Alan Moulder
With a list of hit record credits trailing out the door, Alan Moulder is a man at the top of his game. AT caught up with him in London for a chat about the past, present and future of production and mixing.
28 February 2009
Text: Braddon Williams
Photography: Rob Sheridan
Alan Moulder is without doubt one of the world’s most influential producer/engineer/mixers of recent decades. Having worked in the business since the ’80s, Alan has been at the helm of some of rock music’s most iconic records. His production, engineering and mixing credits include Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Killers, Billy Corgan, U2, Marilyn Manson, My Bloody Valentine and The Arctic Monkeys, to name but a few.
On a cold, wet day in London a couple of months ago, I was lucky enough to catch up with Alan during one of his rare breaks. During our long discussion, Alan reflected on his career, offered up a few tips and tricks for AT readers, and gave us his take on the current state of the audio industry.
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
Braddon Williams: Alan, I understand your career began back in the early ’80s at Trident Studios in London. Can you tell us about what your job first entailed there?
Alan Moulder: I had two stints at Trident. The first of these was as a tea boy, running around making tea for everybody. In those days the studios were spread across four floors, so it took some doing! We had offices, a mastering room, two studios, as well as maintenance staff and builders – I had to service everybody with tea every half an hour, and run errands basically. That’s how I started at Trident, the same as every other engineer who worked there. I eventually progressed to the job of assistant, working with the engineers and learning the craft. After a good deal of time doing that, I eventually became an engineer myself.
BW: Working at Trident connected you with The Jesus And Mary Chain, I believe. Was that your big break, would you say?
AM: Yeah, that was my first big freelance job. I’d worked with a few indie bands before then who, ironically, liked working with me mainly because I’d done pop music. For whatever reason, many of them seemed convinced that this was a sign of my skill as an engineer. I’d worked with the ‘bigger bands’ – as they saw it – on stuff that had been in the charts and on radio, so I must have been good, right?
BW:You now work out of your own studio, Assault & Battery, in London. What can you tell us about that?
AM: Another producer (and good friend of mine), Flood, and I set up a studio complex in the old Battery Studios building in London when a room became available there that we’d previously used as a mix room. We dragged in Trent Reznor’s [frontman for Nine Inch Nails] SSL G+ from New Orleans and set up base camp there. I’d done a couple of albums on the desk previously and loved it, so we made the decision to pool all our gear and make ourselves a mix facility. It was either that or possibly find ourselves without a workspace. Studios were going down left and right and we were concerned that there mightn’t be anywhere left to work if we didn’t act. The room is quite small, but it’s mainly for mixing.
We’ve just opened a studio upstairs as well, which offers a big tracking space for bands. ‘Assault & Battery 1’ is now the official name of the mix room, and ‘Assault & Battery 2’ the recording room. Assault & Battery 2 is managed separately as a commercial venture by Miloco (miloco.co.uk), but the downstairs space is mainly for Flood and I to work in.
I always try and use something different when it comes to recording and mixing chains and rarely default to a standard setup for anything. That’s not because I’m a snob; I simply get bored easily.
THE ART OF THE MIX
BW: Do you do all your mixing at Assault & Battery 1 these days?
AM: Not Nine Inch Nails. We brought The Killers and Arctic Monkeys back here to mix, but because the studio is like an instrument to Trent [Reznor], it’s very difficult to work on his projects anywhere else but his own studio. He may want any number of pieces of equipment employed on a mix at any given time, so it’s impractical to move all his gear to another studio.
BW: When it comes to mixing, do you work ‘in the box’ much?
AM: It averages out about 50/50. I’m certainly using more and more plug-ins these days, I know that. They’ve gotten better and better, and it makes recalls much easier.
BW: Have you ever done a mix entirely ‘in the box’?
