How Does It Sound Now ? Legendary Engineers and Vintage Gear
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How Does It Sound Now? Legendary Engineers and Vintage Gear Gary Gottlieb Course Technology PTR A part of Cengage Learning Australia . Brazil . Japan . Korea . Mexico . Singapore . Spain . United Kingdom . United States How Does It Sound Now? © 2010 Course Technology, a part of Cengage Learning. Legendary Engineers and Vintage Gear ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein Gary Gottlieb may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means Publisher and General Manager, Course graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, Technology PTR: Stacy L. Hiquet recording, scanning, digitizing, taping, Web distribution, information Associate Director of Marketing: Sarah networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except as permitted 107 108 1976 Panella under Section or of the United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Manager of Editorial Services: Heather Talbot Marketing Manager: Mark Hughes For product information and technology assistance, contact us at Cengage Learning Customer & Sales Support, 1-800-354-9706 Acquisitions Editor: Orren Merton Project Editor/Copy Editor: Cathleen D. For permission to use material from this text or product, submit all Small requests online at www.cengage.com/permissions Further permissions questions can be emailed to Editorial Services Coordinator: Judy [email protected] Littlefield Interior Layout Tech: MPS Limited Cover Designer: Mike Tanamachi All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Indexer: Sharon Shock All images © Cengage Learning unless otherwise noted. Proofreader: Laura R. Gabler Library of Congress Control Number: 2008934363 ISBN-13: 978-1-59863-852-3 ISBN-10: 1-59863-852-1 eISBN-10: 1-59863-921-8 Course Technology, a part of Cengage Learning 20 Channel Center Street Boston, MA 02210 USA Cengage Learning is a leading provider of customized learning solutions with office locations around the globe, including Singapore, the United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, and Japan. Locate your local office at: international. cengage.com/region Cengage Learning products are represented in Canada by Nelson Education, Ltd. For your lifelong learning solutions, visit courseptr.com Visit our corporate website at cengage.com Printed in the United States of America 1234567111009 This book is dedicated to the engineers and professionals who shaped our passion and have passed on: Tom Dowd Les Paul Wally Heider Alan Blumlein John Eargle Larry Levine Bob Fine William Hoekstra To name a few And to those they have mentored. Their memories, their skills, and their commitment to quality live on through those they have mentored who have, in turn, mentored us all. Foreword It is the music that attracts us to learn how to record better than reality while making the player trust us to release their recording. I have listened to recordings that were made throughout the century. The common feeling I got, whether the engineer wore a lab coat or jeans, was inner passion and pride. The gear changes constantly. For me, immediacy and spontaneity drive my drive. Cleaner and purer is always the hope, but the rough and imper- fect audio must be addressed for the engineer to be more prepared, and to try new gear when they can evaluate it on their own time. This book, with all its interviews, gives you insight to the soul of the players. Read into the depths and realize the heart of this book. Phil Ramone iv Acknowledgments So I thought an interview book would be easier to write than any of the others I’ve written. After all, I’m just thinking up a list of questions and people to interview. Easy, right? Little did I know just how difficult this project would be, and the resources and personnel I would need to complete the project. Speaking of resources, I would like to express my gratitude to Webster University for pro- viding me with a generous research grant. This funding allowed me to travel to perform the necessary interviews and also permitted me to pay for transcriptions. Without this support, the goals I set in this project would not have been realized. I would like to thank those transcriptionists who toiled to decipher the jargon-heavy ram- blings of my 31 interviewees and myself. Some of these were in environments with high ambient noise levels. Their task should not be underestimated: Thank you Larry Mollard, Andrea Sisney, Roger Landreth, and Laura Sarsen. For the third time, the team at my publisher, Cengage Learning, pulled together with an uncompromising combination of sage advice and Buddha-like patience. My project editor, Cathleen Small; acquisitions editor, Orren Merton; and marketing manager, Mark Hughes, all contributed from behind the scenes, helping with everything from the title to the cover design. Thanks