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Sound
On Sound CHECKING IN
WITH THE CHOIRGIRL For Tori Amos, success was anything but an overnight affair. In the late ‘70s,
at the age of 13, she was playing popular easy-listening standards in the
hotels around her home town of Washington. By 1984 she had moved to Los Angeles
and signed her first record deal, with Atlantic Records, for her band Y Kant
Tori Read. The fact that you have probably never heard of them says it all. The
band was not a huge success and their only eponymously-titled album was largely
ignored. Tori’s first piano and voice solo album, however, made quite an impression.
Little Earthquakes, released in 1992, paved the way for the huge following she
now enjoys. Under the Pink followed in 1994, and it was during the tour to
support this second solo album that Mark Hawley and Marcel Van Limbeck first
met up with Tori. Mark was the tour’s FOH engineer, with Marcel on monitors. Following the
positive reception afforded some of their live recordings, which were released
as B-sides, Mark and Marcel were asked to engineer Tori’s 1996 follow-up album,
Boys for Pele. This marked a significant departure for Tori, in that she no
longer recorded as a solo singing piano player, thanks to contributions from
guitarist Steve Caton. Anyone familiar with these three albums will be
wondering what on earth I’m on about, as many of the tracks feature extensive
musical arrangements with a wide variety of other instrumentation—but this was
all added after the original voice and piano recordings. Her latest album, From the Choirgirl Hotel is different again in that for these
sessions Tori played live with a band: Matt Chamberlain (drums), Steve Caton
(Guitar), and George Porter or Justin Medal-Johnsen (bass). The Album was
recorded and mastered in Tori’s brand-new studio, built in a converted barn
adjoining a 300 year-old farm cottage near Bude in Cornwall. One way or another it has been a very busy year for Mark and Marcel. After
completing the Pele tour, Mark married Tori in February, and in September work
started on their new studio. In fact, the building work was barely completed in
time to start the new album, and only a few months later they were mixing and
mastering its 12 tracks. The ink was hardly dry on the advance CDs when in
early April Tori and her new band were in North London rehearsal rooms
polishing their act for the start of a 200-date world tour. Mark Hawley: “I started in studios
years and years ago but became bored being in the studio all the time. I was
working at a level where I could not record the kinds of things I liked anyway,
so it made sense to move over into the live thing, and it was when I was
working for a little PA company in Kings Cross that Marcel walked in—with a
very poor English accent—looking for work. We immediately got on well and were
soon working together a lot on small tours and gigs. “I had known John Witherspoon (Tori’s tour manager) for ages, and had done
lots of work with him in the past, so when he offered me the Tori Amos tour in
1994 I asked if Marcel could come along to do the monitors. Initially, Marcel
was only going to be on the job for a couple of weeks for the UK dates, but it
all went so well that Tori insisted we both stayed on—and we’re still doing it
five years later! “Halfway through Tori’s ‘94 tour we recorded some B-sides from the stage
show and everyone loved the sound of those, so were were talked into
engineering Boys For Pele, which was very good for us. Live sound and the
studio are very different cultures and I think that had a lot to do with the
sound we achieved on the last album—especially on how dynamic it was. Although
we came at it from the live sound angle, both Marcel and I love the studio and
it’s a really great mixture to have the experience of both sides—a definite
advantage.” Marcel Van Limbeek: “It’s also
really great fun importing live sound techniques into the studio, as well as
the other way around. I’m thinking of things such as the extensive use of
effects, although obviously we have to be more subtle in the studio than you
would be on a live concert. Usually what happens on a tour is that the tour
manager gives you a CD of the band and you have to try to work out how they got
the effects and sounds. In this case, because we both engineered the album and
we are both working on the tour together, we already know how it was all done,
which makes it a lot easier and much more fun!” RECORDING
FROM THE CHOIRGIRL HOTEL Mark Hawley: “The last album was
quite a classical sounding thing and a very personal project for Tori. It did
extremely well in the States and it will always be one of my favourites, but
the record company were rather unsure about it. I guess it was not too great on
radio because it was so dynamic, and so this time we decided to make a bit of a
pop album. Tori had never recorded with a drummer before—she had always
recorded piano and vocals then we put any drums on top. That was a great way of
working for her because a lot of what she does is improvised, and working with
a drummer would have been too restricting, but we found Matt Chamberlain and
she got on so well with him that a lot of the tracks on the new album are her
singing and playing the piano with Matt drumming along live.” Did you build your new studio specifically to record this album? Mark Hawley: “No. Tori needed a
studio which she likes and where she can work whenever she wants. We have a few
