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Whether he’s recording the latest hit Norwegian rock song or working with the likes of Tom Petty, Danzig, and Primal Scream, you’ll find David Bianco trying any number of innovative mic selection and placement ideas to make each record the best it can be. If he isn’t planted deep in an upright piano with a pair of ribbon mics in hand or listening closely on headphones for the unequalized spot of a 4 x 4 Marshall cabinet, you can be sure David is trying something new somewhere in the studio. Bianco was an engineer on Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, the 1996 Grammy winner
of the coveted Best Engineered Album (Non Classical), and he’s been busy
ever since then. He’s mixed records for heavy rock bands The Damned, Coal
Chamber, T.S.O.L., and Failure and worked with a wide range of mainstream pop
and rock artists, as well: Ozzy Osbourne, Mick Jagger, Teenage Fan Club, LL
Cool J, John Hiatt, and The Posies, to name a few. Recently in 2006 Bianco—a
very talented musician and vocalist himself—has completed new projects
for Janet Robin, the Low Stars, The Wreckers, and Aussie band The Offcuts.
David: In late 2004 and early ‘05 I recorded an album for Madrugada here in Los Angeles at Sound City [The Deep End, winner Best Rock Album, Artist of the Year, and Hit Song of the Year Norwegian Grammies in 2006], then I mixed a live record for the band called Live At Tralfamadore in Oslo [album went platinum in Norway on first day of release.] As far as the production style being different in Europe, the primary difference in the European production style is that it’s a lot more open minded and fearless. I would also say that European bands seem to have—and this is something I’ve experienced many times over the years—a pretty broad worldview of music and art. Their influences seem to come from all over, and in respect to America they find very specific artists, sounds, and production techniques that excite them. For instance, Madrugada is completely impressed by composer/arranger Angelo Battlemente, whose work with David Lynch really resonated with them. Songs on the record were inspired by him, as well as American country, Scandinavian folk, Spanish flamenco, and British punk rock. VM: Using one track from Madrugada’s albums as an example, describe a unique microphone selection or placement you tried. David: On one piano part I used an ambient pair of mics in an X-Y configuration in tandem with a normal microphone set up inside the piano. It was an upright piano with the top lid removed. I dropped a pair of ribbon mics inside and had an additional set of condensers set back in a really large room. The effect was a dreamy barroom style piano with a very natural, sweet sounding ambience . VM: Some engineers don't like to give away "secrets," but is there one very unique microphone trick or technique you've used that you can share with the readers? Something you've used over the years you've not seen many others use, perhaps? DAVID: Yes, listening to microphones in headphones to get the best character of a variety of mics. It’s kind of an intimate way to get in touch with the different attributes and limitations of each one. I recently was using this technique of finding the unequalized spot on a 4 x 4 speaker cabinet with headphones. You plug a guitar into an amplifier with the volume of the guitar off, then crank the volume of the amp up to where you want it and stand back from the speaker cabinet about 15 feet or so. Get a mental picture of the sound you’re hearing—the basic hum and hiss from the combination of all four speakers. Then, with a live dynamic instrument mic up in a pair of headphones, listen to the individual speakers with the microphone pressed right up against the speaker grill cloth of each of the four speakers. Move the mic around until you find the spot that sounds most like the amp did when you stood back 15 feet from the amp: That will be your spot to place the microphone. You will be surprised to hear how different each speaker sounds, and this will most times get you around the typical guitar player’s comment of, “Well, it sounds really good out there.” VM: Like most good producers, you’re also known for your talents as a musician. Not that it’s an either/or, but how do you know when to let an artist play their part, and when to offer your own playing instead? David: If I play the part a lot better, usually the artist will say “Why don’t you just do it.” These days in the studio time is money and most logical thinking artists just want it to be done quickly and well. I usually don’t breach the subject unless I’m confident I can do it better, of course, and feel it will improve the record. VM: Describe what you’re specifically listening for in the elements of an instrument’s sound and timbre before recording it. In terms of character and tone, what stands out most to your ear as you’re deciding what type of microphone to use? DAVID: I think everyone has in their mind an “ideal” sound: The perfect snare sound; the greatest, deepest bass; the sweetest bright acoustic guitar, etc. It’s like what a golfer sees during a putt where he looks at the hole, lines it up, and then looks down at the ball—he sees the hole and the perfect path in his “mind’s eye.” I think musical instruments and mixes are like that. You have a template in your mind on what it should sound like and how it should move you, and that’s what you strive for. As you work with microphones on a regular basis you start to quickly understand the colors you can get. You start to have a pretty good understanding on what frequencies are going to be accented and which ones are going to be downplayed. As you gain a bit more experimentation time, you start to figure out which mic fits a particular situation. Sometime you need a mic that rejects well; other times, one that can be opened up to record an entire room. You learn also over time the limitations of microphones. The absolute obvious sometimes is ignored, but you really have to work on your source: Drums that are in good condition and tuned well will sound good; a microphone won’t help your situation if the drums are in a sad state. This, of course, carries on to every instrument along with technique. You can have the great Les Paul Gold Top with the vintage Marshall JCM800 with the Plexi speakers, but if you have poor playing technique going into those, it’s not going to sound good. VM: Ditto for tracking vocals—how does the specific timbre and range of what you’re hearing in the singer’s voice determine your choices about which mic you’ll use and how you’ll use it? DAVID: You want to enhance the positive attributes in a singer’s voice. You don’t want to, for example, boost the mids on a voice that is very heady or nasally. You would move to a warm sounding tube microphone when a voice is reedy. Sometimes just from an SPL level perspective there is a place for a dynamic when the power translates to harshness with a condenser. It’s a combination of choice and placement. I years ago had the opportunity to record Pavarotti at the San Francisco Opera house and had to set the mic on a boom so that I could pull the mic back from him. He was extremely powerful. For a natural warm unprocessed sound, a ribbon can be great; or, If a voice is lacking peak, FET microphones can boost that 3 or 4 kHz to give it that “already mixed” kind of sound. VM: When have you tried a really weird, fun studio idea that seemed at first it absolutely wouldn’t work, technically or creatively, but then it did? DAVID: Even before the big home recording boom I used to get demos from bands that were mind blowing in their sonic experimentaion. I’ve met a lot of, I guess, what you would call “tweakers” in my time, including a band I worked with about ten years ago who got this amazing tom sound. They used to mic it with a dynamic instrument mic running through a guitar sustainer pedal and then record it on a Yamaha 4-track recorder. They said they were never able to duplicate their tom sound in a real studio, so we did it by bringing in the actual machine they used and transferring it to the main multi-track we used. I also remember during the time when loops were like “the thing” that I’d try every bizarre way of creating loops so that what was used in the song was a one-of-a-kind loop not used by anybody else. We would find a strange place to put a mic, near or away from the drummer, compress it to bits, run it through an Echoplex, a Marshall and then blast it back into a room and re-record it. Another one I remember was building a track with a drum machine triggering a crazy syncopated pattern into the key of a gate that a guitar was running through. It was then sent to a delay and the nucleus for the groove of a song was set up. I’ve got a million of these, but that’s a few examples of exploring the studio space.
DAVID: Remoting patterns on mics was a big one, but that wish has come true already with a few manufacturers. I would also like to see a filament or some shield that would act as a built-in wind filter for open diaphragm mics, as well as a lo pass and hi pass that could work independently and be more frequency specific. I would like to see more split or dual capsule mics that have independent patterns. A tri-calpsule mic would be killer, a three capsule mic that you could do MS applications and ambient recordings—three separate outputs, somewhat based on the original Calrec design. http://www.mcdman.com/bianco.html
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