In the near future, we may have something coming along which saves you money as well as helps to find you work – but we’ll announce that if and when it happens.

For now though – sign up to our RSS feed to enjoy our interview with Marc Carolan – a truly big time Sound Engineer, great bloke, and someone who has achieved what many of us long to.

Wembley Stadium!

(I’ve done the arena, but never the stadium).

Here’s a taster for you.

Any favourite memories from recording sessions and/or live work?

Mixing an album for an amazing Irish jazz singer called Mary Coughlan in Kampo studios in New York (Tom Waits and Elvis Costello dropped by!).

My first recording session in Abbey Road. And the first album mix session i finished in my own Suite Studios, here in Dublin.

Marc works with Muse in the studio as well as in a live capacity, so it’s no wonder the shows are sonically brilliant. Audiotechnews wanted to know about Marc’s influence on the sound of the artists he works with. His gear preferences, if you will.

Do you have any particular gear that you consider puts the ‘Marc Carolan stamp’ on things?

Pre Amps - Live the XL4 pre’s cannot be beaten. Studio, loving my new John Hardys at the moment. Comps – All hail the Distressor!!

Muse at Wembley would have to be the one!

Also, mixing an album for an amazing irish jazz singer called Mary Coughlan in Kampo studios in New York (Tom Waits and Elvis Costello dropped by!).

My first recording session in Abbey Road.

And the first album mix session i finished in my own Suite Studios, here in dublin.

Marc has also worked with such names as The Cure, Royseven, Turn, Wormhole, Mary Coughlan, Shellac, Sickboy, Melaton, The Pogues, and a great many more, either as engineer and or producer.

Oh, and the full interview is going to be available to our RSS subscribers only. That’s ok, though, as it’s free – and you can sign up easily. You should either see a link on this posting, or at the top right of the page. Sign up, and get the interview delivered to you!

Oh yeah, and he’s done sound for Metallica for 23 years.

So this time, we’ll let the audio guru, Mick, tell it for himself (courtesy of Unity Audio)

“I’ve recently had the Earthworks mics on evaluation from UK distributor Unity Audio for another project and was seriously impressed with the results, their extended high frequency response gives a fantastic openness and clarity, which was perfect for Led Zeppelin’s dynamic open drum sound. Essentially, I used several of the DK25/L drum mic sets, each coming with 3x SR25 cardioids, and a KickPad, which is an XLR in-line filter optimised for kickdrums, long with two, top of the line SR30 cardioids”.

“ I had a main X/Y pair pointing down above Jason’s head, to get an overall top kit sound, and another pair of SR25’s on the extreme outer edges of the kit, pointing down and slightly away from the centre of the kit to handle the cymbals on either side. For snare, I used an SR25 underneath, and a SM57 on top. For kick, I used a combination of SR25 just outside the sound hole, and a Beta 52 just inside, both had the Earthworks KickPad in-line filters. The SR30 was used on the top side of the hi-hat, with another SR30 for the timpani, the new Earthworks, goose necked Periscope series P30 was used underneath the main ride cymbal, which I could position to capture a nice balance between the bell of the cymbal and the stick”.

“I’m using the new Midas digital XL8 console, and that allowed me in the sound check to record impulse responses from all the drum mics from a single snare hit, then analyse all the mic waveforms and enter precise delay information on the Midas to compensate for phase issues, resulting in a really solid sounding kit. I’m now really looking forward to using the Earthworks for the next Metallica tour”.

“I’m the chief engineer at Kampo in Greenwich Village. I work regularly as a crew member on ABC’s Good Morning America, on the Record Plant Remote truck, and I freelance when I can. I spent a long time at the now defunct NYC Hit Factory, but we don’t like to talk about that.”

Audiotechnews found Greg a funny, friendly and likeable guy, more than willing to share a few stories and some experience. So much so, that we took advantage of his good nature, got him drunk and REALLY got him talking.

(The drunk bit is not true).

Here’s some of what we spoke about. The rest of the interview is available to RSS subscribers.

