Recording a new Fireworks Night album #2

Fireworks Night

This is the second in a series of posts detailing the recording of a new Fireworks Night album; the series is going to follow every stage of our recording process, covering equipment, mic selection and technique, dealing with room acoustics, getting good performances, tracking, mixing and production.

I’ve been reading a fair few interviews with engineers and producers over the last few weeks, in preparation for the upcoming Week of Enormous Recording. I was already familiar with the sort of thing that producers would tend to talk about- recording techniques, what a producer’s role should be, how to get the best performance out of your musicians and so on (I didn’t, of course, know the details of what they’d say, but we’ll come to that later). What I wasn’t expecting was that so many producers would still have a distinction in their minds between ‘American’ and ‘English’ recording and production styles.

Before I really get going, it’s worth bearing in mind that these interviews have been with big-name producers – people who’ve been doing this for a long time. They’ve been doing their job since tape machines were the standard (some of them claim to have been recording on wax cylinders, which I might take with a pinch of salt)- before digital recording was a viable possibility in the professional domain, and aeons before the recent technology explosion that sees every Apple laptop bundled with GarageBand. Back in these pre-digital, pre-globalised days, there were still a great many local differences. As a tiny example, manufacturers of condenser microphones were largely European (Germany immediately springs to mind) and, as a result, you tended to find a great many more condensers in English and European studios than you did in the US, where the more-robust dynamic mic was much more likely to be used.

I’m sure this is old news to nearly everyone but me; from a producer’s point of view, though, it was interesting to find out that there’s still a perceived difference in approach (and end result) from a English and a US producer. Even today, where every studio throughout the world has very similar equipment (broadly speaking), most high-end producers believe there to be a difference in the sound of UK and US records. It’s not from the equipment (which may have been a contributing factor in the past)- it’s the approach of the engineer and producer.

In essence, the ‘English’ approach is to get something sounding great in the room, hear the musician playing, add whatever compression, EQ and other input effects you need to get the sound you want, and record this part, anticipating doing very little in the mix to make the parts sit well together. The ‘American’ approach involves getting a good sound from the instrument and record it flat, doing most of your effects work, EQ and getting the parts to sit together, as part of the mix.

I’ll refer to these as the ‘American’ and ‘English’ approach, as wiser heads than mine have already devised that as a kind of shorthand; while I’m generally wary of dividing large groups into two categories, I think this might be a useful way to approach to the new Fireworks Night record. The implication of the interviews is that the English method sacrifices flexibility in the later stages in order to commit to a sound early in the mixing process, shaping how the record sounds. The American method means that you record an adaptable sound, deciding on the direction of the song when it comes to mixing, sacrificing commitment to a particular sound in favour of being able to change your mind at mixing. I will almost certainly end up taking a little from each of these approaches when it comes to recording Fireworks Night.

Instinctively, I think I would tend to go more towards the English approach; in terms of practicality, however,  I think I’ll probably need to be more flexible when it comes to mixing- recording things largely flat, and doing most of the work in mixing seems more likely.  I have a little experience in recording (largely in terms of ‘things I’ve got wrong’) and, while I’m getting more confident the more I learn, I’m not so confident in my abilities that I think I’ll be able to commit to a sound immediately, and not regret it later. I just don’t have the experience to know when something will sound good in the long run, or whether there’s an immediate appeal from novelty; or, at the very least, I don’t have the confidence that my experience is sufficient, and that’s probably enough in itself to mean I shouldn’t be committing too early.

Another concern is that Fireworks Night is a group of six people, plus an artistically-minded manager, all of whom will want to have a say in how the record is produced. Not all of us, though, have enough production and mixing experience to be able to use the same language to discuss the problems, and if there’s the possibility of delaying the arguments until after the (limited) recording time is used up, that might be a sensible move. The more flexibility I build in to the recordings, the more leeway I’ll have to satisfy everyone’s peccadilloes.

Also, and perhaps more importantly than I’d previously considered, we only have a certain amount of time in which to record – it’s probably in all our interests to make the recording time as efficient as possible, and maybe let the mixing sprawl out a little more.

On the other hand, there’s a huge appeal to committing to a sound early on in a song’s recording. There are a million and one decisions to be made throughout the recording process, and I’m thinking of it as a little like washing-up: if you don’t do a little bit as you go along, you may end up with an enormous, unmanageable mess at the end. If you’ve already committed to washing up all the pans, then you’ll know that you only have cutlery left to go…ah, this is a stupid analogy. Recording a record is like recording a record: sooner or later you’re going to have to commit to something and, if you’ve got something that sounds awesome, why not commit to it now and have it shape the song? Once again, I’m back to Duke Ellington:

“If it sounds good, it is good.”

You just have to be pretty damned certain that something does sound good…

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