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| Producer/Mixer Eli Janney |
There are several hot spots for indie rock around the country. Austin is always one, Nashville too; in the past we've had Seattle and Detroit. One of the hot spots right now is Brooklyn. New York has always been a music center, but Manhattan is too pricey for most young people. The real happening, innovative scene is across the bridge in the Brooklyn 'hood called Williamsburg. Eli Janney is an engineer/producer/remixer with a great little studio there. He also works out of Stratosphere Sound in Manhattan. The UAD-1 allows Janney to harness the power of analog outboard gear in his small Brooklyn studio.
Did you learn everything by doing it yourself for your own bands?
No. Actually, I started working at a little, tiny studio in Washington, D.C., called Inner Ear, which is a quite famous punk-rock studio, because a lot of D.C. punk rock was done there, like Minor Threat and Fugazi. I learned from Don Zientara there. I just lucked out, because a lot of my friends were recording there, so I would go out and visit, and I became friends with Don. I just talked to him about recording all the time, and at one point he needed some help, so he just offered me a job. I ended up working there for about five years, learning everything. This is before the band. Then I moved up to New York and then started doing the band thing for about ten years or so.
That was Girls Against Boys.
Yeah. That's right.
What did you play in the band?
I played keyboards and bass.
Do you miss it? Do you miss touring?
[Laughs.] I don't miss touring so much. I do miss playing. We still get the occasional invitation. We're going over to the UK in May, and we're going to play a festival over there.
These days, what are you doing more of, producing, engineering, remixing?
I'm doing mostly mixing, I guess. I do mostly producing and mixing. Usually, if I'm producing a project, I almost always get Geoff Sanoff to come and engineer it. So I haven't been doing that much engineering. Mostly mixing. That's where I use the UAD plugs most, is in the mixing stage.
Your studio's really impressive.
Thanks. It's very homey, actually. It's not a terribly big, fancy place, but it's very, very comfortable, and people like working here.
The control room seems pretty big. What kind of board is that?
That's an old MCI 636.
Do you find you're mixing in the box more?
Not really. We run it through the board, but all of the automation, and most of the effects are done in the box, though the actual mix buss is the MCI, because it does actually sound better. Then I actually run it back into Pro Tools, and use the Precision Limiter, or the Precision Maximizer on its stereo mix buss, after it's gone through the board. Actually, I use a ridiculous amount of UAD plug-ins when I mix, because they sound so great. I think these emulations are definitely the best. They definitely give a better sound than most of the stuff that the majority of people are using. People don't tend to stray too far from what they receive with their Pro Tools, so I like having the UAD on hand.
I use a ridiculous amount of UAD plug-ins when I mix, because they sound so great.
Let's talk about your favorite plug-ins, how you use them.
When I'm mixing vocals, I almost always use the Fairchild as the compressor, and the Cambridge EQ or the Helios EQ--the two of them. The high end on the Helios is really, really amazing, and it's definitely one of the best--it's probably the best high end of any plug-in that I've used. And the Cambridge is a pretty close second. It's very nice and surgical. You can really get in and dial things in and out. Those two in a row, I almost always use the Fairchild into either the Cambridge or the Helios. That's basically "the sound." I get a lot of stuff sent to me, from bands from all over the place. I just mixed a band from Atlanta, I'm doing one from D.C. now, and I'm doing a band from France next.
They're sending you raw files to mix.
They send me the raw tracks, and I mix them. The vocal sound is one of the things that people always get excited about, because it ends up sounding so great. A good part of that is because of those plug-ins. It's a really good Fairchild emulation. It's very difficult to get that one right, and it always ends up working on almost every vocal that's sent to me.
Have you tried the SPL?
Yeah. That’s really cool on drums … if you really want to change the dynamics on loops, especially. The band I'm working with from D.C. now, they're called Fort Knox Five, there’s a lot of electronic drums and we've been playing around with the SPL, because you can really change the emotional feel of a loop using that thing, by making it really harsh, or more mellow. You really can mellow these harsh loops out, or you can make it really bombastic. That's a crazy plug-in. I haven't quite got my head around it, but I've been trying it out a lot because it does some cool things that nothing else seems to do.
What about the Precision Maximizer?
The Precision Maximizer I love. I work with a lot of young bands, like this band Bear Hands. We do recordings, and they just put them up on myspace. There's no record label. They're really developing artists, and so the way that they're developing themselves—because it’s very unlikely you're going to get "signed" these days, unless you already have something happening--is to make these recordings and just get them out there. We did a little EP, and then they put it right up on their myspace. We're just not going to a nice mastering studio to get it done. But we can use the Precision Maximizer, which has the Precision Limiter built into it, and really apply this kind of faux mastering on it that sounds really great. I'm not very impressed with those other maximizers that everybody uses--you can really hear them working. But with this one, you can get a real nice, subtle touch, but it still sounds very loud. That thing is pretty awesome.
Do you mix down to stereo, and then use it on stereo tracks?