ideas of other bands and projects we want to do there—when time permits, of
course. I moved into the cottage in Cornwall exactly a year ago and since then
we have completed the studio, recorded the album, mastered it in the control
room with Jon Astley, and prepared for the new world tour which we start
tomorrow!” Marcel Van Limbeek: “This new
album was done extremely quickly. We started it on 8th September and
it took less than six months from start to finish—we mastered it at the start
of February.” Mark Hawley: “The building work
was only just finished in time to start the recording—it got very close. In
fact the window went into the drum room after the drum kit had been set up! One
of the key factors in designing the studio was that there had to be a good live
room because Tori plays the piano whenever she performs and that needs a big,
good sounding room. Also, because she wanted to play with a live drummer for
this album, we knew we needed another separate room for the drums, so that was
basically what determined the layout.” Marcel Van Limbeek: “We decided
to have a very big control room too, so that when Tori was playing live with
the drummer (in their separate rooms), we had Caton (guitar) and Bull (bass)
playing in the control room behind the desk, together with the programmer and
his racks of gear. That all worked really well because we had so much space in
the control room.” Mark Hawley: “When you think
about recording from the engineer’s point of view you always think about
acoustics and equipment—which are really important of course—but as you go on
recording musicians you realise that most of them hate studios and the whole
vibe of the thing. It is not a great atmosphere to get the best from them, so
the whole Cornwall project was designed with that in mind. I think the key to
working in studios is to not make the musicians feel like they are in an alien
environment, but also to have the chance to experiment with the equipment. If
you can get a good crossover between those two things, you should come out with
a great result.” Is being so far away from London a
bonus or a drawback? Mark Hawley: “Personally, I find
having the studio ‘out of the way’ in Cornwall a big advantage, because we don’t
have people coming over just to hang out for an hour—anyone who comes is there
for a reason. In most London studios, people are wandering in and out all the
time and it can be very disruptive. FITTING
OUT THE STUDIO Mark Hawley: “We used a Neve VR
board for the last album, which we liked a lot, but we also used the new SSL
for some B-sides. The SSL is a beautiful desk, an we went over Oxford to have
another look at it, but at the end of the day we both loved the sound of the
Neve so that is what we put in the new studio. The great thing about the Neve
is how open it sounds and the Boys for Pele album was really all about the
sound of that desk. “The main monitoring is a pair of Genelec 1037s with a pair of excellent
Mission hi-fi speakers for nearfields, which may seem unusual but there is a
story behind them. When I’m touring I always have a pair of speakers on the
desk, live. For the ‘94 tour I dashed into a hi-fi shop in Birmingham, listened
to few pairs of speakers and walked out with these Missions which I used all
through the tour, and they have proved so good that they have since grown into
our domestic reference monitors. We tried other nearfields for this album but
we kept coming back to the Missions. When Jon Astley brought his mastering
set-up down with him for this album he used his PMC monitors, which are
beautiful sounding speakers, but the Missions stood up really well in comparison.
Unfortunately I don’t think they make these particular Missions anymore.” Marcel Van Limbeek: “We often use
the small Genelec 1031s as nearfields in other studios, but it would be silly
to have them as nearfields here when we have the 1037s as the main monitors. We
have a pair of NS10s which we never use, and although on the last album we didn’t
mix on the Missions, we did use them a lot for playbacks in other rooms to
check what we had done.” Have you had to develop any specific
mic techniques to record Tori? Marcel Van Limbeek: “For the Pele
album we used Neumann U87s on the piano, both in the studio and on stage during
the tour, simply because they sound nice, and round, and big. On the new album
we still used the U87s on some tracks, but we also used AKG C414s because they
make the Bosendorfer sound much more like a ‘pop’ piano. It sounds slightly
smaller, but it doesn’t sound brittle, and it sits better in the mix with the
drums and the rest of the band. We also tried using a U87 on the low end and a
C414 on the high end to get a really great blend of warmth and brightness,
which worked very well on some tracks.” Mark Hawley: “I think on the
previous album the microphone choice was more critical because of the natural,
real feel to it. On this album, though everything is so hard and compressed to
give it a pop sound that microphone choice plays a smaller role.” Marcel Van Limbeek: “There are
also far more elements in this album. Solo piano and voice are more exposed, so
microphone choice is very important, but on this new album there is much more
going on and maybe diaphragm valve mics wouldn’t be so good—you can’t have
everything sounding huge.” Mark Hawley: “We generally used a
Neumann U87 or M49 valve for Tori’s vocals, and although the normal approach
