Will Atmos Replace Stereo?! A Conversation with Atmos Music Pioneer Steve Genewick

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And he hit play, and a voice came out of the speakers, and it was
definitely not Paul McCartney. It was most definitely John
Lennon. We're not working on a Paul McCartney track, are we? He said. Nope,
we're working on a Beatles track. That's Steve Genewick, an engineer and mixer with over
30 years of experience and credits with almost any artist you can
name, everybody from Diane Accra to Niall Horan and Bob Dylan to

(00:21):
the Beatles. Not only is Steve a first call engineer for large ensemble
tracking sessions like big bands and orchestras, but he's also one of the
first people to mix music in Dolby Atmos, working with Dolby
and Capital studios years before the rest of us even knew it was coming.
Today, we're gonna get deep into Atmos with everything from mixtapes to some of the
more big picture issues with why this format has drawn such a

(00:43):
line within the audio community. I think what people are pushing back on a
lot is it doesn't sound like the stereo mix, and I get that from artists
a lot, and that, like, doesn't sound like my stereo mix. You're right. It's a
different mix. His opinions on the dangers of remixing past
releases for atmos if you can't. Make it good, then why
bother doing it? It's perfectly fine in mono or it's perfectly fine in stereo. We

(01:05):
also cover plenty of traditional studio tips, such as how he's brought the classic
technique of riding the vocal to tape into today's digital mixing realm.
Before I put anything on it, no compression, no eq, nothing, I'll do a
couple passes of automation just to get it to sit,
to bring the loud parts down, to bring the quiet parts up. Then I'll take
that automation and how. One of the best engineering tricks you have

(01:27):
is the band. Let em do one or two takes and then get
them in the control room. Nine times out of ten, they fix everything that needs
to be fixed. Nobody even has to say anything. I'm excited to share this one
with you all because I personally learned a lot from Steve when I first started
in this business, and I think you will as well. So stick around for my
interview with Steve Genewick.

(02:01):
So we're four or five years into this atmos music adventure, and it's still a
pretty divisive topic for audio pros. Like, you've heard people say the
listeners don't want it. It doesn't sound good. You've heard all that stuff, right? Oh,
yeah. But you've been doing this longer than anybody else.
So what do you think? What makes atmos stick around?
What makes it replace stereo, if it should replace stereo?

(02:23):
Well, I think one of the things, you know,
if, you know, a lot of people compare it to the five one days and
that kind of stuff and the other surround formats
that we've had in the past, I think there's a couple things that make
this a little bit different. And it was literally like that from the
start for me when I first heard it. One, it

(02:45):
actually works. So, you know, because it's
scalable and because you're not tied into a certain amount of
speakers and all that kind of stuff, because it's a calibrated system.
So in theory, the renderer or your playback system or
whatever knows where the speakers are and how many there are and all that kind
of stuff, you know, it can actually do that. Whereas in the five one

(03:06):
days, if you weren't in the right position and your speakers weren't calibrated perfectly and
they weren't, you know, the whole thing kind of fell apart. Right. It was a
little too fragile. So that's one thing, is the technology is better.
It's like multi, not multi format,
but multi discipline. I don't know what the word is. It's the same
system that's used for movies. It's the same system that essentially is used for

(03:27):
video games. It's the same. So again, we're not trying to
reinvent the wheel. If you have a home theater system or you have whatever you
have to play your movies on, you can play your music on also. Yeah.
The other thing is, again, the technology has caught up. So, you know, we
have stuff like Bluetooth and wireless speakers and
all that kind of stuff. You don't have to run copper through your ceilings and,

(03:49):
you know, all that. So I think that. And
then there's this binaural element, too. So the
one mix. So your one, your one speaker mix, the one
ADM file you make, you know, it can serve the
speaker system, it can serve the headphone system, it can serve, you know, all of
those things, is just one mix. I believe, you know, the

(04:11):
ultimate goal, especially for the record labels who are paying for
these mixes, the ultimate goal is to have one
mix that serves everything. You know, they don't want
to have to have somebody mix a stereo and then somebody do the
atmos. They would like to have one mix.
And the Atmos system can do that. You know, it can play through a billion

(04:33):
speakers or it can play out of two speakers. So, you know, and it's
doing re renders, not necessarily fold down so it does them really well. So if
you want a stereo mix, you re render 2.0. If you want a five
one, you re render a five one. You know, so
it's actually a very flexible system, a very powerful system. Right. The
re renders sound pretty good. You know, I think

(04:55):
a lot of the complaints that people had, first off.
Well, first of all, if you don't like it, you don't like it at whatever
it's like, you know, you don't want to buy the speakers. You don't want to
buy the, you don't want to buy into it, whatever. That's cool. Do whatever you
want to do. But the system does work. And
I think a lot of what people were complaining about were,

(05:16):
especially in the early days of this, were just bad mixes.
Yeah. You know, well, you ruined that song. Well, yeah, you're right. They did ruin
that song. It's not good, you know, so. But there's bad
stereo mixes, too. But we're also. Especially when you
talk about catalog stuff. Well, you know, if you know,
poor Giles Martin, you know, remixing the Beatles, well, that's,

(05:38):
I mean, he's very good at it. God bless him for it. He's doing a
great job. But that's tough because everybody knows
those songs. Yeah. You know, the song I'm gonna mix when we're
done with this, nobody's heard it, so there's
no, you know, nobody has that 50 years of emotional
attachment to it. So I don't know that I'm gonna break it because

(06:00):
there's nothing to break yet. It hasn't been done yet. So I think
as we get over the hump of the new technology and all that,
and also, you know, the movie people, the movie guys have been doing this for
a long time, and it's worked great in the movies for, you know, 1520
years, whatever it is. You know, same tool. We got into music, you
know, but we got into music way ahead of the consumer getting

(06:22):
into the music. So, you know, the consumer side is
literally just catching up. Right. I mean, you know, there's only a
couple streaming services that stream it. You know, when
some of the other ones come on board, it's going to change things again. And
then as people get systems,
as it moves into cars and as it moves in, as sound bars get better

(06:43):
and systems, people build the houses, so it
works and all that other kind of, there's always going to be the guy, the
crazy guy who has a huge system, and then there's people that want the soundbars
and as that technology gets better, it's going to feed into the
whole format. The other thing is, I think when the
cars are just now starting to catch up, which was a known

(07:05):
thing, it takes years to develop a new car. So, you know, as one
of my friends told me, you know, a few years ago, Apple Carplay was only
in a couple luxury cars. Now it's in, you know, every
toyota you buy. So that's true. As soon as that catches up, and then the
video games, too, because the video games take years to develop a new game. So
the new games that you're going to see coming out, they're going to be in

(07:26):
atmos, too. And then people are going to need playback systems for that and
all that kind of stuff. So I think it's moving forward. And then, you
know, there's also. There's a lot of
really big companies with a lot of money, and they're putting a lot of money
into this. So I think that alone means it's not going away
anytime soon. I was gonna kind of bait a question on that by saying, like,

(07:47):
does it have anything to do with the amount of money getting put behind it?
But, oh, everything. It always does. Yeah, I totally agree with
you. I think that, like, for movies and video games and, like, we all
know that, like, the world's going to VR and AR and everything like that. Like,
it makes absolute sense. And in music, it's
a lot of fun to do. I've done a few. You've done hundreds.

(08:08):
So I would love for it to survive. But
my opinion, you tell me whether you agree or disagree, is that
the kind of lackluster current binaural experience
that most consumers get is the thing that is
creating this pushback. And if that binaural experience was better, I feel
like more people would be like, fuck yeah, atmos. Let's do it. You know

(08:31):
what? I don't know that I totally agree that the binaural experience
isn't great. I think what people are
pushing back on a lot is it doesn't sound like the stereo mix,
and I get that from artists a lot, and that, like, doesn't sound like mysterio
mix. You're right. It's a different mix. Yeah. You know, a really
good binaural mix, honestly, can be a lot more compelling than a really

(08:53):
good stereo mix. Yeah. We're still in the world of
comparing the two things, you know? Well, it's not the same as a stereo. Yeah,
you're right. It's not. And I get it from the artist perspective, you know,
like, I just did a record for, you know, a pretty big artist, and they
were like, you know, we just spent a year making this record, and
now, you know, we finished it, we mixed it, we mastered it, we're happy with

(09:14):
it, and now they're asking us to remix it. What's the deal with
that? Like, this is a bummer. Like, it's different. You know, I already
did this, and I get that. I understand it. Yeah. And they
said the production team and the artists, like,
had we known we would have done this from the start, and
they weren't knocking the format, they were just knocking the fact that it got tossed

(09:37):
on them at the last minute. Yeah. But again, I've had the experience
with artists where I've mixed a record in atmos for them,
and then whether they like it or not,
but then they start making the next record, you know? And, like, there
was one artist, you know, I mixed a couple records for him, and I ran
into him in the hallway at Capitol. I wasn't working on the session, but they

(09:58):
were. He was doing a record, you know, and the first thing he said to
me is, wait till you get your hands on this one. This one's gonna be
so much fun. We're putting stuff in there for you to move around. So
they knew it was coming, so it wasn't a surprise. Yeah. So they're
much more, you know, excited
about it. Cause it's not like I'm reinventing them. I'm going backwards. No
artist likes to go backwards. Yeah, you're totally right, because my commentary

