One of the biggest names in rock production, Butch Vig became a household name producing Nirvana’s Nevermind, and has worked with Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters and loads more. As a founding member of Garbage, he’s also a multi-platinum selling artist in his own right. Take a trip into studio dreamland as we cook up a studio fit for rock royalty. This episode, hear how Vig beat out two of the biggest names in music to get his hands on a one-of-a-kind mic, why he draws similarities between coffee and rock records, and why no software emulation will ever beat his hardware tape delay.
Chris Barker:
I'm Chris Barker.
Will Betts:
And I'm Will Betts. And this is the Music Tech My Forever Studio podcast.
Chris Barker:
In this podcast, we speak with producers, DJ's, audio engineers, and industry figureheads about their fantasy forever studio.
Will Betts:
The studio will have to be created within the confines our completely non-arbitrary rules, and more importantly, is a studio our guests will have to live with forever.
Chris Barker:
Yes, our classic rules. Our guests can select a computer, a DAW, and an audio interface first. Then they can only choose six other bits of studio kit plus one luxury item.
Will Betts:
But Chris, what if they want a selection of plugins combined into a single package?
Chris Barker:
Nope, nope, nope. No bundles.
Will Betts:
No bundles. Joining us today is super producer Butch Vig. Butch Vig is the man behind era-defining 90's records by Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth, and of course, Nevermind, by Nirvana. And he's worked with more influential bands than you can shake a stick at.
Chris Barker:
Yes, but not only a prolific record producer, Butch is also the founding member and drummer of the band Garbage. And he's been in tonnes of other bands too, including his latest project Five Billion in Diamonds.
Will Betts:
Okay, well let's get to it. This is My Forever Studio with Butch Vig. Welcome.
Chris Barker:
Hello Butch, welcome. Thank you for joining us.
Butch Vig:
Well, thank you for having me. I love shows like this because I am a nerd.
Chris Barker:
Yes, welcome. All our nerds find each other on Zoom even in a pandemic. It's great. Here we are. So, we usually kick off ... I don't know if you've heard much of the podcast before, but we usually kick off about where you put the studio in the world and why. I mean, you must have travelled to many studios in your time, you built your own studios, and what makes the perfect setting of the studio for you, does it matter where it is or ...
Butch Vig:
I mean, it's nice to have a studio with a view. I can't tell you how many studios I worked in that are like caves. And I understand that in some ways, not seeing the sunlight is good if you're working 12-14 hour days, you don't even know what time it is. I've been in studios where they don't even have clocks on the walls.
Chris Barker:
More like casino style.
Butch Vig:
I prefer studios that have big open control rooms and high ceilings because most of the time in studios, people seem to spend in control rooms. And I do like it with a view. So if you're going to have a view, why not say Northern California looking at the ocean, or Hawaii possibly. If you're going to get a view, let's get a good view. I live in California, so I'd probably say somewhere on the coast in California.
Chris Barker:
So was California a choice move for you for work or because, again, you really like the town or city you're in? You're in Silver Lake, right?
Butch Vig:
I live in Silver Lake which is just east of Hollywood. My wife is from here. And I met her in the music industry, she used to do A&R at Dreamworks, she signed Nelly Furtado years ago. And it was easy for me to move here because she sort of had to stay here for work. And I've travelled a lot as a producer, I used to have my own studio in Madison, Smart Studios, but I've worked in London and Chicago and New York and Austin and LA and Seattle and Vancouver, wherever, I have too many places to mention. So it just seemed like it was an obvious move for me to come here.
Chris Barker:
So we're going to choose, California sea view maybe?
Butch Vig:
Yeah, I'm going to say Malibu looking down over the bluffs into the ocean. Maybe just a half a mile down the street from Rick Rubin. I'll go over and have some tea with Rick.
Chris Barker:
That's the second guest that's basically wanted. You can just move Rick Rubin out and you can do whatever you want on our podcast. Let's just move Rick out.
Butch Vig:
That's right, I can. I can kick his butt right out.
Will Betts:
You're allowed.
Chris Barker:
Rick's going to have lots of neighbours actually after this podcast. Was it Drew? I think Drew Bang had wanted next door to rent as well.
Butch Vig:
Yeah, I mean there are some incredible studios in Malibu, well, some incredible homes too. And if you can get that kind of view, why not go for it? Like I said, I've spent too many years and too many hours in caves, and anytime you can get a view with some sunlight that's a good thing.
Chris Barker:
And what about the actual vibe and décor issue? Does that matter? Again, you've worked in some dingy places, quite glamorous places?
Butch Vig:
I don't really like glamorous or high-tech. They always seem too corporate to me. I've worked in some studios that are spit-polished and shiny. There's one I used to work at, in particular, in Chicago, CRC, which is is a great studio. But they made all their money in the daytime doing ad work for big clients like Ford, trucking companies, coffee companies, beer companies. And I would get in there at night. We'd get in like 6:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m., and it was a great studio but it was always run very corporate and the vibe was always very cold I thought.
Butch Vig:
I like studios that have sort of a softness to them. If you can see in my little studio here ... I don't even know if you can see behind me, I have these homemade sound panels in my home studio here. And it's based on a Turkish rug that I have, it's upstairs in my living room. So that design is actually from my Turkish rug. And I kind of like things like that because it softens a little bit and gives it some colour. But as long as it's not too shiny and too corporate, I'm going to be okay with it. But it has to have a high ceiling in the control room. I don't like it when they are more boxy rooms, I just like to have a lot of air moving around in the control room.
Will Betts:
And is that because you're also planning to record in the control room, or you want to have a decent envelope of sound around what you're recording? Or is that just personal preference?
Butch Vig:
The sound in bigger rooms, I think you can put speakers farther away if you want to. I usually work with Nearfield's, but if they have good large speakers, I like to use those too, sometimes just to check the bass to impress people if they come by. Sometimes you get the record company to come by and I'll turn on the big speakers and I will leave the room and go listen out in the hallway while it's set to stun volume. Just so they can, "Wow, it sounds great." But I'm trying to protect my ears and be somewhat cautious with them.