ATN: You’ve worked with a massively eclectic array of artists now, but there must have been times in your career when you’ve thought ‘How am I meant to record this?’

So tell us about them!

“Well, I got to spend quite a few years assisting many other engineers at many levels of the industry so I got to see all sorts of methods used on all sorts of instruments for all sorts of genres. Many engineers brought an attitude of “this is the only way to record ________” and I sort of saw through their bull, because i’d seen plenty of situations where that method either didn’t work, or there was an alternate that worked just as well. I spent time with engineers who’d spend an hour on each instrument swapping mics out and wearing out musicians, and guys who got killer sounds in no time flat and worked seamlessly and invisibly with the flow of the musicians. I worked with guys who wouldn’t accept microphone substitutions when they were asking for some pretty esoteric mics in large numbers, and folks who could roll with the situation and whatever was available from the mic locker.”

“Many bands come through with a fixed touring setup that I can’t change much or the band will get cranky. Some bands will have mic endorsements and carry all their own mics and I have to deal with what they give me with minimal substitutions. More often than not, that leads to me having to deal with at least 1 element in the mix that is simply mic’ed with the wrong tool for the job.”

ATN: Have they become career highlights for you because you worked through and delivered a successful product?

“Mm.. Hard to pick any one particular band or situation. I’m always proud when I do something for a live show or something that’s meant to be short lived like a broadcast or webstream and winds up on an album, enshrined forever. Occasionally I’ll even get credited for it too. That’s happened several times, and I’ve only found out about most of those things by being vain and tossing my name in a search engine.”

“But lets see who some of the coolest bands were……”

Only for subscribers

ATN: Do you have any particular gear that you consider puts the ‘Greg Thompson stamp’ on things? Whether its a particular mic/pre-amp for a kick drum, outboard effects or plugins?

“No. I believe that gear comes in 2 types – priceless and worthless. An original C-12 or U-47 may be as close to “priceless” as microphones get, but if it starts crackling midway through a recording, then it has just become “worthless” to me. I’ll take 10 working SM-57s over 1 “touchy” U-47. Also, because I do a ton of live band on a stage or in the same room, I never get to use something like a 47 or a C-12 because their pickup pattern is too wide for me to get a usable vocal or acoustic guitar sound. So in that situation, mics like that are worthless to me.”

ATN: Going into it more – whats your ideal gear rider for a recording session?

“I never want to see a Beta 52 on bass drum.
You’d better have a damn good reason to be using a Neumann KMS 105 on vocals. That’s about it.
Both mics sound good on the right source in the right situation, but I’ve been hosed by those 2 mics more often than any other microphones combined.

ATN: What are you working on right now?

“Right now I’m doing mostly television work that’s pretty unglamorous, but pays the bills in between doing the big video shoots.”

ATN: Anything you’d like to work on/anyone you’d like to work with?

“I always joke that I’d like to work with Led Zeppelin or that whomever I may be working with sounds good, but they’re no Led Zeppelin, but I believe that you should never work with your idols if you want to keep them as idols. Because once you work with them, you’re exposed to their shortcomings and it ruins the illusion of what makes them your idol in the first place.”

ATN: What should we look out for of yours in 2008 then?

“Keep an eye open for things posted online from Clearchannel and AOL, as well as some indie band releases and the occasional band performance I mix on Good Morning America.”

ATN: Anything else to add?

“It’s a brave new world out there for folks working in audio. Anybody can afford the gear to record and mix the music, and so anybody does. Few musicians under 40 feel that they should pay to make an album, when they can do it themselves for free. Few labels feel they should have to pay anybody to record an album since the bands can do it themselves for free. Few people feel they should pay for music since they can download and share copies of it for free. The same 10 engineers have been mixing every album you hear on the radio and TV for the past 10 years and they’re not retiring anytime soon. I see advertisements for schools to teach you “the exciting career of audio engineering” and they pump out students by the hundreds every year. I don’t know how many folks breaking into the business are going to be able to do it for a living, so keep that in mind when you decide you want to take out a loan and open your own recording studio.”