(10:22):
on the binaural is directly related to comparisons. Right. And it's
like, if I. When I go for a run, if I just have an apple
music atmos playlist on, it's fine. But it's when I'm like, oh, this sounds
really good. What's a stereo sound like? And I do that flip and then turn
it down or turn it. Yeah, turn it down. Right. I almost always like the
stereo better, but if you're not doing that comparison and you don't have that reference

(10:42):
for what the original Stones record sound like sounded like, then,
yeah, I guess it is different. So you've obviously answered that question very many, many
times. And. Yeah, well, and also, you know,
those, like, the stones. You know, I did some text text
test mixes for the Stones. They gave me a couple
songs to do for them to show the band. Right. So they could end up

(11:04):
doing the whole record. And those were two of the hardest mixes
I've ever done because the Rolling Stones are not designed to be pulled apart and
spread around a room. It's just not what they do. And those
records were not made to do that. Yeah. You know. Yeah. You know,
I'm also of the opinion, you know. You know, again, I ran into on
the record company level, like, well, how are we gonna do this atmos mix? We

(11:26):
don't have the right. You know, we don't. We can't find the multi tracks or.
It's only an eight tracker. And my opinion is, like, don't do it, then.
Like, you don't have to do every old record in atmos.
Right? If you don't. If you can't make it good, then why bother doing it?
It's perfectly fine in mono, or it's perfectly fine in stereo. You know? If
it's a record that you're thinking about doing in atmos, obviously it's survived the

(11:48):
test of time. But if you can't make it better, then don't.
Yeah. I mean, I get there's business stuff and all that other crap,
but I'd rather not do a bad mix.
You know, saying that made me think about. You know, I grew up
with the Beatles stereo. The hard panned Beatles stereo. Right.
You grew up with the Beatles mono? Yes and no. Yes and

(12:11):
no. But, yeah. Sorry, I don't wanna make you sound that old,
but I only had the cds that were in stereo. And then when I got
that mono box set, I listened to everything. I thought it was cool. But if
I listen to the Beatles now, I wanna listen to the Beatles that I know,
even though that mono is what I should wanna listen to, because it's what they
wanted. I want what I want hundred percent. Well, the funny thing about the

(12:31):
Beatles thing is, you know, they're ruining the Beatles. Well, they're not taking the old
ones away. Nobody came to your house and took your cds away.
Listen to it. It's fine. Yeah, yeah. And somebody said to
me, like, if you're listening to Sergeant Pepper and you're bummed out, you got
bigger problems. Like, you know, come on. It's still
Sergeant Pepper. Yeah, totally. Still. Great. So you mentioned something

(12:55):
earlier, and I kind of wanted to ask you about it. You mentioned the stereo
fold down that comes from the ADM file. Uh huh. You've been doing
this, like I said, for a while. Do you really think that there can be
one mix? Do you feel like your stereo fold downs are
comparable to your stereo mixes? Yes and no.
So right in the. Up until recently,

(13:18):
it was always a separate thing. For me, like, especially if I was doing both,
it was do the stereo mix and then do the, you know, the atmos mix.
I've started in the last year or so to experiment
with one mix for both, and it actually works really
well. Interesting. And again, it's semantics, but it's not
really a fold down, it's a re render, because a fold down implies taking

(13:40):
the channels and pull this down three decibels, whereas
the re render actually does it with more math,
interestingly, algorithmically.
So, yeah, actually, there's a certain sound that the renderer
has, actually, when you, when you dump it down to, like a
stereo. That's actually pretty cool. So I have one

(14:03):
project I'm working on now where it's
a catalog project with an older artist, and
I'm not going to get him. I have to remix in
stereo and I have to do the atmos also.
But there's no way I can make it two different
processes, like, because I have him for short

(14:25):
amounts of time and he's going to go, oh, take that, put it there, move
that, you know. Yeah, push that string line here, do that here. I can't
do all that in stereo and then do it again in
atmos. And he's, and he wants to like, okay, now let me
hear the atmos. You know, he wants me to hit a button and make it
atmos. So that project, I'm actually doing both at the same

(14:46):
time. Wow, okay. And it's, it's working pretty well,
actually. Once, you know, you kind of got to wrap your head around a different,
you know, the different workflows. Yeah. And switching back and
forth a little bit, but it's not so bad for me also.
I've never been one that relied too heavily on bus processing,
so that's not a, that's not a problem for me. Yeah, I

(15:09):
will probably, like, at the end of this process, I
will probably have a session that's stereo, that's meant
for stereo and then a session that's meant for
atmos. So I may, you know, there may be relative
balance changes and stuff in the atmos mix as compared to the other
one, but we're getting closer.

(15:30):
And, you know, I have a bunch of friends that do this, too, and
I think those of us that are experimenting with the one mix for
both, I think we're getting closer to actually making it work really
well. And in a lot of ways it works better, you know, because again, you
have different tools available to you, stuff like that. Do you
think it's because you've done so many mixes that you can kind of wrap your

(15:52):
head around the way to approach both at the same time.
Yeah, probably. I mean, you know, like
anything, you have to wrap your head around it, figure it out. Yeah,
it's a lot of, it's just workflow, you know, a lot of times we just
get stuck in the way we do things. That's true. That's true.
At most workflows. Very different. It's very different. Very

(16:14):
different. Yeah, yeah. And especially right now,
because a lot of times we're just getting stems.
Yeah. You know, so it's much different. Mixing a song from
stems and mixing a song from a multi track. Yeah.
So it's a different thing when you suddenly you're not worried about
compression and EQ and all that stuff, and you're just, you know, you're basically

(16:36):
repanning the stems. That's the way that, you know,
I've only done a few, like, we've talked about, and that's
the way that seemed to work for me. I couldn't even begin to, like,
figure out how to do both at the same time. But I am doing a
project that's more orchestral right now, more cinematic,
and I'm like, I don't really need to stem this. Can I maybe try to.

(16:58):
What I'm going to try to do is take the stereo session and convert that
into an atmos session, not mix them both and use the re render.
But that'll be my first go at it. Yeah, I've done that.
Sometimes it's actually a little harder to do that. Okay,
all right, I'll just stem it. If Steve says it, then I'll just. Well, actually,
you know, what I ended up doing is just committing a bunch of stuff. You

(17:20):
know, I just committed the tracks and then I ended up with a multi
track that had all of the,
like, EQ and compression and all that stuff kind of baked into it already.
Yeah, that makes sense. And then the other thing I did
is, and I set this up a lot earlier, my
stereo mix template, which is basically, you know, routing and

(17:43):
reverbs and stuff like that. My stereo mix template and my
atmos mix template are based off of each other,
and I named everything the same. So if
I import session data from a stereo mix into an atmos
template, like, all the reverbs go to the right reverbs and all
that kind of stuff because they're all named the same. That's great. So,

(18:07):
you know, drum reverb, even though in my stereo template, it goes to
a stereo reverb, when I import that into the atmos
session, that drum reverb just automatically goes to the Atmos
version of that. That's a good, you know, so by having
them very similar, it takes a lot of that away.
Yeah. But it's still, it can be tough

(18:29):
sometimes going from one. That's why the other reason I started experimenting with
try just one, you know, if I know I'm gonna have to do this in
both, let's just do it, you know? And again, nobody's comparing anything.
Right. That's where you get into the problems is people who know what I remember.
Well, now you don't have that problem because there's nothing to remember.
Speaking of comparisons, have

(18:52):
you had any really tough experiences
when getting an approval on an atmos mix with an artist that is maybe not
interested? Do you have any tricks for selling them over?
Well, as much as I possibly can. I try to get them into a
room with me or with somebody else who knows what they're doing.
Yeah. If you get them into a room, you're

(19:13):
99% there. I always caution people, never play them
their stuff first. Always play them. I mean, unless
they've heard the system a bunch of times, always play them
other stuff first and then play them their stuff. Yeah. Most
of the time when you get an artist in a room, they love it.
They think it's great. Yeah. Because it's cool and it works. Then you

(19:35):
start getting the questions, well, how does the consumer hear this? What about my stereo?
All the stuff we just talked about? Right. So
the concerns are more that than anything else. Who's going to pay
for this? How am I getting paid for this? Does it matter? It's like, man,
I just make the widgets. I don't have to sell the widgets. That's pretty
good. But as far as the technology of it, no, the artists usually love it.

