Bob Power

Torsten Schmidt

You rarely see me sitting around with these things in an interview [gestures to papers] But with the man, who we are very pleased to welcome here today, there’s just so much to go through, that we wanted to make absolutely sure that we’re not missing any vital parts. Well, he’s the man, apart from classic quotes, like, “I’m Bob and we really have to hear this one from your end, and I’m really, really tired of doing this guys.”

Bob Power

That’s funny, I remember that.

Torsten Schmidt

OK, before we get into this, I mean the man, well, as the Roots put it, “Coming to New York to mix? Go to Bob Power with the snares and the kicks,” and so on and so on. I mean, he’s quoted all over. I guess there’s not a single person in this room who doesn’t have his name on at least 10 records at his home. If so, show up later, and we’ll sort you out. Somehow involved in the Roots, A Tribe Called Quest, Stetsasonic, De La Soul, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, you name it. Give a big hand to Mr. Bob Power.

[applause]

Bob Power

Hi, I’m going to say something that may make me a little unpopular, but – can you guys hear me OK?

Audience Members

Yeah.

Bob Power

If you could, if there are any smokers in the room, if you could smoke outside? The rest of you will like that, I know. It’s very funny because in the States now, things are so different that, and I was in Seattle recently – I live in New York – and we always think of New York as the place you can do anything, and it’s cool, but you can’t smoke in public places in New York now. And I went to Seattle, which is maybe the most progressive city in the universe. They treat the homeless as a political force in Seattle, it’s crazy. [laughter] But you can still smoke in the bars there, it’s wild. But anyway, I’m happy to be on the continent and I’m happy to be with the smoke. But if you would not here, that’s great.

[applause]

Torsten Schmidt

How do you enforce such a verdict in your studio?

Bob Power

Ah, that’s two things. Number one, pretty much, other than weed, most of the artists I’ve worked with don’t smoke. And not even weed, that much. And I have these great excuses. I can always say: number one, very bad for the gear. Very bad for the equipment. And my other excuse for a lot of things is, if you do that in here, I won’t last that long, and your record won’t sound that good. You know, it’s very interesting, I have a lot of people ask me, because I’ve worked with a lot of different people and I survived Wu-Tang, which if you know Wu-Tang, you understand. [laughter] And you know, Ahmir Questlove once said to me, “You’re the only person in the world who doesn’t have a horror story about working with this artist or that artist, and they pulled steel on me, and they did this and they did that.” If people know that you’re really there to help them, and help do their thing and not yours, that’s the best passport in the world to a lot of different people. And it’s a very interesting point which actually colors everything, I think, we do. There may be a lot of people here who work by themselves in the studio, and I think at one point or another we all do. But at the same time, a skill that you can actually work on just like every other skill, that people forget about many times, is your attitude. And we’ll get back to this during a lot of other things, but that’s a very interesting thing about how I get people not to do that stuff. If people know that you’re there for their best interests, it’s amazing what that does.

Torsten Schmidt

Does that even apply to playing mafia weddings in Bensonhurst?

Bob Power

It applies to playing mafia weddings in Bensonhurst. He must have been on my website [gestures towards Torsten] On my website, www.bobpower.com, and I only say that I have no sponsors, but it’s a really fun place to go – there’s a lot of hidden stuff, too – there’s all sorts of objects, that don’t say that, but if you touch them they take you to different places. There’s a timeline of my life. I didn’t feel like doing a traditional CV or resume, but there’s a little timeline. Among other things, I was a working guitar player and arranger for a long, long time, and like every musician in the world, it doesn’t matter how good you are, you do what in New York is called “club dates,” which is basically...

Torsten Schmidt

Was called or is called?

Bob Power

Is. And “club dates,” you would think is music in a club, but it’s not. On the West Coast they call them “casuals,” and basically, you put a tuxedo on, and you go play someone’s wedding or bar mitzvah or confirmation or anniversary party, and it’s a funny thing. When I still wanted to be a player, all the the time, one of the things that convinced me that maybe there was no “there, there”... I mean I wanted to be the world’s most famous studio musician, and I say this on purpose, because one time I went to a club date in a tuxedo and Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, who you may have seen the other day, was playing drums. And it really was a great education into, like — and I was in my 30s already — but it was an incredible education into... Gertrude Stein said, “There is no there, there,” meaning, when you’re a musician, you do a gig, and sometimes it’s a great gig, and sometimes it’s a mafia wedding in Bensonhurst, you know, for 90 dollars, but that’s the way it is.

Torsten Schmidt

So, where is your affection for Gertrude Stein coming from then?

Bob Power

One of my favorite quotes, everyone’s favorite quote… Do you know Oakland, across from San Francisco? Gertrude Stein was commenting on the fact that Oakland has no soul. To her it didn’t. I think it does. But she said, “There is no there, there,” which I love.

Torsten Schmidt

Well, probably to fill in those who might have your name somewhere on their shelves back home, you’re credited with a lot of different things on these albums. I mean, you know, there are zillions of sayings about getting credit, to whom credit is due and whatnot. Who are all these different people, all these different roles and who gets credited for what? What does it mean in the reality of studio life?

Bob Power

How many people here are part of a production team when you make music? [some participants raise their hands] How many people work totally by themselves no matter what? [more participants raise their hands] Really? That’s a high number, that’s interesting. You know, what Torsten is referencing to, is sort of who does what job in the studio and how that is credited, and maybe where those lines cross. In the States, and I’m sure here, too, there’s a fairly specific hierarchy of who does what in the studio. You guys can hear over there OK? Every time I turn my head, I go off mic. That’s a very engineers thing to think, I always want to keep this in front of me. After years of saying to MCs, “No, no, no. Stay on the mic!” You know, Common sits there with his eyes closed, goes like this [swaying his head], I say, “No No, stay up there!” Anyway...

Torsten Schmidt

Can you finally show us how to do that or shall we do that later in the [studio]?

Bob Power

You don’t wanna see me! That’s an interesting point, and I’ll get back to that, but if any of you engineer, it’s your responsibility for two things. Number one, educate your clients. You know, don’t say, “Listen man, you really gotta stay on the mic, listen man!” No! Educate them into how microphones work, and that’s a big, big issue. And then, it’s really incumbent upon you as the engineer to make their shit work the way that they wanna do it, not the way you wanna do it, OK? So both those things seem like a contradiction, but they’re both true. Anyway, in the States there’s a fairly well-defined hierarchy of studio personnel. Just because it’s a hierarchy doesn’t mean someone is more important than anyone else, but a lot of people see it that way anyway. In the studio itself, there’s usually the studio assistant, who is supplied by the studio that you hire. As rooms get more sophisticated, that’s more and more important. Rooms become more standardized, and all SSLs work the same way, but to have someone there who really knows – and all of you know this – who really knows the idiosyncrasies of the different rooms is tremendously important. And in fact, if I’m going to a new place to mix or to track, I always say, “Give me your best assistant.” Not because I don’t wanna get out of the chair, but I want someone to be honest with me and say, “You know what? That corner of the room doesn’t sound very good.” And that’s fine, I don’t hate the room then, I’m just gonna be able to do my shit better. So the studio assistant is supplied by the studio, and they are responsible for setting up in front of the session. If everybody is really familiar with this, tell me because I’ll move on. OK? [participants nod] So, the studio assistant sets up for the session, makes sure that they know where everything is in the studio. They call for Chinese food when the artist wants Chinese food. Unfortunately, most of the time they clean up the Chinese food off the floor. Studio assistants work harder than anybody else. They get there an hour early, they leave two hours late. They document everything you do on the session, or they should. How many of you are familiar with the idea of “recall” on a session or “total recall”? Anybody not know that term? [participants raise hands] OK, “recall” is either when you have the computer memorize, or write down on a piece of paper, every setting in the whole studio. So that, in theory, if you need to come back and redo something, it will be exactly the same. It never is, it never, never is, but in theory, that’s the deal.

Torsten Schmidt

That’s a big powerful conspiracy as well because with people talking about, “Oh, he recalled my stuff, and...”

Bob Power

Oh, that’s such bullshit. Remind me of that, because I read something... Do you guys know www.gearslutz.com? It’s a bunch of geeks who have nothing better to do, than be in the studio all day and then go home and write about it. [laughter] And you know, I mean, I got a life, too, but sometimes late at night I got nothing to do and I’ll be zipping through this stuff. Remind me about that, because that’s a really interesting thing.

Anyway, then you have the engineer who is usually hired by the band or by the band’s management, they get paid either by the record label, by the band’s manager, by the band, or not at all. Which is another issue that, if you guys are working engineers, that’s a whole issue that’s very important. Then, the artist and usually that’s the person who that’s on the microphone or on an instrument. And the producer, many times that’s the artist, sometimes it’s the person who’s engineering. Sometimes, and this is another interesting thing that I’ll get back to, is the role of the producer. Actually, I guess I’ve gone through everybody. Then you have “friends and relatives.” [laughter] Who, I’ve got to say, everybody should be comfortable, but generally in terms of the workflow, there’s no reason for anybody to be in the studio other than the people that are doing the work.

Torsten Schmidt

How does that apply to the posse?

Bob Power

You know, if someone is more comfortable with an audience, that’s one thing. But, it’s sort of like drugs in the studio. And you know, I’ve been everywhere. I am a former, and... you know, I just, I know what’s going on. [laughter / claps] But, I generally find – and for some people this isn’t true – I generally find that drugs don’t make things go better in the studio, they make things go worse. And I don’t care, you know, and there are some people who are different. There are some people I know who function much better smoking weed from the minute they get up to the minute they go to sleep. And that’s fine. But for 98 percent of the other things, it just ends up making shit go a little bit slower. And the same thing...

Torsten Schmidt

A little bit as in, really chewing up the time?

Bob Power

Time becomes elastic. The other thing is – and this is interesting, too – because a lot of people’s hours are very, very different. But in general, and this is “Power’s Law of Production No. 93,” I find that after midnight, even if you always work all night, many times after midnight, efficiency tends to take a dive. And it doesn’t mean that you don’t get anything done. And it doesn’t mean you don’t get good stuff done, ‘cause sometimes you get the best stuff done. But sort of, just how quickly things move forward, tends to go down. Anyway, let me get back to producer, because this is a really interesting one. Like many things in general – culture, language, many things – hip-hop has redefined a lot of things about our culture, and about our shared culture. And it definitely has redefined language, it’s redefined ways of dressing. Unfortunately, it has many times redefined ways of walking, which I’m not so down with, but that’s cool. [laughter] And it has redefined the term “producer,” which is really interesting. Someone asked me... I had been scoring TV, doing the scores for TV music, in the late ’70s. And I was still playing, every night, different kinds of gigs, and I was doing a lot of jazz, and basically I had some good gigs scoring television, which was paying for my jazz career. And, I went down to Hollywood and visited this really big television composer that I knew through somebody else, and he said – I was doing a lot of different things – and he said, “What do you really want to do?” And I said, “Well, I really want to produce records.” And he looked at me, didn’t skip a beat, and said, “Well, all you really need to produce records is money.” Which is not untrue. But anyway, the role of a producer is really interesting. Some producers know music inside and out. Some producers don’t know a note of music and they are incredible producers. Some producers just have money. Some producers know music but not in traditional ways. Some producers, and many times in hip-hop, are beat creators. These, and all combinations of these, have become very valid concepts of what a producer does, and it’s fascinating. A lot of old school musicians – and again because hip-hop was really the fulcrum, the point at which a lot of things changed, about popular music and how it’s made – a lot of old school people, including engineers, got really resentful when hip-hop came around. Because they say, “Oh, A. This isn’t music, B. That’s not the right way to do things, C. They don’t know about X, Y, Z, so they don’t deserve this,” and shit like that. Fuck that! It’s interesting now how the concept of producer takes so many different avenues and pieces of those. I also find that in the modern world, and really in the digital age, in the age of communications, there are not so many people anymore who say, “Well, I just make beats on my MPC and that’s all I wanna know.” You know, everybody has come to a new consciousness. I made a note about this. Torsten was talking to me before about some ideas of what to cover. And one of the things I wrote and I like, marked and marked and marked, is, a lot of times, especially in the studio environment but sometimes in a cultural thing, where we may be unsure of ourselves, or... Yeah, don’t sacrifice intelligence for being “down.” You know, a lot of times, and it’s really weird...

Torsten Schmidt

Exclamation marks?

Bob Power

Yeah man, big time! I talk to people a fair amount, I love to talk. I have a couple of espressos and I just go. But I joke when I first get up in front of an audience, ‘cause he mentioned my discography, and it seems like the first thing that happens when I walk into a room full of people is that everybody leans over and goes like this [whispers] to the person next to them, and what they’re really saying is, “Oh shit, he’s white!” You know? [laughter] But that gets me to a really important thing about.

Torsten Schmidt

I mean, that song, with the quote about, “I’m Bob, blah blah blah blah...,” wasn’t Posdnuos saying something about, “I’m a modern day slave,” or something like that?

Bob Power

Yeah, I don’t even remember to tell you the truth. I’m not good with lyrics. I can hear a song.

Torsten Schmidt

But that was a big issue, right? It’s like you have the white guys in the chair of command, and...

Bob Power

That’s a whole other issue. And I’ll go into that real quickly. Basically, as briefly as I can be — we may get back to this. Be yourself, show your intelligence, educate the people around you, share your knowledge, and give all that kind of stuff. And you don’t have to worry about anything, man. Everything will come exactly how — not exactly how you want it because nothing’s like that — but all the good stuff comes around.

That’s an interesting point about the record making process. I feel like black, brown and women people are very underrepresented in engineering. In the States, there’s a bunch of very long-term cultural reasons perhaps why, that we don’t have the time... But, I really feel like those groups of people are very under-represented on the technical side. That said, a very interesting thing is happening. The technical side has become democratized, you know? I say about MIDI many times, MIDI was so revolutionary because all of a sudden, you didn’t have to be a “trained musician” [uses finger quotes] in order to make really incredible music. It was all about how your imagination is, and how well you know your tools. In a way, digital technology and computer-based recording has done the same thing for engineering. It has democratized engineering. All the materials and tools are there. You can buy a little digital recorder, a multitrack recorder now, for... Let’s just use a BS, 1680 or 2480, whatever those Roland things are now. If 10 or 15 years ago, you would have said to someone, “Well, you can get something that sits on your lap, that is a multitrack digital recorder, that is also a multitrack digital mixer, that has all these wild effects,” it doesn’t matter how good or bad the thing sounds. With all this stuff, they would have said, “Wow!” And back in the day, it was a Synclavier that did that, and they cost $150,000. And it’s just an amazing thing to think that 10 or 15 years ago, people wouldn’t have been able to conceive of this stuff, much say, “...it cost $2000 and it sits on your lap.” But that also gets to the thing about, the knowledge is there. How to use a microphone, there’s thousands of places on the internet you can go and learn that. The finer points come with doing it a lot, and finding more information. To get the four or five hundred bucks to buy a little digital recorder, or buy a computer and get some software-based recording, you work for a while, you save your money, you’ve got the dough. So in a very interesting way, technology has leveled the field for everybody. That still doesn’t mean that the machine of the record companies and promotion has changed anything. And in truth, when you get down to it, money rules everything. You know, money is what motivates the record companies. I don’t mean that they’re bad people, but they are companies, they are corporations. Unfortunately, the big issue when it comes to doing it yourself, which is what I think a lot of us are doing, is that money still rules visibility and money rules promotion. But that’s another deal, and we’ll get to that. But, on a traditional side, I really feel that in the States at least, African-Americans, Latinos and women are very, very underrepresented on the engineering side. Who the fuck knows why anymore, you know? But definitely it’s that way.