I’m willing to bet there are dozens people out there who think they can do what I do faster and better and are willing to do it for half the price I charge. I have a wife and 2 kids to look after. I have bills to pay. I need to save up for my retirement and college for my kids. This isn’t the dream job they promise you in the ads for those recording schools, and if I’d put as much effort into selling life insurance or mutual funds as I had in working my way through the studio system, I’d have a heck of a lot more to show for it. I still enjoy going to work almost every day, and I look forward to pulling up the faders and seeing what cool things I can do. I’m not sure how many other people actually enjoy their job as much as I do.

The rest of the interview is available to RSS subscribers only (and there is some cracking stuff in there). Greg is an engineer after my own heart. Any type of live sound involves some sort of compromise in order to make the overall result the best it can be. Anyone who says otherwise….?

Robert Plant’s personal sound engineer, Roy Williams, was on the desk too! I suppose it was a case of one hand each on the desk, and the remaining digits meeting to form a bond of fear and mutual respect. Yes I mean holding hands.
Pro Sound News report this

As Big Mick admitted afterwards, “The pressure for this gig was definitely on!”

With that in mind, audio for the show was supplied by various UK-based sound rental companies, including Britannia Row and Major Tom Ltd., the latter of which brought an enormous Meyer Sound PA based around Milo and Mica loudspeakers, while the former had, among other gear, a Midas XL8 digital mixing system on hand for the FOH position and a Midas Heritage 3000 handling monitors at stage-side. Making an unofficial real-world debut, Klark Teknik’s DN9696 high resolution hard disk recorder was used to record the event for posterity.

To be fair, more than a few (reporters) remarked on rough spots in the mix early on, but The Independent, Billboard and Uncut all conceded that the sound was on track by the time “Black Dog,” the evening’s third number, began–and fans quoted in The Telegraph went so far as to call the evening’s audio “fabulous.”

“It was like a rollercoaster ride,” Big Mick laughed. “You had better hold on tight!”

Fantastic. Audiotechnews knew he wasn’t going to get tickets, so decided to forget all about it. All of a sudden, he wishes he’d had the kick drum fader, and maybe some toms.

My favourite book on the industry is propbably ‘Black Vinyl, White Powder‘ by Simon Napier-Bell. Great book, great title. And Mr Napier-Bell once invited me to dinner by accident. I didn’t show. I’m not sure if he holds a grudge.

I haven’t read Mr Ramone’s yet, so I’m not going to give him any stick for his writing. Why on earth, though, has he called it ‘Making Records‘?

Digging aside, it’s bound to be an interesting read.

“It’s a professional memoir of Ramone’s life in the recording business, from sweeping floors to hanging microphones to rolling tape to critiquing songs to winning Grammys. It’s shot through with anecdotes about how his receptionist’s high heels made it onto a Billy Joel record, and how Ramone hung up on President Kennedy. And if you read the book looking for the Phil Ramone formula, well, you will and won’t find it.”

Ramone puts his success down to dedication and his skill as an engineer, as he feels the diverse styles of music he’s worked on mean there is no ‘Phil Ramone sound’.

Phil Ramone will speak at the Cabaret Theatre at the Mohegan Sun Casino, in Uncasville, Conn. on Saturday (1st December) at 1 p.m., followed by a book signing at 2:30. Admission is free.

There’s a really good article in full here

“Early on Monday Nov 5th, a white M.A.N. 7.5 tonne truck with tail lift, reg FN54 FPZ on hire to John Hornby Skewes & Co. Ltd. and containing an HK Audio COHEDRA line array concert and numerous other PA systems, was stolen from the car park at the Innkeepers Lodge, Sheldon, Birmingham.”

Anyone with any information on this theft should contact 0845 1135000, and ask for Stetchford Police Station, quoting crime reference number 20D31517707, or JHS themselves at +44 (0) 113 286 5381.