Artist Interview: Carmen Rizzo
Renaissance Man of the Moment Muses on the UAD-1
By Marsha Vdovin
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| Carmen Rizzo |
This month I was happy to interview Carmen Rizzo, a name that has been buzzing around the past several years. Rizzo is the renaissance man of the moment. In 2007, he scored a film, released his first solo album, produced a track for k.d. lang and toured five countries with his band Niyaz. Oh, and did I mention that he uses the Universal Audio UAD-1 on everything? …
Remixer, engineer, programmer, composer and producer. That’s a lot of hats to wear, and Rizzo wears them with a smile. After discovering that we went to neighboring high schools, we spent about an hour reminiscing, and chatting about all the music-industry friends we have in common. Finally, we got down to business.
Let's start with your background …
I've been doing music since I was young. I was fortunate to be a drummer at an early age. I've got parents who have a music background. My mother was a music teacher at school and the church, and she taught piano. I was lucky to be around music. I did music most of my childhood, until I wanted to become a pro baseball player. And then I switched and played baseball up until the end of high school, where I realized that I had gone as far as I could, and I couldn't become a pro baseball player, even though I tried. [Laughs.] And then I went back to music. After playing in bands and such, I then decided to go into more of the technical side, which was engineering and production.
How old were you then?
About nineteen. I ended up at that point going as far as I could go with baseball, and then I said, OK, I'm going to go into technical. I worked at the Concord Pavilion, actually, as a stage hand for the sound crew. Then I moved to Los Angeles at nineteen, with a thousand dollars and a number of a friend of a friend. I basically started out working at Westlake Studios as a runner in 1984, and kind of moved my way up, and then worked at studios around town.
So you learned engineering on the job?
Yes, I basically learned on the job. I was a janitor in the morning, a runner during the day, and then I'd hang out with the technicians and stuff at night in the studios, and then I would learn. So I was really self-taught.
I make a living with the UA plug-ins, because I use them every single day of every session.
That's how most of the great engineers got their start. Did you have a particular mentor, or anyone who really helped you out?
Yes, there was a woman whom I'd met through a mutual friend. Her name was Susan Rogers, and she was Prince's engineer. I was a huge fan of Prince, and I happened to meet her through a mutual friend. She really taught me a lot. She definitely was a mentor, as well as a guy named John Barnes. He was a session player/producer/writer, which back then was kind of unusual. He was definitely a mentor of mine as well.
Were you also playing music on the side?
No, that's the funny thing. I wasn't, in fact. I was just concentrating on engineering and all this stuff. And then, when they knew that I could play a little bit, I started to program, as a musician, on records that I was participating in. Once I became an engineer, I was lucky enough to produce, at an early age, an artist called Kristen Zygard, who was on Private Music at the time. And I was quite young. Then, once I started to produce records for a living, I started to play on my own records. And then eventually I started to do my own music, because it sort of parlayed back into being an artist. It went full circle. I started being a musician, and then went into the technical side of engineering, then when I got into production, it kind of went full circle back to where I could participate on records in a different way.
You do so many different things. You engineer, you produce--
I mix, I remix.
You remix, and you do your own solo records, and you do records with groups of people.
And I just scored my first film this year, as well.
Do you ever want to just focus on one, or do you enjoy doing all these things?
I enjoy doing lots of different things. It makes it more exciting for me. I make my living more producing, then making my own artist albums and then remixing. Those are probably what I make my living on. But I don't engineer for anyone anymore. I haven't done that in decades, unless it's my own record.
Do you think they all feed into each other?
Yeah, I think they do. And I think that in the climate that we're all in at the moment, you're sort of forced to do a lot of things. It used to be that there would be a producer, an engineer, a musician, et cetera, et cetera. But now, with budgets being lower and all this other stuff going on, if you have those chops, engineers or mixers are forced to be musicians, or the other way around and musicians are forced to be engineers. It's a sign of the times.
I loved the Niyaz album. Are you going to do anything else like that?
Yes. We're doing the second record now. We're almost done. I'm almost done recording, and we're going to be mixing in about two weeks.
And that's going to be on Six Degrees?
Six Degrees, which is a label in the Bay Area. I think that's coming out in May. April or May.
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| Photo by Marc Goldstein |
Do you have a home studio? Is that where you do most of your work?
No, I have my own proper studio at another location. At Hollywood and Cahuenga.
That big building where there are lots of studios?
It's a great building. Glen Ballard's in here, Dave Stewart, a lot of production teams. Michael Dana, that film composer's here. It's a really good vibe, because it's an old building from the twenties, so I have a big loft space on the seventh floor.