Torsten Schmidt

But how do you feel personally as someone whose, I mean there’s people who’ve refused recording records without you, which are obviously way beyond a race issue. How is it in a professional working environment?

Bob Power

What? Issues dealing with race?

Torsten Schmidt

Yeah.

Bob Power

Well, it’s never been an issue with me. I am sort of a multi-culturalist with music. I’ve been playing in funk bands since I was a kid, so with me it’s not an issue. It goes back to what I was saying before, it doesn’t matter who you’re working with or what their thing is, people respond to your positive energy and what you are able to give to them, and they will give stuff back to you if you can put out enough of that stuff. And it’s pretty clear right away whether that line of communication is open. And you know what, if you’re doing that, and people don’t respond, then, money aside, maybe it’s not the right people for you to be working with. And that happens, too. For me, fortunately I have enough clients that, if the vibe isn’t right, and it seems like we’re working in different directions, that’s cool man. I will find them someone else who can help them. And it’s not an ego thing, it’s not like, “I gotta go home at 12 o’clock,” or, “If you’re getting fucked up in the back room, I’m not going to be here.” It’s not about that at all. It’s about, “Are we sort of in the same mindset and are we focused on doing the same thing?,” which generally is making great music. So yeah, it hasn’t really been an issue.

Torsten Schmidt

How is the actual process looking, of how do you find that out? On that level, are there preparational meetings, or do you just go in there and see if it works out, and if not, the company is going to take up the check?

Bob Power

As a producer, I spend a lot of time with people before I decide to work with them. That relationship for me is a very intimate one, and you end up spending, I end up spending... Another “Power’s Law”: If there’s a way of taking a task that’s simple and straightforward, and turning it into something very long and complicated, I will find it. It’s a bad thing, but I sort of try to look at things from lots of different directions. So, as a producer, I think it’s pretty important that you spend time with your artist first...

Torsten Schmidt

Meaning?

Bob Power

Learning who they are musically, what they want. And a big, big issue is what the artist wants versus what the record company wants. Giant issue. I will tell you so many times, people get signed and the record company says, “God, I really love what you do, I love what you do,” and the artist feels great, because all artists are the same. I don’t care how experienced they are, how many props they have, how many awards they have. Every artist in the world lives for people saying, “You know what? I really like what you do.” And not trippin’ in a weird way, you know, and doing all these plays, like, “What can I get for you?” I mean, if the artist is an asshole, that’s what they need. “What can I get for you? Do you want some tea now?” But most everybody really wants to be told, just by another human being, “Thank you. I really, really like what you do.” So, record companies will say that, and they send you limousines, and they give you an iPod and all this nice shit, [laughter] and in the back of their minds, generally they’re thinking, “Oh good, if only I can get them to do this!” Now most of the time, this is not that different from what you do, especially experienced A&R people really know what’s going on. They do know that it’s really about the artists and their artistry, and you cannot be successful or be successful for very long, changing that much about an artist. What you can do, and what I try to do as a producer – and a mixer for that matter – is make people more of what they are. Find the really good things, and the unique things about what they do, and if you think back to, at least for me, a lot of artists who I’ve worked with and been fortunate enough to come together with, they are very unique. D’Angelo has certain ways of playing and singing that are like no one else. Erykah Badu... Jesus Christ, you know? You hear one note come out of her mouth and you know that it’s not somebody else. And in a way, that’s one of the things that I think we all respond to, and that record companies especially, is uniqueness. But anyway, record companies are always signing people for one thing, and hoping they can get them to do another. And trust me – and I try to educate early, young artists to this. Keep straight about what you do. Keep straight about the fact that you’re an artist. You know, it’s funny, I get the same thing and I’ve been doing this a long time. I don’t subscribe to Billboard, and if I’m at the studio, and I start reading Billboard and it shows so-and-so with Clive Davis with their arm around him, and it shows so-and-so with Martin Bandier shaking their hand, you start to think, “Wow, I gotta do more of that stuff!” And it’s really most important that you are an artist, that you do what you do, that you show some respect for yourself, and that you show the people around you some love and respect, and everything else follows that. So, if you are an artist and if you guys are in the position of at some point having a record label say, “God, we love what you do!,” remember what I said. And it’s not like you have to play it, or play the label or anything, but you gotta just remember that if it gets to a point where you cannot help these people financially anymore, they won’t take your telephone calls. And you know what? I don’t hate them for that, but that’s the way it is, and you gotta just remember that. And remember that you do something that they never will do, and you make a certain kind of art. Whatever stage of the process you are involved in, there’s something that is very important to that process that you do that they don’t. So, just something to remember to kind of keep yourselves straight.

Torsten Schmidt

So, when you’re putting your invoice to the record company, is the position on there like “being a shrink to the artist”?

Bob Power

That’s right! And I’ve also had clients tell me, I’m trying to remember who it was... I don’t remember, but someone kind of told me, “I don’t need a shrink, just press record.” You know, it’s like, “Cool man, whatever.” But all this stuff is very important before you get to the studio. There will be a time where you don’t make records anymore, maybe. And there’s a lot of time when you’re not recording. And as I get older there are times when there’s other things that are important. Well, almost as important to me as making music. So, all that stuff, if you’re not straight with that stuff, all this other stuff is going to be gone sometime. So it’s important to just remember that, remember who you are when you approach this. You mentioned another thing about preparation before coming into the studio.

Torsten Schmidt

I mean what is it, is it chicken and waffles? And how do you meet these people?

Bob Power

You know, I’m mostly... I get calls. I get calls from record companies, I get calls from management, I get calls from artists. Sometimes I meet people through my website. And if I’m mixing – I don’t really record much stuff that I’m not producing or mixing anymore, and that’s nice. It’s just that I got other things to do. If I’m mixing, generally I need to hear the music, and I need to talk to the artist for just a minute to make sure that I can help them with what they want. Because the first thing I always say, is, “What do you want to do?” You know? Or, “What’s the difference between the roughs of what I heard and what you want it to be?” And you know what? If somebody says, “You know, I really like the roughs,” and if we talk for a while, and they really do, I say, “Listen, you know what? Who did the roughs for you? You know, you should really have them do this.”

Torsten Schmidt

I see some question marks in here, what are “the roughs”?

Bob Power

Roughs are quick mixes, you know? Quick mixes at the end of sessions, and that’s what I listen to, before I decide that it’s a good idea to mix the record or not. You guys are familiar with a lot of my successes, but I’ve had maybe more failures than everybody else. And by failures, I mean, you go in and you don’t make everybody happy. And you gotta learn how to get up, you know? It’s not important that you don’t fall, everybody falls. I heard a football star talking about this the other day, and he said, “But it’s really important how you get up again,” you know? Anyway, I’ve been called to mix records where I’ve made stupid money for doing this, that people in the middle of it have said, “You know what? I wanna go back and have the person who did the rough mixes do this.” And you know what? That’s fine. That’s really cool. But I try to figure that out ahead of time, because they can save a lot of money. Thank god, you know? I’m in a position – and things change overnight – but I’m not rich, I would dress better. [laughter] But I don’t do things just for money. It’s really cool, and if you can get your shit to a place where you can do stuff... It’s a part of it, and I need to make a living, but the other stuff is all important. If I can help somebody, then that’s what I do. And that’s one of the things, I listen to somebody’s music, and talk to them before I take on some mixing to make sure we’re all going in the same direction.

Torsten Schmidt

Going down to the nitty gritty, how are these rates constructed?

Bob Power

How many people here get money from other people for doing what they do? Even if it’s a little? Good, good. It should be, unless you don’t want it, everybody should raise their hand, OK? And there’s a thing to that. There are many different parts in my mind to being a professional, OK, and it’s all the stuff I was talking about. And it’s not so much that you’re perfect, that you know everything. It’s that you’re trying all the time to know more, and trying all the time to be better, both on a technical level and on a personal level and on a human level. One other aspect to me of “professional” – if somebody says, “Define that word” – is yeah, you get paid. Rates many times are constructed by what is going on in the marketplace, and a great example of that is what’s happened with recording studios. How many people here live in a major city? OK, then you all know what goes on with the big studios?

Torsten Schmidt

What goes on?

Bob Power

With rates at the big studios, two things are happening. They’re dropping like flies. They’re going out of business, and the rates are dropping. They’re not going to go away, and the record business as we know it is not going to go away. It will change. Rates always go through these — I’ve been doing this since the ‘70s — and rates have gone like this. [gestures with hand, left and right] They’re always going up, but it’s kind of like this, they make a sidetrack. Generally your rates at whatever job you are doing are going to be determined by the marketplace. So you have to look around, and a lot of times what you need to say to people is... Say you’re a freelance engineer, OK? Somebody calls you and you say, “Well, I’m $40 an hour,” or, “I’m $50 an hour, but you have to tell me if that works for your record.” And pretty quickly you’ll figure out whether they’re just busting your balls because that’s the way they are, or they really don’t have the money and then you gotta make the decision whether you’ll do it or not for that. And that decision is many times a combination… Anybody here a guitar player? There was a guy who used to have a column in Guitar Player Magazine, named Tommy Tedesco, he’s a fat old guy from LA, a session player, played on all the Beach Boys records, a lot of Motown stuff, you never heard his name. But he used to write a column about sessions, and he said there’s three reasons to take a gig, and he was right about this: Great music, you’ll learn something you don’t know, or money. So, all of those things have to enter into how you adjust your rates. But I think all of you will agree, anybody who gets money for what they do, a lot of times the benchmark or the middle level for your rates are determined by the marketplace. And one of the reasons why I stopped tracking sessions, just recording, I said, “I’m just mixing or producing now,” is because I kind of looked at the economics. And no matter how much money I could ask for as a recordist or as a recording engineer, I looked at what people were getting for mixing, and I was like, “Alright.” And that’s another thing, about how you structure your rates. It works two ways. You can either think that you deserve everything, but if you have an artistic sensibility at all, most artists think they suck. You know, and if you’re a little bit of an artist in your heart, you probably think that you’re never good enough, and you’re always trying to get better, and everybody wants acceptance. That’s what I was talking about — you know, I don’t care if it’s Barbra Streisand, she will love it if you say, “You know, I really love what you do.” And she’s made a lot of money, man, got a lot of props. But it’s important that you look around and you say, “Well, you know what? Other people are doing this, other people get paid for doing what I do.” So, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t. There’s no reason that you shouldn’t. Some of you may think I’m nuts for even going there, but a lot of you are going to understand what I’m saying. And yeah, fin de l’histoire. Love that term.

Torsten Schmidt

But when you talk about all these things, about getting paid and stuff, in the documentations of you talking, you use a phrase a lot, “They used me.” How do you get used without feeling abused, like a hooker somewhere on 5th Street?

Bob Power

Yeah, yeah. That’s a tough one. The answer to that is kind of like, “How do you mic a kick drum?” You know, there’s a million different ways. There’s ways in which we all come to that work for us, and there’s ways in which maybe 19 out of 20 people do it, but there’s all different ways. It’s a balancing act. And it’s no different for me than it is – well, it is probably. I have management that deals with my finances or deals with making my deals and stuff. It’s a balancing act about how to a) set your rates, b) get your rates and c) get paid. And that’s something that just comes from a couple of different places. It comes from who you are and how you approach what you do. And it also comes from just feeling out the situation. And not feeling it out to see how much you can get for how little work, but feeling out how you can feel like you’re treating the people fairly and giving as much as you possibly can, and not going home at the end of the night or in the morning and feeling like shit because you feel like you got taken advantage of. And it’s interesting, ’cause I’m not saying anything you guys don’t know or haven’t felt, but it’s really about that and you have to put as much finesse into that, unfortunately, as you do at getting better at micing a kick drum. You know, the ways you get paid are interesting, too, and I find that the more clear you are upfront – this is something that’s more concrete – the more clear you are upfront with people, the better it is.

Torsten Schmidt

Is it you or the management which is more clear?

Bob Power

Now, for me it’s the management, but we don’t all have that luxury. Or that disease, whichever way you want to look at it. You know, as I get older, there’s certain things that I, only from experience and not from lack of fear, have I become more direct at. You know, we’re all human beings and there’s always a fear, you know, at a certain point when you sit down and talk to somebody about what they’re doing, there’s always a point at which you have to stop talking about what they’re doing, and you go, “Well cool, that sounds great. So listen, this is the deal. About me, I’m $30 an hour, and I need to get paid in this fashion, and how do you do your billing, and what is your billing cycle?” You know, if you’re talking to an artist, for example, maybe they’ll say the record company pays for the stuff, and then you have to say, “Who does your A&R there?” Then you call the A&R person, you introduce yourself… First of all, you say to the A&R person just like everyone else in the record, “Is there anything that’s important to you that I should know?” Gives them a great deal of confidence; they don’t fuck with you. If they say, “Well, they’re always smoking too much weed and they’re always late to the studio.” So you say, “Well, I can’t do too much about that, but I’ll try to keep things moving.” If any of you just engineer for a living, you know that keeping the forward motion of the session going is a giant issue.

Torsten Schmidt

Any top five tips for that?

Bob Power

For keeping the forward motion? Let’s come back to that ’cause I’m not done. So, if you’re dealing with the label, you talk to the A&R person, and then you say, “Who does your A&R administration?” ’Cause a lot of times at big or medium labels, there’s one person who just gets the bills and writes the check. The most important person you can be friends with, you know? [laughter]

Torsten Schmidt

What kind of notion of friendship is that?