Butch Vig:
But the great thing about an airy control room, I think it allows people to hang out for long periods of time in proximity because they don't get too claustrophobic. So it's a sonic thing, having the sound disperse in a wider area and just having room to feel comfortable. Because a lot of the recording is done in control rooms these days. I'll set a mic up ... I had this mic right here set up right behind me because I record vocals and things in here. And a lot of times the bass player and guitar player will stand right next to me in the control room and play and hear what they are hearing coming through a speaker versus headphones. So, it just seems like that's where everybody congregates is in the control room.
Chris Barker:
Nice. Well I think that takes us from the vibe to probably the most boring bit of gear in the studio, I might say, is the computer. I guess Mac or PC? Have you always been a Mac guy or do you care really?
Butch Vig:
I'm always and will continue to be a Mac dude. I don't know how to run a PC at all. I know they're still more popular, the Mac's, but it seems like Macintosh has really carved its way into film and audio. I know a lot of people use it also for editing and movies and TV and things. So that's my choice, and that's what I started on when the first Macintosh's came out and maybe I just don't want to learn another curve with another computer, so I'm going to stick with Macintosh.
Will Betts:
Before you were on Mac, how were you recording? Are we talking large format, are we talking tape, or what were you doing?
Butch Vig:
I learned the old fashioned way on tape. And started on a four track with my buddy Steve Marker who's in Garbage with me. He had a little studio in his basement, and then for some idiotic reason, we decided to start a recording studio in 1984 I think. And we bought an eight track, and we opened up a little room in a factory, like a warehouse, it was $300 a month rent. And we got a lot of work right away. There were a tonne of punk bands in Madison, Wisconsin at the time, a very healthy music scene there. And I didn't have any idea what I was doing, nor did Steve. But we just loved music. And the bands didn't know what we were doing either, so it was a good fit.
Butch Vig:
You know, I never went to recording school, I never had a mentor, anyone who sort of taught me how to engineer or produce. So I just had to sort of make it up on the fly. And it was a good learning groundwork with all these bands, because they were very rough too and didn't know exactly what was going on, so it was just trial and error. There's a documentary on our studio called The Smart Studio Story, and if you listen to the audio through the 90-minute film, it's pretty god awful at the start. But at the end of 90 minutes, the music is sounding pretty damn good. So it's a slow learning curve for me and Steve, as well as the bands get better over that period of time too.
Will Betts:
And so in that period, then, who were those people? Because you said you didn't have a mentor, but were there moments where you had sort of leaps in understanding? Or was it just the constant understanding a little bit more each time?
Butch Vig:
It was really a little bit more each time. I'd finish a recording and take it home and listen to it, and go, "Oh man, the guitar sounded really thin, or the vocals are too buried, or there's no bass." And part of that was trying to figure out what I was hearing. And to be fair, the studio we had was really shitty. I mean, there was no acoustic work at all. So you couldn't tell if there was bass or not because it had this big boomy ringing tone in the back of the room. So it always sounded like there was decent bass. And you'd take it home and go, "There's no bass on here." So we had to figure out ways to sort of guess at that.
Butch Vig:
A lot of that was using headphones, you know, I'd take the speakers off and pop headphones on and then you've got to trust your headphones too. But the band that I was in at the time called Spooner with Duke Erikson was also in Garbage with me now, we've been together many years. He knew a guy called Gary Klebe who worked with a band called Shoes and they had put out a four track recording called Black Vinyl Shoes, which was amazing. They did it in their living room with headphones on and they got signed to Elektra Records. That was a big deal.
Butch Vig:
And Gary sort of took it upon us to help the band we were in. So when we made our first record, he produced it. So I did learn a lot from him because he was a studio nerd. He'd be putting up a snare mic like, "Gary, what are doing with the snare?" "Oh, I'm putting it here because I'm trying to get rid of the high hit wash." Or whatever. And he told me, he could tell that I was interested in recording, and told me, "Hey BV, don't put all of your eggs in one basket. I can tell you're interested in recording. You're not just a drummer, you can be an engineer also."
Chris Barker:
So do you remember the first record that you actually produced when you go, "Oh, okay, this sounds like a record now. I'm not going 'there's no bass, there's no ...'" That first step of ... In how you felt about it.
Butch Vig:
The first single that kind of got some notoriety in the Madison scene was a band called Mecht Mensch. And it was just a cool song, kind of a one-riff ... Over and over and over again. It was called I Want to Be a Zombie, it was great. And for some reason it turned out really good. The mix was good, and the bass, and the guitars, I kind of got that right. And that led to more local bands calling us. And I think over the course of two years I did a tonne of singles and cassettes and EP's.
Butch Vig:
And then I got a call from a band that was from Minneapolis, but they had moved to Madison called Sometimes Why, and they asked me to produce the record. And that was the first proper album that I did all the way through, and it sounded pretty good. That was probably about three years into the studio, so a lot of the trial and error was starting to go in a positive note. I was starting to figure things out. And that record turned out good.
Butch Vig:
And also, because they were from Minneapolis, then we started getting bands from Minneapolis coming down to Madison too. So it was slow-growing process and it just kept getting wider and wider.
Chris Barker:
So back to the Forever Studio gear list. We've got a Mac, we're next to Rick Rubin or we've kicked him out. Next free item before we get to your six is the audio interface. Do you have a preference there?
Butch Vig:
I just use my Digidesign Pro Tools interface. I've experimented with a lot of them, but it works fine for me, so I'm not going to get too fussy. As long as I have enough inputs and outputs to track an entire band if I need to, I'm good with it.
Chris Barker:
Immediately, I'm going to want to upsell your dreams, which is something we do on the podcast. Can we not upsell you something more fancy than that? Surely, the sky's the limit.