(19:57):
Yeah. I mean, you, if you sit in the room, it sounds. It sounds fucking
awesome. I've never heard anybody walk into a room and walk out and say, I
hated that. No, not at all. Again, you get the, you
know, how do people hear this? You know? Yeah. Like, that's the trick.
That's the trick. Yeah, well, but, and we're not there yet. Yeah. You know, I
mean, do people go to the movie theater and go, whoa, whoa, the screen's so

(20:18):
big. How are you gonna, you know. No, everybody knows. You can, you can watch
it on your phone. Right. Is it the same experience? Definitely not.
Yeah, but do people complain about that? I don't know. Maybe they do.
Yeah, I would. Well, since
we're kind of talking about artist approval, I think this is a good question from,
like, the artist perspective. What. What makes a great Atmos

(20:39):
mix? Like, as a mixer, you can't really put your finger on, like, when something
is done or what's. What's great about it, but if you're an artist and you're
getting a mix back or you're going to go listen to a mix,
like, what makes it great? What makes it right?
Well, I don't think that is any different than in stereo.
You know, it has to groove, it has to feel good. It's all about the

(21:00):
feel. In the Atmos mix, if something is
distracting to me, you know, if I put
something in the back and every time it comes up, I start looking over my
shoulder, then it's probably not good. Yeah, that
makes sense. It probably should go someplace else. Yeah. You know, in
atmos, you have, you know, the space you have to work

(21:21):
with is greater. There's definitely
more possibilities for dynamics. And when I say that
it's, you know, some movement or, you
know, I mean, we've been, you know, we've been. At least I have. I've been
trying to get kind of dynamics in that kind of space in
stereo forever, you know, and now it's just a little bit easier in

(21:43):
atmos. Yeah. Not every mix needs,
as Trent Reznor called it, the magic tricks.
Some of them do, some of them don't. It's funny, the two
records that I've done, of the hundreds and hundreds of mixed atmos mixes that I've
done, the two that people keep going back to are the two simplest ones I've
ever done, which is kind of blue. Miles Davis, but

(22:06):
it's kind of blue. It's Miles Davis, you know? Right. And there's
Gregory Porter, Mona Lisa. You know, it's just a big orchestra.
There's. There's nothing moving. There's nothing, you know, flying around.
There's no weird shit happening in the back. There's no, you
know, but. But they hold up. It's just, you know,
I mean, it's great songs and great singing and all that, you know,

(22:28):
great arrangements and all that kind of stuff. So
I think what we're looking for in a really good atmos mix is the same
as what we're looking for in a really good stereo mix. Yeah, I guess
that's true. That is true. Yeah. I mean, there's plenty of
crappy stereo mixes out there.
Just turn on the radio, you know,

(22:50):
and honestly, most crappy stereo mixes are. Because it's a crappy
song. Yeah. If it's a good song, it's really easy to
mix. It's true. It's true. It does matter. Stereo atmos,
if the production's not right, the mix is never going to be. It's never
real good. Yeah. I've been remixing some old Diana Kral
records. You know, I just started that, and it's like,

(23:12):
you know, I said to my wife the other day, I was like, these are
so simple. They're so, like, simple to mix. They're so easy because
it's. They're put together so well, and the playing is so good, and
the singing is so good. It just. It just goes together.
Yeah. You know, it's. It's not, you know, it's not
that. I mean, it's, you know, there's a skill and an art to it,

(23:33):
but I'm not fighting all that other stuff that we have
to fight with a lot of the times to get a good mix.
There really is something that, you know, like, you experienced
every day and I experienced when I was a capital. There's something about, like, when
those players, with their instruments that they've had for so long, step
into a room and they play the right arrangement and you

(23:55):
can use any mic and you can put it basically anywhere, and it's.
And people are going to ask you how you got that sound. Like it's just
the reality of it. Yeah. And a lot of people, you know, are in
their bedroom and they're working against it. They have everything working against
them, you know. Yeah, but, yeah, I mean, how many times
did you know, Al get hired to do a record, you

(24:16):
know, because it was the woman who wants to be the next Diana
Kral, or whatever, and, you know, we're in the same room
sometimes with the same player, you know, so they hired Jeff Hamilton and John
Clay, whatever, and, you know, and they're going, well, it doesn't sound like Diana Krall.
It's like, well, gee, what's different? Diana Krall's got her.
How come my voice doesn't sound like her? It's just because you're not her.

(24:39):
It's the same mic, same mic preamp, same room.
It's just one thing I learned very early on from guys like
Al and Tommy Lupuma and Phil Ramon, is we get the band in as soon
as possible to listen, let them do one or two takes, and then get them
in the control room. Nine times out of ten, they fix everything that
needs to be fixed. Nobody even has to say anything. They just

(25:02):
listen and they go, oh, once in a while, you'll hear them go, oh, are
you playing that thing in the bridge? Yeah. Okay. All right. Then I'll do something
different, you know, or the guitar player lean over and go, can the guitar be
a little brighter? And. Yeah, it could be a little brighter. And they go, okay,
I don't have to do it. Like, you know, they all go out there and
they fix it, and it's like, then they play it again, and you're like, oh,
look, we're geniuses.

(25:25):
Yeah. Drummer fixes what he needs to fix on his kit and,
yeah, you know. I shouldn't go to the ride symbol in that section. Yeah, you're
right. And he doesn't go to the ride symbol, and suddenly it's not washed out
anymore. You know, it really says a lot about, like,
there's. I like to describe to people, like,
younger engineers and producers
producing, like, a mixer, and you think about, like, arrangement

(25:49):
of, like, a jazz record or an orchestral arrangement. Parts
are being moved around to not step on each other. And, like, things are given
the space that they're. They're supposed to have. You don't have to create that space.
It's like, right, you don't need 50 pads in the chorus. You just need the
right pad, and then you need the other right thing. Yeah. You know, it's
just identify what piece you need from what. Use that piece.

(26:10):
Yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes, I mean, I've had plenty of mixes where I
just. I was muting more than anything. Yeah. You know, taking stuff
away, and it was like, suddenly the song came back, you know, it's
like the guys who over, they want the guitars bigger, so they overdubbed, you
know, nine parts, and it's like you only
needed two. Yeah. A little bit out of tune. Every time. It just gets

(26:32):
smaller and smaller. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Wow. How'd you get the guitar
sound so big? I muted those four that were playing the same
part. Got it out of the way of everything else.
Or sometimes just moving in a mix. Just moving it. It's amazing how
sometimes you move something from the left to the right, and you're like, oh,
wow, now I can hear it. Yeah. In atmos, even more. Like, I

(26:54):
found that, like, the. The masking is
so different, you know, because you're not fighting for space, and you move something,
and I'm like, oh, wow. I move this bv to the side, and I'm like,
holy shit, that's what that sounds like in the stereo mix. I need to fix
that, right? Yeah, you do a lot of stuff besides. At most I want to
get into that. But I did want to ask you one or two atmos

(27:15):
mixtapes. Yeah. One being this is a personal question for
me, I find it particularly difficult when you're dealing with,
like, low track count, drier rock stuff.
It just doesn't. It feels harder to glue together in the room
than like a thick pop thing. How do you
approach filling the room with

(27:37):
the files you have before adding ambience and extra
reverb? It's a good question. And
there's like, most things in audio, there's no answer to it,
really. You play around with it till it works.
Yeah. Like a four piece rock band is tough for an atmos because,
again, they don't want to be pulled apart. Yeah, I try to. At that

(27:58):
point, I'm pulling the drums into the room a little bit. I
find if I try too
many tricks and if I try too hard to get it to do
something it doesn't want to do that I make it worse.
So I think sometimes there's nothing wrong
with not putting stuff in the rear

(28:21):
or not, but, you know. Right. The song will tell you what the song wants
to do. Sometimes it's just a matter of, you know what? Let's just take.
Take what we would have done in stereo and just make it a little
wider. Got it. And not. Not
try to fight it a whole bunch, you
know, not everything has to be, you know,

(28:42):
some of the crazy stuff that we've done. Yeah. You know, again, like I said,
I'm doing some of this Diana cross stuff and, you know, some of
it's piano and vocal, you know, or a
small quartet. It's like, well, I'm not going to put the drums
in the back or the bass in the back, you know, so
you just try to make it fill the space

(29:04):
with the space that's in the record. Does that make sense? Yeah, no,
it does. It does. Because, yeah, instinctively you want
to use reverb to fill it, but then
you're just creating this thing that didn't exist. You know what I mean? You're
just putting verb on everything.
Yeah, I try not to do that kind of stuff again, just

(29:27):
because you have twelve speakers doesn't mean you have to use them all.
Isn't there a requirement to have something in every speaker? No,
no, that's just a rumor. There's no spec where something has to be done.
Every channel? No. No. All right. The only thing, I
mean, you have to have, at least for most of the major labels,
the specs are. Well, there's the level specs, you know, that

(29:50):
-18. Level, maximum level. And there's reasons for that.
There's technical reasons for that. But the other thing is,
most of the labels will reject a mix if
you have no binaural information. So you
can't just set everything to off and send it in. They're going to reject that.
You have to have some kind of binaural information. Yeah. And

(30:13):
most. Well, not so much the labels, but I know
some of the streaming services, like Apple, they're
pretty sensitive to, like, up mixing, like
trying to fake stereo stuff into atmos. They're
cracking down on that pretty heavily because they want the format to do what the
format does. So. Yeah, yeah. And again, I'm more of

(30:35):
a proponent of. I'd rather not have it in atmos
than have it badly in atmos. Says the
guy mixing all the Atmos tracks. So that means a lot. Well,
yeah, but there. You know, like, there was a couple early on where it was
like, we don't have the assets for this. And it was like, fine, don't do
it. Yeah, yeah. Well, what if we pull it apart? This. I was

(30:56):
like, man, it's gonna be crap. It's. You know. Then we're breaking
it. Yeah. We're not making it better. My favorite
one was the one. I got something to QC once. It was kind of
during COVID I was still working for the record label. They said,
can you listen to something? This Atmos mix sounds weird to us. Can you listen
to. You have. It was during COVID because I had a room. That. That was.