AM: I have, and the quality of the sound is improving all the time on that front, but there’s a knack to it, just as there is to mixing out of the box. The more you do it the better you get. The way things are going, we’re all going to have to get used to mixing that way because budgets are often eaten up by recording studios. I have my own room, so I’m flexible about which way I choose to mix. Personally, I prefer mixing at the desk because it affords you the best of both worlds.
BW: When it comes to mixing ‘in the box’, what sort of plug-ins do you like to use?
AM: I use the usual ones: Waves, McDSP, Bomb Factory. I also use Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig and Amplitube. If I have a D.I. on a bass I’ll often throw that through Amplitube. I also really like Ohm Force plug-ins: Ohmicide, Predatohm and Ohmboyz simply because they’re a bit different and not everybody has them. I use the software version of the EMI TG1 (as well as the hardware version), and I love the Sound Toys stuff too. I love Echo Boy, Crystalliser, Filter Freak, Pitchblender and Tremolator. I always try and use something different when it comes to recording and mixing chains and rarely default to a standard setup for anything. That’s not because I’m a snob; I simply get bored easily.
BW: Do you have any bits of gear that you can’t live without?
AM: I really like the Chandler TG1 compressor; I use that a lot on vocals. If I’m doing rock stuff and I want the vocal to cut through the mix I think that works brilliantly. I quite often use the Manley Vari Mu and Massive Passive EQ across the mix. I also really like the Thermionic Culture Vulture, and all the Eventide stuff, like the Orville and H3500. I also use their reverb quite a bit.
TIME CONSTRAINTS?
BW: How long do you like to spend on a mix?
AM: For me, a mix a day is quick. I tend to do a mix over about a day and a half, on average. What’s changed now, from the point of view of mixing, is that you have more work to do because things aren’t recorded as well now that budgets have shrunk. Recording things properly often requires having more time up your sleeve, but unfortunately, most people don’t have the budget to hire great studios or the time in which to make sure the sound sources are correct. People rush through the recording process with an attitude that any problems can be fixed later. And this is true, of course, but only to a point. But, hey, I sympathise – it’s just the way things are at the moment.
BW: Do you recall mixes very often?
AM: I don’t seem to have to do that many recalls, maybe because I take a little bit longer, but in the end it’s down to the artist and the record company to say whether I do or don’t. Having said that, on some records I do loads of recalls. I recently did a record for a band called White Lies, who were on tour at the time, so it was difficult to get them to hear stuff when I needed them to. But rather than sit around waiting for them to listen in a different time zone, I just moved on and came back and did recalls.
BW: Do you mix to tape any more?
AM: Yeah, if I can I go to half-inch. It really depends on the budget. If somebody is prepared to pay for it I go to half-inch at 15ips. I don’t use Dolby, and I have the best A/D converter in the world: the Lavry Gold. I go in at 96k on the Lavry, but if the half-inch is lined up properly it always beats it. And another benefit of tape is that you have a physical object that’s hard to lose – files get lost constantly.
BW: You mentioned that you like to use the Manley Vari Mu and Massive Passive on the mix bus. What is your general setup across the entire mix?
AM: I generally use the Vari Mu first, followed by the Massive Passive, and then sometimes I’ll use the SSL compressor as well. With the Manley Vari Mu, I generally don’t use it to compress the audio signal, I just run the mix through it because I like the way the tubes and transformers affect the sound. It just seems to come out the other side with that certain something. It really isn’t doing a great deal of compression work; sometimes the meters don’t even move!
BW: When you use the Massive Passive across the mix, what frequencies are you generally searching for?
AM: Extreme highs, or maybe something lower: 4, 6 or 10kHz. And for the lows: either 40, 60 or 100Hz.
BW: Do you employ parallel compression in your mixes?
AM: Yeah, I have the drums going to about three different compressors, of which I may use one, two or three, and I often use different ones in different sections of the song. I use a Neve 33609 (one of the oldest ones), an Elysia Mpressor, and the Empirical Labs Fatso Jr.