Will Betts:
You're doing a big upgrade on your computer anyway, so let's ...
Butch Vig:
Well, I mean I'm trying to think of what other ones I've used. I've used Apogee before, which is good. There was an interface I used when I worked with Muse and Matt Bellamy swore it was the best interface. Oh, and then Matt went crazy with the clock too. He said you have to get this atomic clock because everything sounds better. Now that clock, I think, was like $40,000. I can't remember.
Chris Barker:
There we go. I think we've upselled the dream, you've got to get the atomic clock.
Butch Vig:
Now to be fair, Matt is brilliant. I mean, he's a brilliant musician, he's incredibly talented. And he can hear things really, really well. So, he's probably right, that was the best clock in the world. And I can't remember what the converters were, but I'll go with Apogee, I have used those before, they sound good.
Chris Barker:
So Apogee, but we'll be kind and we'll give you a $40,000 atomic clock to plot the Apogee with. There we go.
Butch Vig:
I wish I could remember the name of it, yeah. But that ... Well, I guess the budget's unlimited, right?
Chris Barker:
Budget is unlimited. The only limit is the amount and no bundles. So yeah, the next free item is-
Will Betts:
The DAW.
Chris Barker:
Your DAW, which I'm going to guess is Pro Tools, right?
Butch Vig:
Yeah, Pro Tools HDX. I'm using the ultimate HDX.
Chris Barker:
Did you try any other DAWs before Pro Tools? I mean it is the standard for studio work, but ...
Butch Vig:
It is, I've worked on other DAWs, every now and then get logic sessions, and have worked in Logic too. A lot of people think Logic is best for programming, and I probably agree with them, but for me, the best DAW for recording and editing sound is Pro Tools. Part of that is I know it so well, I'm really fast on it, and I don't want to have to know and learn multiple different DAWs and bounce between them. So, when I get sessions that are in Logic or Ableton, I always transfer everything into a Pro Tools session just because I know how to use it really quickly.
Will Betts:
And I guess that's sort of the thing with having the shortest distance between knowing what you want to achieve and actually getting there, which is ... DAW is kind of a boring thing, like you don't want to be thinking about it to use it, right?
Butch Vig:
Yeah, it will slow you down. The funny thing is with Pro Tools, when I'm working really quick, sometimes I'll accidentally hit a key that I'm not supposed to hit, you know just because my fingers are flying, and then something will freeze up or lock. Like the time when it won't follow, it doesn't stop it just keeps going and go, "Damnit, what happened?" I have to click on YouTube and go "What happens when Pro Tools does this?" And you'd be surprised man, every single problem there is on any DAW comes up. And then I go, "Oh yeah, I've got to hit Command splat N," or whatever. And then it goes back to following the timeline. I don't know every key command on Pro Tools, but I know enough to work very quickly on it.
Will Betts:
I guess that's one of the things as well with Pro Tools is that you can't change the key commands. It's always going to be like, "You can do this with this key command."
Chris Barker:
I've just learned that now. You can't change the key commands in Pro Tools? That's nuts.
Will Betts:
No, that's the whole point, yeah. Because you can be an engineer or producer and go from studio to studio and not worry about key commands, so that's kind of the idea allegedly.
Chris Barker:
Yeah. Or you can be like me and then be really worried because you can't load your queue-based key commands.
Butch Vig:
Well a friend of mine, Brian Daly, who's an engineer producer from Madison has designed a keyboard so you can set your own key commands. And it works with any DAW. Like, he kept trying to give me one to use in my studio here but I was like, "Yeah, but then I got to change ... I have to reprogram." And I've thought about it before, maybe I should do that because then I can put things exactly where I want them and especially the key commands that I use a lot. But again, I couldn't be bothered. It seemed like the learning curve just to set-up a new key command like that was going to take weeks. But Brian's ... they're great, I know a lot of people who use them.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, the muscle memory as well.
Will Betts:
But then also try writing a document on that keyboard. If everything is pointing to something else, surely this is going to be an absolute nightmare for you to write an e-mail. This is game over.
Butch Vig:
Yeah, or even how to label a file. Sometimes you clear a file and you want to write rough mix number six and the date or title of song, and you can spend an hour figuring out how to do it with the new keyboard.
Chris Barker:
Like the enigma machine.
Butch Vig:
Exactly.
Chris Barker:
Okay, right, so there's your free items. The free items are DAW, we've got Mac, we've got Pro Tools, and we've got an Apogee with some crazy expensive clock. So we're on to the six items in your forever studio. So item number one, what's it going to be? Some speakers, some headphones I guess?
Butch Vig:
No, I'm going to start with the heart and soul. I'm going to pick a console. Because I still love consoles. And I would take the vintage Neve from Sound City, that 8028, but I can't because Dave Grohl won't give it up.
Chris Barker:
Well, you can have that though.
Butch Vig:
I can't, no I tried you guys. I tried to get it away from him, he won't let it go, man. He'll kick my ass if I try to steal it from him. So I'm going with a 70's vintage API probably a 3288. Because I think they're incredible consoles, I love the EQ in them, they can be real clinical and they can also be super vibey. Their pre-amps are great. The sound just passes through them in a really good way. I've done a tonne of records on Vintage APIs, and in my studio here I've got some API lunchbox pre-amps and EQs and they're awesome. They're very rock 'n roll too, I think that's one of the reasons I love APIs.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, they make drums sound fantastic, just straight go through. Doesn't Dave Grohl have one in his home studio? He did a record the one of the modern API's, didn't he?
Butch Vig:
I produced that, yeah.
Chris Barker:
3208 or the 1608, maybe?
Butch Vig:
I think it was the 1608, I think it was either 16 or 24 channels. Or he might have had two 16's, I can't remember.
Chris Barker:
Oh no, 16 and a sidecar. They do a sidecar for it, don't they? That's right.