(31:18):
The thing is, there weren't. We didn't have access to all the Atmos
rooms because the buildings were closed. They were like, you have a room. Can you
listen to this? Because it sounds weird to us. And I realized they had literally
put the stereo mix in, like, every speaker. So it was.
Stereo mix there, stereo mix there, stereo mix there. It sounded
so bad. It was basically, like six

(31:39):
versions of the stereo mix all playing at the same time. I was like, yeah,
that's not good. Well, that's not even. That would.
Yeah, that's horrible. It was broken on a lot of levels. Oh,
yeah. Okay. Well, yeah. Um. Well, assuming that
that's not the biggest mistake people make in their first Atmos mix, what would
you say the. The thing that most people

(32:01):
do, like, if there was one thing where you're like, please, God, don't
do this. What is it? Uh, too much
reverb, where they just add reverb to a bunch of stuff. Yeah.
I'm. A lot of times, you'll hear
either leaning on the subwoofer, the lfe channel, way too
much to where if you take it away, all the low end goes away.

(32:23):
Yeah. And I'm not a big
proponent of lead vocals. Hard in the center
channel. I use the center channel. I use it quite a
bit for things, but very rarely is anything only in the center
channel. So I use the center channel to kind of anchor stuff in the
middle, not. Not just

(32:44):
to have stuff in the center. To me, that sounds a little disjointed
for music. You know, for movies, it's a different thing for dialogue and
stuff, but for music, it sounds. I mean, now there's been times
where, you know, somebody's gonna go, put down this mix. You did it. Yeah, there
might have been a mix I did because I wanted it to do something like
that. Right. Like, I remember. I don't remember what song it was specifically, but I

(33:05):
remember it had to, like, there was one part of the song where it was.
It needed to be, like, uncomfortably dry and in your face, and
I just stuck it hard in the center channel for, like, that bridge, and it
did. That thing, and then Apple spatial by Nora
ruined that. Who knows? Well,
and the Apple spatial thing is, again, that's a moving target. Yeah.

(33:27):
So that's the other thing I kind of tell people,
like, they're like, but it's, you know, but on Apple, I'm like, yeah, but Apple's
changing. Like, every time you. You update your phone, there's
a good chance that they're updating their spatial algorithms. You
know, I don't know that for sure, but it's. That's changing all
the time, so usually for the better. So that's a

(33:50):
moving target that's really tough to chase. You know,
the speaker mix is still the mix that everything is going to be
based off of. So, yeah, pay attention to that. Don't ignore the other
stuff, but pay attention to that. Yeah, I
definitely. I was a. Has to sound great in
the headphones person until I tried to do a mix in headphones and then went

(34:12):
and heard it on speakers, and I am very firmly in the.
Like, it's got to feel good in the room, and then you've got to find
that balance where it's also good in the binaurals. But do you think there's ever
a time when the Dolby Binaural and the Apple spatial are. Are more
similar or that there's only one binaural or. No,
I hope so.

(34:33):
The last thing we need is more formats, right. You don't want a third binaural
option. I'm sure it's out there. It kind of is, because if
you have apple without the head tracking, it's different. Again, a little bit. Oh,
is it really? Well, sort of. And again,
it's changing some. I don't have the time to keep up with half of it.
But if you're doing a frontline

(34:57):
pop album, you know, I mean, let's be honest,
most of those don't have a huge shelf life. I
might lean on the binaural a little heavier for something like
that than if you're doing, you know, a catalog thing
that has already had a shelf life. That's an
interesting angle. Yeah. Yeah. So there's certain things that, you

(35:19):
know, I mean, I've kind
of done that in the past anyway. Like, in the past, like, if I'm doing
a music for a tv commercial, I'm probably gonna listen to it
on tv type speakers. Right. If I'm doing something,
like, when I used to do all those things for Apple, like the performance things,
I knew they were only gonna be played on Apple Music, you know,

(35:41):
so it was never gonna be released to radio or whatever. So I spent a
little more time caring about, like, earbuds and
laptop speakers and stuff like that because I knew 99% of the people
were going to listen on that only because it was only available
there. You know, if I'm mixing something for theatrical release,
I want to hear it on big speakers because I know it's going to be,

(36:02):
you know, I'm mixing a thing now for a guy. It's a
private thing, a personal project. But this guy has. He's a guy
with probably way too much money, and he's got a
big, huge home theater thing that he wants this project
to play in. So I gotta make sure that it plays well on a
big, huge system. This project is not being

(36:25):
designed to play on headphones. It's being designed to play in his big
home theater. So I mix it for the home theater. So in a way, you
have to mix for what people are gonna hear
it on. That's true, you know, which is what we've always
done. Yeah. Why? Why would we stop? I don't know why Atmos makes us all
want to stop and change, change shit around. Ultimately, I want to make a good

(36:47):
sounding record. Yeah. You know, I never once saw
Al put on a set of earbuds and listen to a mix.
You know, if you're going to listen on a crappy system, that's your problem,
not mine. Yeah, I mean, I hope the mix stands up. I mean,
you don't want to, you know, you want to make sure that the bass doesn't
go away in headphones and stuff like that. But as in stereo,

(37:09):
if you make a really good mix on a good set of speakers, it should
translate. Yeah, yeah, agreed. Um, I
don't. I don't want to talk all about Atmos. I I'll just throw out there
that Steve has done so many amazing interviews.
Working class audio. He's been on there a couple times, and recording studio, rockstars,
both of those. There's lots of atmos stuff in there. But Steve also

(37:31):
does normal records. Normal,
normal, normal. And, uh, tons
of jazz, big band, orchestral. Like. You're really a
top tier tracking engineer and mixer. You've learned from the best.
Still my favorite thing to do. I'd much rather be in the studio, recording.
Yeah. That's what I wanted to ask you about, is, I feel like the

(37:53):
thing that you enjoy the most is becoming this lost art because
of just the way studios are working and the way production is done.
Would you maybe enlighten people on how you
approach some of these ensemble recordings where you have, you know, horns,
string, you have a lot of players in one room. Are you
thinking about isolation or not? Isolation. How is that going into you? Like, your

(38:15):
mic choices and your mic placement? What's that mindset? Like, when you're about to do
the thing that you do? So the first
thing is sessions like that, which are, again, like I said, are
my favorite things to do. I always tell the more people you put out in
that room, the happier I am. But
it does come with a different set of, I won't say

(38:37):
problems, because they're not problems. It's just a different set of issues.
Yeah. And most of that
is preparation. So when I get a
gig, you know, and it was the
same when I was working with Al. He would do it, or we would do
it together. It's. You get the job, you find out what it is,

(38:59):
and then there's a few questions you have to ask, like, okay,
what is this for? Is it. Well, yeah. What is
it for? Is this for a movie? Is it for an album? Is it for
what? Is it. Okay, it's for an album. Okay, great. We're gonna do an album.
So, do we have a singer? Yes, we have a singer. Is that
singer. The singer that's gonna be on the record. Or is it a guide

(39:19):
vocal or are we. Do we want keeper
takes for this? Is it strictly, you know, a guide
vocal? Which it never is because, you know, how many times is
that guide vocal been the one? And then,
you know, are we overdubbing solos or are we doing live
solos? Are we, you know, is. Well, in this case, the

(39:42):
artist is a piano player. Are they going to want to replace their piano
parts later? You know, stuff like that? That's the kind of information
I need to know that will inform me about how to set
up the room. Now, usually if it's a big band or an orchestral thing, you
know, you're not going to split the big band up. They, they go as
a. That's a, that's one. One whole team. You know, it's. It's all

(40:04):
live, basically. You know, we might isolate, you know, put the drums in a booth
and isolate the bass as much as we can, but they're usually in
the room and, you know, or close to the room and playing at
the same time. If, if we get isolation, it's more,
you know, the drums sound better if they're not bleeding into every single microphone and,
you know, the bass sounds better if all the horns aren't bleeding into the bass

(40:28):
mic and stuff like that, you can get more definition. So, so
isolation in that situation is more for that kind of stuff. As far as,
like a horn section. If you have five saxophones, you know, they're sitting right next
to each other, you're not going to isolate those guys. So,
I mean, I put a mic on all of them and that's so I can
do minor balance things. But nine times out

(40:48):
of ten, those mics are probably all in omni anyways because the mics sound better
and the leakage sounds better. And so it's a
section, and then how I set them up is
more. A lot of that is about
visual sight lines. Make sure everybody can see, make sure they can
hear. If you're dealing with a big band or an orchestra or something, a lot

(41:10):
of what they're hearing is in the room that usually they only have one headset
on. So they're balancing themselves. They need to hear each other in the room
because that's how they balance, especially a string section. You know, they want to hear
each other and they'll. And they'll do a lot of the balancing
themselves. So a lot of it happens before the session.
I mean, you were on a million sessions with us where, you know, you were