BW: What do you use for reverbs?
AM: I have a couple of plates that I really like. I have a valve plate and an old EMT standard. They have a unique sound that plug-ins haven’t quite replicated yet, and every plate has a slightly different sound. I use the Eventide Reverb, the Eventide Orville, and the Eventide 2016. In terms of software reverbs I really like Reverb One, Revibe, Native Instruments’ Classics, and even Digidesign’s Dverb.
BW: What type of monitoring do you like to use?
AM: All sorts. At the moment I flick between Yamaha NS10s, ATC SCM50s, DynAudio BM15As, an Auratone and a mini hi-fi system.
MARILYN MANSON
In 1994, Alan was asked by Trent Reznor to engineer Marilyn Manson’s debut album, Portrait of an American Family…
BW: By far the most distinctive feature of any Marilyn Manson album is the vocal. What tricks did you use to bring out his unique vocal quality?
AM: (Laughs) That is Manson. That is pretty much how it comes out! There were a few tricks put on certain words or lines. I remember that we really liked the ring modulator on the Zoom 9050 which we used a fair bit. When I worked with him the vocal chain was a Shure SM7, a Neve 1066 mic preamp and an 1176 compressor.
TRACKING DOWN A SOUND
BW: What are some of your favourite techniques for recording drums?
AM: With drums, I find the player is the main thing that defines the drum sound, and then obviously the drum kit. I try and make sure I have the right kit for the sound I want, and spend a lot of time getting the tuning right so it sounds great in the room. Only after all that’s sorted out do I put up any mics. The standard ones work: Shure SM57s, Sennheiser 421s and Neumann U47s. On overheads, my general go-to mics are Neumann U67s for rock, and I also really like Coles ribbons. I’ve used AKG C-414s and B&Ks if the 67s or Coles options don’t seem to be working.
I don’t have a standard setup; it’s more getting the source sound right than reaching for the EQ. Once the source is right, you can start moving your mics around. You have to make sure you get everything in place first before you start jumping into EQ and phase. If you put the time in to making sure the phase between the microphones is good, you’re on solid ground. If you want to start EQing at that point, you’re at least working from a solid foundation.
BW: What about recording drum ambience in the room?
AM: If it’s a big rock song I find I can’t use too much of the room because it gets eaten up by big guitars, so there’s not much point recording lots of room mics. They clog everything up and in the end the guitars make drum ambience disappear in the mix, so they’re always pulled down low – if I record them at all. On a more open track it’s a different story. In that situation I’ll always experiment with different room mics.
BW: Do you have a preference for the types of rooms you prefer to put a drum kit in – large, medium, small, live, dead?
AM: I’ve used big rooms and had a PA in there driving the room, which I liked. But one of my favorite drum sounds is the one on We’re In This Together by Nine Inch Nails. That was done in a booth we built that was just big enough to get the kit inside, and the roof was just above the cymbals. The walls were all covered in carpet and we placed towels on the toms.
BW: On a lot of tracks, especially Nine Inch Nails songs, it sounds like there’s quite a synthetic overtone to the drums. Do you often resample kit sounds?
AM: There are no rules guiding what happens on NIN drums. When we use real drums in an aggressive rock manner, they’re often processed. This is for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they have to cut through very intense distortion, and secondly, Trent often finds normal sounding rock drums a little boring and predictable. In some cases the demo may have had a programmed beat with distinctive kicks or snares, and later when the real drums are added, we may miss those original sounds. In that case we’ll often trigger the original samples alongside the real ones.
GUITAR LAND
BW: Do you have any favourite guitars, cabinets and pedals that give you a sound?