Butch Vig:
I think that's what it was, yeah. I will say this, the new API's sound really good, the EQs and preamps are the same, you can sort of mix and match whatever you want to put in the chassis. But the new ones do not have the head room that those vintage consoles had in the '70s. Like you could pin the music in those old API's, completely flatten it going through the stereo bus, and it still sounded good. Like, it had this sort of nice compression built within the console. It never got raspy or scratchy. And with the new ones, we found we had to be careful with that.
Butch Vig:
Like if you started really hitting the metres, going plus five or plus 6 over zero VU, you can start to hear a little bit of rizz in the top end, you had to be very cautious about that. So I don't know what the difference is when the transformers or the circuitry going through the master section, but it's not same as it was in those vintage consoles from the '70s.
Chris Barker:
Interesting.
Butch Vig:
That's why I'm going for a '70s vintage console.
Chris Barker:
And how many channels are you going for that? Is there a limit?
Butch Vig:
32. 32 is good.
Will Betts:
32. And you've got the 2500 as well built in, the bus compressor. Is this something that is a favourite of yours? Is that another reason for the console?
Butch Vig:
Yeah, I mean I love that API compressor too. It's great, very musical and very flexible in terms of hardening or soft knee and attack and release time. That's also ... You can hit that pretty hard and it sounds good. I also use the API EQs and compressor has plugins too. I think they also sound really good. But if I had my choice, I would go with a hardware unit.
Chris Barker:
Nice. Cool, item number one is done. Here we go. Item number two, you're going to have to hear something.
Butch Vig:
Item number two you have to hear what the fuck you're doing. So I'm taking Barefoot MM27's. And I've been using them now for probably 10 years or so. Right? Have they been around that long? I guess so. I'm looking at a pair right now in my studio. I have two pairs actually, I have a pair here and then I have a pair in roll cases that I send around when I'm doing a project somewhere else because I just know the speakers and I really trust them.
Butch Vig:
There is something about the midrange quality in the Barefoots that I can hear really clearly. Like if I push up a guitar a quarter dB, I can hear that move. And it's really ... The midrange to me is almost the most important thing in making records. Because that's where a lot of the definition of almost all of the instruments is. Getting bass right is important, getting the real top end air right is important. But a lot of times there's a lot of information going on in the midrange between guitars, transience on drums, and vocals, and keyboards. And I really find that the Barefoots work for me.
Chris Barker:
And I don't want to be too controversial here, but how did you find the reliability? Because I remember early on a lot of, especially DJs out in LA that I would go and see, they were kind of on the Barefoots in the US and the European DJs and producers would be on Focals. And I remember a lot of them having problems with them, blowing them up. But that could just be DJs.
Butch Vig:
Well yeah, they have really good bass, but they're not meant to be used in a club setting I think. As loud as they will go, they don't have an extra subwoofer with them. I think if you're going to do that, you should get an additional subwoofer if you really want to crank the low end in a room.
Chris Barker:
No reliability problems?
Butch Vig:
Mine have been very reliable. I have the old school pair. The other pair that I have is the newer pair, where you can switch the different settings, you can set one for an NS-10, you can give it a scoop if you want which sort of heightens the top end and the bottom end. But I always leave those on the flat setting too, just because I know what the midrange is like in the flat setting.
Butch Vig:
But speaking of the other speaker, that's my auditional pair here, is the Focals or however you say them. I've got a small pair as my auxiliary speakers here in my studio. So I flip between the Barefoots and then the Focals.
Chris Barker:
Nice. But no bundles, we can only have the one set. So you have the Barefoot.
Butch Vig:
Okay, I'm sticking with the Barefoots, the MM27s.
Chris Barker:
MM27s, okay.
Will Betts:
Which Focals are those? Are those the alphas? Or are those something a little bit bigger and nicer?
Butch Vig:
They're the CMS 6.5. They're like little Nearfields.
Will Betts:
Nice. And it's interesting you say about not actually messing with the voicing control on the MicroMains. Because ... And it's one of those things where ... They sort of put it across as being this really interesting feature, and it sounds like it's turning off different drivers within the unit. But you don't find that particularly useful then. Or is it just you prefer the midrange sound of the ...
Butch Vig:
Yeah, I don't find the EQ curves, to be able to switch between them, that useful for me. When you get the scooped one, which heightens the top and bottom, or basically cuts some of the midrange, it sounds hyped, more like maybe a master would if someone's going to suck some of the low midrange out. And I have never liked NS-10s ever. It used to drive me crazy to go into a studio and there would be the NS-10s, they just have all of this horrible midrange. And I always found that when I worked on them, I never mixed the guitars loud enough. Because there was so much point in that 2-2.5 K range, whatever, that the guitars always sounded soft when I took them out to other studios.
Butch Vig:
So I started working on a lot of other speakers. I worked on Tannoys over the years and Genelecs, Adams. And so when I would go into other studios, if they had NS-10s, I would take my own speakers.
Chris Barker:
I was just about to say let's do some NS-10 chat, because it's always a love/hate, proper Marmite speak as we might say in the UK, you either love them or you hate them. There's people that swear by them, but I'm starting to feel like, especially with our podcast, there's more people that hate them than like them. I think we're more haters than lovers, which is good. We need to move on from the NS-10.
Butch Vig:
Do you remember the NS-10 story about Bob Clearmountain? He used to mix with them, but he put tissue paper over the tweeter.
Chris Barker:
That's right, yeah.
Butch Vig:
So then I would go in the studios and people would have the tissue paper over the tweeter. And I'm like, "The tweeter, there must be something wrong with it if you have to put tissue paper over it." But, you have to admit, Bob Clearmountain is a genius of a mixer, he mixed some incredible sounding albums. So whatever Bob did, we were going to do that too.
Chris Barker:
Yeah. I like the idea that it's nothing to do with Bob Clearmountain, it's just we didn't know about that tissue paper trick. It's like I'm still doing the tissue paper thing and I'm still not as good as Bob Clearmountain, what is going on?