Bob Power:

Yeah, right? And just, you call them and you introduce yourself, you say, “I’ve already talked to the band and to the A&R and to the management, and we’re going to start on this day, and we’ll probably going to do this many hours a week. My rate is X, Y, Z. What do you need from me? What’s your normal procedure for billing?” And then you can say – you can get into passive-aggressive stuff – you can say, “Because I want to make sure that I make this as easy as possible for you,” which really, what that means is, “I’m going to do it your way, but you better pay me, motherfucker.” [laughter] You know, that’s really what it means.

Torsten Schmidt

That’s a literal translation for passive-aggressive.

Bob Power

Yeah, it is. Yeah, right, it is. But anyway, so communicate — if it’s a label, if it’s the band that’s paying you, a lot of times it’s how you say something, you know? If you feel that there’s going to be an issue about that, until you get a good working relationship up with people, it’s fine. The first time you sit down, get it out of the way. After you listen to the artist, say, “Well great, let me just tell you how I work, generally. I’m $30 an hour, and I need to get paid in cash, before or at the end of the session.” You know, if you really feel bad about the people, you say, before the session starts, but that’s a little hard. But you say, “I need to get paid in cash, when the session’s done,” and go on about your business. Then it’s over. And then, you know, you say, “Is that OK? Does that work for you?” to make sure that they’re cool with it and they really heard what you said.

Audience Member

And what would be the punitive of...

Bob Power

Recourse if you don’t get paid? Nothing. You know, you just, you don’t do any more sessions for those people. And until you get to know them, it’s really tough, because, even if you have a purchase order from a label, and... A purchase order is basically a document from the record label that says, “OK, we know that you’re going to do this much work for us, and charge us this much, so we’re expecting your invoices, and we will pay you.” It used to be just with smaller labels where cash flow was a problem. Now with bigger labels, they suck. They try to hang on to their money as long as they can. And you know, when I first got management... Well, for the grace of god, I don’t need more work, and I haven’t for 20 years. But I said to my manager, “No offense, but why should we be doing this?” And he said, “Well, among other things, I can make sure you get paid.” And I said, “I never have a problem getting paid.” ‘Cause I do all the things that I told you guys about. And he said, “Listen, as long as they feel like may they need you for something, something in the future, you’ll get paid.” But when they feel like they might not need you anymore... And this sucks, but it’s a fact of life, and you don’t have a lot of recourse, except being as persuasive as you possibly can. And as you know, saying, “Fuck you, you’re an asshole, I’m coming over to kick your ass.” [laughter] You know, it doesn’t really work for that long. You know, your powers of communication – as in everything I’ve been talking about – your skills of communication are easily as important as how you mic a kick drum. And again, those of you who have experience know this, but it’s important to keep thinking about this and just kind of work on that like you’d work on anything else.

Torsten Schmidt

Probably to take it a little bit away from the harshness and realities of the business side of the aspect, could you probably, while taking your own history into account, give us a little rundown of how the roles of being an engineer or a producer have changed throughout the last couple of decades?

Bob Power

Sure. First of all, and I’ll get back to this too, the best way you can be professional in whatever role you are, whether engineer or producer... And a lot of times if you want to do it in the “old school” way, and come up in a big studio or something, you’ll be getting Chinese food for people first. Remember, whatever you do, try to do that thing. Don’t fuck around and try to be something else, you know? You don’t have to kiss people’s butts all the time. But be professional. If you’re a tea boy, make the tea and be real cool about that. And communicate, and say, “Is there anything else I can get for you?” If you’re sweeping the floors, make sure you sweep the floors real great. And go to the engineer after you’re done and say, “I’m done, what else can I do?” You know, if you’re an engineer, the issue of sort of getting into the production aspects of the record and stuff is a very touchy area. Make sure you focus on what you’re supposed to be doing. Very important for me coming up, because when I started engineering for outside clients, I was in my 30s already.

Torsten Schmidt

What do you mean, for outside clients?

Bob Power

Engineering for people other than me. Because I already had a couple of viable careers. I had scored television, I was a working player, I’d produced a bunch of stuff, I’d done adverts, and you know, I backed into engineering by mistake. Someone said, “Do you want to fill in for a couple of weeks? Someone’s going away,” and I said, “Yeah, I can do that.” So, I had a couple of degrees in music from the university, and my first records were hip-hop records. And I was dealing with people who were coming in who were half my age, who in a way didn’t “know anything” in traditional ways, and it was very important that I didn’t close down and say, “Who the fuck are you?” No, I don’t want to do it that way. A lot of engineers, as you guys probably know, when hip-hop started, kind of got pushed out of the business. Because there’s a very subtle form of racism here, but I’ll leave that aside, and I think you might understand how that is. But you know, engineering at that point was a very skilled white male boy’s locker room.

Torsten Schmidt

Ponytails were really essential, right?

Bob Power

Yeah, ponytails. You know, in the ‘70s and stuff, there were no engineering schools and stuff. It was really tough. And a lot of guys got pushed out of the business, because they couldn’t adapt. And they said, “Well, that’s not the way I make records,” or “That’s not the way people make records.” So it’s very important to kind of keep focused on your job, listen to your client, listen to your artist, and if you’re engineering — back to that — make sure that you’re focused on those things. If your artist is doing something that you feel may be not in the best interests down the road of the project, you have to tell them, and that’s where your communication skills come in again. Suss out who is in charge, which sometimes is difficult — and that will get into what a producer is — and pull them aside. Sometimes, if you have a lot of people in the room, and you need to get some communication going, it’s best to say, “Excuse me, can I talk to you over here for a second?” Because if there’s a party going on or if there’s an issue about the hierarchy of who’s in charge, remove yourself from that. Ask somebody to come into the other room for a second. Plus, that lets them focus on you better. And say, “Listen, I know you guys want to do this, but it may give us problems down the road, and this is why.” OK? Explain the process as simply as you can, and say, “If you don’t want to..” You know, for example – sync, SMPTE. In the old days when we worked on tape, people would come in on early hip-hop records, and this is really before there were samplers and before there were lots of synchronization boxes that would lock to either timecode, or if you work inside a computer, it’s not an issue because everything comes out of the computer. But back in the day, we’d have to stripe the tape with timecode, with SMPTE or EBU which... does everybody know what that is? Anybody not? Don’t be embarrassed, I’ll explain it real quickly. SMPTE and timecode is a signal that has timing references embedded in it, so if you record something at one point from a computer, and the beat goes like this [illustrates beat movement with hands], if you want to record something later on and have it right in the beat like that, you need it. It’s very important. So back in the day, there were maybe drum machines like 808s, but there were no samplers, there were no computers, there were no sync boxes. So a lot of artists would come in, and they’d say — and many times it was a DJ, with two turntables — and say, “Well, I want to do this beat.” And you’d say, “OK, what do you mean?” And they’d go, “Well, I have my turntables here.” So a lot of times, they’d just flip back and forth between two records and put the beat down that way. Amazing when you think of it. Now, for a lot of people who have DJ skills, you might say, “Yeah, so what?” But at the time that was like, “Wow!” It’s an amazing thing that people could do. And this was people who didn’t have a lot of money, thus [not] a lot of time in the studio. You know, they wanted to make a record in two hours. And you’d say, “Look, it’ll just take me a minute, let me stripe the tape with timecode.” And sometimes there would be issues about that. So then you’ve gotta say – and these your human skills coming into play again. If you pull somebody aside, you go, “Don’t worry, don’t worry about the time, this is important, let me talk to you about this.” You know, I’d have to say, “It’s really important that we stripe timecode because if you want to sync up stuff later, you won’t be able to do it without this.” And you know, by and by we all sort of figured out what we were doing at the same time.

So anyway, back to what you do as an engineer. All those things about education and stuff, and if somebody, say for example, keeps popping into the mic, and you get a lot of P’s and S’s and T’s onto the mic. Everybody know what that does when you get close to a mic and make wind? It could be ugly. Anyway, so you don’t want your artist when they’re on the mic to only be thinking, “Well, I’ve gotta stand up straight and I gotta stay this far away from the mic.” I used to do that you know, and fortunately my people showed me love and didn’t get on me because of it. But you want the artist, when they’re on the microphone, to able to get as far into that special place as they can be. And like what I said before, if that entails them smoking a bag of weed, then, that’s what it is. But anyway, at some point, you got to educate them, you say, “Well listen, this is the way that microphones work.” By the way – this is another thing – don’t bother putting the windscreen, the pop filter, right up against the mic. If you put it right against the microphone, it’s worthless. You need to get it a couple of inches away at least, and in fact, the further away, the better it’s going to work. Same thing if the artist is right on top of the pop filter, it kind of doesn’t work as well as if they’re a couple of inches away. So just a couple of things about that. Anyway, but at some time, and not just before the artist goes out to do their stuff because then, they don’t want this in the back of their mind. But sometime, you know, educate the artist about how microphones and pop filters work, and all that.

And again, Common is a great example. An amazing artist, a really amazing artist, and a lot of times, one of those people that, yeah he writes poetry, and he rhymes, and he’s an emcee, but if you really get into what he does, he’s got that X-factor. Anybody out here ever seen Common live? Really astounding. He doesn’t jump up and down, he doesn’t have dancers. In this day and age, in the modern age, you think, “Wow!” It’s hard to kind of get over, in a world where people are expecting a spectacle, he’s got this incredible magnetism and energy and intensity about what he does. If you haven’t seen him, try to do it. You know, he doesn’t jump up and down, but his intensity, it’s amazing. Because a lot of times, you want to see someone jump up and down.

Anyway, he moves a lot on the mic. Well, you know, you’ve got to learn to work with it. For those of you who are into microphones, maybe you want to pick a slightly wider pickup pattern. Maybe not — don’t go into “Omni” or anything, because you’ll get a lot of room noise, but maybe pick a wider cardioid pattern. And by the way, for those of you who are engineers, if you do that, make sure you baffle down the room a little bit more, because as you widen up the pattern, you’re going to get a lot more ambiance from the room. And if you want that, that’s fine, but if you don’t, make sure you put more gobos around so you get less of that. So anyway, your role as an engineer, make sure you educate your clients, and make sure you do that. Producer, it’s changed a lot, and as I said before, hip-hop has really changed that, just like it’s changed everything else.

Torsten Schmidt

Can you probably, to make it more visible, explain what a producer was when you were doing PBS stuff and probably, what that is?

Bob Power

In the ‘70s, a producer was either someone from the record label, who had made a lot of records, and again, maybe knew a lot about music, maybe not; an independent who maybe knew a lot about music, maybe not; someone with a lot of money, who maybe knew a lot about music, and maybe not. And in those days, their involvement in the record took all sorts of different forms. Every producer does not do this, but a good producer does all these things. A lot of times, a producer would book the studio, book outside musicians if that was the case, make sure all the people in the band showed up and didn’t get too fucked up, if that was the case – helped decide what songs were going to be on the record. And again, not all of these things, but sometimes one or many or all of them. Talk to the band or the musicians about how they were going to approach the material. Hired an arranger if they were using studio musicians. If the producer was an independent, he dealt with the record company to keep them off of the artist’s back. Kind of weighed the balance on what the artist wants to do versus what the record company needs, which is still one of the most important things that a producer can do in a record label environment.

Torsten Schmidt

So it was a lot like, a janitor, a mediator, a...

Bob Power

Mother, father, drug dealer, you know, whatever. And again, a lot of producers were just one of those things. You know, I know a lot of real famous people and I’m not going to name names, who I really like, and they got a lot on the ball. But I realized that back in the ’70s, a lot of famous records, it was because the artists were there, and this is actually true about my career as well. It’s because of what the artist does that made the record special, and the producer was just a babysitter or a buffer between the artist and the record label.

Sometimes the sonics or the way a record sounds are not very important to a record. But in many cases, a producer is responsible for the sonics, whether he turns a knob or knows what a fader does or not. He’s responsible for the material and the artist and how deep the record goes. And I may be screwing myself out of a lot of money – and I’ve said this in mix sessions where I’m getting paid stupid money to be there every day and, you know, get stupid about the kick drum – but a great artist can make a great record on a minidisc. I don’t know if you like what he does or not, but I’m using him as an example because he’s very simple: James Taylor. I was really into James Taylor when he was starting out, ’cause I was in high school or whatever. And then I kind of lost touch with that stuff. But now, I listen to James Taylor, and man, he is so pure! You know, he’s just — it’s kind of like what I was saying about Common. He doesn’t have to jump up and down to do what he does, he just gets to that place when he’s on the microphone that it’s just amazing. And James Taylor could make a great record on an answering machine for a telephone. [laughter] But, you know, we live in the modern age, so, the state of the media arts are such now that we’ve all come to expect certain things from an entertainment or a media experience. And we should get to that later because I think that’s one of the big reasons why record sales are so down. Downloading is a really big deal, and I’ll get to that too, because it’s kind of like voting, but that’s another story. The state of the media arts are such now that when you listen to a record, you want a good performance, and you want somebody who’s really connected in that wonderful, intangible way, so much, that even if you don’t like what they’re doing, you kind of go, “Wow! That’s deep.” You know? Even if you don’t like the style. But also we expect a record to sound good, we expect a record to have a sense of humor, we expect a record to have some surprises. We were talking about production. But anyway, so it’s not just one thing that makes a great record. But it all starts with having someone who has something unique to say and has a really compelling way of saying it.

Torsten Schmidt

What you were saying earlier, with the democratization of production means and stuff, that’s something. No matter how cheap a certain piece of software or a computer is or something, there’s no real way you can get to that, can you?

Bob Power

Get to what?

Torsten Schmidt

I mean, this “originality” or however you’re referring to it?

Bob Power

Well, no! That’s why, in a way, what we do as a recordist or as a technical person, what you do really doesn’t make any difference. But on the other hand, it makes a great deal of difference. How you facilitate the artist is what makes the difference. You know, how you help the artist or set the table or make the environment, to make sure that the artist does — and again my concept of production — is “the most of who they are.” And yeah it’s really interesting, when it comes down to it, it’s a really sad thing, but all of us who are “facilitators” — and whether you’re an engineer or a producer, programmer, studio owner, musician for hire; yes, we are artists also. And it gets back to the different roles of people in the studio. Remember what you do. If the artist doesn’t have that thing going on, you can help, but you know what? If I’m mixing a record, and even if it’s from an artist who sometimes has that thing, if I mix a track that sort of isn’t quite happening, or isn’t quite compelling, then I’ll do my best to make it sound really good, but it will always be a track that sounds really good that’s kind of a piece of shit, but that’s the way it is. And you know, if you are developing your own artistry, or trying to find artists to work with, look for that thing. I think Star Search, what’s the new one? American Idol. God! Our media arts, well, television has gotten to such a disgusting place. And you know, we’re going to look back at this, hopefully, in eight or nine years, and just like we did in fashion trends and stuff like that, we’ll look back and think, “Ooh, I’m really glad that’s over.” [applause]

But anyway, now a producer can just be a lot of different things, and all the things I mentioned before; from someone who makes beats, to someone who has money, to someone who has any or all of the skills that I talked about.