(41:31):
there the whole night before setting that room up. And that was, you
know, we were already mixing just by how we set the room up. You
know, at capital was interesting because we had the two rooms also, so
we could have a rhythm section, a big band, and a whole string
section playing at the same time, but have the strings completely isolated because we could
put them in studio b and close the glass. You know, that's a very unique

(41:53):
situation. Yeah. So, again, if we don't have that situation, okay, well, we
want everybody together. Well, how are we going to manage this? Because now we got
strings and horns in the same room and, you know, okay, do I put the
horns in front of the strings? Do I put the strings back there? Do I
put, you know, like, Tommy Vaccari and I just had the big discussion because we
did the oscars, you know, a couple weeks ago. We have strings and horns in

(42:14):
the same room at Warner Brothers. How are we going to do that? You know,
are we going to, again, do the strings go behind? Do we put one on
this side and one on that side? How are you going to do it? And
it depends on a lot of it depends on where it's going and what it's
being used for. But by the time we get to the actual recording
session, that should all be taken care of, and it's
already predetermine. What's gonna happen? Like,

(42:36):
we just did a. Or we just actually, we just won a Grammy for the
count Basie record that I did, like, a year ago. Congrats. Thank you.
But on that record, I knew there was gonna be guests artists, so we
had singers to sing live, but I knew
that most of those singers were gonna be replaced with guests.
So it wasn't about keeping the band out of the vocal. It was about

(42:58):
keeping the vocal out of the band because I had to take it all out.
And we were at East west studio one, which is a
great room. It's, you know, big, but there's no really isolated vocal
booth in that room. So I had the singers in the lounge
outside. But again, that was the necessity. I had
to be able to take that vocal completely out. You know, there

(43:21):
were a couple things where we were going to have a different guitar player play
on it. It was like, all right, well, just don't, you know, we just tell
the guitar player, just don't play on this. You know, maybe he plays the rundown
so everybody can hear what it's going to be, and then it's like, all right,
just don't play because you're going to bleed into everybody else, and I can't get
rid of it. So solos are big things a lot

(43:41):
of times, especially in big band records, it'll be, all right, let's play it down
once. Okay, now play it down, but don't play any of the
solos. And then we'll. We'll get the track, and then it's like,
okay, do the solos now, you know? All right, go back, do
the alto solo, do the trumpet solo. Okay, but we're not going to come back
two days from now and overdub it. You're going to do it right now. So

(44:02):
in the seat that you were in. Exactly. And at that point,
depending on how ambient the sound is, I might record
all the mics again just to grab that solo. That's true.
That's true. In pro tools now we can do. But that's how you get to
200 tracks really quickly. Yeah, but that is a. That's
a super pro move that 99.9% of

(44:25):
people would not think about because you need that thing to sound the same. And
if you got five guys that lay out, those mics don't exist anymore, it's going
to be a different tone. So. Exactly. Depending on what it is, I might do,
like, okay, do the room mics and that one mic, right. Or something
like that. May not have to do the drum mics and all that kind of
stuff. Or. Or it'll be like, oh, there's the

(44:45):
intro and the outro, the saxes are all
playing flutes, quiet flutes. All right, don't play that
part. And then we'll go back and I'll raise the mics up and then
record all of the horn mics again, and we'll just punch it, you know, or
overdub those flute parts so that we can get a. You know, because
if the trumpets are wailing away, you're not going to hear two flutes,

(45:08):
you know, so we do do stuff like that quite a
bit. That is something that's like, you know, because since I left capital, it's
just, you know, I'm either mixing my house or it's a pop session. And the.
The preparation level is so. I'm not say
preparation level. Preparation expectations are so different. Like those
sessions that you would do at capital. When I was working there, like you

(45:30):
said, everything was sorted out before everybody walked in the room,
and everything now is so I've got my keyboard, my laptop.
You've got the vocal mic. Like, we're going to make something. There's zero
preparation other than, like, plugging the five things in. Right. And so I think
communication is huge because whenever I do work with an artist now
and they want to do like multiple things, they're like, I'm going to be able

(45:51):
to redo the guitar. And I'm like, no, you can't because, you know, you're both
in here. Right? So many people don't understand that.
That just because the microphone is here, that doesn't mean that
if my daughter was over there that it wouldn't hear, you know what I mean?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Communication is huge. And sometimes
education is huge. Yeah, yes. And politely

(46:13):
educating. There's something else that you need to understand how to like
help everybody understand the situation in a, you know, non condescending
manner, which. Yeah, psychology. A lot of it is
psychology and people skills. Yep. You know, I mean at capital we
hired people based on the people, not what they knew,
you know, I mean, when we were hiring runners, set up

(46:36):
people, you know, I didn't, you know, I would look at a resume,
be like, all right, whatever, you know, the resume would be, you know, I use,
I know how to use pro tools and I know how to use the SSL
and I know how, and I would look at the resume and go, why has
this guy had twelve crappy jobs in the last two years? You
know, what is it about this person that he can't hold a job
at the pizza place? At the pizza place, yeah, exactly. Yeah,

(46:59):
yeah, yeah, yeah. You know. Cause if you're an asshole at the pizza place, well,
you're probably gonna be an asshole at the studio too. That's true. That's
true. Cause you're gonna be in a room with people way longer at the studio
than you are at the pizza place. Right. And you know, I can teach you
how to use a neve console, you know, and as a setup person,
I don't care if, you know, pro tools, you're not gonna be asked to run
pro tools.

(47:22):
Yeah, it's true. I mean, if it's a good thing to know, I mean,
obviously the more, you know, coming in, the quicker you can make it through
the system. Right. You know? Right. But again, when
you, if you working at a place like capital, you know, when we hire
you, we're going to teach you how to make the coffee because we want you
to make the coffee the way we want the coffee made. Yeah. You know, and

(47:43):
this is how you wind up cables because this is how we wind up the
cables here. And there's a reason for that. It's so that everybody
so that this guy isn't tangling up all the cables that this guy wrapped up
over there, you know? Yeah. You know, there's that
thing of, you know, if you screw up my lunch order every day, how am
I going to trust you to run my pro tool session, you know? Yep. Or

(48:05):
do my. Do my patches or whatever it is. It's like, yeah, studios are
all about. The little levels of
detail, about detail and responsibility. That's the word
I was looking for, responsibility. Okay, you did this, you can do
that. You did this, you can do that. You know, the setup staff was
just as important as the engineering staff, was just as important as the tech staff,

(48:27):
and just as important as the office staff. And, you know, especially at capital,
because the setup staff was responsible for setting up the rooms,
you know, even though, yes, during the day, they were runners.
But, you know, the majority of the work the setup
staff did was setting up those rooms. And if it was done,
you know, if you missed, if you're setting up 50 or 60

(48:49):
mics and your input sheet is all screwed
up, that's going to take a session down for 45 minutes
in the morning. That's a huge
deal. Yeah, it is.
I always liked the night shift because I like setting everything up when we were
at capital, and I used to love to come in the next day

(49:11):
and see where, where everything was, like, how far did it
move? Okay, next time this engineer's here, I'm going to try to put it closer
to where he puts it. That was my game, too, at capital.
Yeah. Like, set it up and see how it moved. You know, it's
how you learn how. To do it without being in there to watch. Exactly. Or
try to anticipate, like, you know. Cause a lot of times the

(49:32):
drawings were, you know, we would give you guys drawings that were just chicken scratch.
Oh, yeah. And, you know, you as a setup person, have to interpret
the chicken scratch into exactly what we wanted,
which, I mean, you figure out after a month or
so, oh, this is what a big band session looks like. I mean,
it was fun. The staff at capital, nobody ever left.

(49:54):
So there were times where we had the same setup people for years
where I could make a phone call and go, Travis, it's a big band setup
for Monday. Just do the thing. And you knew what it was.
I didn't have to tell you, you know,
it's that kind of thing. Just give me a vocal setup with a 47. Okay,
great. Yeah. You know. You know what that means? I don't have to go into

(50:14):
the detail of the whole thing. Yeah. But I also did it when I became
an assistant engineer. It was still kind of like when I would
work with Al. I would get in the mornings and I would set up a
mix for him. You know, we had the console patch and everything. And I'd,
you know, I'd kind of get a balance going of
the song. And, I mean, I wasn't automating faders or anything

(50:36):
like that, but especially as I got more comfortable with Alan, he
got more comfortable with me. I could take that a little farther. Cause, you know,
but my game was, let's see if I can get in early,
get a really good mix up, and then see what he changes
to. Make it an Al Schmidt mix, you know, and, I mean,
honestly, there were a couple times where he came in, he was like, pretty good.

(51:00):
Just turn on your automation. Let's go. You know, it's like, yes, okay. You
know, then he automated and it became his mix. Right. Because that
was, that was his thing. It was. Or, you know, or he pushed and pulled
a little, like, it's pretty good. And he'd push and pull a couple little things
here and there, you know, so it was never like,
okay, print it. You know, there's always something to do.