AM: All guitars are great for different things and they all have distinctive sounds. Les Pauls, SGs, Flying Vs, Strats, Jags, Jazz’s, Tele’s, 330s, 335s, Gretches, etc. They all sound good if they’re used appropriately. Even old cheap guitars can be great for the right part. The same goes for cabinets too, but pedals, where do you begin? I like all the normal ones: the Big Muff, the RAT. There are also some great boutique ones I love such as the Z.Vex, Lovetone and Roger Mayer. I have a ‘Way Huge Swollen Pickle’ that I love. There’s a company called Death By Audio that makes amazing sounding weapons. I’ve also got a couple of great pedals by a Norwegian company called Locomofon; their Fuz Fabrik pedal is amazing!
MIKING AMPS
BW: What is your approach to capturing the sound of a guitar cabinet?
AM: I try and vary things as much as possible because I don’t like using the same things all the time. But if you have a Shure SM57 on one speaker and a Sennheiser 421 on the other, for me that combo works.
BW: How did you achieve that massive guitar sound for The Smashing Pumpkins? Were multiple cabinets used?
AM: The Pumpkins’ sound was simply one Marshall cab and one SM57. Never with multiple mics or cabinets.
BW: Were any room mics recorded for that sound?
AM: Absolutely not, the cabinet was closed off, and enclosed, with no room whatsoever.
BW: When it comes to mixing guitars, what do you do to sit them in a mix? Rumour has it you’re fairly lean on EQ for electric guitars.
AM: I do EQ them; normally I add some bite and generally a bit of SSL channel compression as well. If the sound isn’t right for the mix, I won’t hesitate to add more extreme EQ but generally I find guitars sound fuller and richer if they’re not EQ’d too much, provided they’re recorded well. If I’m struggling with the sound I may re-amp a guitar or run it through pedals rather than trying to repair the sound with extreme EQ.
BW: How do you like to capture the sound of a bass guitar?
AM: On a bass cabinet, again I’ll tend to go for a couple of mics: the Neumann U47 and a Sennheiser 421… even a Shure SM57. The 47 picks up the body and is placed a little further back, while the SM57 is pretty close and picks up the bite.
VOCAL CHORDS
BW: You’ve worked with some amazing vocalists over the years: the aforementioned Trent Reznor, Billy Corgan, Bono, Marilyn Manson to name but a few. How do you go about capturing the human voice?
AM: For loud stuff I think the Shure SM58 is great because it captures all the sound and tends to cut well, often with a Neve 1073 preamp and an Empirical Labs Distressor. Trent uses the SM58 a fair bit, as did The Smashing Pumpkins. We also used it on The Killers and U2. For softer stuff I often use a Neumann U67 with a similar mic preamp. In terms of compression I really like the Urei 1176.
BW: When you use the SM58 for vocals, is the microphone hand-held, or do you use a stand with a pop shield?
AM: It depends on the singer. With Trent, it’s always in a mic holder with a pop shield, recorded in the control room with everyone on headphones. Sometimes you’re monitoring on the speakers because the singer is struggling with pitch, other times it’s hand-held to make the singer feel more comfortable. But if you’re recording vocals with the speakers on, you have to be careful with the monitor balance so you don’t have all the high-end parts really loud, otherwise it ends up going down the mic. I personally prefer the singer to be on headphones, that way you’re not compromised sonically when mixing, but obviously the performance is the most important thing.
I don’t have a standard setup; it’s more getting the source sound right than reaching for the EQ.
REFLECTIONS ON SOME MODERN CLASSICS:
THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
In 1993, Alan mixed the Smashing Pumpkins second album, the hugely successful, Siamese Dream. This led to further collaboration with the band, as he once again teamed up with Flood to produce, engineer and mix the epic third album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.
BW: What can you tell us about the journey you’ve shared with The Smashing Pumpkins and the landmark albums you’ve recorded with them.
