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John Feldmann—guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, and producer
of the California punk band Goldfinger—is just your average guy. That
is, assuming average to you is a vegan punk front man and A&R director who
loudly supports PETA, thinks the Beatles’ Revolver is the greatest recording
of all time, knows Pro Tools inside and out, and once made the Guinness Book
by playing 385 gigs in a single year.
“But the most important thing I’ve done all year is raise my new son Julian,” beams Feldmann. RED: We usually start by chatting about your overall approach to miking. How does it change for you from genre-to-genre or artist-to-artist—or does it? JOHN: There's a basic setup that I use as a jumping off point for most of the work I do. I have a good idea of how I want things to sound, and I know how to achieve that from years of making records. So, that's where I start. That being said, it's often necessary to adjust from artist-to-artist, and song-to-song.
JOHN: My audio chain goes hand-in-hand with my mic choice and placement. It's part of the template I start off each session with. I always EQ and compress to "tape" with both outboard gear and some trusty plug-ins inside Pro Tools. I'm currently using Brent Averill 1073's, the UA 6176, and Sony Oxford EQ's a lot. However, like with mic placement, my audio chain does need to change from artist-to-artist and song-to-song.
JOHN: I consider what sort of room I'm in. Is it highly reflective? Is it big? Small? Does it sound good? How the source sounds in the room has a big effect on what mic I choose. Maybe if the room sounds bad, I won't want to capture the room sound at all. Often times I'm looking for an in-your-face direct capture of the source that I can manipulate later. So then, in terms of mics, I consider whether it's a condenser, dynamic, ribbon, or tube, and I look at the polar pattern. Is the mic going to accurately capture what I'm recording, in the space I'm recording it, or will it make it sound worse…or better? After that, it's a matter of trying them out until I find the one that sounds right to me.
JOHN: For the guitars on the Bottom Line song "Trainwreck" I used a combination of a pair of dynamic condenser mics, an active ribbon mic, and a cardioid studio condenser all on-axis and right up on the grill over the center of the speaker cones. I used the 1073 pre's and a bit of EQ before tape on that track.
JOHN: On The Used's song "Poetic Tragedy," I wasn't getting Bert [McCracken] to scream the way he needed to for the track. I started throwing every piece of kitchenware I could find at him, and it worked! That was a kind of accidental method, but it actually did work. I also once recorded a dildo on a guitar. Now that was not accidental.
JOHN: I tried taking the drums out of the studio and setting them up in my living room for a record. I thought I'd use it on more than one song, but it didn't really work out and took me two days to set it all up and break it all back down. I guess that's not that funny of an answer. [note: yes it is.]
JOHN: I would say it's finding workarounds for a broken piece of gear. Trying to find a way to finish tracking when an "essential" piece of gear dies on you at 2 a.m. and all the rental shops are closed—that’s tough. Also, making sure the artist is happy and productive is a challenge that never goes away.
JOHN: My most memorable show was probably when I spit on a cop and didn't even get hurt—that was awesome. Also, at one show in San Jose, we had 2,000 kids on stage with us, and one time I dumped a big bowl of noodles on Gwen Stefani's head during the last show of the tour we did with No Doubt. That was pretty fun.
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