Neil Watkinson doesn't care whether your studio is analogue or digital, big or small, so long as he can hear the words...
So, you've got a dozen 24‑track analogue machines costing 50 grand each, and a fully‑automated tea‑making jet console with flying faders and radar nestling in your gigantic cockpit of a control room. You've got hundreds and hundreds of valve microphones with vocal enhancers that melt the listener, pumping bottom end due to the complexity of all those signal processors and effect boxes. But so what?
I'm sick and tired of reading about such studios and the engineers and producers who run, operate or own them. Who do they think they are? "Analogue is better than digital," they say, "Especially if you run it at 15ips during the second verse, and then increase the machine to 30 as the bass drum rolls off at the third beat on the chorus. You would never be able to create an effect like this if you were recording on digital equipment." Well, flaming hooray! I'm never going to be able to try it unless I win the lottery, am I? And even if I win it right now, by the time I'd built my new studio and installed all the necessary equipment, would I really be bothered to try to produce an effect that probably takes 50 hours to put together and takes up about one second of one song?
I run a small digital based studio. It has an 8‑track recording facility and I master to DAT. I have a handful of outboard equipment — the usual effects, compressors and mic preamps (you know, the kind ordinary people have).
I am about to transfer the studio from my conservatory into an outbuilding. That's right, I used to do all my recording, mixing and mastering within one room. Traffic used to pass within 50 feet, and my dog was housed right outside the window. I had one microphone, one effects unit, one compressor and one mic preamp (and that's all). Using this setup I recorded many artists and produced many albums which, I might add, are on sale up and down the country. I recorded vocals on their own, acoustic guitars, penny whistles, violins and mandolins, miking live whilst the dog was barking and lorries were passing, and when I listened to the finished master through my sensitive £120 Beyer headphones, not a bark or rumble was present — and I can supply a previous CD to prove it.
So what I'm getting at is this: my studio cost me around five thousand pounds to install, was in a room surrounded by glass, and suffered noisy distractions from animals and traffic outside. Yet I still managed to get a recording in which I could actually hear what the singer was saying and tell what the song was about. So how come you can buy a record that has been recorded in one of the best studios in the country, mixed by six different people, been enhanced then enhanced further, and yet you still can't tell a bloody word they're singing?
Do the other studios not have good monitors and speakers, do they not have a hi‑fi handy to play back a mix — or is it just that the words in these songs are meaningless? If they are then they shouldn't have bothered to write them in the first place. You don't speak in sentences that don't make sense, do you? If you did, people would say 'what did you say?' or 'what a dippo'.
Big time producers and engineers out there — answer my question! Are we supposed to tell what people are singing or are we not? If we are, then turn them up during the final mix, instead of trying to concentrate on what Hertz the ride cymbal will change its tonal content. If you're finding this difficult, come to my studio and I'll show you how to mix them.
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