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Why do you think you have become famous (in a relative sense) for doing something that ususally doesn't make a person a household name. How much of this was your skill in engineering vs. luck. vs recording really good bands.
Almost any competent engineer could have done what I have. I have been incredibly lucky to be working in a music scene that spawned a huge number of distinctive, talented bands, and I made myself available to them. There is no doubt in my mind that I get some credit I didn't earn, for working on records that were going to be incredible no matter who was in the chair at the time.
There are a few things about my approach in the studio that I think have made a positive contribution to the records I work on. I come from a band background myself, so I'm sympathetic to bands, and I understand how they work, both internally and in relation to the outside world. I know that asking a band to do things differently in the studio than they would onstage or in the practice room is bound to make them uncomfortable, and is not going to make them play well, so I try to let them play as normally as possible.
I also respect the decisions the band makes about their own music: What it should sound like, how fast it should be, etc. Whenever I hear that a producer made a band add a chorus or shorten a solo or tack-on a string section, my blood boils a little.
I also pride myself on being a bargain. A lot of people in my position try to maximize their income on every project, and eventually they price themselves out of the scene where all the good music is, and end up doing a few sessions a year for music that totally sucks. By keeping my rates reasonable, I get to work with all the good bands, not just those who have money and hype behind them at the moment.
The other thing I have is experience. I've made an assload of records, and any problem that's ever going to come up in a session, I've probably already figured out how to solve it or defend against it. I can work more efficiently than a lot of engineers because I'm not guessing and I'm virtually never stumped.
As percentage, I'd say my own contribution and tendencies are about ten percent of the value of my job. Eighty percent is the band and their abilities and ten percent is luck and market forces. That's a wild guess.
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Who have you worked with that you felt had the best understanding of recording?
Excellent question.
I think any band has a pretty good handle on things by their third album or so, and they can start to anticipate the technical considerations. Bands with recording engineers in them are a little quicker in that regard. Neurosis and the New Year are probably the most studio-savvy bands I've worked with, in that they often have pretty specific studio techniques in mind for individual songs.