Listen To The Album Jack Johnson In Between Dreams

[Kylee Mccandrew]

Fromhis home in Los Angeles, Robert Carranza, the album's mixer and engineer, elaborates. "The whole focus of making this record was to simplify things. Even the process of using outboard gear was enormously simplified: there was hardly any. We trusted our instincts, and we had the good sense of not being bound by how people are making records right now. We did our own thing. We focused on feel, and so if something felt right, we went with it. Even when it came to mastering, we told Bernie Grundman that this record didn't need to be loud and that the acoustic songs should feel like acoustic songs and be less loud than the other songs. And it's interesting for people to see that a hit record can be made in such a very simple way!"

"The previous records I did with Jack were recorded to Pro Tools at his studio in Hawaii," recalls Carranza. "Jack had never made a record to tape, and he asked me one day: 'What's the difference?' I replied 'I don't know whether you'll hear the difference, but I can show you what the difference is.' So he decided to do it on tape, and we soon realised that this was a good decision. Most of all it forced us to pay attention. With Pro Tools you spend a lot of time looking at the screen and you start listening with your eyes. Working with tape forced us to sit back and really listen to takes and to what was good or not in terms of feel, and be a little bit more forgiving of little mistakes that happen. That was really liberating.

Jack Johnson's emphasis on live playing and performance is refreshingly different today."Jack had gotten tired of listening with his eyes, and he loved to sit back and close his eyes and just use his ears. He also enjoyed the fact that we only had a limited amount of tracks, and for most songs we didn't even fill all of them up. We went with the attitude: 'Let's not be precious about it, if it works let's leave it as it is. The feeling of the song is more important than the technical side.' The other thing that helped was that we had moments of pause in between takes and songs. With Pro Tools the files come up instantly, but it takes a while for the tape machine to roll back, and it takes another minute to change reels. These are little moments of quiet in the recording process, and they made us pay more attention. The pauses forced me to refocus and get my thoughts together, and pay attention to what was happening next.

"Electric guitars were also pretty straightforward, with an SM57 on the amp. The acoustic guitar was usually a Gibson J45, sometimes a Cole Clark, recorded with an AKG C451. I'd screened off the acoustic guitar so it didn't bleed as much. Some songs started off acoustically, and Jack would say 'There's too much bleed on the mic, let's try an electric,' and all of a sudden the vibe of the song changed. We simply went with it. 'If I Had Eyes' was one of those songs.

Regarding the signal chains, simplicity again ruled. "For vocals it was the U47 going into an API 512, into an LA2A with a dB compression at the most, straight to tape. I've learned in the past that you want to use no or very little EQ during recording, because if you later want to drop in a fix, you'll never match it. The drums were all cut through an API preamp. For bass we went through a Universal Audio 610, and guitar and piano went through the Neve 1073. That was pretty much the signal chain on everything.

"There was no compression, not on the bass or the guitar. I only compressed the kick drum a little bit, and I mean just a dB, to smooth it out a little. That was it. Everything else was pretty flat. Because of their great musicianship, they balanced themselves amazingly. It was almost unnatural. I think the fact that they didn't use headphones when laying down the basic tracks helped them to really listen to each other. And finally, we didn't use a click track, apart from for the song 'Hope'. We struggled a bit with the tempo on that one, and when we finally agreed on a tempo, we started the song with a click track and then faded it out. Again, we trusted our instincts, and did our own thing. If it felt right, we went with it."

"One of the best lessons I ever learned was when mixing Los Lobos' Live At Fillmore [DVD 2004, CD 2005]. I was in the studio and the band were on the road, and I was uploading mixes for them to listen to. One day I got a call from the band, and they were all in a conference room, and they said 'Hey, have you listened to the rough mixes?' And I was like 'No, why?' And they replied 'Have a listen and then call us back.' These mixes were really quick, rough live mixes that I had done in the truck. So I listened to them, and they sounded incredible. As a result I told my engineer to pull back all the faders and effects and I started again from scratch. It's one of those lessons that you learn not from engineers, but from musicians. And it is what happened to me with 'Static'. I started overdoing it, and I suddenly realised that I was back with what I did with Los Lobos.

"So when I came back to the song, I simply put the faders back up, and then started with the lead vocal [21, below] and the live guitar [14]. I then added the vocal double, followed by the other instruments around it, and finally the rhythm section. The whole song took maybe four hours to mix! With this album, mixing was a matter of lining up the faders and listening constantly. I'd listen to a song four or five times, take a break, and listen again. I was aware that the tape was degrading with each playback, so the pressure was on. 'Static' was very easy to mix. Technically there's very little happening in it. My main concern was that the feeling came across. That's what I spent the most time on.

"I used no compression at all on the electric guitar, the bass, or the piano. The only thing I did on the bass was manually ride a couple of notes that didn't come out clearly. Most of the stuff was done without automation. The piano had a little bit of SSL EQ to bring out the high mids. I wanted it to speak a little more. The drums were also really straightforward, with all the faders straight up. I'm a big fan of the Empirical Labs EL7 Fatso Jr, and I added a little bit of compression on the drum bus with that. It made a difference, but not a huge difference. It just gave it a bit more size. The ambience on the drums came from the overheads and the room mic.

"It was a very simple mix, but complex to do at the same time. My first pass was very close. Jack had some little comments, for example about the banjo, that really jumped out at you. He wanted it really tucked down, and I was like 'But it's just two seconds, and like this nobody is going to hear it, and we spent so much time recording it with a great mic.' That was me the engineer. When I tucked it down it sounded great. It is well understated, on purpose, because the whole song is supposed to feel understated."

"A friend of mine, Rich Costey [see SOS, March 2008] recommended the ATC50 monitors, which definitely complemented the music. But they were too big for the control room, causing a big bump in the bottom end, so I had them in an office room to the side. Sometimes I'd play back through them while sitting in the control room, with the office doors open, just to get a mono perspective. I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to monitors, and I tried the PMC AML1 monitors, but I was thrown off because for some reason there was a big void in a couple of frequencies. Then I tried some M&K monitors, but they didn't work, even though they are great speakers. So in the end I settled on my tried-and-tested Genelec 1030s. All of a sudden it sounded perfect in the room. I also always reference things on a cheap boombox from Circuit City. It all gives a different perspective."

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