Will Betts:
That's the only difference.
Chris Barker:
So what's that? Where are we at? Are you at number three?
Will Betts:
Coming up on three, but before we get there, in terms of translation from when you're mixing on the MicroMains, say, I noticed that some of those earlier records like Nevermind and Siamese Dreams, some of the tracks on there, they don't have a massive amount of width. And I wondered, is that sort of an aesthetic choice at the time, or is that something where at the time you're thinking this needs to be mostly down the middle because the primary delivery format is radio for this. Or what was the thinking there?
Butch Vig:
You know, I used to do that. I used to mix wide stereo mixes and if I had leftover on guitars, I'd put them hard left and hard right. But I was very conscious of things going to radio, especially if it was a single and it went to MTV, because a lot of TVs back then had a mono speaker. And if you have something panned hard left or hard right, it's 3 dB quieter when it goes to mono. So I would usually pan things, like instead of going completely wide, I'd say go into a 10% whatever the term would be, I would go to 7%. I would tuck him in a little bit so that there's still some stereo, but when you hit the mono button it wouldn't completely collapse and lose them.
Butch Vig:
And sometimes I would do ... I would mix a whole album that way. But then for my own joy, I would do a stereo mix that I would have. But inevitably, those never really made it on to the records because people were always concerned that it would translate to a mono radio and mono TV. Nowadays I don't think you have to worry about that so much, because almost all TVs have stereo speakers.
Chris Barker:
Do you think any of those records in that version will see the light of day? Do you think there will ever be any re-releases or re-mastered?
Butch Vig:
Maybe. Possibly. You know I think when we did ... When Billy Corrigan re-released Siamese Dream, I think he went back to the original mixes, and we went for the widest stereo. I haven't listened to him with headphones, but I bet if you compare that to the original CD, it's got a wider sonic spectrum to it.
Chris Barker:
Interesting, so these things all exist then, you've got the wide boy versions of all of these era-defining records?
Butch Vig:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Where do these live? Do you have them somewhere?
Butch Vig:
Well some of them are here, yeah. I've got in the side of my studio here and in the back, I have a closet with a lot of master tapes and DATs. And some, I used to burn. I put them on CDs and then I just file them away. The tapes, obviously, if I was going to pull those out, I'd have to bake them because some of them have been sitting there for 20-plus years.
Chris Barker:
The idea of all this music, though, is kind of exciting.
Chris Barker:
So, item number three, what are we going for next? We've got a desk, we've got some badass monitors.
Butch Vig:
There has to be a way to capture what you're recording, so I'm going with a microphone next. And at first I thought I would go kind of old school and utilitarian and go for a Shure SM7, which if I had to go to a dessert island, that would probably be the microphone I took, because you can drop it in the ocean and take it out and the damn thing would still work. But for sonics, I'm going to go with the 1959 ELA M 250. And I have one. It came out of RCA studios and we're pretty sure that Elvis Presley sang on it.
Chris Barker:
What?
Butch Vig:
It's a pretty special sounding mic. You know, there's something kind of wrong with it. In the top-end, it's almost like this little extra distortion, but it's super musical, so it gives everything a ... Like there's this steam that comes out of things, especially singers. When I had the power supply on it about six or seven years ago worked on, I sent it in and the mic tech who's a super guru from Nashville looked at it. And he wrote me back this letter and said he's never heard an ELA M 250 that sounds like this. He goes, "It's kind of f'ed up, but it's really special."
Butch Vig:
And I've used that with Dave Grohl and with Billy Joe and with Shirley Manson on I can't tell you how many things. I have it here in my studio, but it's in a roll case. I don't pull it out unless it's a real proper session. I did use it here when I was finishing the Silversun Pickups record, because I worked with them on their last record. As well as 5 Billion in Diamonds, we did some of the vocals here and I pulled it out for them. But otherwise, I leave it in the case because my daughter comes down here and runs around and I don't want her friends to knock over a $15,000 mic or whatever it costs.
Chris Barker:
That's amazing. So how did you find out ... Were they selling it? Or did you approach them? Because that's the thing with items like that, is just finding them. Even if you're able to afford it financially it's getting ahold of the damn things.
Butch Vig:
Well I remember exactly how I got it. I was in New York working with Freddie Johnston who's a singer-songwriter who I'm very good friends with. And we were working on this record, This Perfect World. And at one point we went into Sears Sound, and I don't know if you ever knew Walter Sear. He had one of the best mic collections in the world, he was a super audio gear head. And the first day when we wanted to do vocals with Freddie, John Siket , the engineer, set up a an M49 and U47 and a U67, and I can't even remember, like five or six different mics.
Butch Vig:
And a friend of John's had brought by the Elam to set up and we set that up and Freddie went by and sang a verse and chorus, just as a warm-up on each mic, and it got to that mic and John and I both went, "Wow that sounds great. What's that?" We were looking, "Oh, that's the Elam 250 from Mark Russell." His friend Mark Russell said we should check it out. I think he rented it for like $75 a day or whatever. But it sounded so good, we decided to use it.
Butch Vig:
And about a week and a half later, Mark called me and said, "Are you interested in buying that mic?" I said, "God it sounds great, how much do you want for it?" And he went, "Hmm, $6500." And I was like, "Oh, I can't afford that, that's just too much for a microphone." And I said, "Well, let me think about it." He goes, "I'll call you tomorrow."
Butch Vig:
So the next day he calls back and he said, "Well do you want the mic because Bryan Adams wants it and Lou Reed wants it. And I said, "I'm taking it. Those guys are not getting that microphone. I'll write you a check right now for $6,500." There was no way Bryan Adams or Lou Reed was going to get that microphone.
Chris Barker:
That's an amazing story, that's great. That sounds amazing.