Torsten Schmidt

So back then it wasn’t necessarily someone who was touching a knob at all?

Bob Power

Absolutely not! And in fact, one of the ways... well this has always been true. You don’t need to be an engineer or this or that to be a producer. And you know, you say “well what is a producer then? How do you define a producer?” Well, a producer is probably someone, who is responsible for all of the things that come together that make the record the way it is.

Torsten Schmidt

I’m really scared there’s a revival of that already.

Bob Power

But you know, I mean basically what’s really going on right now, is we’ve become so desensitized to universally accepted positive human values, and the world has gotten to be such an awful place, that our voyeurism, or our sense of... The same reason people slow down on the road to look at an accident. You know, people who program television have taken advantage of that. And this will pass. I don’t hate them for it, it’s just like people who market records, you know? And it’s like playlists on radio, how a lot of radio syndicates in the States and everywhere else develop their playlists from computer models. And the computer models are developed by playing a bunch of people like, four seconds of a song. And you know, “Hit five buttons, one through five,” and the most five’s get played on the radio, after four seconds. Now, radio stations stay in business by making money and they do that by selling advertising. And the more people that listen to this radio station, the more money they can get for their advertising. Now, if I was a business person who bought a radio station, and didn’t know shit about radio — which is sort of how it works — but I was a business person... I can’t hold it against these people. If someone came and said to me, “Look, I have this service, and if you do things my way you’ll make more money,” I’m thinking, “Wow! That’s what I’m in business for.” So, TV people, I can’t hold it against them. You know what the problem is? And my problem – stop me, cause I’ll go on about this – my problem with the political situation in the United States is not George Bush. My problem with the political situation in the United States – and it’s interesting that today is election day – my problem is the people who buy that shit. And my problem is, people who know better. Everybody knows better. Everybody has a mother and a father somewhere, everybody learns the difference between right and wrong. And the interesting thing is, it’s gotten to the point where you get some people who say, “Well, I know he lied to us.” And this from the person we should all trust; it’s like a crooked policeman, you know? That’s kind of like the worst thing in the world. Somebody sells you a piece of fruit and charges you too much, that’s one thing. Someone who has the public trust... You know what? This is the same thing I was talking about with being an engineer or practitioner. Anyway, it’s the people who say, “I know he lied to us, but it’s cool because I feel more comfortable with him.” That’s what gets to me.

Anyway, back to records. We have become accustomed to so much stuff coming at us from so many different places that, besides that thing, that really special, indefinable thing I told you about — that someone does a unique thing in a very special way, in a compelling way — besides that, making a record, you got to have a lot of other stuff going on now. And it’s just because of what we’ve become used to. That’s why, one of the main reasons, I think, digital downloading is wrong. Let me just tell you guys something, and there are a lot of new media and digital theorists, who have some philosophically compelling arguments for why it’s OK to take things digital for your own use, whether it’s for entertainment or otherwise. Let me just say one thing. I know you won’t believe that I’ll just say one thing, but I will! [laughter] If someone else made something that’s very important to them, either with a lot of money or with a lot of blood, sweat and tears, or a lot of heart and soul, or any combination of those things, you have no right to take it without asking them. And people say, “Well, the record companies make too much money,” well start your own, you know? Or buy independent artists. Yes?

Audience Member

Sorry to interrupt. About the last thing you said. OK, we’re in a situation where everybody is an artist up to a point, he has blood and sweat over something. That could be music, that could be film, that could be anything. Isn’t it all human though, and, I mean, we invented the means of actually sharing all that? Downloading and this is...

Bob Power

We invented guns too, man, and it doesn’t mean you should go out packing a gun and shooting other people! [applause]

Audience Member

In the same way, you say that, the guns are used mainly... I mean, they still are, around us. OK, I mean what you said is totally correct...

Bob Power

You’re right.

Audience Member

You understand? My point is that, you take that for granted and you move on. Maybe for me, the most...

Bob Power

I won’t. You know what? I understand what you’re saying, and there is a truth to it. But I have to draw the line somewhere and it’s the same way I draw the line with being violent towards somebody else. You know, I can walk up to somebody on the street and smack ‘em. But I don’t do it. And it’s all around us, and other people do that, but I’m not going to do it. But you know, that’s a choice, and if you believe in your philosophy, it’s there and it’s a part of life, so I guess that justifies doing it, well, that’s the way you think. But you know, I feel differently. And I think that the thing I was talking about, about why record sales are so far down, is due to a couple of things. The biggest issue, well two big issues. One: That our media experience, when we either buy or get for free a media experience, we’re used to some amazing stuff. And all you have to do is go to a video arcade, a video game place, to see. When a kid puts money into a machine now, he sees something, he hears something, and many times you feel something. You know, like those things where you drive the car and you crash it, it pushes the steering wheel? It’s amazing! So, in a way, a record which is only a sonic experience, in a way, it’s just one-dimensional compared to that. At the same time, then it’s incumbent upon us as practitioners... Then you say, “Well, what makes a record special?” And the special thing about a record, is it can take you somewhere that the literal experience cannot. And that’s the whole thing, is that, you have to make your thing compelling enough that people get sucked into this whole world. When I talk to clients about production, a lot of what I say is, “A record has to be like a little movie.” Or, on my website, it’s funny, there’s “Power’s Law of Production No. 17.” You know, you have to get sucked into an experience. When you listen to a Marvin Gaye record, you don’t say, “Wow, that guy can sing really high, he had great chops.” No! When you listen to What’s Going On, you get into the whole world inside that record, and that’s what we have to do as record makers. And that’s the X-factor, that’s the intangible about why a record is cool, even in light of that there are other things that can come at you from a bunch of different directions. I also think that’s why we all keep doing it, ’cause we’ve all had that experience. But that’s one issue why record sales are suffering that people overlook I think. I also think that, as an example – and I don’t have the answer to this either – but more 12-year-olds know who Tony Hawk is, and are more into who Tony Hawk is, than are into Robert Plant. Everybody know who Tony Hawk is? The big skateboard guy. And Robert Plant, if you don’t know, was the singer for Led Zeppelin. So, culturally...

Torsten Schmidt

But you’re talking, what, 15 to 20 years age difference there as well, you know? Tony Hawk is not that young any more.

Bob Power

Yeah! But I’m just saying, that’s reality, and you know what? You may be right, about what you said. That’s reality, that’s cultural reality. But here’s another thing that I know is true. And I wish I had an answer, I wish I had answers for everything, I have a lot of questions. There’s no great musical movement that’s a big wave, that’s carrying the music business, the record business. Although hip-hop and R&B still is a very large segment of record sales, it doesn’t have the wave effect that it did, sort of from ’85 through ’98, of carrying the rest of the enthusiasm of the record business along with it. Now, as evident by hip-hop, music is always ancillary to and not the driving force behind social movements. And if you really think about it, it’s really true. Like hip-hop, there’s all this stuff that came up around it, and a lot of people have made a lot of money. Clothes, a way to talk, like I said before, a way to walk. You know, and some not so positive things. There are some ways of behavior which maybe aren’t so cool. But that followed hip-hop. I mean, the music was a part of that. And if you look at early rock & roll, with Elvis and wearing leather jackets, and the James Dean thing, you know, the outlaw, and you look at the British Invasion, and wearing funny jackets with epaulettes. And you look at raves and stuff, and cool pants that you can... I love it! You know, one of the things I love about hip-hop and fashion is then, you can go to your tailor when fashions change, and you can hold up your shit and say, “Make me three of these out of this.” And it’s cool you know, ’cause they can cut em down and make three pairs of pants out of one. [laughter] Anyway, the new musical movement, of which we have none, and if there’s some around that I should listen to, let me know, is always ancillary, and it always follows the social movement. And I haven’t really seen any new social movement coming along, that’s going to make some big musical movement. But who knows?

Audience Member

Had you heard that, actually I was at a concert the other night and on the stage the artist said that post-September 11th they made a blacklist of songs they didn’t want to have played on the radio. The artist said, “I don’t know if this is true, I have yet to confirm it,” but the artist said that “Imagine” by John Lennon is one of the songs. And he said, “Can you imagine that?” For that reason. Now if that’s the case in the United States post-September 11th, let’s say yes or no I don’t know, I’m going to believe them.

Audience Member

Yes, it was banned.

Audience Member

Well, there you go, so if that’s the case, then my question is in response to what you just said, how can we even get exposure to that next musical movement? How can we even get a view of this ancillary cultural thing if it’s being prevented?

Bob Power

Yeah. I think in a way there are two different issues. They are part of the same issue but they are kind of two different issues. Post... Revolution, and I say the revolutions like the Beatles, I’ll use that as a benchmark, that’s when things started and all of the sudden there was a way to think differently and act differently and dress differently. Sometime you got your ass kicked for it and sometimes we still do. But, people and us and thank god that the information resources through the Internet to a great degree are still available to us. People will always find the stuff that they want to. It’s the reason why people still smoke weed. I’m not saying it’s cool to outlaw it cause of that but I’m just saying people will find it. The other thing is, this is me, and I think that in a way if you have a cultural message or a cultural imperative with your music or your art... Two things. Number one, radicals are very important, people who do radical stuff are really important. But not because we say, “Oh I’m gonna do that because I believe in that.” The radicals are important because they pull the middle over a little bit. Anybody who is on the end, all of the sudden the middle shifts a little bit. For the rest of us, I think that from an artistic point of view, as well as a social point of view, the political direction and emphasis of one’s music, or art in general, is a very stealth thing. I think that number one, just on a sort of my concept of production and stuff, preachy does not work. That’s why if you have someone getting up and saying, “do stuff this way because this is the right way to live.” No. In a really great artist that message may be there, but it’s there in a much more artistic way. That’s probably why some people are not good lyricists and some people are. The people who are get their message through in a way that sometimes you got to listen to a lot. Then you say, “Wow, that’s really interesting.” But that’s an artistic thing. I also think that, and this is my feeliing, the most important politic that you can have, and your effectiveness as a political person starts right here. [points to heart] And it deals with the way you treat the person sitting next to you. But that’s my politic.

Now back to that. The United States is in a pretty ill political mode right now. The reason, there are a lot of reasons for that, one of them is from an effectiveness point of view. It’s very interesting. If you look at the last election, when George Bush says to me, “I’m against a woman’s right to choose because most of my constituants, most of my people, feel this way.” He may be right, OK. He may be right that 51 people feel that way and 49 people feel another way. That doesn’t make it right. And number one I feel that the political divisions in the States are very much like that now. It’s really just like this. But there’s become a whole new sense of self-righteousness on the right, saying, “Well, why shouldn’t I be able to feel like this?” Or, “Why shouldn’t I say my kids need to say a prayer in school everyday, why should you prevent me from saying that?” That gets into a lot of issues that that’s not my thing to talk about right now. The constitution is supposed to reflect some very broad based, commonly accepted human rights then thats why that thing exists. I don’t think any culture feels any different than those ideas. Did you have a question?

Audience Member

I heard you saying earlier that you, coming from America, you have so many questions, generally speaking. I’d like to comment on that, and say that, maybe you coming from the United States, maybe the whole exposure of reality, is in a very certain pattern.

Bob Power

Is in a…?

Audience Member

In a very certain pattern.

Bob Power

Right.

Audience Member

I mean, patternized, you know? You mention the word radical, radical as in, something that is out of the norms, and the forms, right? Maybe you should be, not looking for, but be ready to accept something that is out of your capacity, something out of the United States, something out of your code of analyzing and interpreting music and the schemes that happen in the industry.

Bob Power

You are right. And those are questions I ask myself as a creative artist, all the time.

Audience Member

But, as a radical, isn’t actually downloading music and making a great, great… Collecting so many sounds with just clicks on a keyboard, isn’t that radical? That is the way to move forward.

Bob Power

Making clicks on the keyboard is one thing. Taking something that belongs to someone else is not.

Audience Member

Yeah, but if you think about it, making a multi-layered and multi-faced industry out of one musical style, that’s over-analyzing. And maybe over-analyzing can happen in many, many directions nowadays, in our society.

Bob Power

You think that’s a positive thing, by taking those things and… ?

Audience Member

I’m not analyzing the procedure of downloading somebody’s track, I’m just saying that, as a behavior, it happens more and more. So maybe the industry should come up with another way of exploiting art, or whatever art is, or music. And maybe you could get what you want, recognition...

Bob Power

OK. If there’s a guy selling fruit, and just because you can go by and take the fruit and stick it in your pocket and walk on, you’re telling me that maybe the people who grow the fruit and the guy who sells the fruit should come up with a new way of getting the fruit out there?

Audience Member

No, but if it’s a mass phenomenon in society, people stealing fruit, maybe you should do something with that.

Bob Power

I kind of disagree with you. You know what? Great points, really important.

Audience Member

[We] shouldn’t take that for granted, and maybe find fruits that are not... Yeah, or make them cheaper. Find new fruits, or make them want to buy fruit.

Bob Power

I think that’s a great point, I think that’s really important. That’s what I was talking about before with, “There’s nothing really compelling out there.” I agree with you on that level.

Torsten Schmidt

What you are basically saying is, sticking to the fruit example, that you want the fruit to smell good. You want some nice packaging, you want it to taste real, you don’t want some gene-modified or whatever kind of stuff.

Bob Power

Guys!

Torsten Schmidt

But I somehow have the feeling that we’re losing the plot there somewhere. And I wanted to go back to a different kind of radicalism, which is part of the reason why we want you here. And probably, listening to an example from The Low End Theory might be a good starting point for that other side of radicalism there.

Bob Power

It’s ancient history for me. But let me just say one other thing, sorry man, you’re right, we are here to talk about music. The issue is capitalism, the issue is not art. Let’s talk about that somewhere else, but that is really the issue. I’m a human being and I live my life. But, you know, we can talk about that, too, later. OK? [addressing someone in the audience] I’m very happy to find out about new modes of expression. I don’t like to take things that belong to other people. And maybe I’m old school, man. And then you get into the thing, and this is something that was on your agenda, about sampling. Well, yeah, I participate in records that do sampling all the time. But then, should it be free? Well, no. Bob says that if something belongs to someone else, you can’t take it without asking them, or if they say, “I want five dollars for this,” without paying for them. Well then, if you just take a snare drum. So who defines what it is? And that’s something that’s going on in the courts in the States right now, exactly what defines a unique artistic work, that defines whether there’s ownership of that right now. I think it’s an interesting concept.