Yeah, that's exactly what we did. I actually ended up putting it on as we were mixing it down. Like mixing with it. If I know the stuff's not going to get formally mastered, I'll use that, because it really does have that sound that's it's been mastered. It gives a real finalized sound to it.
The budgets often aren’t there to have projects professionally mastered, so you have to try to do something. Do you do things like check it on funky computer speakers, or anything like that, to see how it's going to sound?
Oh, yeah, definitely! We take it around. We listen to it on as many variants as possible.
And then there are the Plate plug-ins. Have you used the Plate 140?
Yeah, I have used the Plate 140, and I have to say, that's an awesome piece. They have a real Plate over in Stratosphere that we use a lot for mixing. You should ask Geoff Sanoff about that, because he's always saying, "Why don't we just use the UAD-1 Plate?" Because that plug is a very, very accurate emulation, and it's a lot easier to use. Most studios only have one Plate, so if you want to get three Plates out of it, the UAD is actually a lot handier. And I don't have a Plate in my studio, so it's awesome for me. It's wonderful.
That was modeled after one at The Plant studio in Sausalito, where they had done Jefferson Airplane and Fleetwood Mac, and all those '70s bands like Sly and the Family Stone. And then there’s the Roland Dimension-D, have you tried that?
Yeah. I love it!
That's modeled after the original Talking Heads unit. We were able to borrow it from Jerry Harrison and really take time to model it properly.
Oh really? I didn't know that. That's cool. I used to work in a studio in Baltimore that had a Dimension-D, and I loved it. That was the last one I've ever seen, and I've worked in a ton of studios in New York, and no one seems to have one. So it's pretty awesome. It's funny, I pull that thing out, and people are like, "What the hell is that?"
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| Eli Janney tracking Stephen Fretwell with Stratosphere Sound’s Neve. |
How about the Space Echo?
Yeah, well, of course everybody knows what that is. That thing's really awesome. We gotta get some more cards, basically. Our machine is filled with cards; we can't fit any more cards in it. We're at the point where we're like, "OK, time to get an Xpander," because I've converted everybody who works here into a UAD fan.
Do you have any experience with some of the original hardware?
Well, the 1176, and the LA-2, we use those all the time. In fact, the LA-2 over at Stratosphere was used on the Motion City Soundtrack vocal tracks--that LA-2 is one of the reissues that we ended up using and it’s pretty sweet. It's a standard for a reason. It’s very transparent, but it really keeps the transients in line, gives it a nice, present sound. That's a very dense rock record, a very radio-sounding record, and you have to have everything very punchy. That's one of the areas where that compressor is just such a great compressor. We used the reissue of the LA-2 a lot on that record.
I read on Boing Boing that research showed that the most successful rock/pop song length is exactly 2 minutes and 42 seconds. They listed how many songs are exactly that long. Like "Sgt. Pepper," "California Dreamin'," "The Charming Man" by The Smiths, "Get Up" by R.E.M. … So remember that! [Laughs.] Two minutes and 42 seconds!
Two-forty-two. [Laughs.] That's tough. I'm always trying to get people to cut them down shorter, but you know these artists. They fall in love with their parts, and then [laughs]. I know, we're always trying to get it down three minutes. I'm like, "You know, the perfect album is 30 minutes long." So you gotta keep 'em short.
It seems people are making longer pieces now, like it's back to the '70s concept albums.
It's true. People are making long stuff. I think there's a lot of melding of electronic music and rock music. It's been going on for a while, but because of the dance-music scene, pieces are so much longer… and they're not really in a typical pop format. So when you start melding those two ideas together, you're going to end up with longer songs. There are very long build-ups and breakdowns, not like a typical pop thing.
There's a new type of music scene going on in New York right now, and I wanted to get your take on that.
You mean the dominant music scene right now? [Laughs.] There's always so much music going on, and all different types, but what gets the most attention kind of gets moved around, certainly. I just worked with a new band called Bear Hands, and they're definitely that Williamsburg sound--I don't even know how to describe that sound. I always just called it the Williamsburg indie-rock sound. It's cool, though. I think it's really great when bands do it right, it is really exciting. And that's the sound I grew up listening to. I get really turned on by that kind of music, so I really like that whole scene that's going on.
Electronica is taking more of a back seat now, and people are actually playing instruments and singing. It’s a little more minimal ...
Yeah, that's true.
There are always these hot scenes that move around. Like grunge in Seattle, and then five years ago it was Detroit. But there's so much going on now that’s coming out of New York, especially out of Brooklyn.
Yeah. It's true. Of course part of that is because of the prices--you just can't realistically live in Manhattan any more, and you especially can't move to New York as a band and live in Manhattan, it's just not possible these days. In Williamsburg, the farther east you go, the cheaper it gets. You can still be connected to this really vibrant music scene that's happening in Williamsburg, but live close enough so that it's only a couple of subway stops, or even a walk, away, and it's cheap enough. That's why it's all happening out in Brooklyn. Same thing for pretty much every scene, like the writers out here. There’s a huge literary scene out here and there's all kinds of film projects being done out here …
Jerry Harrison from the Talking Heads told me that when they were starting out, New York was—well, you could live in really bad neighborhoods really cheap. And the clubs, like CBGBs in particular, paid the bands relatively well to play there. So you could actually get by without a day job. So he thinks that that's large part of why there was this incredible music scene at that time.