Butch Vig:
Yeah, the mic, it's a special mic though, man. Like I said, it's got something in the top end that just gives everything this really lovely like compressed steam. Hard to describe, but it's a beautiful sounding mic. I don't know that I would put it next to a snare drum or kick drum. I have used it on room mics before, but it sounds great on piano, acoustic guitar, you can put it in front of a guitar cabinet, particularly good on strings and vocals, and it's very unique sounding.
Will Betts:
And can you think of a specific track where you might be able to really hear the sizzle on it?
Butch Vig:
Well if you listen to pretty much all of Version 2.0 of Garbage, that's the Elam. Freddie's record This Perfect World, everything was sung with the Elam. You could probably check that out on Spotify. He has a great voice, he's got a little bit of a country twang to it, but it's very plaintive and that mic really capture his voice in detail.
Chris Barker:
And interesting, also, to have an Elam 250, because everybody raves about the 251, and it's the not the 250 that people talk about too much.
Butch Vig:
Well the 251s are easier to find and there's also ... A lot of 251s now clones that sound really good. Yeah, but there's just something about that one, I don't know what it is that sounds really really special. After I had worked with Dave Grohl, we finished ... James Brown and I, the engineer, we bought Dave a 251 for his birthday. But it's one of the new ones, one of the clone ones. And it sounds great. I can't remember whether it was Wonder Audio or one of them, but you know, it's a couple thousand dollars. But the vintage ones, we looked at, but they were crazy expensive.
Butch Vig:
And the new ones sound good. Like I told you guys, I've got my ... Right here, my U47 clone and it sounds really, really good.
Chris Barker:
What's that? What are we up to? Item number four. So we've console, we've got some speakers, we've got a mic.
Butch Vig:
Next up, I like to control the level of things when I am recording them, so it's going to be a compressor. And my initial thought went to a Classic 1176, which is a brilliant compressor. You can't go wrong with it because it's really musical, you can adjust the attack and release times. But I started thinking about it, and I decided to pick a Summit TLA 100, which is one of my favourite compressors. I use it when I can every time I record a vocal. As I'm talking to you guys right now, this is going through a Summit TLA 100. There is a smoothness to it. I think you can really compress things with that compressor and it puts it up in your face, but it never gets harsh like some compressors do. I don't know that I would use it on a snare drum or a kick drum, but I've used it on bass, I've used it on guitars, acoustic guitar, and it's particularly good with vocals.
Chris Barker:
And so where did you first use a TLA 100? What was the set-up there?
Butch Vig:
I remember, I want to say it was probably around 1989, I got a call from this guy, Michael Papp in Wisconsin, I think he lived in Waukesha or Wausau or Stevens Point, somewhere, a smaller town like an hour and a half outside of Madison. And he said, "Hey, I've got this audio gear I'm working on and I've got this compressor, it's a TLA 100, how about if I drop it by and you check it out?" I'm like, "Sure." And he brought it by, smart, and we plugged it and I just fell in love with it instantly.
Butch Vig:
At the time, we were very much a budget studio. We had a lot of DBX 160s, I think we had 1 1176, we had 1 LA-2A, but we had a lot of cheap compressors. And the first time I heard the TLA 100 it had such a creamy kind of sound to it, it's just really really smooth. And I said I love it on vocals. And when someone sings, it immediately kicks down minus 10 dB. I do not shy away from the compression. It's like I want it to just sit right in your face.
Butch Vig:
The only thing you have to be careful with, as you do a lot of compressors, is that ... The only thing you have to careful with the TLA 100, as with other compressors, is it can bring out the sibilance. So, sometimes you may need to De-ess, but if you want to take a vocal and put it in the track and just let it sit there and barely have to ride it at all, it's perfect for doing that.
Will Betts:
So right now, because you're going through one, are you De-essing as well? Or are you just a naturally a ess-less person?
Butch Vig:
You guys are going to have to de-ess me. So sorry about that.
Chris Barker:
Naturally ess-less, I like that as a thing.
Butch Vig:
She sells sea shells by the sea shore. That's a good ... You can use that to plug in the de-esser.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, perfect.
Will Betts:
The reason I ask is that this is a thing ... I have a whistley s and I have to de-ess myself constantly. I have to de-ess on the way in, I often have to de-ess in post, and it's a pain. And certain people are just a bit more essy than others. And so I aspire one day to be as ess-less person that I can control my ess's perfectly.
Butch Vig:
Well you have to just speak in words that don't contain esses, you know?
Chris Barker:
Yeah, write those lyrics perfectly, that's the thing.
Will Betts:
I'm going to have to think so hard about everything I say going forward to avoid esses, but I'm here for it. I'll work on that.
Chris Barker:
Item number five. We're closing in now, we're closing in, two more left.
Butch Vig:
I'm going to go with a Roland Space Echo, either just the regular Space Echo or the Chorus Echo, which is what, the RE-201 or something like that?
Chris Barker:
201 for Space, 301 for Chorus, I think.
Butch Vig:
It's one of the first Echos I ever had. I still have one, they are kind of magical. I like it that they don't necessarily always sync up perfectly. You know, you have to sort of move it around to get it so that where you want the delays to fall in space. But they're just so amazing, they're super vibey. Put a little bit on a snare drum and it works. Put a little slap on a vocal and it works. I'm not a huge reverb fan, I do use reverb, of course, on a lot of things. But I have a tendency to rely more on delays for things to sort of put them back in a track. I also feel like sometimes reverb can start to take up a lot of space. So I generally will defer to putting a tape slap on something, a guitar or vocal, before I put anything else on it.
Chris Barker:
I've had people use them just to run things through them without really any delay as well, just hitting the tape, just going through the circuits in a given kind of a vibe thing. Especially on synths. I know a lot of guys just adding that vibe of it, even if you're not going to mount on the reverb and delay settings.
Butch Vig:
You know the cool thing about them is the gain stage on them is quite musical too. You can get a little bit of crunch and a little bit of attitude, but it never gets super harsh. So you can vibe something up. Even if you're barely using the echo, it can just instantly vibe up a voice or instantly vibe up an instrument.
