My old friend Peter Kranzler, known to readers as the One-Eyed Man, tipped me off to an article in the WSJ about Bob Clearmountain, who is in my opinion the most gifted mixer ever to raise a fader.
I was lucky enough to be Clearmountain’s regular assistant for a couple of years, back when I was coming up through the ranks at Power Station — and out all of that great studio’s legendary corral of engineers, he was easily the one from whom I learned the most (with the possible exception of the owner, the former Motown engineer Tony Bongiovi).
Each day I’d come in and set up for the day’s mix. By the time I started working with him regularly, Bob had already established himself as a mixdown specialist, and so the projects had often been recorded elsewhere by some other engineer and just sent to us for mixing. Once I had the multitrack tape spooled up (yes, records were still recorded on two-inch tape back then), the tracks labeled on the console, and the effects plugged in, I’d always run up the faders and have a listen. As often as not the recordings sounded just awful, and I would always be curious to see how Bob could possibly make anything decent out of them once we got to work.
He never failed, though, and I soon came to realize the man was some kind of sorcerer. Over time I came to understand much of how he did what he did — Bob’s a happy, good-natured guy, and was never reluctant to explain his methods to his assistants, as some engineers were — but there are some things you just can’t teach, and he has them in almost supernatural abundance.
You can read the article here. And to get an idea of the scope of Clearmountain’s body of work, check out his discography, here.
2 Comments
M.P.
Yes, I agree. Clearmountain is in a class all by himself, and I am sure it was a joy working along side of him.
I know most of your readers will not find this interesting, but I have a name for the phenomena you speak of pertaining to Clearmountain. It comes from a friend of mine was an assistant engineer years ago at studio called The Sandbox. He noticed that most of the regular mixers and engineers working there would generally achieve pretty good mixes. But, whenever our mutual friend Josh Abbey came in to mix, his mixes were always 10 times better than anyone else there. Just as you mentioned, he used the same equiptment, the same studio, room, etc. The main difference was talent.
I call this “The Singer Principle”, named after my friend, Jim Singer who pointed this out to me while working at The Sandbox. The “Singer Principle” is how quickly and easily your ear/brain adjusts to a mediocre mix. Everything starts to sound good and works well within that relative world. However, the moment a really amazing mixer comes along, then that world is blown apart. What everyone agreed sounded good before, is now mediocre at best by comparison.
And finally, I feel lucky to have learned a lot from our web-host, M.P., who always shared Clearmountain’s view of passing along knowledge to assistants and other engineer. Because of that, I also feel lucky to have learned from B.C. indirectly.
R.D.
Thanks Ron!
Yes, Josh is a very talented engineer, all right.
I haven’t seen him in years — I wonder how he is?
I think I might be tilting my own life back toward the studio before too much longer…