to them, this book came together and looks as good as it could. Obviously, I cannot begin to express the contribution made by the 31 engineers and pro- ducers I interviewed for this book. To state the obvious, this book would not be here with- out them. These are all incredibly busy people who took time out of their personal and professional lives to sit down with me. The only reason they did so was to advance your knowledge. None of them was paid or will receive any personal gain from this, other than the satisfaction of knowing that they have helped the next generation of engineers and producers. Along with the 31 I interviewed, there are hundreds of recording engineers, maintenance engineers, producers, and inventors over the last century or so who contributed indirectly to this book. When you read it, you will see some of the same names repeated—Tom Dowd, Wally Heider, Roy Halee, Bill Porter, Frank Laico—alongside lesser-known names, people who also had a tremendous influence on me, the people I interviewed, and everyone in our business. I would like to thank all the teachers and mentors in our business—the ones who shaped it into whatever it is today. We may complain about this business, but we are all here, drawn into it, and we’re not going anywhere else anytime soon. Lastly, I would like to thank my family and friends for putting up with my travels to per- form interviews, punctuated by weeks locked in my home office to get this book written. Melanie, Miranda, Kyla, I love you all and could not do this without your support. Thank you. v About the Author Longtime music business professional Gary Gottlieb refers to himself as a music generalist. A professional musician since age 13, he worked in radio on and off for 25 years and was a music critic for nine years. As a recording engineer, live recordist, and music producer in New York, Gottlieb’s long and distinguished career includes work with numerous Grammy Award winners and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees in a variety of venues. His credits as a sound designer include off-off-Broadway productions, along with community and col- lege theatre productions throughout New England. Along with his history as a music critic and entertainment writer for the Deerfield Valley News in West Dover, Vermont, and as a disc jockey for WEQX, a major modern rock station in Manchester, Vermont, Gottlieb owned and operated a mobile DJ service and was a venue director for numerous X Games and Winter X Games for ESPN. In 2002, he accepted a position as professor of audio production at Webster University in St. Louis, where he now runs the audio program. In 2007, Gottlieb’s Shaping Sound in the Studio and Beyond, the definitive introductory textbook in audio, was released, and in 2008 he co-authored Recording on the Go: The Definitive Guide to Live Recording with Paul Hennerich. Gottlieb teaches, writes, records, mixes, and accepts speaking engagements throughout the United States. vi Contents Introduction. ................................................ xi Chapter 1 Alan Parsons 1 Chapter 2 Chuck Ainlay 11 Chapter 3 Ed Cherney 25 Chapter 4 Marc Aubort 41 Chapter 5 Bob Ludwig 53 Chapter 6 Leanne Ungar 73 Chapter 7 Jim Malloy 87 Chapter 8 Geoff Emerick 97 vii viii How Does It Sound Now? Chapter 9 Don Puluse 113 Chapter 10 Gary Chester 127 Chapter 11 Al Schmitt 145 Chapter 12 Glen Snoddy 155 Chapter 13 Bob Katz 165 Chapter 14 Danny Leake 175 Chapter 15 Leslie Mona-Mathus 197 Chapter 16 Steve Epstein 209 Chapter 17 Lou Bradley 223 Chapter 18 Jim Reeves 237 Chapter 19 Dave Moulton 267 Contents ix Chapter 20 Ben Wisch 279 Chapter 21 Paul Stubblebine 287 Chapter 22 Cowboy Jack Clement 307 Chapter 23 Elliot Scheiner 319 Chapter 24 Bill Schulenburg 327 Chapter 25 Bob Clearmountain 351 Chapter 26 Gene Eichelberger 365 Chapter 27 Fred Breitberg 375 Chapter 28 Frank Filipetti 391 Chapter 29 Jim Anderson 405 Chapter 30 Bil VornDick 423 x How Does It Sound Now? Chapter 31 Phil Ramone 439 Index 455 Introduction While conducting the research for this project, a friend suggested that I start the introduc- tion by talking about the hundreds of millions—probably billions—of copies of albums and CDs that the engineers and producers interviewed in this book contributed to throughout their combined careers. While I am confident that his math was correct, this project is about quality, not quantity. The original concept was simply interviews with engineers who made the transition through different technologies—analog to digital, wire to tape, and CD to MP3. I sought to explore the methodology employed by the most successful among us when confronted with new and evolving technology. In the course of these conversations, we can’t help but talk about the gear, but the real discussion that emerged focused on how we retain quality and continue to create a product that conforms to our own high standards.