Sgt. Pepper’s, where they only had the perfect take any more. On so many sessions four. You certainly can’t keep a huge amount as a drummer, I’ve done three passes, barely of performances of the same part though, so it learnt the song, and been told that “We can forces you to realise right there and then what make a take out of that”. I think that’s probably you want from that instrument and whether or the biggest detriment to home recording projects not it’s fitting in with everything else, because – not necessarily the sound engineering, but the the real estate is so valuable – it won’t stay there production decisions. for long if it’s not right. GW: Yeah, the computer can make everyone GW: I couldn’t help noticing some of the exotic lazy, the players, singers and the producers too. instruments in your studio. Are you a collector? The irony, of course, is that then it takes four times longer to edit and fix it all! Are there any MB: By far the best part of the studio is the cost savings to be had by going analogue? amount and variety of musical instruments. I’ve never been to another studio that has a MB: When I wanted to start setting up a more interesting selection of toys lying around, vaguely decent studio, I found people were although a friend recently told me that Real selling their analogue gear cheaply so it seemed World studios had more! just as cheap an option as buying a decent computer setup. Of course, it’s the outboard GW: Yeah, that’s pretty serious competition! stuff that can sting you with an analogue setup Can you talk us through the recording process – it’s not as simple as getting your hands on of one of the songs on the last album? plug-ins. So it’s taken me about six years, and a MB: I might talk about the last track – Yes I lot more money, but I’m now pretty happy with Miss You Like The Rain. This one was recorded the setup. differently to every other song on the album GW: Tell us about your live room and some of mainly because it was added to the songs for the acoustic treatments you’ve used. What did recording at the very last minute. The song you set out to achieve with your space? order that I had worked out finished with On This Side, which is an up-tempo happy pop song. MB: The performance space is small – just a I liked the fact that there was a happier place on The Tascam MSR-24 one- single-car garage, but I wanted to have a few the other side of grief but didn’t want a corny inch 24-track tape machine different options for room sounds so that I could (top), Marty’s ancient pump happy ending as such. So I looked through get as much depth as possible in that space. So organ (middle),and also in Clare’s demo tapes to find a song that could the live room a coincident one corner is dead with a futon on one wall pair of an AKG C-414 and be an interesting postscript, like The Beatles’ and acoustic foam baffles on the other and on Shure SM57. You can see Her Majesty. Miss You Like The Rain fitted the in the background some the roof and rubber on the floor. So that’s for of Marty’s handiwork themes of the album perfectly but it was only dead, close-sounding applications – generally with the DIY wall diffuser one verse long. Rather than turning it into a – essentially a random vocals and bass. Then one of the other corners array of stuck-on bits of formally structured song, we decided to leave is live, so it has a wooden floor and walls with wood etc. it in this ‘postscript’ form and just repeat that wooden off-cuts to act as sound diffusers. I verse a few times. It was definitely the last song use that corner for instruments that need the that we recorded for the album. On the last day space like drums, electric and acoustic guitars, of Clare’s recording, we decided to do a whole strings etc. Then the other half of the room is lot of acoustic live takes of guitar and vocals to pretty neutral sounding but it rarely gets used. use as a bonus disc. We recorded the basic track I’m pretty happy with the variety I can get out of Miss You Like the Rain in this setup. AT 65 The Universal Audio 6176 preamp/compressor. Just about any mic of any importance on the album made its way through this device.

Because I only have one figure-eight mic, I used that on the vox, cancelling out the guitar. Then I used a Rode NT2 on the guitar, and because the other bonus disc tracks were just guitar and vox, I added a couple of other mics to play with during mixing. A room mic NT2 and also an old Sennheiser dynamic mic from the ’60s, which is my go-to blues harp mic. So Clare did two live takes with vocals and guitar without a click track. The second take was awesome. Because it was a postscript song, I wanted to use some themes from the rest of the album as the instrumentation. So I used our pump organ to play the vocal melody of the first track Starry Picking Night – slightly changed to fit the new chords, of course. It was also used as the bass instrument and was recorded with an AKG C414 on the back through the UA 6176 and a room Rode NT2. Next was piano that echoed the French horn from When I Was Five, recorded with a mic at the bass end and one at the treble, most likely a 414/NT2 combo. Finally, to finish off, and to cover up the tempo/tightness issues were some percussion tracks. Some Llama’s toenails as shakers, which were double-tracked, and a Tibetan Singing bowl, which I used to end the album because it started our first album Autumn Bone. The final touch in mixing was to use the Sennheiser and room mic from the basic Guitar/Vox take exclusively for the first verse and then gradually bring in the close mics which had the effect of being brought into Clare’s voice. I think the track works because Clare’s take works, she is much freer and using her voice in a more interesting way than when she records guitar and vocals separately. Because that was what was recorded first it was easy for the other instruments to slot in and support her in a complimentary yet interesting way. GW: Finally, I’ve also got to ask you about your bass speaker/ microphone technique. Is that how you’ve recorded most of the bass tracks? MB: I did. I used three tracks for bass. A 414 a metre or so away from the amp using Stav’s sweetspot finding technique, a DI and also a speaker box from a ’70s radiogram with an XLR soldered onto the speaker wire. I think I got the idea from something that I read about a producer using a car stereo speaker to record bass drums so that they are punchy on car stereos… So I tried it with this speaker, which has a 12-inch and a horn in it. I think the whole wooden box ends up creating most of the voltage so that it’s a very subby sound. The idea was to slip a little of that in while mixing to make the bass as big as possible but I’m not sure that I used much of it while mixing. It sounded fine but I think there were enough subs from the 414 both on the bass and the kick drum while being used as a room mic, that I didn’t need it so much. I don’t think I’ve used it since, but maybe I’ll pull it out again when Clare goes dub-reggae.

AT 66