(51:21):
But that was my, that was my game. That's how I learned. Well, it's a
great way to learn, and it's. I don't know, I think it's the best way
to learn. I'm biased because that's, that's how I did it as well.
But just to, to highlight for listeners like you, you
might, you know, have an internship in your town or you might go to
school, whether it's expensive or not, take. Go to a program, and then when you

(51:42):
go to one of these facilities, you, you have
to remember that you've been given, like, the, the
baseline to keep up, but that you're really going to
learn the real deal when you're working with the people that are working
every day. So just remember that, like, you only have the tools to learn. You
don't actually have the, you know, the full skillset

(52:04):
yet. You can really only learn by watching.
Yeah. And doing it. And, you know, and
the other thing is that, you know, like,
how many times have we run into, you know, oh, we had, we
had a neve console at our school. It was like, great. And they look at
it and go, oh, we never use it in this mode.

(52:26):
Right. Well, yeah, well, but tomorrow we're going to use
it in the other mode, and a week from now, we're going to use it
in broadcast mode and in a week, so. Oh, I know how
to run pro tools. That's great. We don't want to do that on this
session. We're not going to record in playlists. We're going to record
linear, no, click with an ed. You know,

(52:47):
and they look at you and it's like, well, that's what you have to learn
how to do because every session is different. You know,
I. I was just. I was just talking to a
bunch of young staff engineers at a studio, and
they have a new Neve 88 r console that they just installed. And. And even
the guy who ran the studio was like, can I ask you a question? Yeah.

(53:07):
How do you do this? And I was like, well, what am I doing? And
he was like, what do you mean? He was like, how do you do the
headphones for this? I said, what are we doing? Is it tracking date? Is it
an overdub? Is it like, I had ten different ways I can run the headphone
mix depending on how many I need and who's doing it.
And is it stereo, is it mono, is it tracking? Is it overdubbing? And they
were like, oh, my God. But that's what you learn

(53:28):
working at a big studio like that is how to be flexible and
how to do all those different things, how to adapt. Yeah.
There's one other question I wanted to ask you. You mentioned vocals earlier. You mentioned,
alright, every time I ever
saw Al record a vocal, he rode every word of every
take. Yep. Two tape. Yep. Can

(53:50):
you talk to young engineers about why somebody
would do that? And maybe, is there like a 2024
version of that technique that. That you could suggest? Yeah,
I still do it every session.
People, it kind of freaks people out sometimes because they're like, it's to
tape, though. You're committing it. It's like, well, yeah, you're committing it. It's okay. Commit.

(54:14):
Make a decision. And when we talk about it,
it's not like we're doing 20 decibels rides. It's subtle
stuff. I mean, sometimes it can be more, but, yeah,
so basically, when the singer's out there, you're learning the
song, you're learning it with them. A lot of it is visual.
Like if you can see the singer. Cause then if you see him back

(54:37):
up and wind up for a big one, you know they're gonna get loud. It's
like you pull the vader down. So, you know, the thing with Al
and, you know, subsequently with me, because I learned from those guys,
is you know, he relied very little on compression. You know, that
compressor, man, if he was compressing something three decibels, that was
crushing it. And his compressor was pre

(54:58):
fader, so he would set the mic pre up, so edit the loud
parts. You know, it would hit, you know, two or three decibels,
but that meant at the soft parts, it wasn't compressing at all. So essentially,
when the singer was sitting, you know, the beginning of the song, the
intro, the first verse, you know, the fader might be up, you
know, four or five decibels. And then as the song progresses and gets louder,

(55:20):
they, you know, or there's that one word that they sing really loud every time.
Well, you know where that is? And you just pull the fader back a couple.
You know, you're talking about a threshold of maybe four or five
decibels in there, but that way.
Well, two things. One, they're hearing that too.
So their vocal is. It's. It's mixing,

(55:40):
essentially. Yeah. Their vocals smooth out. And with Al
not only vocals, we were doing it on sessions, like in a horn
section and, you know, trumpets. You know, when you saw Al moving faders, it
was going to tape. So, you know, the trumpets put their mutes in. Well, you
know, when the mutes go in, they're going to be. Tend to be quieter, you
know, so you jam the fader up for that part and then you pull it

(56:01):
back down and they take the mutes out. It's all that kind of stuff. And
then, you know, certainly when it comes to
mixing, it's a lot easier because you've already done half the
moves. But, yeah, I mean, it's harder these
days, especially if you're in a room that doesn't have a console because you don't
have that fader in front of you. But a lot of

(56:22):
preamps, you know, if there's a knob on the output
of that preamp, that's a fader, essentially. So I'll do it with that.
The output of a compressor, you know, I'll lean over and just. Just
ride the output of the compressor. As long as it doesn't make noise and all
that kind of stuff. A lot of what I do now, like, I
do a version of that now when I'm mixing, I'll get stuff in

(56:43):
to mix that's been recorded in, you know, small studio, home studio, no
fader, whatever, straight into pro tools. A lot of times there's no
compression on it, but they will have heard compression in the. In the
session. So there might be a compressor on the vocal, so
everybody's hearing it nice and upfront and in your face, and
dynamics are under control and all that stuff, but it's not being recorded that way.

(57:06):
Yeah. So when I get it and I take that compressor off, suddenly, you know,
you look at the waveforms and it's like the beginning is like this, and then
it goes like this, and then it's like this, and then it's like this, you
know. Well, now if I want to put a little bit of compression on it,
you know, I'm only going to compress the loud part or I'm going to, you
know, so what I'll do is I'll spend like, I'll
get a basic mix up and then I'll go to the vocal, and before I

(57:28):
put anything on it, no compression, no eq, nothing, I'll do a couple
passes of automation just to get it to
sit, to bring the loud parts down, to bring the quiet
parts up. Then I'll take that automation and convert it to clip gain.
Well, now I have an audio file that's
got those rides in it. Now I can put my compressor on there, have it

(57:50):
compressed to three decibels, whatever it is, and everything's kind of,
you know, then I can put my processing on it like that. So that's, that's
a real, like, it's become a basic
part of my mixing nowadays is that first couple of passes of
automation with no processing at all on it, then I put the processing on
it. That volume automation transition to clip gain

(58:12):
is. I don't think people know that you can do that in
pro tools. For anybody listening, that is not in pro tools, sorry. Yeah, well, it
used to be, you had to, it had to be hd like the other versions
of Pro tools couldn't. But that's not that way anymore. I see every version now.
Yeah, yeah, I do it all the time. Or just clip game. Once clip
game came into pro tools, half my automation went out the window.

(58:33):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. That guitar line's too loud. Just click game
that thing down. It's great. Yeah. Cause then if you wanna
trim the whole thing, you don't have to flip to trim, you can just push
the fader half a DB and. Exactly. The thing to remember is clip gain is
pre processing. Yeah. So it's pre compression,
pre eq, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, you can't just

(58:54):
go, oh, the vocal needs to be louder and clip gain the whole thing up
five decibels, because now you're hitting your compressor five decibels. Louder. Or you
can. It's okay. I so
badly just want to talk about gain staging and how. How it can just
go so far south if you don't understand what's down chain from something.
But that's like a whole other podcast episode. We'll just. We'll just, like, let that.

(59:15):
We'll let that go. We'll pretend you didn't bring it up. Obviously, it makes me
feisty, but that. Gets back to the, like, being an assistant
and the recording process and all that is what's happening down
the line. Yeah. You know, if you lean over and click that mic preamp.
Well, is. Are you now just driving your compressor harder? You
know, where. Where are you going to make up your gain? Yeah. Where do you

(59:36):
need to do that? You know, if you're riding gain, like we talked about
riding, you know, a vocal, well, if you're doing that into a
compressor, you're just riding more compression, less compression, you're
not riding the actual gain. So just
the number of auxes that will come in on a session or something, or when
you open some, you can just be like, oh, my God, how is this happening?

(59:58):
But whatever. I mean, if it sounds great, however you get there is fine, as
long as you understand what you're doing along the way, I think,
is what's important. Well, it used to be easy. Signal flow is easy. We used
to say there's goes ins and goes outs. Everything goes into something, and it goes
out of that thing. It was a line. I mean, it
might have gone into a million different things, but it went into that and out

(01:00:19):
of that and into that and out of that, and it did the same thing
inside of a console, into this, into that, into that. So once you understood
that it was great with pro tools, it can be a little.
A little difficult. Well, actually, in pro tools, it still does the same
thing. You're still going in and out of stuff. It's when you get into
Dante, that's a whole nother Dante.

