RECORDING TECHNIQUES WITH NICHOLAS WILSON

PRODUCING ROCK BANDS IN BYRON BAY SURE SOUNDS LIKE A TOUGH LIFE.

Nicholas Wilson wears a lot of badges in his producing and engineering roles at Rocking Horse Studios in beautiful Byron Bay. But even though he’s done a lot of work with electronic artists and genres of a similar ilk, he’s still very much a rock dog. Why? Well, back in 2005, Rocking Horse was looking for a temporary engineer to come in and cover a session for three weeks. The timing was perfect – Wilson was in town finishing off his audio education, so he decided to take the job. When he arrived, the band turned out to be none other than Wolfmother.

How did you get your start in audio?

I grew up in Switzerland playing and loving music. I always had a real interest in the technical side of things, so I started my studies in audio engineering when I was 18. Then I got a job at a local theatre and mixed mates’ bands at clubs in my free time.

You’ve done a fair bit of work in the rock genre, including a bunch of sessions with Wolfmother frontman Andrew Stockdale. What’s the leading instrument in a rock mix, and how do you ensure it captivates the listener?

I always look at a piece of music

as a whole piece of work – every instrument compliments the other in a certain way. When it comes to rock music, the guitar and vocals often become the focal point as they carry the melody, and the drums and bass are the engine driving it forward. When I’m recording a rock band, I like to get as much of a live feel as possible. I try to capture drums, bass and rhythm guitar all together and then overdub vocals and solos.

Stockdale is an interesting example: you’ve got guitars and vocals in the one package, leading the charge. How do you keep those commanding elements in balance?

When I was recording the Andrew Stockdale, album we tracked the band mostly live and overdubbed some guitar parts and the vocals. I used a Neumann U89 on his vocals, through a Neve 1272 preamp and a Urei 1176LN limiter. The limiter was set quite high, which worked really well on his voice. I used a combination of a Sennheiser MD 441 and an AKG C414 on his guitar cab.

If a guitarist like Stockdale wants to record vocals and guitar at the same time, how do you set the mics up to stop excessive bleeding?

There are a couple of ways.

Sometimes the artist is quite happy to overdub the vocals without playing the guitar. Other times I have the amp set up in a separate room at Rockinghorse so that I can have complete isolation between the guitar and vocals. Sometimes the singer can feel uncomfortable standing in front of a mic and singing without their guitar, so I’d have them sing whilst playing the guitar when it’s not actually plugged in.

Are there any rules you swear by when it comes time to mic up a rock guitar?

Micing up a guitar cab can vary. For overdriven guitars, I like to use a Sennheiser MD 441 pointed directly at the centre of the cone, and a large diaphragm condenser in the edge of the cone. But the main live room at Rockinghorse has a fantastic sound for drums, so I try to capture the room as much as I can. Firstly, I use a combination of close mics on the snare, kick and toms. When it comes to overheads, I like to measure them so that the two mics are the same distance from the snare. I do the same for two room mics at about twice the distance on either side of the kit. Lastly, I use a couple of PZM mics – one I place in front of the kick drum at a distance of about a metre, and the other I

place directly under the snare and overdrive it into a compressor, which creates a really dirty sound.

You’ve also worked with a lot of electronic artists that integrate an element of rock in their music. What process would you use when you want to mix and produce a guitar to integrate nicely with samples, beats and other typical electronic instruments?

The greatest challenge with electronic music is making sure the synths and guitars share a lot of the same bandwidth, and creating enough space for every instrument can be quite difficult. Sometimes if the synths have a real dirty or distorted sound to them, it helps to have the guitar a bit cleaner and vice versa. I do occasionally use hard compression on the guitars to really limit the dynamics so it can sit between the synths.

Does compression play a role when you’re fitting a guitar into an electronic mix?

I try not to over-compress guitars in general. Overdriven guitars tend to be quite saturated as is, so it doesn’t take much for it to sit properly in a mix. I really like using the Neve 2254 compressors on guitars, though.