Interesting… makes sense
It must be fun; it must be exciting to be in the midst of this scene. I hope that business is good for you, and you're making a living at it.
[Laughs.] Yeah, it is good. The thing is that it's very competitive. There are a lot of people doing it. I just like the idea of having a creative community, and it kind of feeds off itself. My studio is down in DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), and just up the street there's a block-size building, and down in the basement there's all these rehearsal spaces. The entire basement, the entire block, is all rehearsal spaces. Animal Collective is down there, there's all these bands down, there and there is a little recording studio down there, too. The thing that's cool about it is that it's such a creative community. All the bands start to know each other, and they all start playing on each other's projects, or start side projects and then they bring in people from outside …
And they go to each other's gigs …
Yeah, they go to each other's gigs, they support each other, and before you know it, there's this musical movement being created. It's because there's a creative community going on. When you get that critical mass of bands in one area, and they all start going to see each other's shows, and they start playing with each other, then all this creative energy starts, and all this great music gets made. The creative community is very important; it's been priced out of Manhattan. Unless you're already established, you're not going to live in Manhattan. Once you're done being a student, you're not going to be living in Manhattan... well, unless your parents are still paying for it. [Laughs.] That's why there's so much stuff happening there in Williamsburg, because like you said, it can be cheap to live there, and it's certainly a hell of a lot cheaper than living in Manhattan. Living in the heart of Williamsburg is a little expensive, but you can live in that community of Williamsburg fairly cheaply, so a lot of artists can do it, and that's why there's a lot of bands going on there.
I haven't heard the Stephen Fretwell CD.
That's actually only a UK and European release. We did use a lot of the UAD plug-ins when we were recording that here in my small studio, because I don't have Neves, like they have over at Stratosphere. So having those Neve emulators in the UAD came in very handy. For the song called "Now," we did the pianos here--we did a lot of pianos here--and a lot of that sound comes from that 1073 plug-in. … Which is a very dope plug-in!
You work with a lot of indie bands. Do you provide them different mixes, one for MP3, one hi-res, one for radio play?
Well, we usually do one mix as far as a creative idea of what the mix should sound like. But then on the technical side of it, yeah, I usually have to provide a bunch of different types, because they use them for all types of different purposes. If it's going to be mastered, it's pretty simple, because you just give them the hi-res files, that's the mix. But in this day and age, when they're placing them on myspace, and selling it directly off the myspace store, it's almost as important for these up-and-coming bands to have a finished product. You really have to make sure you're covering everything that they need.
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| Perry Farrell, Steve Lillywhite, Nuno Bettencourt and Eli Janney mixing at Avatar's studio G. |
So you do end up providing them different specifically mastered variations?
Yeah, I do end up working on all those things. And listening back, to make sure that the MP3 is representing what we worked on. This has been a running joke for many years in the recording industry, how you sweat all the details, and you strive to get this wonderful, high-fidelity sound but in the end, most people listen to an MP3 on their little iPod ear buds. [Laughs.] Sounds terrible. That's why I always tell them when we're mixing, "This is probably as good as it's going to ever sound." [Laughs.]
Then how do you archive the mix?
They usually take a hard drive with them, with everything on it. And then I try to keep a hard drive--I've got stacks of hard drives.
Are you archiving it as a Pro Tools session?
Yeah, basically, so it’s exactly how we worked on it. So if something calamitous should happen, I would be able to just open it right back up from where we were.
Do you ever work with tape any more?
I do work with tape, but unfortunately it's usually a budgetary concern, we don't often work with tape because bands can't usually afford that. I don't work exclusively on tape anymore at all. If we do work with tape, we record onto tape to get that sound, and then immediately put it into Pro Tools. That process takes a little bit more time, and you have to take a bit more care when you're doing it. So it's a slower process, and the way budgets are going now, I don't end up using tape very often. The Stephen Fretwell project we tracked to tape but then we immediately dumped all the takes into Pro Tools.
And you tracked that at Stratosphere?
Yeah, we did.
Are there certain things you'd rather track somewhere else, like drums, as opposed to your studio?
Yeah. My space is a little bit small for drums. Although we might be expanding it, which I hope happens. So yeah, I usually don't track drums there. But we do everything else. We put a nice grand piano in there, and obviously vocals and guitars and everything, you can do. Drums are the main thing that I think you really need to have a nice acoustic space to make work.
So… Why do you think you're such a good mixer?
[Laughs.] I've never considered that question before. Well, I guess I just really listen to the tracks, and try to bring out the best emotional content that I can out of the song. As a producer, you really focus more on the song, and less about the engineering, less about the technical side of it. I approach mixing more as a producer. I actually start by really listening to the song right off, and then move over into the engineering mode. I think it's that approach of listening to a song first, thinking about what’s not being brought out that's really showcasing the best of this song, then concentrating on how I can do that in the mix.