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If You Don't Know Jorma...
Read this great story on The Fur Peace Ranch in Delta Magazine this month
Bowie in Wonderland
Tony Visconti on Mixing David Bowie's Heathen at Manhattan's Looking Glass Studiosby Patrick Runkle
"People who have heard Heathen already are hearing new things in the [5.1 mix], including Bowie."
"A lot of 5.1 mixing seems to be that the guys mix the band in stereo in the front, throw the reverb in the back, and maybe there's a lonesome tambourine over your shoulder"
There was a major thunderstorm dumping rain on me as I arrived at the Looking Glass Studios in lower Manhattan. Having just flown in from the dry Bay Area autumn, I hadn't seen an umbrella in six months and was completely unprepared. I sloshed down the entrance hallway trying not to flick water on any of Philip Glass's gold records, and studio manager Kara Bilof offered me the studio's emergency hair dryer.
Twenty minutes later, as I was listening to the sparkling, brand-new 5.1 mix of David Bowie's Heathen album in Studio A, Bilof told me that Bowie lives only a few blocks away from the studio and occasionally walks to the Looking Glass. He keeps some of his personal guitars and keyboards in Studio B, and I couldn't help wondering whether the hair dryer I had just used could have been called upon in a similar emergency to dry the hair of Ziggy Stardust himself.
The Album
After a decade of meandering, the general consensus seems to be that Heathen is a return to form for David Bowie. This album—his first on Columbia Records and the new imprint ISO—seethes with life, and confirms for many that the collaboration between Bowie and veteran producer Tony Visconti has resulted in some of Bowie's best work. Heathen is their first full album together since 1980's Scary Monsters.
Heathen was originally released in June 2002 on CD, with the multi-channel SACD version just released in December. Hector Castillo, assistant engineer on all the Heathen sessions at the Looking Glass, gave me some background:
"Before Heathen, David did an album called Toy for Virgin that, for one reason or another, he never gave to them," Castillo said. "So David has an entire unreleased album in the can. Mark Plati [who worked with David throughout the nineties] produced it, and Tony did the string arrangements on that album. That was actually the first time that Tony and David had worked together in 20 years. And they had such a good time that they decided to do the new album together."
Most of the basic tracks for Heathen were laid down in early 2002 at Allaire Studios in Shokan, New York, with all mixing as well as additional recording and overdubs done at the Looking Glass.
"A couple tracks from Toy made it onto Heathen," Castillo explained. "'Slip Away' was on Toy, but that was completely re-recorded for Heathen. 'Afraid' was recorded for Toy, and we re-mixed it and did some overdubs. Also, the SACD version has four bonus tracks, and one of those is from Toy."
Castillo said that Visconti and Bowie had a great time collaborating on the album. "The two of them laughed all day, every day," Castillo said. "They really were like little kids. Tony played lots of parts himself, and everything came together really well."
Visconti, a native New Yorker, is one of the rock world's most influential producers. He is most famous for long producing relationships with prog- and glam-rock acts like T. Rex, Sparks, the Strawbs, the Moody Blues and Bowie, among many others. Visconti is a thoughtful and engaging interviewee, speaking his mind directly and having a formidably commanding and contemporary knowledge of recording. He took some time out of his busy schedule to meet Castillo and me in Studio A at the Looking Glass to talk about recording and mixing Heathen.
"It's always a great opportunity to remix a project, because a few months after a record comes out, I always want to mix it again," Visconti said. "We finished mixing Heathen in April 2002; it was processed really quickly and came out in June. We came back here soon after to start the 5.1 mix."
"Some of the original mixes on Heathen we did at the very last minute. We had been mixing for a few weeks, and when we were almost finished David decided that he wanted a complete redesign on three mixes," Visconti said. "We couldn't even use this room; we had to do it in Studio B. I was happy that we pulled it off, because Studio B is a bit less technologically advanced than this room. I do most of my mixing in the Mac, and I don't do many fader movements anymore."
Mixing Heathen in 5.1
On the 5.1 mix of Heathen, Bowie told me through email, "Tony played me the new mix the other day and I have to say it's an incredibly rewarding experience. I listened to my own album with completely fresh ears as though listening to the work of another artist. The amount of new sonic information is stupendous."