Torsten Schmidt

It’s all a question of intellectual property. Is it really one that you have to deal with.

Bob Power

But it’s like a blues song. You know, there’s only like, four or five notes in a blues scale, but there’s a lot of people who put it together differently. And it’s the same thing with language and phrases. And you know what? The dividing lines we draw are all subjective. They are all subjective. And that’s why societies exist, because societies and laws, generally, are groups of people that get together with somewhat common beliefs, that have, whether we like it or not, rules for social order. And I’m not saying that’s good or bad, but that’s sort of what we’re at right now with sampling and what defines a sample. I know that I’m being nudged to get away from politics, so I’m going to try to do that. If you guys want to talk about that stuff later, that’s cool. But, you said you wanted to play something?

Torsten Schmidt

Well, I guess there was something over there?

Audience Member

It’s not to trivialize the issues of politics, downloading music and whatever. I just think they are very circular arguments. We could be here for the next two weeks. And I’d just love to get some information about your role in producing a lot of the Native Tongues stuff, especially Buhloone Mindstate and what De La Soul actually came to the studio with and what you actually did. I know you spoke on “I Am, I Be.” Well, I didn’t actually realize that it was you, until Torsten mentioned it earlier. But what finished product did they actually come to the studio with, what your role was, in completing the product, or whatever?

Bob Power

That’s a very good and to-the-point question.

Audience Member

[With] some definitive answers. [laughs]

Bob Power

As in what I was saying before about a minidisc, the reason why De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest and some of my people are who they are, is because they are great artists. And that takes a lot of different forms, and at different times it’s different things. In the case of many hip-hop records, for example, it goes from one end of the spectrum to the other. And one end of the spectrum is someone coming in with a record and a turntable, playing something, and says, “I want you to sample that, and loop it up, and then I’ll do some other stuff on top of that.” And then you build the record that way in the studio. And perhaps I’m doing all the programming, in that sense, but there’s somebody coming in and saying, “This here, that there, this here, that there.” All the way to people coming in with stuff that’s already sequenced in samplers, and all I do is sit there, as an engineer, split out the outputs, and in the old days, record it to separate tracks of tapes, or Pro Tools, just so we can manipulate it a little bit more. And them sitting there and pressing play on their MPC or their computer. All the way down to people coming in with Pro Tools files and I mix the record. Buhloone Mindstate particularly... De La are really smart guys, and they’ve always been very aggressive on. Very early on I got from them, they felt if they understood and controlled the technology, it would be a lot better, and Prince Paul is out of that same place. So they got little Macs very early on and started sequencing with certain software. And they were smart, too, because they didn’t let the technology derail their creative nature, which happens. You know, I think most of us are probably technology geeks and a lot of time we get so into the way something works that you sort of forget about the purity or spontaneity of your creative vision.

Torsten Schmidt

Is there a “Power’s Law” to prevent that as well?

Bob Power

No, just think. Remember what role you are in at what time, and keep it in your mind. Many times – this is interesting because I was thinking about talking about this last night – if you are an artist and an engineer, and nobody is not all those things at some point or another, divide your tasks. It’s very important for me, when I’m producing, or coming up with parts, or playing, that I totally forget about the other thing. Almost on purpose, when I’m recording myself playing guitar, I turn into a real piece-of-shit engineer. I turn knobs and press record, and then I really try to totally forget about it. And the stuff of me tracking myself, if someone else gave it to me to mix, I’d say, “God! This person is terrible, there’s buzzes and hums.” But it’s very important for you guys, as artists and as technical people, to separate your tasks. Just say, “You know what? Today I’m just writing and I’m going to get something down as quickly as I can, and if the programming isn’t perfect, I don’t care. I’m going to get the idea down.”

But back to Buhloone Mindstate, that was a very complicated record. A lot of that was. Posdnous is a really brilliant producer and track maker. People don’t know that. He did a lot of the tracks on that. I think Prince Paul did some of them, but Pos did a lot of them. He’s a really brilliant track maker, and people don’t know that. Anyway, at that point it was a little bit of both. Some of it was them coming in with records and me sampling them and programming them. And at the time we used Macs, but I was really into Notator on the Atari. If any of you know that, that was a great platform that a lot of people still trying to keep their Ataris going because they just feel so good. The most interesting thing that I remember about the technical things about that record, was the “I Am, I Be,” the collage at the beginning of that with all the voices coming out. ‘Cause we only had 24-track tape machines. So, there was a lot of stuff filled on the tape. And you know, it’s interesting, one of the marks of great art is that it can either be something that’s very simple, that’s wonderful, or something that’s very complex, that the artist is so good that they make it look really simple. Like when you watch Nuriab dance, you think, “Wow! I could do that.” But, that record may sound simple, like a lot of hip-hop records, or Tribe records, but there’s a lot of stuff going on. One of my jobs is to pay attention to detail, so that’s why that happens. Anyway, so we didn’t have enough tracks to record, there were like 60 or 80 voices in their collage, and the way I heard it was having this sort of space that you’re in with voices, with different degrees of clarity and close or far, or recorded quality. Just like this whole thing with all these voices coming out of the darkness all over you. And the way we did it was they only had S1000s at the time — that was all they were up to, these were different lines of Akai samplers — and the S1000 was at the time a very sophisticated piece, now very primitive. I realized what we needed to do was print this to one or two stereo pairs of tape, that each one had like 30 voices that all came out from one pass, from the sampler. So I spent about a day and a half programming all the voices, getting them placed right in the stereo spectrum and how far away or close they seemed, how much reverb they had, how hi-fi they were. Some of the best stuff on that they recorded on minidiscs over the telephone. So, you know, developing that collage, and this is really... I’ll try to keep this brief. How many of you know the S1000? OK. There’s a page, when you develop a keymap in a sampler — quickly, for those of you who don’t know what that is — that basically says what key on the piano is going to play what sample, what sound. And on many of them, there’s something called “MIDI to keymap,” and you can press keys, and have it go from one sample to the other, and set up the MIDI map. It’s a very easy way of doing things. On the S1000 there was no way to turn that off, so when you were in the keymap page, if there was ever any MIDI coming into the S1000, it would change your whole keymap. And, I had worked for much of a day on this thing, you know, five or six hours, and I was on that page and by mistake, I hit play on the sampler, which happened to have all the drum patterns in it, too. So my half days work went “blobaloobaloobalooo” [makes a funny noise and impersonates MIDI code messing up his pattern]. Changed everything, and I had to go back. Just a thing, save often and early. [laughter] So that record was a combination of them coming in with things pretty much done, and I think that an SP12 was involved and they would come in with things they had sequenced. So it was a combination of both.

Audience Member

I was just wondering, was that a guitar sample or was that someone that came in and played live on that?

Bob Power

There was some stuff on that record that I replayed for them. I don’t really remember what. That’s another interesting thing that’s an aside. For those of you who are instrumentalists, you spend all of your life trying to play in the pocket, trying to be a better groove and feel player. To play with things, to really integrate yourself with the music. When you’re replacing samples, it’s a really interesting phenomenon, because the reason that the stuff sounds really cool is because it has a slightly different time feel, because it was meant to fit into another piece of music. And the reason why it sounds cool is because it doesn’t quite sit in the pocket. It’s what I call “the rub,” and if you take out the rub, you lose a lot of funk and you lose a lot of interest. So for those of you who are instrumentalists, many times it’s better to try to replace the thing with the original music and not with the new stuff ’cause just for that reason.

Audience Member

I don’t want to dwell too much on Buhloone Mindstate ‘cause we’ve got a lot of stuff to talk about, but just about the “I Be Blowin’” track, with Maceo, how did that take place? Did that all happen in the studio?

Bob Power

On “I Am, I Be,” it’s a combination of him as a sample and him playing live. And then the other one was his band, which... “The Patti Dooke”?

Audience Member

No, “I Be Blowin’,” with the instrumental track.

Bob Power

Oh, I think that was just “I Am, I Be” as an instrumental. I’m not sure. That was “I Am, I Be” without the [vocals]. Yeah, what happened was Maceo blew over, we kind of said, “Just blow,” you know, ‘cause you can’t legislate that stuff. And I think for the vocal version we might have sampled and/or used certain live parts as they sat. But the thing was so incredible, that they said, “Well, let’s also just mix this and have him playing through.” And then there was also “The Patti Dooke,” which was one of the most thrilling moments of my entire life. I’ve met and worked with a lot of stars and musicians, but having Maceo’s band come in and play… That’s where I got to know Larry Goldings, the organist, who is an amazing jazz musician, and one of the funkiest people on the planet. Great guy, and I developed a relationship with him. But also, I think his name is William Parker, Maceo’s brother, who played on a lot of James Brown records. Pardon?

Audience Member

Melvin.

Bob Power

Melvin, right! Came in and played drums. I mean, I’m into jazz and I’m into really complex stuff. And he did what he did, and this whole world was in his grooves, you know? He was an older guy and he came up in a suit on the train from Washington, DC... I think he was teaching grade school at the time. Very distinguished guy, very refined cat. You know, very polite and stuff. And then sat down at the kit, and you know, it was very interesting. Usually when you listen to a jazz drummer, one of the things you listen for on a study level is their independence. You don’t just hear this whole beat, you sort of hear all these little different beats on all these limbs and stuff. And especially on a funk track, you don’t really think about that stuff, you just think about the groove. But he was just doing all this stuff that was like, you never lost the fact that it was a groove, but if you listened to that track, each part of his drum thing could be a whole song in itself. Really incredible. Wonderful.

Audience Member

I think Q-Tip in the ’90s had one of the most distinguishable snares in hip-hop or in hip-hop tracks, or was credited with one of the meanest snares. What role did you play in that, or did you play a role in that? Layering it or panning it or anything like that? Or was that just something he came to the studio with?

Bob Power

Different at different times. You know, Tip also, we think of as an MC and an artist, and sort of, a personality. He is also one of the great programmers of all time. His records tend to be so well integrated, just like we were saying before, you listen to a Marvin Gaye record, you don’t say, “Wow, great snare drum sound.” It’s this whole world. And the records that he’s involved with tend to be so — and particularly The Low End Theory — it’s just this whole world. You get sucked in. But at different times it was different, and one of the interesting things about how hip-hop opened me up at a time in my life where I sort of thought I knew a lot of stuff already, was, we were all making this up as we went along. In the early days, whether or not Tip would come in and say, “We want that snare,” and I’d sample it off the record and stuff, or he’d come in with tracks that were already sequenced. There were a lot of techniques that in those days we used to beef stuff up. And I don’t think we were the first, but I had never heard of a lot of stuff before. For example, there were times where the snare didn’t have enough real pop to the beginning of it. And you know, if you compress it, that’s great, that’s one way to do it. But it also changes the sort of envelope and if you get enough pop that you want, usually you lose that kind of old crunchy, fucked-up hip-hop sound. You get this sorta dance thing that’s like “splat” rather than “pooshhhhhhhh.” So I would take the attack from a cowbell a lot and put that up underneath the beginning of the snare. It’s a fairly common thing, especially for dance and club music now, but at the time, putting it in a sequencer and sliding it against the snare so the timing was right... And, two things: number one, so you didn’t hear it, so it was right at the attack, but you definitely felt it, and there’s a volume thing, it’s got to be just right. The other thing is when you combine two sounds like that, as you change the phase relationship between the two, the aggregate sound changes.

By the way, this is another thing, just a little aside for those engineers. If you’re ever mixing a track that has a couple of kick drums that are playing the same thing, try flipping the phase on one of them early on, just to kind of see what it does ‘cause it might be a better place to work from. Especially, if you’re doing a live track and there’s an inside kick drum mic and an outside one. Put them up, play with the levels between the two ‘cause the sound will change radically, but also, try flipping the phase on one, even if it’s out of phase, it doesn’t matter. You’ll notice that it may be a better point of departure for your sound.

So anyway, some of the techniques we used were stuff like that to try to get the stuff to pop more. That was always an issue. ‘Cause Tip was always all over me, all over me. And, you know, I love him, but a lot of times he was behind me, “Make the snare louder, now make the kick louder, now make it pop more,” and it was… I worship music, so it’s very hard for me to defile music in a way that I think may be harmful to it. But again, that’s a lesson as an engineer, as a mixer. You’re making your artist’s record, you’re not making your record. So try as hard as you can to go there. I’m trying to think of some other things. Yeah, we were always mixing in other sounds with the stuff to make it smack a little bit more.

Audience Member

Quick question. You did engineer “Award Tour,” right?

Bob Power

Yes.

Audience Member

Yeah, ‘cause the snare, the kick, the beat is so heavy and so clear, and I was wondering if that was one of the tracks that Tip gave you a hard time on.

Bob Power

All of them! [laughter] I just have this image of him behind me, “Turn the snare up, turn up the kick now, more snare, more kick.” Now, I’ve got to say that I do stuff now when I’m left to my own devices where the drums are always much too loud. That’s one of the ways in which hip-hop has changed me, I hear stuff that way. So, almost every song we’ve ever done and I’ve ever mixed was like that. And that’s funny, because that record also, that was from — the one with the faces all over the front — Midnight Marauders. As you can hear, the thesis behind that record, and Tip never told me this, but as time went on, I kind of said, “You know what? It’s interesting.” Whereas on Low End Theory we were all learning, at the same time and we just happened to track most of it on a Neve board. I was really learning at the time, and I was very unschooled in the “Get it down quick while the creativity is flowing” aspect of engineering, which is tremendously important to me now. So at the time, I was just like, “Wow, let me work on this,” and they were like, “Yeah man, sure!” But the thesis that I kind of discovered later on, was that, Midnight Marauders was meant to be sort of a grittier-sounding record, a lot dirtier record. So it’s interesting you say it was clear. I feel like I fucked up because it was supposed to be nastier sounding.

Audience Member

Yeah, I loved it, it was great.

Bob Power

... [Busta Rhymes is] a star and that was sort of the first night where I saw him bust out into that. We all couldn’t believe it when he dropped his rhyme, you know, the, “Oh my god!” part. And there’s one thing that never goes out of my mind. I have a lot of Yamaha gear, and I’m not really good with lyrics, because I’ve played all my life. I can hear a song and play it right away, and stuff. But with lyrics, I can hear them a thousand times. But this one I remember. Part of his rhyme he says, “Ahamay! Yamaha, Ahamay!” It’s just the thing backwards. But anyway, he got into the “Oh my god” thing, and I don’t remember a lot of other specifics, but I do remember that once Busta laid his rhyme, everybody went back and re-did theirs. [laughter] And there was also some freestyling going on in the back room. And, oh god, Tip was doing it, Truegoy, Dave was back there, he’s really totally slept on as an MC. I mean, you might know this, great writer, really great. Flows like water. And then, there was this guy, do you remember MC Watchout? He’s a blind guy that somebody out of De La was promoting. There was this amazing freestyle session going on in one of the back rooms which I wish I had a microphone for, but I didn’t. I mean, the electricity of that evening, you can really hear on the track, it was really great.

