Tag Archives for " George Strait "

My guest today is Bob Bullock, whose career started as a studio engineer in Oakland CA, training under such greats as Humberto Gatica, Reggie Dozier, Barney Perkins, Roy Haley and Roger Nichols. And he became a top engineer himself, working with many great artists like The Tubes, Art Garfunkel, Seals and Crofts, Crazy Horse, Chick Corea and REO Speedwagon.

In 1981, while working at Lionshare Recording Studio for Kenny Rogers, he was approached by legendary producer Jimmy Bowen to engineer for Warner Bros. Records in Nashville and finally moved here full time in 1984.

Bob's engineering credits extend over fifty gold and platinum albums, including Shania Twain, Reba McEntire, George Strait, Tanya Tucker, Patty Loveless, George Jones, John Anderson, Hank Williams Jr., Jimmy Buffet and Steve Wariner.

Bob has spent 40 years working with major label artists like Kenny Chesney, Loretta Lynn and Keith Urban, but in sharp contrast now enjoys working almost exclusively with independent artists from all over the world including Switzerland’s Baton Rouge, Norway’s Gunslingers and Canadian acts, Tyler Whelan and Friends of Jack.

He has also expanded his musical contribution outside the studio and now lends his teaching expertise to multiple universities including Belmont University & The Art Institute in Nashville, TN, and Troy University in Montgomery, AL.

Bob is also passionate about helping artists develop their work at a time, when the traditional artist development label no longer exists. He recently joined the team of providers at PCG Nashville - The Science of Artist Development, a company dedicated to educating and mentoring artists.

When Chick Corea came into Kendun Recorders to do the Mad Hatter record, people booked rooms for a couple of months it wasn’t like they just came in to book a session or tracking date and that was your day in, day out job for that period of time. Everybody lived together and sometimes we would just stay at hotels near the studio. In Chick Corea’s case it was kind of a cast of different musicians he had coming in and we would cut tracks one day, maybe do overdubs on another day, the only thing we didn’t do there was mix, they took the project over to Crystal Sound.

One of the guys I learned a lot from Bernie Hersh was his name. He was Chick’s regular engineer and so I assisted Bernie on some stuff, did some overdubs myself. Bernie worked with him even live so, Bernie really knew Chick’s style and sound and most of the time in those recordings, so much of it is still the musician, there’s no magic tricks. In fact we probably at the time had two AKG 414’s on the grand piano. Again when you work in an environment where you’re spending a few months recording, you have the opportunity to experiment with different things for different songs. So it’s not like there are any magic tricks, it’s just being able to try something different for this particular piece and then there are other things that contribute. We were working I believe a Harrison console that was in that studio, but we were also recording to Studer a800 analog tape machines, so all those things contribute.

                                                  Chick Corea - Mad Hatter

How do you See Recordings Sessions Contrasting Today Compared to Then ?

It really was about getting everything the way you wanted it on the front end you know through the 70s & 80s. I still work that way myself for projects I produce, I record them in commercial studios at least getting them the basic tracks down so the only real difference for me and recording music now is that we have to work more time efficiently and have to make decisions much quicker because of smaller budgets. I find myself having to do more pre-planning, more organized, more sure of what I’m going to do. There’s pros and cons to that, that’s a bit of a fight for me because you’re telling yourself that every decision you make has to be the right decision for the music and the artist. Aside from the time constraints, I really record exactly the same way I did 30 years ago with the exception of recording to generally ProTools.

Recording Art Garfunkel

The part that I played in it was really cool because I got to engineer it, but I recorded horns for the Garfunkel project Fate for Breakfast . There would be different microphones of choice for the different horns. Most of us would have the musicians standing side by side not really worried about isolation because it was a section, I was mostly worried about the musicians all being comfortable. We recorded in a larger room, but room decisions are always just song to song and project to project. I think Bill Conte was producing and I think describing what they wanted for Art Garfunkels horn section was a more controlled room. As far as mics it’s just a matter of being familiar with what the range of different microphones are. For trombone I’d probably for example a Fet47 with a pad on it, trumpets were probably more likely Norman 87s at that time also with a pad. It was generally just like here’s a go-to starting set-up and if everybody’s jumping up and down and happy then that’s great, if any one of the creative team, including me, say gee I think the trumpets sounding a little thin let me try a different microphone, then that’s what we did.

                                               Art Garfunkel - Fate for Breakfast

Q- What was some of the best advice you got early on?
A - I had the good fortune of working under the best of the best Reggie Dozier, Barney Perkins, Roy Haley, Roger Nichols, the list goes on and on and I got to be an assistant engineer for all those people. Mostly what I got pretty consistant was you shouldn't do this unless you really love it and it’s all about working with people, you have to be a people person. Every person I just mentioned, their biggest contribution to me was they were always creating a calm environment for artists and producers.

Q - Q- Share with us a recording tip, hack, or secret sauce.
A- I learned different things from different people. Al Schmidt was very minimalist on everything and made fantastic sounding records, Roy Haley was real big on a lot of effects and reverb on his work with Simon and Garfunkel so I learned a lot of reverb tricks. From all that I realized I only reach for the gear when I think I need it. It’s all about being creative. Some of my favorite records have happened because of people that made a record that really didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t know how other people did it, they just used their own ears to come up with something that sounded good to them. In many cases those would become classic records.