Listening to the 5.1 version of "Slow Burn"—the first single from Heathen—in the room where it was mixed was a special treat, and the music made a truly visceral impact as it thundered forth from the Genelec 5.1 monitoring system. It occurred to me that Bowie and Visconti are two people who have really elevated the art of recording rock music; it's only fitting that they take an album as good as Heathen into the multi-channel realm.
Visconti was thrilled to be mixing the album in surround. "Doing it in 5.1 was a great opportunity to explore the depth of some of the layers that we created," Visconti explains. "We'd have about three or four keyboards and maybe some ambient guitar, and in stereo they make up one huge sound. In 5.1, it was great to pull them apart a bit and have certain things in the rear speakers, certain things on the right and left, and do all of this without spoiling the effect of the blend."
"David [Torn, Bowie's guitarist,] has a gorgeous sound. He records on three tracks at once; his main guitar is on one track, and he sends stereo effects to two other amplifiers. So we put the rear ambient mics of his guitar in the rear speakers, while keeping his main guitar in the front. That alone is worth the 5.1 mix, and to be in the middle of this is like being in a film soundtrack, with just one guitar."
"We were able to separate these textures out so that people who have heard Heathen already are hearing new things in the music for the first time, including Bowie." Visconti smiled while describing Bowie's reaction to the mix: "David was just flabbergasted. He kept saying, 'I did that?' He would turn around and wink or give the thumbs up whenever he heard something great."
"The other thing about this 5.1 mix is that I tried to make the drums huge without destroying everything else," Visconti said. "On this mix, we put the drums in the center instead of putting them in a soundscape in the front two speakers. So the listener feels like the drummer on this mix. The reason for doing this is that you need a lot of energy for a kick drum; my philosophy is to use all the speakers possible without distracting from the mix."
Also on the drums, Visconti said, "When we were recording them, we put ambient mics thirty feet in the air above the kit. We were in an big, old studio [Allaire] and we had mics hanging from the rafters. In the 5.1 mix, we put the ambient drum mics in the rear. So when Matt [Chamberlain] hits the snare drum, you hear a space. Even though the space was actually going up, in the mix you feel it going through you. You get some idea of the hugeness of the room."
"There's one track on the album where we recorded the drums here at Looking Glass, and we had to do a little trick to make it sound comparable," Visconti explained. "We took the ambient mics here and we delayed them on Pro Tools, so it's just a little bigger. We couldn't really imitate the other room, but we had to do something to make it match up."
I tell Visconti that I was especially struck by the drums in the 5.1 mix of "Sunday," the opening cut from Heathen. "The drums just sound thunderous, right in the center of the mix, perfectly balanced and powerful," I said.
"Well, I guess we pulled that off," Visconti says with a wry smile.
According to Visconti and Castillo, bass guitar is another thing that needs to be spread out in a 5.1 mix. "Once you put the kick drum on all the speakers, you have to do the same with the bass, or it sounds out of balance," Castillo explained.
"The vocal is in the center channel," Castillo said. "We also pulled it to the sides a bit to make it bigger, but the vocal is so clear when it's in the center."
"Basically, guitars and rock stuff, apart from the drums and bass, were pushed to the front," Visconti said. "Choirs, strings and keyboards are wrapped around you in the back. We tried to make a semicircle in the back and a semicircle in the front."
"There were some other times that we used the sides as a stereo pair," Castillo said. "So, maybe we'd use left front and left rear for horns that we recorded in stereo."
"Yes, that lets us have these interesting pockets of stereo on the left and right," Visconti continued. "Even though you're usually facing front, you hear that. I'm quite amazed at the information that we can perceive through our ears."
5.1 Technology
"Something Hector and I had trouble with the entire time was the subwoofer track. We didn't know what to do; we read conflicting articles, and I still feel like we're all beta testers for this technology," Visconti said. "I think Hector and I are some of the pioneers who are making some headway and sense out of it all. With all the format wars going on, I wondered whether we should print the [bass] track or just let someone's home receiver take care of it. These were big questions."
"Fortunately, we have heard this on a few systems now, and it seems to me like our hunches on what to print to the subwoofer track paid off. But it does sound different on different systems. I know that if I hear this in DTS it's going to sound different, and if I hear it on Dolby AC-3 it's going to sound different."