Torsten Schmidt

Well, let’s put it on for a second, maybe you remember something else about it.

Bob Power

I won’t, I’m discreet.

(music: A Tribe Called Quest – “Scenario” / applause)

Torsten Schmidt

OK, let’s do it slightly different for everything concerning that track and Tribe in general. You got 90 seconds now to throw everything in, and you will answer everything around that complex in one go.

Bob Power

No, let me just say a couple of things before I forget, sorry. [laughter] From an engineering standpoint there’s a couple of really important things that I thought about. Number one, in hip-hop especially, but in music in general, a giant issue is the size and loudness of the vocal against the track. Because if you make the vocal too loud, the track will sound small. If you can’t hear them, it doesn’t help. Another thing is, Tip sounds really soft when he comes on in that track, and I always have this problem mixing Q-Tip in an aggressive track because he doesn’t scream — now he does it a little bit more — but because he always sort of spoke. If you turn the voice up really loud, it sounds way out of perspective. It’s like somebody whispering being much louder than this track and it’s not that way. So that was always really a tough issue for me. And the second one is that I was aghast and freaking out because there was no hook until the end. Tip said, “It’s OK, it’s OK,” you know?

Torsten Schmidt

Is that a 90-second throw-it-all-in’ session now?

Audience Member

Were the mutes on “Scenario” done before or after the vocals were recorded?

Bob Power

No, they were done after. And also, another thing that Q-Tip is one of the all-time great: He always drops where you don’t expect it. But they’re just not weird, they’re really cool. That’s where my education has totally just been from him.

Audience Member

Concerning drum loops, because I’m assuming you didn’t deconstruct the loop by chopping it up, you just used it whole...

Bob Power

I don’t remember to tell you the truth.

Audience Member:

OK, but a lot of them, like “Fly Me Away” by the Sounds, which they used on “Award Tour,” there is no hiss and that record sounds like complete dog shit. So, how did you get the hiss out of that or “Electric Relaxation”?

Bob Power

I got crazy, and now there’s all these amazing digital things that take the noise out. I hear Sound Soap is really cool, I haven’t used it yet. At that time, we didn’t have any of that, so it was a couple of things. Number one, I had sort of pirated this thing called the Burwin Noise Eliminator. DJs probably know it, it’s a really old piece that was really expensive in its day that helped take clicks and pops out of records, and I used some sounds through that. The other thing is, I really worked EQ-wise. Unfortunately, the hiss, say it’s at 5K, is usually the frequency where all the brightness of the snare are. I went crazy on all of this trying to make it quieter.

Audience Member

I think one of the great things about that track is the group vocals on the doubles. I’m just wondering how you mic’d those. Did you record them separately or did you use two mics and got everyone on?

Bob Power

Now, I won’t say never, but when you have a crowd like that — same thing with a horn section, but there’s definitely a lot of exceptions to that — get them sounding right in the space and then try to capture it. So I think I probably just used two mics, I may have done a figure-eight [pick-up pattern]. It was a tiny, tiny room and it was really weird because when you have a bunch of people yelling in a very small room, it sounds awful. But it sounded pretty cool. I probably used figure-eight on both sides and kept going back in and saying, “No, move a little bit.” That’s the thing about educating your clients. Performers learn about pick-up patterns. If you tell people about pick-up patterns on a microphone and the sonic ramifications of not being where you should be are, they’re real cool, man, they get it really fast.

Audience Member

Phife was telling me that there were several versions of “Scenario,” one included the De La guys. Was it planned to release this particular version, or did they go for the best one?

Bob Power

I don’t remember, to tell you the truth.

Torsten Schmidt

Was there any sort of conceptual thinking behind Low End Theory as such? Because obviously you had a lot of brainy people especially in Europe and they’d been fantasizing about different use of jazz stuff? I mean, there’s theory in it, so, “Oh, it must be good.”

Bob Power

You would have to ask Tip about that. At the time he was really young, I think he was 19 or 20. He’s an amazing conceptualist and I have a feeling that there was a lot of forethought there, but then again you never know. Because also he’s a great producer in that he’s able to seize moments. And I don’t know even about the name, maybe he thought of the name while we were making it. I think it was sort of his thesis, “OK, let’s have a record that booms more than anything,” you know? And my thing was, “Yeah, but it’s got to be clear, too.” So I really think a lot of it, he definitely had an idea… The idea of the jazz things and the integration of it, I think that it’s just his brilliance as a programmer. I think he did almost all the tracks on that. Ali did one or two also. But the whole jazz thing, and the way it integrated, I think was him being the right person at the right time. The right person with the right inclinations.

Torsten Schmidt

Did your education as a jazz guitarist play into that as well?

Bob Power

Well, I got stupid with timing of things. If people were coming in with beats on an SP-12, which Tip is a master of this now — and I think a lot of it has to do with the Large Professor, who is also an absolute master and should not be forgotten. Sometimes I wasn’t happy with the feel of the stuff. So, you know, it’s part of my responsibility. So I would say, “Look, let me put this into the computer and fuck with it and leave me alone for an hour.” So, I would play the MIDI stuff in the computer, trigger the SP-12, but then I had track offsets available, so I’d move stuff around. And the guys were cool enough that they let me do that. And then it was either, “Cool, let’s do it,” or, “No, no. I meant it to be fucked up.”

Audience Member

Jay Dee is a producer that I really respect and I know that you engineered something with Common that Jay Dee produced. I was wondering, his issue with heavy beats – because his beats are really loud – by that time, were you used to that type of beats because you were doing Tribe stuff and you pretty much understood that whole concept?

Bob Power

I love it. You hold the mic like an MC.

Audience Member

Yeah, I’m an MC, too, so you know…

Bob Power

Two things. Number one, with guys like Common, same thing with Tip, I never have the feeling I get it right. I really feel that some of his vocals are too soft on some of the stuff. That said, I mixed a record that Jay Dee produced most of for him, and some stuff for Tribe as well. Jay Dee is a pretty brilliant guy. You know, his stuff is really simple, but one of his brilliant things is, the kick he chooses, where he tunes it, and where the bass is in relation to that. People who mix bottom-heavy music will know that that’s like 90 percent of the battle. So Jay Dee’s stuff, in a weird way, is easier to deal with as a mixer than it might sound. And that’s another thing, and most of you know this, if you’re dealing with samples or just drum sounds on their own, where you tune them is absolutely key to both the feel and the sonics of the track as well. And where you tune the kick drum versus where the vocals are going to sit and where the bassline is, if you don’t deal with it, you should.

Torsten Schmidt

Where do you tune them? Within the actual gear you’re using?

Bob Power

Yeah, in the sampler. And you know what? I usually follow the groove first. Wherever the thing kind of feels the best, is where I’ll sit, not saying, “Oh good, it will stay out of the way of the vocals.” No, the groove has got to be solid and feel great. There’s another thing, sometimes you do that and you say, “Wow! I really like the bottom of the thing when it’s tuned way down, but I like the pop when it’s tuned way up,” so you know what? You have two separate key maps and you put them both together. You usually have to advance the lower one, because the attack is at the wrong time. And sometimes, if you sequence two things at the same time, you get phasing, which isn’t always what you want. Yeah, you’ve got to kind of pay attention to that, but that’s also something you sometimes have to do, or bring in a deeper sound and put it behind it and you don’t want to hear those things as separate sounds. That’s the other key and that was a big thing in the making of the Tribe records. A lot of times with the early records, we put stuff down and I would say, “You know, the bass doesn’t sound just deep enough. Do you mind if I double it?” So, modern synthesizers are great and virtual synths are great, but the one truly wonderful thing a Juno-106 is great for, and I still love it, even though I hate big pieces of hardware, is, it has this kind of sub-y bass thing that you can sneak in behind other basses and you don’t hear it as a distinct octave down, you just feel this thing. So we did a lot of that, too.

Torsten Schmidt

Let me introduce a different argument, probably a different way of working here.

(music: The Roots – “Panic!!!!!!”) (music: The Roots – “What They Do”)

Bob Power

...and the recall notes, which allow to set the studio back. Now, that it’s ProTools sessions and a lot of guys are doing their mixes in Pro Tools, some people wrote in saying, “How do you feel about this? They’re taking your secrets and they might use them.” And I usually don’t participate in discussion groups, I talk enough elsewhere so I don’t have to talk online. So I read it for a while and I also try to be linguistically as exact as I can when I say certain things, like I don’t curse when I write like I do here. So I read it for a while and I was trying to think something that was really correct to say in rebuttal, ’cause a lot of people were saying, “They can take my vocal sound,” and then another guy said, “Well, what if they take the settings I used for all tracks and use them to mix all their other tracks?” So I wrote in and I went through this very long polite thing how mixing in the hands of someone who has done it for a while, a combination of a thousand tiny details and judgements that are not any one specific thing. And even if you focus on one thing, like the bottom on the bass, it’s not just that. It’s how a person hears and the decisions they make, which goes from the first time they sang “Happy Birthday” to when they go to college to study engineering, it’s all these different things. So I was very careful about the way I worded that and I said that I don’t think you could put this in a bottle and then I said that I think that every singer is different, every kick drum is different, so there’s no magic EQ. And then I said to sum it all up, “You got to be kidding. This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of.” So that’s my response to that question.

Torsten Schmidt

And if you re-worded that in a way that all these relatively simple things to watch out for or to start learning when you want to get your sound better. Or is it something more individual and hands-on that we might talk about later?

Bob Power

I think we all do this, but if I had to say one thing, it’s think about the sounds up and down, in terms of their frequency content. For those of you who might not know how much bass, how much treble they have, stuff like that. Think about where everything fits. I can’t help it. Actually, my iPod has helped me because the fidelity on mp3 is so relatively low that what the thing sounds like is not the issue. It made me start listening to the music again. But think about where things are placed like that, other than that it is very, very difficult. You know, learn as much as you can, read as much as you can. Listen to what other people say as much as you can. And then, if you really feel strongly about something, really try and try and try to do it your way. Because ultimately you will come to your own way. And you will make a lot of mistakes and you will feel like shit about them, but that’s the way it works. Getting up and how you get up is much more important than if you don’t fall at all. Because no one never falls, OK? Learn as much as you can, but also just follow your own muse. One other thing is, spare no expense of energy in knowing you really did everything you could — say, for example, if you’re mixing — to make those people’s records sound as good as you can. One other thing on a much more practical level, ‘cause I wrote down a couple of things before — get some studio monitors that you are comfortable with. [Moderator interrupts speaker to replace microphone]

(music: D’Angelo – “Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine”)

Bob Power

One of the most absolutely singular musicians that you know. I can’t think of anyone else, who does things that differently and it’s that dope. It’s just amazing. When we did that record... I didn’t get Pro Tools till it was 24-bit, because if you’ve been with Pro Tools, you know it sounded like shit. Can you all hear me? Everything cool with the mic? In the early days, it was sort of the Wild West in terms of digital recording. I had something called a Roland DM80. And it was an 8-track digital recorder that weighed about eighty pounds, cost $15,000 and has hit the garbage truck years ago. It sucks, but that’s the way that gear is. But it was the best sounding thing at the time, and this was really primitive, but it allowed you to import tempo maps. So, D’Angelo had programmed this stuff on an EPS-16, but I just didn’t feel like there was enough control, and D said, “Fuck that! Take the stereo out, that’s the record.” I was like, “Come on, let’s make this great.” So we took the stuff into my computer, and messed with it a lot. With the DM80, I flew his background vocals from one chorus to another ‘cause that was like a lot of vocal tracks.

Torsten Schmidt

You just said “flew,” right?

Bob Power

Pardon?

Torsten Schmidt

You said, you “flew” his vocals. Meaning?

Bob Power

Yeah, by “fly” I mean, when you digitally take something from one spot and move it to another, so it exists in two different spots. So when he sings exactly the same thing the first time, as the second time, you don’t have to sing it again. So, even though I had a tempo map... D’Angelo has made behind-the-beat into a whole other universe. “Cruisin’” is a great example of that. “Cruisin’” sounds like he fucked up and sang to the wrong track, it’s so behind. And I had been a musician most of my life and a funk musician for a lot of it, and my whole sort of time concept is all about behind. In fact, I’ll tell you the story behind the guitar solo sometime. But anyway, when I flew his vocals, I took them from the first chorus and put them in the second and third and stuff, even when I did it by the tempo map, so I knew it was like, right on, for like a half day I was sitting there scratching my head, kind of movin’ it a little forward, and movin’ it a little back, ‘cause I couldn’t believe that it sounded as far behind as it does. And yeah, he’s really amazing. He sort legitimized a whole new time concept like that, which, up until that point had been kind of hip-hop thing, where people rhyme. And it’s very... This is another thing! Like, when the second wave of hip-hop started really being established, from like, Low End, from after the first Stetsasonic record, and when De La came in, and Tribe. When Tip and some other people started kind of rhyming way behind the beat, there were times when Tip would do something, and he’d come in the room, and I’d say, “Are you sure man?” I said, “It’s really good, but are you really sure?” And then finally, I got used to it, too. But anyway, his time feel is phenomenal, really. Absolutely brilliant, and tortured, musician. [quiet laughter / followed by silence]

Torsten Schmidt

OK, we’ll let that sink in for about, 30 seconds. [laughter] But what do you mean by it?

Bob Power

Everybody I know who I would consider a real artist — which basically means they say something very unique in a very different way, and it’s very compelling — they’re all nuts. [laughter] They’re some of my best friends but they’re all excessive in one way or another, like we all are. That’s all. That’s what I mean. And I don’t have to explain brilliant because it’s very, very difficult to do something very unlike what anybody else has ever done. Because you can do something different, but you know, most of the time it doesn’t groove. You can just do something different for doing it different, but like Joni Mitchell, she just has a radically different concept of how to put music together than most other people. And so does D, definitely.

Torsten Schmidt

And she never lies too.

Bob Power

Ha! Yeah, right. [laughter]

Audience Member

Question. Mixing 101.

[Rome’s bells chime in background as participants try to get the mic working]

Torsten Schmidt

There’s your one already. There’s your one for your 101.