Chris Barker:
So when did you discover that, and do you own one now?
Butch Vig:
I still own one. And the first delay unit we ever had at Smart was an Echoplex. And that was great, but it was a little more tricky getting it set. I don't know if you remember what the Echoplex was like, it had a little slider you'd slide back and forth. The tapes seemed to break quite often, maybe you'd have to open it up and try to instal it. Or we would try to fix it ourselves and splice the tape. The Rolands, to me, were just more sturdy and a little bit more flexible in terms of what you could do with them. Especially if you had one of the Rolands that had echo or reverb and chorus, because you could do a lot with that.
Butch Vig:
And again, they were quite magical because they would glue things together, they would vibe up even at the most simple track if you just ran it through it.
Chris Barker:
And you talk thereabouts using it on a snare drum, when you're processing drums, because that is one of the things you're known for is the awesome drum sounds, so what are some of those tricks you use to get something super vibey? I mean, you did the native instruments pack just recently. So what were some of those things where you got to be the mad scientist in the studio and make cool noises?
Butch Vig:
Well the native instruments drum thing I worked on was really fun, for one thing, because it was total lab rats just doing whatever I wanted. I sort of tried to make the drums sound a little bit more electro rock leaning, less hip hop, organic sounding. And I used a lot of analogue stomp boxes. I had my Roland plugged in like I ... Sometimes you add a little bit of slap echo rather than reverb, and you barely hear it, but it gives it some body and some depth.
Butch Vig:
I also used a tonne of stomp box pedals. You can't really see them here, but I've got Graphic Fuzz, and Woolly Mammoth, and Hyper Fuzz, and a tonne of little stomp box pedals that I use. Again, there's not a lot of big super roomy drum sounds on the Butch Vig drums. There's a lot of stuff that's gated or chopped or manipulated so it's really punchy, but it doesn't have a lot of super long sustain. Of course, you can do that any time. You can always add more reverb or whatever too.
Butch Vig:
And a lot of that was a combination of tweaking the drums in Pro Tools with plugins, and then also routing it through the stomp box pedals and then re-running them all back. At the end of the day, I rout everything through my Neve 1081, which I have over here, and then that printed back into Pro Tools. So I couldn't tell you, there was not one specific one, but I had a lot of different templates and things that I could mix and match as I was working on the drum sounds. It's really fun.
Chris Barker:
And so, important to be going through the Neve then as well, for that coloration? Or was that just for internal sculpting, what were you doing there?
Butch Vig:
Both, for coloration and at the very end, if I wanted to add more EQ top of bottom or cut some midrange, whatever, I could just insert that. But that was the last in the chain, and went back into Pro Tools when I printed.
Chris Barker:
Just back on the delay question as well, because I know that Space Delays aren't super difficult to get ahold of at the moment, but would you turn to a plugin version just for repeatability ever? Or is there something about the tactility of that, that the actual Space Echo makes a difference?
Butch Vig:
Well I used the plugin some. Waves makes great plugins, UAD makes awesome plugins, but I have a tendency, if it's available, to use the analogue one. Because I feel like they're a little less predictable just sonically and ... I don't know, there's something about it that a real analogue sound that to me has sort of a definitive glue to it, if that makes any sense. I'm sure that some people could line up an analogue Roland and AB that against a digital plugin and they may sound exactly the same. But there's a comfort in having that little box right next to you and hearing the tape going ... And I love to grab things still, a tactile grab a knob and twist it. Everybody's heard when the Space Echo goes ... And changes the tempo, or you turn up the feedback and it starts getting ... I love that, and you can do that in the plugins too, but I just find it's a lot more fun and interesting to do when you have a real analogue unit.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, I guess you want to do it when it's something to grab. Like you want to play the echo or you can do things like that. Like having a real console and playing the mixing desk when you're printing mixes, it can be kind of a performance in itself. Whereas even though you can do that with plugins and controllers, you tend not to. You sort of set it and leave it a lot more.
Butch Vig:
Well if you listen to any of the great Dub records made from the late '70s, early '80s, it's all about delays. And they were all old school tape delays. And they would manipulate it in the mix. And I've done that a couple times on remixes, before we started Garbage, Steve and Duke and I did a bunch of remixes for Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails and U2, and Beck and we always had a couple Roland Space Echos and sometimes an Echoplex set up in the studio, and it was just fun to be able to sort of manipulate those in the process of when we were doing a mix.
Chris Barker:
Where are we at Will? I'm getting lost into stories. We're at item number five or item number six?
Will Betts:
Number six, it's our last studio item.
Chris Barker:
The last studio item.
Butch Vig:
Oh boy, that's a tough question. What would I want?
Will Betts:
Any instruments?
Butch Vig:
Well that's what I'm thinking, yeah, either a drum kit or a really good piano. I'm going to say I would want a really good piano, like a good Steinway or a good Yamaha grand piano. We used to have a Yamaha at Smart Studios and it was very bright. It never needed any EQ, which I thought was kind of amazing. Normally you have to cut some midrange in pianos or if they sound too boxy, or you have to boost the top end. And we used that Yamaha in tonnes of sessions and it always fit in perfectly with guitars and keyboards and base and drums.
Butch Vig:
And the thing I like about having a piano in the studio is when you're trying to figure out something with the band, it's easy to go up and play a melody or play something and just figure it out on the spot. I'm not really a very good piano player, I studied piano from first grade to sixth grade and then I gave it up and took up drums. But I know enough to sit down and play chords and figure out things. And I find that that's fairly valuable to have in the studio. Even though a lot of rock records don't have piano, but it's really musical to have around when you're trying to work on arrangements.
Will Betts:
Sounds like a compositional aid more than something to record.
Butch Vig:
Yeah and sometimes I'll go ... Somebody will be singing and I'll go, "I think you're supposed to be singing a G#, not a G." And they'll go, "Huh?" And I'll go up to the piano ... And I'll hit the note and they'll go, "Okay, you're right, it is a G#." It helps to have a piano available.