How nice. And you can go actually walk somewhere.
Oh, it's wonderful, because it's one of the few places in L.A. where I can walk out and it's like I'm on Times Square. And Hollywood's just booming at the moment. And there are cafes, and all kinds of cool stuff around.
Let's talk about your setup. What gear do you have?
Well, I've got a pretty modern setup. I have a Mac Intel Xeon, fully loaded, just maxed out everything, RAM, you name it. That's my main rig, with Pro Tools HD-2, with two UA cards.
Monitors?
I use three sets of monitors. I use the Tannoy Precision 6, with a subwoofer. I also use the M Audio EX-66, and I also use the KRK V-4.
Do you do everything in Pro Tools, or do you use Logic?
My main tool is Pro Tools, and M Power when I travel, and Ableton Live. I use Ableton Live as a second rig, as a VST host. When I tour, I use Ableton Live. So I have a second computer. And I have three other computers, which are incorporated in my rig. I'm very into MIDI beat clocks, and when I hit Play, everything in the room lights up. I should also mention that I have a D Command, as a control surface.
That's a Digi product.
Yes, and I have a 192/96i audio interface, for my Pro Tools. My second rig is an older iMac PPC, which is not Intel because there are a lot of instruments that are not Intel. So I keep that old iMac, and I use that with an M Audio Firewire 410, and I run Ableton Live 7 on that rig. And I also run Logic 8, because I access their instruments and their effects. Then I have an Intel Macbook Pro that I also run Ableton Live 7 on. I also have a Dell Precision M65 Intel PC laptop, where I also run Ableton Live as a VST host for all the great PC instruments and plug-ins that I can't access on a Mac.
Do you have any outboard gear?
Yes, I use a lot of internal soft synths and plug-ins, but in terms of hardware, I have a couple of dbx 165As and a UREI 545 parametric EQ with Brent Averill API custom mic pres. I've got a Pultec Mavec EQ and an Altec compressor. And I got some vintage stuff. A Roland Space Echo. I do have some outboard gear, but mainly it's used for the recording chain.
You have two UAD-1 cards in your Mac Pro?
Well, I actually have three, but I use two in the Mac Xeon and the UAD-1 Xpander with the Macbook Pro.
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| Carmen Rizzo with the Xpander |
Which UA plug-ins do you use the most; which do you like the most?
I make a living with the UA plug-ins, because I use them every single day of every session. That's something that I want to make clear. For instance, I just produced this song for k.d. lang. Your plug-ins are all over this track. But my favorite one would be the Neve 33609, because that used to be one of my favorite limiters, hardware-wise.
What do you use it on?
Background vocals, piano. I use it on lots of things but those are my two favorites. It's just a fantastic limiter. And the thing about UA is that you don't emulate anything unless it's exact, and if you can't get it exact, you don't do it. Another favorite of mine is the Plate 140, because it's an extremely natural-sounding reverb.
Isn't that amazing? That's a beautiful reverb.
The Roland Space Echo is also a favorite, and I have a real one.
How do you see the comparison?
It's just easier to use yours. [Laughs.] It just loads, and you can lock it to beat clock, and you can automate, obviously, the thing. So that's definitely on my list. All of the Roland stuff. The CE-1, and the Dimension D. And you've nailed it. I don't know if people know about your plug-in, that by holding Shift, you can actually hit all the buttons in. That was a trick with the Dimension D, was that you don't just go 1, 2, 3, 4. You actually hold all of them in together. And you get a special sound. And somebody figured that out, because by holding Shift, you can hit them all in. You can select four different modes, they call it, by holding Shift.
The Cambridge EQ is very good. I use that a lot. It's very easy to use. The two that I'm using a lot lately is the Nigel amp simulator, but not for distortion. Because of that mod filter feature, you've got all the tremolo and all those things, all of the delays--I can get this kind of dark filtered sound with a little bit of dirt using the amps. But I love that. That's a great, great plug-in. And the last one that I use an awful lot is the Precision Multiband EQ/compressor. I’m a poster child for UAD-1 plug-ins.
How has the Xpander changed the way you work?
When I am at my studio, I use all the amazing UA plug-ins with my Intel Mac Xeon tower. Until I had the Xpander, I could not open up sessions using those plug-ins, but now everywhere I go I have my Xpander with me.
Do you have anything to say to kids that want to enter the biz?
I would say for anyone entering in the business, try to embrace technology as well as fundamental skills. No one likes a stubborn person, and being someone to work with who knows old and new technologies will separate you from the rest.
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