(01:00:42):
Okay, so before you go, I can't let you leave.
I know you've told the story, but it's just. It's so good. I can't let
you leave without talking about recording strings for the final Beatles
song. You worked on a Beatles track. You have to bring it up on the
show. Those are the rules. That's cool. I'm good with that.
Yeah, it was fun. So, you know, I'd worked

(01:01:04):
with Paul a few times, you know, with Al and Tommy. We'd done a
few projects together. So working with Paul was not,
you know, a new thing. And I got a call from Paula, the studio
manager at Capital. Oh, hey, I just booked you for a string
date for Paul in, like a month or whatever it was. Oh, okay,
great. You know who's producing? Giles is producing. Okay, great. I know Giles. You know

(01:01:26):
Giles Martin. Okay. Do you know what it is? They said, it's just a string
date. It's on a weekend in like a month. Okay, cool.
So we get closer, and I called Giles, you know, hey,
string date this weekend. What are we doing? He says, oh, yeah, yeah, it's just
a string day. It's a song for Paul. We're going
to come in on Saturday, and Paul's going to come in, and we're going to

(01:01:49):
go over the arrangement, just the mock up arrangement with Ben, who was
Ben Foster, who was the string arranger. So we'll do that
and some other stuff on Saturday, and then we'll do the strings on Sunday.
Okay, cool. It was one of the last sessions at capital,
and ironically, like, the week before was when we found out we were
all getting laid off, which was kind of fun. So it was like

(01:02:12):
dead man walking all over the place, right? Oh, and Giles said, oh, and I
have a breakfast meeting, so I'm going to drop the drive off on
Friday night with security. So just
get it in the morning and set up, and I'll be there like,
noon. I said, okay. So Chandler Herod is one of the other
capital engineers. He was going to be my pro tools operator on the session, so

(01:02:34):
he got there before I did because, you know, you never want to.
Can't let the engineer beat you there. So when I
walked in, he had already grabbed the drive and grabbed the track and was
setting up to record. And when I walked in, he had a
look on his face, and I was just like, oh, shit, like
what? You know? And he just went, do you know what we're working

(01:02:56):
on? I said, no. Some song for Paul is what I was
told. Why? And he hit play, and a voice came out of the
speakers, and it was definitely not Paul McCartney. It was
most definitely John Lennon. It's amazing. And it was kind of garbly with
a piano, but it was definitely John, you know? And I was like,
that's not Paul. He's like, nope, it's not. And I said.

(01:03:19):
And then he played. He said, listen to this. And he played some guitars.
I was like, is that who I think it is? And he went,
says, george guitar right here. I was like, we're not working
on a Paul McCartney track. Are we. He said, nope. We're working on a Beatles
track. I was like, amazing. Okay, now, you
know, and so, like, a half hour later, hour later, whatever

(01:03:40):
Giles shows up, you know, comes in the control, like,
giles, like, what are we doing? He was like, oh, you've heard the
track. Like, yeah, we've heard the track.
He said, yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, oh, by the way, you guys have to
sign these NDAs right now. So, you know, nobody can know about
this. As far as anybody's concerned, it's just a track for

(01:04:02):
Paul. So the only people that knew what we were doing were in the control
room. It's amazing. And then. So then Paul showed the
cool part. Paul showed up that day, you know, the Saturday where we were just
gonna listen so, you know,
do all the pleasantries and all that fun stuff, and went over the
arrangement, the mock up of the arrangement. Cause Paul hadn't heard it, you know. Oh,

(01:04:23):
yeah, it'd be nice. Put the strings here, maybe not there. Do this thing here.
All that kind of stuff. Took like, an hour or so, whatever. And then
Giles says, all right, well, let's pull up the other thing, and you can listen
to those. To which Chandler and I were like, other thing we didn't know about.
Another thing, we're kind of freaking out. Like, what's this other thing you didn't tell
us about another thing is there. He said, no, no, we just have to listen
to some mixes. He said, it's all in pro tools. Don't worry about it. It's

(01:04:44):
just, you know, I can do it. Well, it was
Paul listening to the new revolver
mixes. Oh, wow. Stereo. There were stereo mixes, not atmos,
which was so fun, because we got to sit with Paul and, like,
basically go over the mixes of revolver. And such a good record.
Oh, yeah, it's great. But it was the Peter Jackson source separation stuff that he

(01:05:06):
had done. So I got to solo some of that stuff and listen to the
separated parts and all that kind of stuff. So that was fun. But again,
the whole Capitol crew's out setting up the room. They're setting up for strings.
All the other. Anytime Paul's there, it was like, for some
reason, the whole staff was there on a Saturday, it was, you know, oh, I
forgot my jacket. Oh, I'm. You know, oh, I have to do something

(01:05:28):
for, you know. But. But none of them knew what we were doing. Only me
and Chandler. Paula didn't even know what we were doing. That's amazing. So then
the next day, the string play, you know, was a string date, and
Paul was there early. String players start coming in. They know it's
a Paul McCartney session. They've been prepped. It's a song for Paul, you know,
no pictures, all that kind of stuff. Here's the NDAs to sign, all

(01:05:50):
that. But Paul's there when the string players show up, and he was out in
the room and having fun and talking to them. And, you know, everybody's having a
good time. You know, we do the session, all they hear
is drums, bass, piano. No vocals, nothing
like that. The chart, actually, I still have my chart that, you know,
that I had. It's hanging on my wall now, you know, had a different name

(01:06:11):
on it. The song title was different. It just said Paul McCartney.
So they didn't know what they were playing on. So, you know, we did
the string date. It took, you know, a couple hours or whatever. Everything's great.
Thanks a lot. Hugs and kisses. Everybody leaves.
Chandler and I look at each other, high five. Like, holy shit, we just did
a Beatles song. It's amazing, but we can't talk about it.

(01:06:33):
Like, I think my wife knew. Obviously, I had to tell her. I had to
tell somebody, and it just went away.
Yeah. And then we closed capital for the renovations and all that kind of stuff.
And every now and then, I'd go online and
search Paul McCartney or Beatles or nothing. I'm like.
And after, like, a year or so, I was like, it must have gotten

(01:06:54):
shelved. Maybe it didn't. Maybe they weren't able to separate the vocal enough,
you know, who knows, right? But obviously, nothing's
happened. And I got an
email one morning. It was like a Friday, Thursday or Friday
morning or something, and it was from a journalist, and it
was a journal. It was a name I knew he was an audio journalist.

(01:07:16):
And in the email, it said something like, hey, I got your
name from. And it listed a bunch of names. I want to talk to you
about this new Beatles song. And I was like, uh oh.
Like, well, and actually, before
that, the thing had come out where Paul McCartney had talked about a
Beatles track and using AI, which it really wasn't, and all this.

(01:07:37):
So I was like, oh, it must. That must be it.
But nobody knew when it was coming out. So at least at that point, I
was like, okay, it's coming. Like, at some point,
this is gonna come out because Paul's talking about it, sort of cryptically
talking about it. So I got this email from the journalist, and the names in
the email lined up like it was the right record company.

(01:07:59):
People. So I immediately reached out to one of those people and I was
like, hey, I just got this email. And they were like, yeah, yeah, he's under
the NDAs. He's doing a piece for us. You can tell him any, you know,
he knows. You can tell him anything you want. Yeah, do the interview. That's great.
Okay. So I call, you know. Okay, yeah, when you want to talk, let's talk
Monday morning. Okay, great. He calls me, I do the interview,

(01:08:21):
tell him the story, the whole thing. And I said, hey,
by the way, when do you know when this comes out? And he
goes, yeah, Thursday. I was like, what?
He says, yeah, it comes out on Thursday. I was like, he's like, there's gonna
be a video and then the song will be released Thursday on

(01:08:41):
Apple. I think it's apple music. I think it was a big apple thing.
Okay, great. So now I'm kind of excited. Now I'm like, oh, great. You know,
it's finally going to come out, but I still can't talk about it. Right? You
know, because nobody. I called Chandler. I think I was like, dude, it's coming out.
Because he knew about it. That's great. So Thursday
came, like that morning, you know, I rolled out of bed early

(01:09:03):
and first thing I did was write to Apple. I'm like, is it out? Is
it out? Is it out? Is it out? You know? And the video was out.
There's like a twelve minute video or something they did. And the song is out.
And I'm like, oh, cool, it's out. And then I started getting text
messages and Facebook
because the string players

(01:09:23):
who were on the session, they saw themselves in the
video. And that was the first inkling they had
that it was a Beatles track. They had no idea. So I was
getting text messages, like, you knew, didn't you? Yeah, sorry. I
knew. And again, remember, it had been like 18
months. So people kind of forgot about it. They just thought it

(01:09:45):
went away. It was like, oh, well, that was a fun day with Paul. But
here it went away. So, yeah.
And then I knew, because I knew this journalist. I knew I had a proper
credit on the record, which was cool. So my
daughter actually handles my website. So I saw the video. I saw it
came out. I called her immediately. I was like, okay, make this change to the

(01:10:07):
website. Go to the credits page and at the very top, write
the Beatles ASAP. Do it right
now. Exactly. Yeah. Whatever you're doing, stop and write
that down. Oh, yeah. That is so good. So good.
Yeah. So it was fun. So, yeah, got to work on. I have a credit,
actually over here. I have little thing on my wall. I have. I bought a.

