week something: Paradise (not surprisingly, not my idea of)

Well, never could two studios be as different as Mix Masters and Paradise. The former, in true Rock tradition I think, assembled over a life time of engineering and collecting, many devices being old/salvaged/restored/emulating the old, the engineers being their own masters (the guy from Paradise kept on referring to “the band’s producer” as the person who decides what to do. Producer? I have never seen a local band with a producer.) The building was old and homely unlike Paradise, which featured narrow corridors, wide screen TV, egg chairs and the smell of paint. The Paradise equipment was all bought brand new, top of the line stuff (no two inch multitrack taping machines kicking around this joint). The Paradise engineer a mere 23 years old, shipped over from Sydney to do Church recordings. So, what did I learn? Our guide said most sagely that it is better to get things right when recording than spend ages trying to fix it up in the editing stage. He also said, most intriguingly that, once you have a little experience and a little confidence…abandon the clean recording. If you have an A grade compressor at your disposal, run your vocals through it, it’s compression will sound infinitely nicer than anything Protools has to offer. If your desk is a quality beast of a desk, set your EQ at sound check, the result will be pleasant (and save messing around in post production). Upon examining our offerings of recorded material, the Paradise engineer played recordings through two different sets of speakers, one set of which Ken declared to sound ‘appalling’. This statement was met with the explanation of needing some poorer quality speakers for a more objective monitoring system (harking back to Stephen Fieldhouse’s adventures mixing on his car stereo). Alas, the overwhelmingly commercial attitude (manifest in such ideas as ‘if the drummer can not play to a click track, tell him to practice until he can.’) of our guide meant that I had trouble not tuning him out and gleaned little more knowledge than what you see above you. I can conclude that, I liked Mix Masters a lot more than Paradise and, I could never do work experience at Paradise. Too Much Church Music!