Engineer and Producer Louis Austin tells Paul White about his early days in the industry, where he developed his recording skills working with Queen, Fleetwood Mac, Sweet and Judas Priest. Louis became an expert is capturing drum and guitar sounds and shares some useful tips on miking instruments and capturing room ambience.
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:12 - Getting Into The Industry
00:59 - Starting Out As A Tape Op
02:29 - First Solo Session
03:35 - Early Fleetwood Mac Sessions
06:15 - Working With Queen
09:23 - Buying A Studio And Going Freelance
13:19 - How The Industry Changed
17:00 - Recording Sweet
18:56 - Getting A Good Drum Sound
22:02 - Going Mobile
24:56 - What Makes A Good Recording Engineer
26:18 - The Most Difficult Session
27:49 - Changing Career Direction
"Often you went to a studio where you had to adapt the studio to suit your needs, whereas on the mobile you had all the technology with you and you just use what rooms you fancied. Little living room for an intimate vocal, you know, it's all there, basically".
Louis Austin Biog
Louis Austin launched his career at De Lane Lea Studio in the 1970s, assisting on Fleetwood Mac’s Green Manalishi and Oh Well albums. He quickly rose to chief engineer and then pursued a freelance engineering / production career, recording Queen’s first album, Def Leppard, Deep Purple, Sweet (Action, Fox on The Run), Leo Sayer (Platinum) and 3 Judas Priest albums including the multi-Platinum Screaming For Vengeance.
A close co-operation with Deep Purple’s singer Ian Gillan resulted in Kingsway Recorders, a studio in London that recorded artists such as Steve Hackett, David Coverdale, Sweet and Ian Gillan's own musical projects. Austin later built a mobile recording studio called Fleetwood Mobile, the largest and best equipped in its day and in 1988 launched the retailer Home Service, selling bespoke studio packages. He later diversified into marketing and handled the international sales & marketing for AD Systéme. In the 90’s he worked for various audio companies as a PR specialist, including spending 15 years at Genelec.
Paul White Biog
Paul White initially trained in electronics at The Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern then went on to work with Malvern Instruments, a company specialising in laser analysis equipment, before moving into technical writing.
He joined the Sound On Sound team in 1991 where he became Editor In Chief, a position he held for many years before recently becoming Executive Editor. Paul has written more than 20 recording and music technology textbooks, the latest being The Producer’s Manual.
Having established his own multitrack home studio in the 1980s he’s worked with many notable names including Bert Jansch and Gordon Giltrap. He’s played in various bands over the years and currently collaborates with Malvern musician Mark Soden, under the name of Cydonia Collective. Paul still performs live claiming that as he has suffered for his music he doesn’t see why everyone else shouldn’t too!
http://www.cydoniacollective.co.uk/
Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts
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