might simply be ‘OK, you are a singer—so sing, and I’m going to record your
voice”, Tori makes you realise that sometimes she is singing from her stomach,
and other times from her throat, and they are very different things. Once you
understand that, and learn to work with it, you can get a lot more our of her
vocals.” Marcel Van Limbeek: “We developed
a set-up in the studio for Tori’s vocals which involves a Focusrite Red 2 EQ,
and a TubeTech LCA2-B valve compressor. We used that pretty much for everything
on Boys for Pele, and although we experimented a bit more on the new album,
like using the EQ on a Mackie desk just for the hell of it, we kept coming back
to this set up.” I’ve heard stories about strange
singing booths. Can you tell me more? Mark Hawley: “Something that
freaked us out when we first started recording Tori was separation between
voice and piano, and we had seen pictures of her previous recording sessions
with the piano covered with a heavy blanket to get better separation. On the
previous album we found a beautiful church with a fantastic acoustic which we wanted
for the piano and harpsichord, but the harpsichord is about a tenth of the
volume of the piano, and we were very concerned about her vocals getting on the
harpsichord mics. So, to try and keep some separation, we built this ridiculous
wooden booth construction, which Tori sat in with the keyboards poking through
a slot in the bottom—it was every bit as bizarre as it sounds! We made the
inside as dead as possible so it didn’t sound to boxy, and it worked
surprisingly well. “I think you can go too far in trying to get everything completely separate,
and there is a danger that you might lose the ambient sound of the room. A bit
of crosstalk is perfectly OK, so with this album we used a simple sound board
which went over the front of the piano to provide a degree of screening. We
still had some crosstalk between the voice and piano, but at least it was
reflected rather than direct sound.” Marcel Van Limbeek: “ We don’t
really have any fixed ideas about mic techniques. If we don’t know what is
going to happen then we tend to stick with the old favourites like a Shure
SM57, a U87 or a Neumann KM140, depending on what the source is. But other than
that we don’t really have favourites as such. If you have the time, I think it
is always worth experimenting anyway. The U87 is the workhorse in the studio,
much like the SM57 is for live sound, and although they are coloured compared
to B&Ks, they are coloured in a very musical way which is why I like them
so much. Marcel Van Limbeek: “For the new
album we mike every drum up separately but conventionally, although sometimes
we would just use a pair of overheads, or maybe even just one distant room mic.
We also changed the acoustics of the room, to make it more dead sometimes. It
really all depended on the kind of sound we wanted for the music, and what the
rack was all about.” Mark Hawley: “That was the fun
thing about this album compared to the last. On the last album it was all about
pure audio, and if we put drums on a track, they had to sound like pure drums.
This album was much more about how could we f**k the sound up to make it more
pop orientated. For example, Matt (drummer) brought in this nasty little box
which was some kind of really stupid limiter with an outrageously long release
time. You can put up an mic anywhere in the room and you get this amazing
sound!” Does Tori get involved in the
technical or production sides? Mark Hawley: “Tori is a pure
musician and isn’t interested in the technical aspects, but the great thing
about working with her is that she is never unsure about anything. She will
make a decision and will say when something is right. A lot of artists are
quick to say when something is wrong, but Tori will say when it is right too,
and you know when she says that, it is right, and she won’t change her mind again.
A lot of musicians like Tori find it very hard to listen to a mix as you are
building it up, and not automatically hear it as the finished thing, so
although we might be quite happy with a quick reverb slapped on the vocal, and
a rough drum reverb as we are building the mix, whenever Tori walks in she
hears it as the finished thing.” Marcel Van Limbeek: “You know you
couldn’t say to her ‘Listen to this, but we haven’t done anything with the
backing vocals yet’ because she wouldn’t say ‘this is great’, she’d say ‘where
are the backing vocals?’. Timing is everything in terms of when she listens to
the mixes, so we would tell her when we had finished a track and then she could
come and listen and anything she had to say was relevant.” How did you record and master the
album Mark Hawley: “The album was
recorded onto a Sony DASH 24-track with a bunch of Tascams slaving off it. That
was a great way of working because if you have something like a 48-track Sony
you still only have one bit of tape, but with the Tascams locked up you can
just keep recording more takes by putting new tapes in. Having said that, I
think it is very important to come up with a performance and decide at the time
what you want to keep, because the down side with this technique is that it can
sometimes take forever to find the take you want from a large pile of
cassettes! Rob Van Tuin, our studio tech, made an amazing database which we use
to log everything during the session, and that makes it easier to find things.
