RECORDING TECHNIQUES WITH ALEX WILSON

THE MUSICAL MASTERMIND BEHIND SLEEPMAKESWAVES HAS STARTED TO PRODUCE THE BAND’S RECORDS. IT’S A REWARDING PROCESS, BUT ONE THAT REQUIRES A CERTAIN DISCIPLINE TO UNDERTAKE.

Alex Wilson is a man of many talents. He’s the bassist and key creative force behind Sydney post-rock outfit sleepmakeswaves, he regularly pens gear reviews for this very magazine (just a few pages away), and more recently, he’s stepped outside the recording booth to learn the art of record production.

Though he’s already amassed a sizable collection of clients, Wilson has also started working on his own music, with the ultimate goal of handling all the recording duties on the next sleepmakeswaves record.

Writing an album is one thing, but to produce, engineer and mix your own music requires a certain set of skills, discipline and emotional disconnection to achieve. Though it has it advantages, moving from musician to producer isn’t the easiest process according to Wilson.

You’ve co-produced the last two sleepmakeswaves records. Why did you want to get involved behind the desk?

For albums like ...and so we destroyed everything, Love Of Cartography and Made Of Breath Only, I was overseeing a process of making quite detailed pre-production demos of every track. I was also doing all the electronic production and sequencing, and that’s a big part of our sound. So in retrospect, it seems like co-producing was a natural outgrowth of our band’s creative process, and one that I was really eager to jump into.

It wasn’t the easiest transition, because I don’t have any formal training in music production or audio engineering. I was very confident in my ability to “produce” in a musical sense, but I realised quickly that I had much to learn as an engineer of recorded sound.

What are the advantages of producing your own work?

Understanding the personal dynamics of the band – the things each musician needs to excel and feel satisfied with the result – are some of the really tricky things about producing. So the deep personal connection I have with my bandmates means that they can be pretty straight-up with me about what they want and what needs to be better.

Does that mean you have to be disciplined, and disconnect from the music to some degree?

It’s tempting to leverage the power I have in producing sleepmakeswaves to get my way, and even though collaboration brings better results, I have to fight an urge to make a process fit my vision. When I was co-producing, I tried to act more like a representative for our band as a whole, but in terms of me working alone for sleepmakeswaves, I try to think of myself as an employee of the group.

Is that the most difficult thing to overcome?

The hardest thing is managing perfectionism when I mix. There’s always a nagging feeling about how my work stacks up, and I can sink hours into tweaks or different approaches to try and bring the best out in material. Obviously this is amplified when it’s my band.

I’ve been training myself to sever that emotional connection to some extent, simply for the preservation of my sanity! I lean pretty heavily on Tim [Adderley, drums] and Otto [Wicks-Green, guitar] and their particular sonic tastes, to help guide my choices. They haven’t invested the time I have in learning to be a mixer, but they still have tremendous ears and ideas that are crucial in guiding the process.

For example, I often want to prove my mix skills by adding as much “polish” as possible, and Tim and Otto have often been the ones that push me back towards making things rawer.

Do you produce with the live show in mind as well, or do you view the records as a studio product and keep them in that context?

We went through a very beneficial phase where we realised that the amount of touring we were doing was changing the nature of the band and we wanted to capture that on record. These days, I’m aiming to keep that core of live performance energy and then build a panoramic world of sound around it – headphone recordings that still feel authentic. What we need to pull that off live is a bridge we’ll cross when we come to it.

Based on your experience and ongoing education in production, mixing and so on, do you think more bands should try their hand at getting behind the desk?

I don’t think there’s an ideal way for a band to make music. Self-producing suits my goals at the moment, and is a path we want to pursue as a band. It means autonomy and efficiency, and since we’re not the biggest band in the world, it makes all the creative avenues we want to explore more affordable.

That said, over the past year we’ve kept on doing parts of the process with other established Sydney producers like Nathan Sheehy and Simon Berckelman. There are so many great people to work with out there and I think it would be foolish to close the door on collaboration, just because we’ve expanded our skillset.