"We mastered with Vlado Meller at Sony Studios here in New York. He does these SACDs every day of the week, in betweeen sandwiches and Italian meals, that is," Visconti chuckled. "He's a 5.1 expert. When we walked in, we got the vibe that he had heard it and seen it all before. But after an hour or two working with these tracks, he loved the choices that we had made. He loved the fact that we used all the speakers."
"A lot of 5.1 mixing seems to be that the guys mix the band in stereo in the front, throw the reverb in the back, and maybe there's a lonesome tambourine over your shoulder," Visconti laughed, turning his head. "And you think, 'Who's playing that tambourine? Who walked in here?'"
"With the 5.1 mix of Heathen, you can really swivel your chair around to face the rear and hear a whole new mix. That was my intention, to give the listener a new experience. Whenever I mix in stereo, I try to add little hidden things that the listener may only discover in headphones, just to make it interesting to hear the song over and over again. I try to do the same thing with 5.1 mixes."
"We got Vlado's approval on the mix we did, and we had some people here from Sony, and they loved it," Visconti said. "Someone told me that the mix we did of 'Slow Burn' was the best 5.1 mix he had ever heard. So everyone on this level is happy with it, and I just can't wait for the public to hear what we've done."
5.1 is not Visconti's first foray into multi-channel mixing. "I mixed a few albums in Quad in the mid-seventies, and to my knowledge they were never even released. I mixed the David Live album in Quad in 1974, and it was stupendous. You actually got the feel that you were in the theater," Visconti said. "But I was chastised by RCA for not putting primary information in the rear speakers. I felt that was one time—because it was a live concert—where I had to put the band in the front and the audience in the rear. They said that it screwed up the tracking system and the stylus would fly off the record. So much for that."
"I also did a Quad mix for a band I produced called Carmen. It was fantastic; they were flamenco rock. We had dancers in who would click their heels and I'd mix it to move between the speakers. EMI said that it was a terrific showpiece and that they loved it, but the Quad mix never got released."
"I think everyone looked at the sales [of Quad] and decided to throw in the towel. If the record companies would dig in their vaults, I bet they would find lots of Quad mixes sitting around that they never released," Visconti said. "Because of the economics in those days, Quad just never took off. But nowadays it's wonderful because people already have home theater systems, and the 5.1 music mixes fit quite naturally in there. People might want to upgrade their speakers for music, but still, I think 5.1 is a different ballgame from Quad entirely."
"I think multi-channel is very viable. When I mixed the Ziggy Stardust live DVD, I went and bought an $800 system. I set it up and I was totally impressed, especially for movies. Now I really want to upgrade my speakers just for music." Visconti continued, "But for movies it's absolutely great. With all the sound effects, I thought The Matrix in 5.1 was terrific. Even with some of the older films, they're faking it a bit, but you still feel more involved in the action."
"Slowly but surely, it will gain ground," Visconti said of multi-channel music. "It's definitely an upper-middle-class market so far, because it's a lot of money to spend on equipment. You also get the complaint of where to put the speakers, but really the speakers are quite small. I hide my subwoofer behind a cabinet, and it does a fine job."
"I am a bit worried about the format wars, though. DTS is everywhere, and from what I've heard it's the most superior system apart from direct digital audio. I also have faith in Sony's format because the sample rate is so high, although I haven't really had the chance to hear it much yet," Visconti said. "To be honest, I have very little time for Dolby's AC-3. It should be just a movie format. To my ears it sounds grainy, and there's very little separation between channels. I did the Ziggy DVD with discrete reverbs in very specific places, and in AC-3, the reverb was all one mish-mash. It was very soggy, like a ball of reverb hanging over your head. It made my skin crawl."
"So, it seems DTS and Sony are equal in quality," Visconti said. "DTS has a franchise, and Sony has a proprietary format, so I hope that all gets settled."
Recording Heathen
The instrument mics used on Heathen varied from song to song. "On the guitar, it was a 57, a 421 or a U87," Castillo said.
The drums were a little more esoteric. "Matt has his own thing going on," Castillo said. "The idea was to go for a big mono drum sound, and Matt has his own old Altec mic that's pretty beat up but has a unique sound. He also has a Shure Level Lock compressor that really pumps. So the sound from the Altec mic and Shure was mixed with the other drum mics: a D112 on the kick, a 57 on the snare, 421's on the hi-hats, and U87's for the overheads."