Bob Power

It’s weird. You know, I thought it was like, some hour. It’s 6:15 and all the bells are ringing. Maybe that means [John] Kerry won, I don’t know. [laughter]

Audience Member

OK, mixing 101. Very simple question, might sound stupid, but, I want to talk about buses. What advice do you have in terms of utilizing buses that people might not even mess with on their digital mixing board? And, what are their function? ’Cause I mean, I know what their function is in terms of a purely digital sense, but in an audio sense, what is the function of a bus?

Bob Power

OK. Most of you know this, but, a bus is like a master audio highway that you can send one signal, one sound, to one or many other different places. Now, normally you do that at the patchbay. But a bus lets you press a button and do that. And very simply, that’s what a bus is. It also lets you combine things together, so it does both those things. And that’s as clear as I can be. If you have one audio signal and you want to send it to a bunch of different places, you put it into these different buses. You press the button and it splits it out and sends it to different places. The reason you don’t use a Y-cord for that, is number one, you’d need a Y-cord that was a W-cord or a lot of different things, and you lose some of the signal when you do that. The only reason I avoid buses when I can is this: With most mixers and in most situations, to get something to either Pro Tools or tape, you have a choice of either using a bus, or pressing a bus button. Press bus 19, the signal goes to track 19 on the tape. Or, taking a direct patch, which means, you take the mic preamp and plug it straight into the tape machine. The only real issues I have with buses is, it’s an extra point in the signal chain where you go through another amplifier. And in fact, in the old days I was much more crazy about this than I am now. But you know what? If you can plug something directly into it, without going through another amplifier stage, you know what it is, get up off your ass and walk over to the patch bay. ‘Cause I know a lot of guys, for example, who used to track stuff that if the patchbay was over at the end of the console, they were too lazy to get up. And what they would do, as they did different vocal takes… Say, you do a bunch of different vocal passes, to track nine, track ten, track eleven, so you could listen to the best one, or comp them together. They’d press in all the buttons, use one fader, and just put the record tracks into record. Get up, pick up the patch cable, and plug it into the other one. Generally, the less stuff you put in between you and the record medium, the better it’s going to be. That said, another way in which hip-hop has affected all of us, is, hi-fi is not always what you want. So, you know, it goes both ways.

Audience Member

But I find it’s a great way to allow you to send different channels to a single stereo compressor. So, I like to compress my kick and snare and hi-hat together again, after they maybe have been compressed separately, to glue them all together. Is that a common thing to do?

Bob Power

Yeah, very common. And I’ve gotten to do it much more. If I had a board it would be easier to explain. Just as briefly as I can…

Torsten Schmidt

We’re going to do that in a couple of minutes anyway, I guess.

Bob Power

For those of you who don’t understand, what he’s talking about is, say you have a mixer and you have different faders. And this is the kick drum, and you turn it up to where you want it, and this is the snare drum, and this is the hi-hat. In addition to listening to the stuff like that, you also send it through a bus to a different place, put an effect on it, in this case compression, and mix it back in on another fader with the original. That’s about as simple as I can make it. It’s a pretty accepted rock way of mixing, to do bus compression. For example, you’ll take all the drums, send them to a stereo bus. Don’t listen to them through the main mix! Take all the drums, send them out, sort of, a whole separate mix of their own, but you’re not hearing them through the main mix. Put them through a stereo compressor, which generally makes them pop a little more, and then bring them back into the full mix like that. Same thing with EQ. If you don’t have enough gear, but you got a bunch of buses – and by the way, this only works on an analog board, and I’ll explain that in a minute. For example, if I’m mixing a record, and I put EQ across the whole mix, I’ll make everything sound as good as I can. Then take an extra equalizer. And before I put the vocals in, I’ll do a little more EQ, just to make it really ‘right there’. But then, when I put the vocals in, I realize that all the high frequency that I added to the drums, to make it snap, makes the vocals sound really “essy” and too bright. Well, in that case, I’ll take all the instruments out of the main mix, send it to an auxiliary two track bus, put the EQ on that, bring it back into the main mix, but leave the vocals out of it, OK? So I do a lot of that now. Rock guys do a lot of it.

Lot of times, if you don’t have a lot of gear and you have an analog board, this is a good thing to do. Set up bus four as your send to a compressor. Take the output of the compressor, bring it up on another fader. Do not send it back to bus four! You know, again, bus four into the compressor, but bring the output of the compressor up over here [shows signal path with hands]. Then, anytime you have an element that you want a little more smack to, particularly drums, send a little bit of that drum to the compressor. You’ll have the dry drum over here and you’ll be hearing it, but then you’ll have the snappy, compressed sound of the drum coming back, and you can do as much or as little of that as you want. It’s a little tricky with levels, you know? And that’s one of the reasons, for those of you that do this a lot, one of the reasons you’ve got to watch bus compression, is, for example, say you’ve got all your drums through a compressor, and you’re not hearing them dry, you’re only hearing them compressed. Say the snare drum is too loud, so you turn down the send from the snare drum, but all of a sudden, it changes the way the compressor is reacting to everything else. So it’s a little bit dodgy!

Audience Member

More on the drums stuff. Back to that tune we were speaking on, “What They Do.” How much did you beef up Questlove’s drums?

Bob Power

To tell you the truth, I don’t…

Audience Member

You can’t remember?

Bob Power

I don’t remember specifics. A lot of times what I’ll do with live drums — to make them really pop but not make them sound too fucked up — is just what we just said. I’ll leave the dry drum there with no compression, and EQ that the way I want, and then take another tap off that drum sound, send it through another fader, so I can mix it back in with the original, but compress the daylights out of it. So it’s like really “POCK POCK!,” rather than “BOOM BOOM!” And mix a little of that back in with the original. If you have enough inputs on your board, it’s really great, because you don’t change the envelope, you don’t change the attack characteristics of the main one. For those of you who don’t know, you can’t do that digitally, it’s very difficult. The reason you can’t do that digitally is because, when you send something out to something else digital and bring it back through another fader, it delays it, it makes it late, and you get phasing, which makes everything sound like this [muffles his voice with his hands]. I like that, that was good. [laughter] So yeah, that’s the short form.

Audience Member

Was that a loop of Questlove’s or was he playing the whole way through?

Bob Power

No, he very, very seldom loops his stuff, although, in the records that they wanted to sound more hip-hop... What was before Things Fall Apart?

Audience Member

Illadelph Halflife.

Bob Power

Illadelph Halflife, some of it, and I think some of the new one [had loops], ‘cause they wanted that more hip-hop sound. But generally he plays all the way through.

Audience Member

Can I ask one more thing? How’s your hearing? You were saying as a live musician…

Bob Power

Great point, great point! In fact, that was one of the things I wrote down. I don’t want say this, I don’t want to come off sounding preachy, but we all may do drugs. And we all probably have friends who’ve died from drugs. So, during the course of your life you kind of figure out what’s good for you and what’s not good for you. And, as you get your shit together as a human being, you start to be able to live that a little bit more. It’s the same thing with monitoring. Particularly for dance music ’cause it’s really hard. ’Cause that’s like how it’s going to be heard. But try to moderate your listening levels. I have a reputation, when my clients want to listen to it cranked, I leave the control room. And I say, “Just call me when you’re ready.” You know what? It’s also better, because they can listen and not feel like I’ll feel bad every time they go, “Oh, that’s terrible,” you know? And I don’t feel bad ’cause I don’t listen to it going, “Oh, that’s terrible.” I just let them listen by themselves. I do go up and down a lot, and that’s important. Between my own monitors and occasionally NS10’s, which I can’t stand. And then, the big monitors in the studio. I’ll go up to the big monitors every 15 minutes or so, and crank the shit out of it for like, 10 seconds, just to feel what I’m doing to the bottom. And then go back to my monitors. Actually, the best way to listen… My monitors are these really old Genelec’s called S-80’s. I think you can find them now. They’re about six thousand dollars apiece. Don’t bother, don’t bother. Find something that you’re comfortable with that you know the mixes will translate well. And this is only a matter of trial and error. You know, you got to mix enough stuff at your house, listen to it elsewhere, listen to it elsewhere, listen to it elsewhere. And then make adjustments and say, “Wow, I know my speakers sound brighter than they really are, so I’m going to have to make things in my place, so it sounds too bright.” It’s much more important that you know your own rig than that you have a really expensive rig that’s maybe is [finger quotes] “more accurate.” Very, very, very important.

Torsten Schmidt

What’s the story with subwoofers?

Bob Power

Subwoofers, be careful. If you want to have what I call your fanny tickled, leave your sub on. But keep in mind that unless you have it adjusted right, you may come out of your studio with something that you think has plenty of bottom, because the subwoofer is hyping it up, but then you get elsewhere and there’s no subwoofer and you realize that it doesn’t really translate. I try to leave them off most of the time when I’m mixing. That way, I know my speakers, I know the big Oxbergers at most New York studios, and I kind of know certain rooms. And some rooms, I know, if I turn it up on the big monitors, I know the low end at about 50 or 40 hertz will be a little flabby. You guys know what I mean? It’s just kind of like [blows out with mouth] phh phh phh. But I know that the speakers make it that way, so I can leave my mix a little that way. Another room, I may know the sound in there is actually the way it is, and if it’s a little flabby, I’ll put a high-pass filter on the mix at 40 Hz or something like that.

This is another good tip: If you have EQ across the whole mix, chances are your equalizer does not have high-pass filters. For those of you who don’t know, a high-pass filter is something that let’s the highs pass, it cuts off all frequencies below a certain point. An equalizer just pushes them up or down at a certain place. Most EQ’s, or program EQ’s, which do the whole mix, don’t have filters like that. And you may be using a GML, or sometimes a Tube Tech, which is very broad. Something you can do, if you don’t have high pass filters, is, take the lowest band on the EQ — whether it’s shelving or peaking, it doesn’t matter — and turn it down to something way out of the way, like 20 or 30 Hz. Now, for dance music, that might actually be a consideration, so you have to be careful. But take it way down so it’s below where you really want your music to start, and make it to a fairly high “Q” — which is a really high band — and roll it off. One of the cool things with digital EQ and computerized EQ is if you do that, you can actually see what it is doing and it will, in a way, act like a high-pass [filter] and where it comes back up again on the low-side is so low that it really won’t make a difference. So that’s a great way to kind of fake a high-pass filter. And it’s important when you do music that you really load up the low end.

Now to dance people, ’cause I see people nodding, is stuff below 40 hertz important? It is? OK! That’s a trip, that’s a real trip. Usually, below 40 and 30, I don’t really, other than the fact that it’s not really loose, I don’t really care, but that’s amazing. But anyway, with your bottom, it’s very important that you pay attention to the ranges of the bottom. One of the things with a hip-hop record, and with two bands in particular: With Meshell Ndegeocello because she may have three basses going on at the same time, a couple of synths and a real bass, or the Roots, because they may have one or two machine kicks and Ahmir’s kick, you got to kind of divide and conquer. Figure where each low-frequency element can have the majority of its energy and then leave room for something else. Because if they clash, you’re going to shake the room apart. When two low-frequency sounds come together that are sort of in the wrong apportionment, if you have big monitors, the whole room will shake. And not in a good way. Every once in awhile, when two kicks hit, it won’t be consistent.

Audience Member

You were talking about EQing and maybe even compressing the whole mix, isn’t that something that a mastering engineer is going to hate you for?

Bob Power

Yeah.

Audience Member

Alright!

Bob Power

You know, you’ve got to really use your judgment. The point is, never to paint yourself into a corner. Meaning, never to put yourself in a situation that can’t be undone. The same things about EQ and compression on tracking... I compress when I track now, for several reasons. Number one, you’re going to do it anyway. Number two, almost everything needs it, in terms of, how we are used to listening to music. Now, if I’m doing a jazz session, I’m real careful about it ’cause I don’t want to hear it. Otherwise I do it so the thing sounds right. For years, everybody said, “Track flat! Don’t track with EQ, it’s the best way!” I could never get away with it because I didn’t have enough technique nor the right gear to get away with it. Now I can actually get away with it most of the time ‘cause I have a lot of microphones, a lot of different mic pre’s, and I use proximity as much as I can. By the way, for those of you who don’t know, getting a good mic preamp will probably be the best addition to your studio, if you don’t have it, that you can possibly make. It actually makes almost more difference than the microphone itself. And there’s a big argument as to which ones are really good, but a good flexible one, it’s a tremendous difference.

Audience Member

For example?

Bob Power

OK, the pre’s on an SSL G-series or E-series.

Audience Member

Oh, I’ll go out and buy that. [laughter]

Bob Power

No, they suck! They’re awful! I think they’re awful. But then, I know Focusrite make some very good, very affordable — I shouldn’t name names. Whatever! Focusrite makes some things that are under a $1,000 that actually sound quite good. In fact, we’re in a golden age of hardware right now. People are making two things right now that they didn’t make for years. They’re making emulations or copies of the old gear, which actually is much quieter, much lower maintenance and sounds arguably just as good. And I say, arguably. Number two, people are making a lot of very reasonably priced gear that really sounds much, much better. And the difference that a good mic pre will make for you, is your stuff will sound very clear and focused. You’ll hear the edges to the sound instead of something sounding like this [muffles voice], and you got to really work to make it sound open. Or actually, more like this [puts hand over mic]. It’ll sound much more clear and open and you’ll hear the shape of the things. Oh, if you want to EQ your whole mix, and compress it, just be careful. Less is more, and who doesn’t mix mostly digitally here? [asks participant] OK, do you have a complex analog setup?

Audience Member

Ah, it’s a Mackie 24-channel, pretty standard.

Bob Power

OK, do you recall? Do you take notes on your mixes?

Audience Member

No, I work very quickly and leave it like that.

Bob Power

OK, cool. So you don’t do that much. OK. You know, one of the cool things about staying digital, and I’m one of those guys who gets paid a lot of money to go to a really cool studio and play with a lot of great toys, so I shouldn’t talk like this.

Torsten Schmidt

How much of these toys do you own, or how many?

Bob Power

I’m a gear junkie. If I had to buy all of my gear, all over again, it would probably be a quarter of a million dollars. But most of the stuff I don’t use and it’s worthless to anybody else. I have a bunch of old Neve stuff that I use less and less. Good studios are really well equipped these days. I also try not to buy anything. This is a good thing, if you do work in outside studios, or mix in outside studios, don’t buy what they’re all going to have. It’s ridiculous. In the States, most studios have GML EQs, which is a wonderful, very adaptable and powerful piece. I was going to buy one or two, they’re $5,000 apiece! I don’t need to buy it, every studio I’m going to has them. Anyway, so, now I use less and less analog outboard all the time, both mine and my studio’s. One of the advantages to digital mixing, which I don’t do, but when I have done stuff for pre-production or for sales purposes, meaning, let’s do as much as we can, go out and shop the band, get a record deal, and get money to do it right. I have a digital console, an [Yamaha] 02R, which is soon to be, 02/196. And I run Logic Audio with Pro Tools. And man, you know, if you don’t like something, you press a button, and you change it, instead of recall. Setting analog recalls are both a pain in the ass… You sound like you’re a little more liberated than I am ‘cause I’m like, “I got to get it the same, I got to get it the same.” You know what? You’re right, get it close and then make it better. That’s the idea. But my point is, if you’re working all digitally, you can experiment with doing some radical things to your master mix, and listen to it a few times, over the next couple of days, and it’s cool ‘cause it takes you ten minutes to change it. So that’s what I’d recommend with that.