Will Betts:
And so how much of that ... You said that you played piano for a while, but the music theory stuff, that's got to be a huge part of what you're doing, even with bands that ... Especially with bands that don't necessarily know that much about the music theory behind what they're doing. And how much of your role is being that sort of music theory shepherd?
Butch Vig:
I think I'm lucky I know enough music theory to help figure things out. There's a lot of producers I know who have no musical background training, they can't play an instrument and they're still really brilliant because they just hear things and say, "I like this," or "I don't like that." And really, a great producer is just someone who has an opinion and the artist trusts that opinion. So you don't really have to have a musical background, but it's been invaluable for me, like I said, to just be able to quickly on the fly figure out melodies and counter-point things and chord structures. And sometimes helping singers figure out a melody. I do it all the time with my daughter, she's fourteen, and she'll be singing something, like working on a musical, and some of the musicals are quite complicated in terms of the melodic structure, because the chords keep modulating to a different key. And when it modulates, sometimes it's hard to find that scale. But it's easy when I can show her piano and go, "Here it is in F, here it is in A, here it is in C, or C#, or D," or whatever. And she gets it, she can hear it right away. When you see the notes and hear it it allows you to sort of train your voice to do that too. So pianos are amazing for that reason.
Butch Vig:
I wish I could play piano a lot better. Because I do find it soothing to sit and noodle around on it every now and then, just sort of play some random Keith Jarrett-esque chords with little noodley topline, it's kind of therapy, it's cool.
Chris Barker:
I think it's extra therapy, too, when it's a beautiful, big old piano as well. There's something about those really good quality top-end pianos where anything you touch just sounds lovely. And even really, discordant stuff just sounds wonderful out of them.
Butch Vig:
Yeah. Especially since I'm sitting in my beautiful house in Malibu looking out over the ocean through giant glass windows, why not have a grand piano there to noodle around on, right?
Chris Barker:
The breeze just coming in, yeah.
Will Betts:
All with an open linen shirt, I hope.
Butch Vig:
That I borrowed from Rick Rubin.
Chris Barker:
Just took it straight out of his wardrobe.
Chris Barker:
Okay Will, do you want to set the scene before we get to the luxury item? What's going on in this studio, let's take us through it.
Will Betts:
We're overlooking the bluffs in Malibu in Rick Rubin's house, with a big airy control room, your audio is going into an Apogee Symphony connected a Mac, we assume the most expensive Mac money can buy.
Butch Vig:
Of course.
Will Betts:
Excellent. We're running Pro Tools and the first thing that's apparent in the studio is your giant 1970's 32 channel vintage API desk. The 3288's you're listening back on Barefoot MicroMain 27s. You're recording with a 1959 Telefunken ELA M 250, you're compressing with a Summit Audio TLA 100. For effect, you have a Roland Space Echo RE-201 and for musical accompaniment, you have a Yamaha grand piano. How does that sound?
Butch Vig:
It's all sounding quite glorious. Especially since I've just had my third espresso from my espresso pod machine, which I drink about 10 of those little suckers everyday. You know I never drank coffee in high school or college until I started Smart Studios. And one day my partner said, "Hey BV, let's have some coffee," and he was into coffee, and he made me a mocha which is like French roast with chocolate and sugar and stuff, and it just tasted like hot chocolate and I loved it. Cut to about three months later, I was just drinking black French roast as dark as it would go. And I drink a lot of coffee. I find that the pause when you're working on something and trying to figure out if it's good or bad or what you should do next to be able to step away from the console and get a coffee is a good brain clearer for me. So I do have to load the studio up with caffeinated capsules as well as decaf capsules. Because if I drink caffeine all day, I'll be just wired by 8:00 p.m. at night.
Butch Vig:
But I have to give you a little sidebar here, when I did Wasting Light with the Foo Fighters, because I was really into that Nespresso pod machine, I bought a coffee machine, a little Nespresso pod machine to put in Dave's lounge above his garage. Dave said early on, "Oh you can just go make coffee in our kitchen." And I realised we're going to be going down in his kitchen where his family lives like five or six times a day, so I said, "I'm just going to get one and I'll put it right in the corner here." And I didn't know how many pods to get, so I ordered 500. And they were gone in three weeks.
Butch Vig:
Because I would have 8-10 a day, but everybody would join me in the band. There was two engineers and the band was there and they were like, "Oh, BV's having a coffee, let's all get one." And we're all running the little pod maker. After three weeks, I ordered another 500 and those were gone in three weeks too. So we drank a shit load of coffee making Wasting Light.
Chris Barker:
So, just to go over it, this is your luxury item for the studio, is a Nespresso capsule machine with unlimited capsules, obviously.
Butch Vig:
Yes.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, a forever amount of decaf and a forever amount of caffeinated capsules.
Butch Vig:
That's correct, yeah.
Will Betts:
So is it all black now? Do you only drink dark roast still? Or do you have a different preference these days?
Butch Vig:
Yeah I like dark roast, particularly French roast or Italian roast. There's a lot of coffees out that have this sort of peculiar midrange to me and I'm not really a big fan of midrange in coffee. I sort of like the French roast because it sort of tastes burnt on the top and has this richness in the bottom. It has no mid-range. It's like the '80s rock records, it's all been sucked right out. I'll drink it with a little splash of almond milk or oat milk and sometimes I might add a little honey, but I can just drink it straight black too, if need be.
Chris Barker:
I do like that line. I like my coffee like I like my '80's rock records.
Butch Vig:
No midrange.
Chris Barker:
That's a great way to end the podcast. I like my coffee like I like my '80's rock records.
Will Betts:
Well thank you so much, Butch, it's really been a bit of an honour, and really great to chat to you.
Butch Vig:
Yeah guys, this is really fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Chris Barker:
Great pleasure, thank you so much.
Butch Vig:
Peace.