"Tony did an interesting thing recording the strings," Castillo said. "All the string players had pick-ups, and in addition to the C-12's that we used to record them, there's this other part of the string sound that's amplified and effected through the pick-ups. It's a special sound, blending the acoustic quartet with an electric quartet."
"The bass was mostly recorded direct," Castillo said. "We have a special direct box that was custom-built for us. Keyboards were taken direct as well."
"Tony also used his legendary vocal miking technique on this album," Castillo said. "He places a gated vocal mic, say, ten feet away from the source, and another one farther still. And when David sings loud enough, one or both of the gates open up and add more room sound to the vocal."
For the vocals, Castillo explained, "David always records with a Manley Gold Reference mic that he owns." On the question of pitch correction, Castillo says, "There's almost zero pitch correction on any of David's vocals. We mostly use Auto-Tune to fix up single notes that are slightly off in the instruments."
"It's amazing to see Tony and David work together," Castillo explained. "It's not like they laid down each track separately and agonized over what to do with it. No, they knew what they wanted, and printed everything on hard. With the vocal recording, it wasn't like each mic was on a different track and it was tweaked in the mix; it's all printed to one track during recording. I think you can really hear the spontaneity and directness of their methods in the finished recording."
The recordings went straight to hard disk through Apogee converters. "Most of the original stereo mixes of Heathen done with Logic Audio, and the multi-channel mixes were done in Logic and Pro Tools," Castillo said. "We recorded with a 44.1 kHz sampling rate at 24 bits of resolution."
The Studio
Part of the unique sound of Heathen can be attributed to the unique facility where it was mixed. Perched in the 9th floor of a quaint office building in the NoHo area of lower Manhattan, the Looking Glass studio is owned by Philip Glass, and most of the celebrated composer's musical output is recorded there. While I was visiting, the Glass team had just finished work on Naqoyqatsi, and orchestrator Michael Reisman was tucked away working on the score to the Nicole Kidman film The Hours. Other artists who have recently recorded at the Looking Glass include Björk (Vespertine) and Suzanne Vega (Songs in Red and Gray).
"Looking Glass is a charming studio that really has the best of all worlds," Visconti said. "It has a great SSL G series console, and they have six 8-channel Apogee converters that are just amazing. Kurt [Munkasci] is a vintage freak, and he keeps buying racks and racks of this great vintage gear. For me, Looking Glass is like my home now. You wouldn't believe you're in Manhattan, it's so serene and peaceful, and this room gives a great rock sound. We mixed all of Heathen here between the two studios. David just adores it here, and he's got his own private entrance."
Bowie's next album, which he plans to start early in 2003, will be recorded and mixed entirely at the Looking Glass with Visconti producing.
"What we have here is basically a creative, collaborative environment where these great artists can work," Bilof said. "We're so happy that David considers this his home base studio."
Studio B
Visconti and Bowie have set up shop in Looking Glass Studio B, and Castillo gave me a guided tour of the new Bowie/Visconti working space. I noticed a few interesting guitars, a Yamaha DX7 and a beautiful Roland Jupiter-8, one of the most sought-after vintage analog synths, all with masking tape marked "DB" stuck to them. As Bowie says on Heathen: "In space, it's always 1982."
As a special touch, there's an androgynous, life-size blow-up doll gazing out the window of Studio B at the Manhattan skyline.
My attention was also drawn to a Stylophone sitting on the shelf beside the case for Bowie's Manley mic. The Stylophone is the unmistakable late-sixties "toy" piano instrument that uses a metal keyboard to make piano and organ-type sounds. The instrument is played with an attached metal stylus that, when touching the metal "keys," completes a circuit and makes sound.
The Stylophone contributed the memorable organ sound during the choruses of "Slip Away," which is track 3 on the new disc. "There's a lot of Stylophone on Heathen," Castillo said. "David has both the large and small versions of it. It has a mini-phono output, and we took that direct."
I have to admit that rummaging through Bowie's personal instrument collection was quite a thrill, but it seems as if Bowie gets some of his obscure musical gadgets the same way we all do:
"I think David spends a lot of time on eBay," Castillo said.