Torsten Schmidt

Aren’t there gear heads who would shoot themselves, now, you saying, “Go digital”?

Bob Power

No, I didn’t say that! I didn’t say that. I said, it has its advantages, for quickness of recall. That said, I never set out to be a better mixer “in the box”. And “in the box” means, staying inside Pro Tools. One of the ways I’ve been working in the last couple of years, that started out of Meshell Ndegeocello’s last record, Comfort Woman, which is both a great record and actually an amazing sounding record. And again, it’s the luck of the draw. You go out every day, you do the best you can. Sometimes you listen to it later and you say, “Wow, that’s pretty cool!” And sometimes you say, “Man, what the fuck was I doing?” But anyway, that record is very full-ranged. A lot of stuff going on everywhere, sonically. Anyway, because her people have never been able to sell a lot of records for her, we didn’t have a lot of money for the mixes. So, I took it into my room, mixed it like for half a day on my Pro Tools rig, on each song first. Then went up to the big studio, spread it out on the faders, put the faders flat and said, “Wow, it sounds exactly the same.” And then went on to make something that sounded pretty good, sound phenomenal. And that’s something I’ve been doing the last couple of years now on all my projects. It aces me out of a little bit of money, ‘cause I don’t charge for my [studio], but sometimes I do. I also take more time on the stuff, and I get paid the same thing. But it’s really, really nice, you know, because gating the kick drum or taking the cell phone out of the lead vocal at $2,000 a day, you feel like a jerk. So, you know, do that stuff at home. If you’re going to take it up to the big studio, do as much of what I call “shit work” at home as you can. But no, I don’t stay “in the box.” I’m not ruling it out. What I have found is, for my best mixes where I stay all digital, which I haven’t released — I mean, this is like, demos and stuff — I still come up about 20 percent short. Twenty to 30 percent short of what I could do if I took it and helped it out with analog. But, I will get better at it. It is the way things are going. I’ve never done anything out of a marketing or economic imperative. I do things to help people make better sounding records. But, it is going that way. Most of the really big mixers I know, are doing a lot of that, because it’s their survival. I’m doing it ‘cause I’m interested, and we’ll see if it becomes my survival, too, I don’t know.

Torsten Schmidt

When you’re talking big mixers, are there people where you really go like, “How the heck did they do that?,” and whose sound do you admire?

Bob Power

A lot of people. Everything from a 1947 Charles Mingus record that on hi-fi levels may not sound great, to I’ll use the example of a Barbra Streisand record, which to me is an example of hi-fi gone bad. I admire a lot of stuff. When people ask me to recommend other mixers, I find it difficult because people want what I do, and other people do what they do, and they do shit really well. And at a certain point, it’s not better, just different. There’s a lot of people who do really good work, and it should be different. You know, you pay a lot of money and you should get something that’s a little unique to that person.

Just ‘cause someone has done a lot of big records, and you’ve seen their name a lot, and they happen to work in New York, London, LA, Nashville, you know whatever the big centers are, and they happen to have a lot of money behind what they do, so you see their name a lot, and they happen to be working with amazing artists, it doesn’t really mean that whatever they do is better or worse than what you do. So you got to make sure, keep your focus straight. Stay focused on the music and do what you do. I mean, there’s a lot of people who consistently I admire their work.

Torsten Schmidt

Is there a camaraderie amongst colleagues or are you just so sick of hearing stuff, that when you’re finished with it, you don’t want to talk about it?

Bob Power:

Like, there’s other mixers and me who are kind of friends. Like, Tony Maserati and I are pretty close. I totally respect and occasionally hang out with Dave Pensado, who has a definite way of doing things. You know, I do kind of slicky, hi-fi R&B things sometimes, too, so I shouldn’t say anything. But both those guys are really amazing. You know, Jon Gass who did Babyface’s shit for years. I mean, everybody’s got a strength. If you really study different peoples mixing, there’s some people who you say, “God, their background vocals are just, like crystal.” And there’s some people who you say, “The gradations of their low end are just amazing,” or, “God, their high end is always so smooth.” So you know, everybody’s got something. But yeah, we all kind of know each other and for the most part there’s definitely a great deal of respect. There’s a certain point, and this comes with money — I wish I was there — but, it comes with props, it comes with expertise, it comes with possessions, it comes with family, where you kind of got all you need. I don’t find a lot of people who are really, really good at what they do to be major assholes about their ego and how it’s involved in it. Because, you know, they got all that stuff, it’s cool. So most of the high-end mixers, we all kind of hang together, we’re pretty cool.

Torsten Schmidt

So because you got the power in the name already, you don’t have to go on about playing power games all the time?

Bob Power

Absolutely not. And you know what? Everybody knows that that’s not really necessary for most things anyway.

Audience Member

I was wondering, how does the compression with FM radio play affect how you mix, or is that an issue?

Bob Power

It’s a great issue, and number one, I try not to pay attention to it when I mix. You got to get tunnel vision. I mean, I sort of have the big picture in mind, and occasionally I do something, I’ll tell my artist, I say, “Look, ‘cause in mastering it’s going to be blah blah blah, so that’s why I’m doing it this way.” You got to pay attention, think about those things. Just like I was saying, when I play guitar tracks, I’m the world’s worst engineer. ‘Cause at each stage of the project, you got to pay attention and get tunnel vision about what’s going on right there. And I really hate to say, “We’ll fix it in mastering,” but for example, sometimes, if I have the high end pushed as far as I can where I am, I’ll tell people that. I’ll say, “Look, it still needs a little bit of 20k.” But with EQ’s, those of you who know, it’s not just… If you turn it to +3, +6 is not just twice +3. It gets into a lot of other issues. So sometimes, you got to pay attention a little bit.

For those of you who don’t know as well, FM radio puts a compressor on their signal to try to make it seem louder. Bob Katz’s new book called Mastering Audio is absolutely brilliant. There’s not a lot of books on audio that are that good. Bob Katz, it’s called Mastering Audio. For techies, he’s totally there, but he also demystifies a lot of concepts about digital audio, headroom, and radio and compression, in really, really cool ways. I don’t buy 100 percent of what he says, but it speaks to that thing very, very, very well. And the classic example is listening to, generally one of the hip-hop tracks that I might have mixed over MTV, and what happens when the kick drum plays. And every time the kick drum plays, the vocal goes in like this [quietens voice] and goes louder [raises voice] like that. What that is, is because the kick drum is so much louder than everything else, when the compressor hears that, it turns down the whole thing. That’s kind of what they do, and then, you lose everything else along with it.

Audience Member

In terms of what you just said about kick drums coming out too loud, what are your favorites? I don’t know if you group a lot, but your tracks, in terms of percussions and basslines and stuff, what are your favorite groupings to make?

Bob Power

Whatever makes the mix easiest. Grouping is when you assign a whole bunch of faders to be controlled by one. Just makes life easier. I usually put all my drums on one fader, sometimes all the guitars — I mean, on a master — all the guitars on another, all the keyboards on another, background vocals on another. That way it just makes it very, very easy if you’re doing complex stuff. If you’re using a mixer that uses DCA grouping, don’t do that. DCAs are a device on older consoles that allow one fader to control another. And they degrade the audio quality, especially the older ones. Like in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, when I started recording, if you put stuff through a couple of DCA’s, it would end up sounding like this. [covers mouth] It just sounded like shit. So be careful if you use a DCA group.

Audience Member

Hi, I’m studying sound engineering. From the beginning of the course, my lecturers and everybody keep telling me, don’t work in a studio, because studios are going down. All business is going down because of bedroom studios. Stick to broadcasting or post-production. Then I finally managed to find a job in a studio, and the first thing they told me, “Don’t do it! Because, it’s long hours, we’re not paid too much…”

Bob Power

The studio told you this?

Audience Member

Yeah, yeah. Can you comment on that and can you give advice to somebody who wants to do that?

Bob Power

You know, I can’t give advice, but I’ll make a couple of observations. Everything you say is true. If you’re a musician, and your ultimate aim is to make your own music, I would say take the money you were going to put into recording school, buy some gear and learn how to use it. I don’t have to explain that, everybody knows this. If you want to engineer for other people, whatever environment that is, it’s a good idea to learn some stuff from other people. And I’m still not at the get-a-job-in-a-studio stage yet, OK? I’ll get there. It’s a good idea to learn as much as you can. At the same time, remember that the more things you know about everything in the world will make you better at what you do. But you should learn as much as you can about engineering, both from your own experience as well as from books and what other people tell you.

As far as jobs in studios, that’s a tough one. I get asked this all the time. You’re absolutely right, studios are dying. There’s — and this is another thing that I wrote down — there’s no such thing as a tracking engineer any more. Unless you’re really, really good, and you’ve hung out for a long period of time. Part of success and longevity is sticking in there long enough. There’s a lot of people who are very good, who’ve been doing shit for two weeks, there’s a lot of people who are very good who’ve been doing shit for 20 years. But you got to stick with it. The way, once you are in a studio... Let me get to that in a second. If you’re going at it from a more realistic point of view, and you want to look in an arena where there’s more work, and perhaps a better pay level – post-production, audio for video, audio for media in general is the way to go, and in a way, that’s a growth industry, one of the few. On the other hand, keep in mind that it’s so easy to do it yourself anymore, you know? Most video editing programs and stuff have enough audio stuff going on that until you get to a certain level, people do it themselves. The editors do the audio themselves and it won’t really make a difference if they have a separate audio person. After you get past a certain level of resolution, then it makes a difference. Live sound, there is work there. It’s a really tough life. I say something really funny — besides the fact that you’re never home, everyone knows this, coiling up mic cables from a live gig gets your hands dirtier than anything I’ve ever done in the world. You could go to a car and rub your hands all over the engine, your hands would not get dirtier than they do, coiling up a cable from a club. So that’s a hard life, too. I mean, I know there’s other careers. Broadcasting, I consider that audio for video. But that’s a more stable thing. Many times there are union jobs, but keep in mind, you go to work every day at the same time, you see the same people all the time, you’re restricted, saying “do it this way.” Basically, you do things so they don’t fuck up, rather than doing things so they’re really cool. So there’s that trade-off.

Torsten Schmidt

Probably, before we give you a little bit of a break, before we lure you off into the studio, you just touched upon the subject, and you said it earlier on. Body clocks are different. And I mean, yes, it might be really fulfilling to do something you really like, and a lot of us are really striving towards that or gravitating towards that aim. But how does that somehow interfere with your private life? Because I mean, I would know as a wife of yours, you’d be in the studio with Erykah Badu, until two o’clock in the morning.

Bob Power

I haven’t gotten into that yet with you, man.

Torsten Schmidt

What?

Bob Power

Nothing, nothing, go ahead. [laughter]

Torsten Schmidt

I mean, just from experience.

Bob Power

You can expect not to have a life if you work in recording studios for a long time. One of the things you become better at after you’ve done it for a while is how to finesse that. You still can’t expect the normal things from your life. My soon to be ex-wife… [laughter] Yeah, if you don’t know the details, it’s hilarious. She blames my never being around. You know what? That’s bullshit. We knew this going in, she knew that I was passionate about music. And it’s about how much… I’m going to stop on this really soon.

Audience Member

Nah, carry on please.

Bob Power

...how much guts to keep going you both have. And how strong you are to make the sacrifices you need to make to keep your relationship together. But it doesn’t really look like anyone in this room really cares about having a normal life, so… [laughter] But, that brings up an important point. It’s important that you work on your skills at being a person, and getting sleep, and doing something else besides music, and reading, all that stuff. It’s very easy to sit, leave your session, get fucked up and sit in front of the television, and fall out. You know, it’s not going to take you anywhere. So, it’s important that you work as hard at other things, you know, as being in the studio, too.

Audience Member

What would you say is like, an average Bob Power day?

Bob Power

If I’m mixing, it’s usually, 10 or 11 AM, to anytime between 11 PM and 2 AM, at worst, 10 AM the next day. If I’m way ahead on a mix, it’ll be like 5:30, 6 PM it sounds pretty good, I get real excited. It’s always midnight. You know, this is why a real rule – you can never schedule social things on days where you have sessions. Never, don’t do it! Every time I’ve done it, even with other artists, who know what’s going on, you’ll never make it.

Audience Member

We’re going to have to talk afterwards man, I think.

Bob Power

OK. [laughter]

Audience Member

But I mean, have you tried to ever get a balance?

Bob Power

Yeah, I’m doing it right now. No, definitely. I’m 52. It’s really important to have something going on in your life other than this because that will also help you bring things to your professional life. And everybody’s a human being first, we all like what we do, second. And we try to lie to ourselves for a long time. You know, when you’re working, you actually have to lie to yourself. But that’s really the way it works, and we all know this.

Torsten Schmidt

So do people working at some car factory as well.

Bob Power

Yeah, same thing.

Torsten Schmidt

You’re in a really privileged situation anyhow.

Bob Power

Absolutely, I’m in a very privileged situation. But life also has a way of teaching you lessons about things all over again, at different times. You know, sometimes you think you got something together and then something will come along and it reminds you that you don’t. And that’s good because it makes you keep rethinking what you do. You know, think about running a session when you’re an engineer. Something I never used to be into or talked about: Get the stuff going as quickly as you can. Get out of the musician’s way. Make the technology transparent to the musician. Let them take their inspiration and run with it. If you have issues, if someone’s running up on the mic and distorting the shit, don’t stop them in the middle of the take. Tell them gently between takes. And if the stuff’s distorted, then, you know what, if it’s a great take and it’s a little crunchy… I’ve started to live with stuff, particularly as a producer that I engineer, that may be a little fucked up, but it’s so good. But, you know what’s funny? If I’m mixing a track and someone else brings something in, I kick and scream not to use that material if it’s a little nasty. But for myself, it’s like, “No, no, no, that feels great.” So you know, different things. But yeah, you got to develop that other stuff.

Torsten Schmidt

I guess, it’s in all our interests to give the man a big hand. [applause]