Tori also has an incredible memory for the detail of what we did on each
session.” Mark Hawley: “When we came to
mixing the album we used three formats. Boys for Pele was mastered to DAT using
the Apogee AD1000, but now they have a new 24-bit system which they managed to
get together for us. Unfortunately, because it was so new it wasn’t totally
reliable, and so we decided to play safe and master to both DAT and to a Tascam
DA88 with a bit-splitting box to handle the full 24-bit audio. The A&R guy
from the record company also suggested mastering the album onto half-inch
analogue, so we did that too. “The analogue sounded gorgeous, but we didn’t actually use it at all for the
CD. I think you really need to concentrate on what you are doing to get the
best out of analogue, and because we were going down to three formats at the
same time, it lost out something there. The 24-bit Tascam was fantastic oo -
really clean and open - and we used that for a few tracks, but most were taken
from the DAT because it was so ‘in your face’ and that is what the album is
really about.” THE
TOURING BAND Mark Hawley: “Tori has a huge
cult following in the USA—it’s difficult to explain to people in this country
just what a presence she has over there. We were regularly doing sheds with
12,000 people, but over here the biggest thing we do is 2 nights in the Albert
Hall. Tori hasn’t played with a live band since she became successful, so this
tour is something rather different. She has such a good reputation for
performing live in America, and that has a lot to do with the fact that the
songs change every night, and she alters the set drastically to suit the
audience. Obviously that is much harder to do with a full band on stage, but I
think as the tour progresses the band are such accomplished players that it
could quickly turn into something really special. “In terms of the equipment, we are virtually duplicating the effects we used
in the studio because they really shaped the sound of the new album . We’re
even taking Lexicon 480Ls out with us, which is pretty unusual in live sound, and
we’re also using a lot of Focusrite EQs and preamps.” Is it a big problem keeping the
foldback out of the piano? Mark Hawley: “You don’t come
across nine-foot Bosendorfer pianos on live tours a lot, and we asked everyone
for ideas on how to deal with it. We tried everything—all the usual bugs and
pick-ups—but nothing worked as well as the classic studio technique of a pair
of good cardioid mics. The whole idea of the bugs is to try to get rid of the
ambient noise on the stage, but a lot of that is picked up directly by the
piano itself—the sound board resonates in sympathy. With the piano lid open it
can pick up so much ambient sound that before the show has started the piano
mic channel meters on the desk would often be peaking up to the top just with the
audience noise! We found if the ambient noise is already in the piano, using a
pair of mics like Neumann U87s gives you a much better sound quality than all
the bugs.” Marcel Van Limbeek: “On the last
tour we used more or less the same microphones on stage as we used in the
studio, although you obviously can’t do that with Tori’s vocal microphone. We
used a U87 or a Neumann M49 in the studio, but on stage we used a Neumann KM140
which is a great mic, and I guess we will do the same on this tour.” “In the first part of this new tour of America we’re doing smallish clubs,
so we’re taking a baby Bosendorfer—Tori’s big one will come over when we do the
big stadiums. Both pianos have been fitted with Bosendorfer’s own MIDI system
which drives a Kurzweil piano sampler, and I’ll probably be using that in all
the band numbers rather than the piano mics. In the past, if we had ever
suggested having a MIDI piano or sampler Tori would have freaked—her thing has
always been about the sound of the Bose, but she has really changed her
attitude for this tour because of the live band.” Will you be recording the tour,
perhaps for a live album? Mark Hawley: “We recorded both
the previous tours but with just solo piano and vocals the recordings really
didn’t work as a piece of audio because of all the crosstalk. We had some
B-sides off the last two tours, but they were really the best recorded tracks
from 200 shows. This tour is totally different because of the band element, so
we’re going to record all the shows and an album might come out of that—it is
more controlled this time especially with the MIDI piano and everything.” Marcel Van Limbeek: “All the mics
and DIs from the stage would normally go to both the monitor and FOH desks, but
we are routing them to a rack of Focusrite preamps - an unusual approach in
itself - and then to a rack of active BSS splitters with feeds to the monitor
desk, FOH desk, and a pile of Tascam DA88s. There are 40 lines off the stage,
and we have six Tascams so there is a spare in the system just in case. It is
an unusual way of working, but the beauty of the system is that by swapping
just one multi around, we can replay from the DA88s back into both desks, and
sound check with last night’s show without having to have Tori around. It also
means we can work out new effects or something just like in the studio by
working around the DA88 tapes.” “Tori is not big on rehearsing in sound checks, and she actually does a lot
of her writing then, so I usually have to keep a DAT running for her and can’t
easily try new things out. The other thing she does a lot is use the sound
check for the local press reports, so I often have to give the local TV people
a sound feed rather than doing a proper sound check. So the Tascam idea is
extremely useful from several points of view.” Do you enjoy combining the studio and
live sound roles? Mark Hawley: “Although it’s
really great doing both the studio album and the live tour, it has been
completely manic! Normally, there are entirely different teams of people
looking after the two sides of it, but with this, it’s all the same people.
Even John, the tour manager, has been the production manager for the album, so
it has been pretty hectic finishing off the album and getting ready for the
tour. Of course, it’s a great opportunity and very rare to follow through from
the studio recording to the live tour, so even though it’s all total chaos, it
is still fantastic!” |