(01:10:29):
I got a copy of the vinyl record and. Yeah, the insert that has my
name on it and the sheet music from that day I have hanging on my
wall over here. So amazing. I can. I can see Chandler's face too when you
walk in. And I could just. I could picture it. So it's. It's so good.
I was like, what is wrong? I thought, like, the stuff
in that split second, the stuff going through my head that could be wrong

(01:10:50):
was like, like, oh, shit.
But this has been awesome. I'd love to keep chatting.
I got two questions. You've been on the show before. I didn't bring that
up. But I'm going to ask you the questions again because that's how we do
things. We have rules here. I don't remember answering them last time. Well,
I'm going to compare the answers, so we'll see. Yeah, if they're better on the

(01:11:11):
last one. Just cut it into this one. Done.
You were kind of touching on this, but was there ever a time in your
career where you chose to redefine what success meant?
Yes, because. Well, part of it is it got redefined for
me because when I started, you know,
I think at least being a young

(01:11:33):
assistant or young runner or whatever, you know, I would see
the engineers and the producers coming. You know, it was the big, famous guys with
the racks of gear and all that stuff. And, you know, you wanted to be
one of those guys, you know? And then
there was a bit of a recession and the business
changed quite a bit when pro tools and home studios and that

(01:11:54):
kind of stuff came in. And I remember a time where I was on
staff at capital thinking, still with the
mindset of staff engineer,
I haven't made it yet because I'm still working here doing
this. Then at one point, I looked up and went, wow. I
know a lot of guys who are doing that thing that I think I want

(01:12:17):
to do and they're not working and
they're, you know, and I have a job every day and I'm doing
some pretty big stuff and I get to sit next to Al Schmidt every
day. And, you know, this is pretty cool, actually.
This staff job is a little bit. It's a little bit more

(01:12:37):
than it was cracked up to be. So. So it
became that. And then I realized as I did it longer
that I didn't think that the goal of the game,
at least for me, was not to be a big famous engineer. It was to
work. I'd much rather be a working
engineer than the guy who did that one

(01:12:58):
famous record and never worked again.
And it's funny in a way. I
distinctly remember a time sitting at capital, where I was engineering for. It was
a big orchestra out there, two rooms, strings,
like the whole shoot and match. And I remember
sitting at the console going, all right, this is what you wanted.

(01:13:21):
You're the guy, and you're doing it now. And then I remember thinking, stop
thinking this and do the job.
And it was kind of like, okay, now you got there, now you have to
stay there. It's true. Now you actually have to do
it every single day. You have to do it, you know?
Yeah. So. And not everything is Paul McCartney, you know.

(01:13:43):
Not every day is, you know, very few of those days are like that,
you know, most. You know. I mean, look,
every mixer in the world, every engineer does. You do what
shows up not every day as a big, famous, you know, rock star
or whatever it is. Yeah. I mean, how many vanity records did Al
Schmidt do? You know, some guy's rich guy's wife wants to

(01:14:06):
sing. Great. Come on, you know?
Well, you still get to do the thing you love. You still get to, like.
You still get to work. You still get to maybe try something. You never
know. Maybe you'll meet some guitar player that'll bring you a great gig down the
line. Like, you just. You never know. Who knows? Yeah. So, yeah,
and those people get the same work ethic. They get the same job as the

(01:14:27):
other people. You know, they may not come around again, but
you may not want them to come around again sometimes. Totally.
So, last question before we go is, what is your current biggest goal
right now? And what's the next smallest step you. Take to go towards it,
to keep working? There you go. It's funny
now, you know, I don't have. I'm not a staff guy anymore. I'm an independent

(01:14:49):
now. So, you know, it's just. Keep
going. I still don't understand how I get
jobs. You know, I
answer an email or I answer the phone, and there's a job. So I
guess people like what I do, or they like, you know, me better
than they like somebody else or whatever it is. I don't know. Again, you know,

(01:15:12):
I've been doing this for a while. I think I'm okay at what I do.
So I'd like to keep working. I just. I
love what I do. So there is no
big goal, you know, to own a big studio or anything like that. Or
I just. I kind of just want to keep doing what I'm doing and keep
getting better at it and figuring it out. And there's

(01:15:34):
always something to learn, and there's always a new artist to figure out, and
there's, you know, as many times as you do it, something new comes up
and you gotta, you know, pivot and work it out and.
Yeah, or a new format to mix in. Yeah, or a new format to
make. Exactly. Something like that. You know, there's all that. Yeah,
or a new challenge. Like, whatever it is. Hey, you want to do this live

(01:15:56):
tv show? Yeah, let's go do that. Yeah, whatever it is. I love doing stuff
like this, you know, talking, passing on the knowledge, talking to people and
teaching and that kind of stuff. Like, I don't want to be a teacher. Like,
that's. That sounds like a real job. I don't want to do that.
But there's always something fun, you know? Look, we also
work in the arts. There's really interesting people we get to meet every single

(01:16:19):
day. Not all of them are famous. Some. Sometimes the interesting people are
not famous. Sometimes the famous people are not
interesting. I guess what I really meant to say. But, yeah, there's
always cool people to meet and, you know, you never know who
you're gonna. I've met some very odd people in the recording. Like, not odd people,
but people you wouldn't expect to meet in a recording studio, you know?

(01:16:41):
I remember looking, I was doing a session with, like, a big
thing, a big orchestra, like lots of moving parts. And I looked down and
David Beckham sitting next to me, and I was like, what the
hell? Like, but it was in the middle of a take, and I was kind
of like, hi. He was like, hi. And then, like, I kept
doing what I was doing, and then he was gone. Like, after the session, I

(01:17:02):
was like, Paula, was that David Beckham? And she was like, yeah, he came with,
knew somebody upstairs and they wanted to see the studio. And you were doing a
session, and he was like, sorry, did we. I was like, no, but,
you know, that kind of stuff happens.
That's amazing. Yeah, you never know who you're going to run into.
Yeah, well, that's awesome. That's the thing that's nice about

(01:17:25):
when you work in one of those studios. It's like multiple rooms. There's just people
in and out. You never know who's working on what. And it's
that community aspect that I feel like people are missing out
on in the home studio era, you know? Yeah. The
learning process. Like, you know, you walk into a room after
Ed Czerny's been in there, and you're like, is that how he mic the piano?

(01:17:46):
Wow, that sounded great. I never would have thought of that, you know?
So you pick up and learn, or whatever it is. So, I
mean, how many times did Al get a job? Because we were in studio c,
you know, the door would open, like, what are you guys doing next week? Nothing.
You want to mix this record we're doing? Yeah, sure. Okay, great. We'll see you
next week. Yeah. It used to happen all the time.

(01:18:07):
Free advertising, being there. Yeah. You know, I
mean, honestly, most of the jobs I got at capital was because I was sitting
at capital. I was already there. So why not just use that?
Just use him. He's already been sitting there. I mean,
that's how it started. Yeah. When I started getting my own clients, that's
what it was. Use the house guy. He's there. That's where so many of

(01:18:29):
my clients came from. It's like, you meet him once, and then they want to
work with you again. Then you take them with you when you leave. Don't
tell anybody. Or then it was, you know,
Al can't do something or journey can't do. Steve.
He's great. He'll take care of you. Don't worry. And he's already there. Yeah, totally,
totally. So, you know, it's stepping stones. It

(01:18:50):
is. It's a long. It's. It's a long career. No matter what part of it
you're in, it's. It's a. It's always, always a journey. And
I've realized there's. There's no end game. It's. The end
game is to keep working. Yeah. You know, just keep going.
Keep doing. Just keep going. Yeah, there's no, like, okay, you've made it to the
top of the mountain, now you're done. It's like,

(01:19:13):
yeah, if you get to the top of the mountain, you probably immediately are sliding
back down and you got to go up again. That's
true. That's true. That's very true. And it's cyclical. You
know, sometimes you're really busy, other times you're not busy. It's. It's.
It's a weird business, but it's fun. Wouldn't do
anything else, you know? I don't know how to do anything else. That's right. That's

(01:19:33):
right, Steve. Tell people where they can find you.
I'll put some links to some of your music and in your website. In
the show notes, but whatever you want to share with people, go for it. You
mean if I send you the links I was supposed to send you. I can
find them? Yeah. I have a website, stevegenowick.com,
that's, you know, I try to keep it updated somewhat, you

(01:19:54):
know, Facebook and Instagram and that stuff. I don't post a lot, but I'm
there. I'm not that hard to find. Yeah,
I do. I have an apple playlist for Atmos stuff
or have a bunch of the atmos mixes that I've done so I can give
that to you and, you know, people can check out some of. The atmos
stuff and I just gotta throw it out there. If you're gonna listen to some

(01:20:15):
atmos stuff, definitely listen to Steve's, like, some of the best mixes
on that playlist that I've heard. So if you wanna go to. If you
wanna home base for fucking great Atmos mixes, start. Start with Steve's playlist and
go out from there. There's some fun stuff in there. Yeah, man. Yeah.
Well, thank you for taking the time, dude. It's good to see you. It's been
absolutely too long, so. Yeah, I know. You were. You were a

(01:20:36):
young pup when I met you. Now I'm getting
a little old. I think I hired you. Yeah, you put. You were definitely in
the meeting. I was there, yeah. No, I pretty much. I remember hiring you.
Yeah. I don't think I fired you, though.
No, no. It's always good
to see you. It's always good to talk to.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Will Atmos Replace Stereo?! A Conversation with Atmos Music Pioneer Steve Genewick

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

All Episodes

Will Atmos Replace Stereo?! A Conversation with Atmos Music Pioneer Steve Genewick

Stuff You Should Know