AM: Mixing Siamese Dream with Butch [Vigg: producer for Nirvana, Garbage] and Billy Corgan [The Smashing Pumpkins’ frontman] was a fantastic experience. It was my first foray into American rock. They liked the work I’d done on the My Bloody Valentine and Jesus and Mary Chain records, and figured I’d have the patience to mix their album slowly and carefully, based on those records. They knew the songs on Siamese Dream weren’t going to get mixed one song per day… and they certainly weren’t! Siamese Dream was really hard work but it also opened my eyes to what was possible. Working with Butch and Billy was inspiring… they were brilliant and pushed me further than I’d ever gone before.
After that, Flood and I got asked to do Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and the approach on that was very different. Siamese Dream had been a very precise album so we decided to loosen up a bit on Mellon Collie. Billy went away and came up with 50 songs while he was on tour. We spent a bit of time in the rehearsal space doing pre-production and recording, and then went into a studio to flesh it out.
In the studio, Billy had to be kept busy all the time, otherwise he got bored. To combat this, Flood and I split the work in two; he worked in one room while I worked in another. That way Billy could work almost constantly. I think it helped having the two of us sharing the workload on that record.
NINE INCH NAILS
In 1994, Alan mixed Nine Inch Nails’ landmark album, The Downward Spiral. After the success of this record, he went on to produce subsequent albums: The Fragile, With Teeth, and most recently 2008’s The Slip.
BW: You’ve worked with Trent Reznor for well over a decade now. What type of working relationship do you share with Trent, and what do you bring to a Nine Inch Nails production?
AM: Trent and I have gotten to know each other very well over the years, which makes it easier to communicate. I know he likes to work quickly, which might surprise some people. We’ve spent a long time making records, but we don’t really spend a long time on individual sounds. When Trent has an idea, he wants to be up and running while he’s still inspired. As for what I bring to a Nine Inch Nails production, I think Trent trusts my sensibility on certain things, and I can push him when he needs to be pushed. I also probably bring him a sense of reassurance. He knows things are going to work and be done to his liking while he’s busy being creative.
BW: Having mixed the group’s landmark album Downward Spiral, and co-produced subsequent albums, you must have experienced how the development of technology has affected the creation of a Nine Inch Nails record. Can you tell us more about that?
AM: The Downward Spiral was 48 track tape, loads of keyboards running live from MIDI, and four tracks of ProTools. Now it’s 96 tracks of ProTools. Things have definitely changed from that perspective. In the early days of The Downward Spiral, sounds were created by sampling into keyboards and then resampling into others at lower bit rates, to create aliasing. But of course all this can now be done easily via plug-ins, so we’ve ended up abandoning those tricks because everyone uses them. These days we use things like analogue synthesizers for processing. We still use plug-ins a lot, but the important thing is we’re always trying to do something different with them.
THE ARCTIC MONKEYS
After their groundbreaking entrance onto the scene in the UK, The Arctic Monkeys asked Alan to mix their second record, Favourite Worst Nightmare.
BW: What can you tell us about the mixing of this record; I assume it wasn’t a nightmare?
AM: It was one of the easiest records I’ve ever had to mix because it was beautifully produced and recorded. The room they did it in at The Garden sounds really good: the drum sounds, in particular, were amazing. As I’ve said, I tend to mix a song in about a day and a half, but for this record, I was doing them in a day.
BW: One feature of that record that really stands out for me is the use of reverb and delay. Can you tell us how you achieved those effects?
AM: I used the Revibe Spring on quite a few things, and the vocals had a lot of delay on them. And I hate to admit this but the Line 6 Echofarm was where a lot of the vocal distortion came from; the first preset that comes up, the one that has the drive, simply inserted across the vocal.
SIGNING OFF
BW: What advice can you give aspiring engineers and producers out there before we sign off?
AM: The advice I would give them is that there is no point getting into it for the money any more, so you have to enjoy yourself, and that should be the reason you get into it anyway. So have fun, and if you can, make the records you want to make and try not to follow what everybody else does. Take a bit of what you learn from here, there, and everywhere, and try and put a bit of yourself into it as well because there are enough records out there that all sound the same.
RESPONSES