Q -Share a favorite hardware tool for the studio
A- I don’t really have any. I’m so used to working in different rooms with what they have. For recording I’m flexible. If a band approaches me to record them, I’m going to take us into a studio I think captures the vibe and maybe the sound. There’s a room here in Nashville called Ronnie’s Place. I favor that tracking room a lot because it’s an old 70s wood tracking room and drums just have a different tone.

Q -Share a favorite software tool for the studio
A- I’m a fan of the UAD plugins and also Waves, but I also use PSP plugins quite a lot it’s much smaller company out of Poland. PSP has a couple of EQ’s and delay programs that just sound a little different to me and so I use those occasionally, it seems to break things up a little bit, a little more boutique.

My guest today is Steve Marcantonio, a Grammy winning producer, recording engineer, and teacher from Nashville TN. He is also a member of NARAS, a Leadership Music alumnus, and winner of the ACM Engineer of the year award.

Steve Marcantonio started his career at the Record Plant Studios in New York City in 1978.

While at the Record Plant he worked with such artists as The J. Geils Band, Aerosmith, Kiss, Heart, Graham Parker, The Blues Bros and John Lennon.

One remarkable and heart breaking story is that Steve spent 8 days in the studio in December of 1980 with John and Yoko. After they left on the night of the 8th John was killed. Quite a shock for a 21 year old who just started in the business 2 years prior.

Steve’s credentials include Rosanne Cash, Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill, Reba, George Strait, Alabama, Restless Heart and Deana Carter. And In recent years Steve has done records with Brantley Gilbert, Thomas Rhett, Band Perry, Taylor Swift, Hank Jr, Steven Tyler and Cheap Trick.

And though he didn’t include it in his bio I know Steve is also dead serious about cooking real Italian food!

Keep Your Promises

Roy Cicala hired me off the street. I didn’t know anything, so he wanted to teach me his way. I learned a lot of valuable lessons from him. One of which is when you’re booking time with someone you have to keep your promise that you’ll work with them, even if you get booked by someone else who’s a much bigger name. You don’t go by the name, you go by the booking. I was actually involved in a project with the Blues Brothers. I worked on the soundtrack of the Blue’s Brothers movie. It went on for about 6-7 months. I don’t think there was a budget because we spent a heck of a lot of money, a lot of time, and a lot of other things. Along the way I got to learn about a very valuable piece of equipment back then it was called the BTX. It was this white little console that held two tape machines together. Well in September of that year Jonny and Yoko were working on Double Fantasy and they booked the studio and they wanted me because I knew how to use the BTX. I thought for sure that the producer of the Blues Brothers having worked with me for 5-6 months would have said oh sure. He said, “No, I need you here with me.” At the time John Belushi was very famous, the Blues Brother’s movie was going to be huge, but I’m thinking to myself man I have the chance to work with John Lennon. I didn't make any fuss, and as it turns out I missed that chance, but I got my chance late afterwards. You can’t get too bent out of shape with names, you have to keep to whoever it is you’re working with.

John Lennon at the Record Plant

Gretchen Peters

I would say my number one highlight besides working with John Lennon is I got to record a song with Gretchen Peters. She’s probably one of the most amazing artists I’ve ever worked with. Great singer, great songwriter, she doesn’t write with anyone except for Brian Adams. She had a song she wrote called, “When You Are Old,” and it’s about getting old and tired and grey. My mom had been getting old and she was into music and said, “I want bridge over troubled waters to be played at my funeral.” I gave her this song and she said, “That’s the one I want played.” So sure enough in the funeral home, we played that song and there was not a dry eye in there. That’s one of my major accomplishments besides the grammy. Having that song played for my mom that I recorded was incredible.

                    Gretchen Peters - When You Are Old

Running a Great Recording Session

Obviously you have to pick the right mics to go with whatever instruments you’re using. In order to get a good mix you have to have good sounding tracks. You’d be amazed at some of the stuff I have to mix, I’m not sure where the producer was when they were recording it. In order to get a good sound, you have to have a good sound on the floor whatever instrument you’re recording. Is it in tune? Are the heads changed on the drums? Are they in tune? Does the drummer hit the drums with the right velocity to get a good sound? These are all elements that you’re dealing with as a engineer. I have go-to mics for certain things, but I’m not opposed to trying new things. I have to keep up with the times. I realized in order to stay current I have to try these things. And I love it, I think it’s great!

Secret for Mixing Great Vocals

Country and pop vocals tend to be louder than rock records. What I use mostly in ProTools is RVox, it kind of evens out the vocal. A lot of times too I’ll mult the vocal into where there’s different EQ or compression on it and I’ll use it in different spots in the chorus or verse. And also most female vocalists have an EQ point somewhere around 1k-2k that really hurts your ears during specific spots and a multiband compressor can take care of that or you can just scoop out that EQ. As far as recording vocals, my favorite go to vocal mic is an SM7. It has everything you need. There’s no real, real lows or sparkling highs and the artist can get right up on it. The best thing about it..it’s cheap. When a vocalist says big, most of the time it means a lot of reverb. I tend to use delay most all the time on anything instead of reverb just to give it that width. On a vocal the delay has to be used differently in the verses than the choruses. Instead of sending it to a delay, I duplicate the vocal and I put the plugin right on the vocal. So instead of having the send go up and down, I’ll just clip gain the vocal up or down. I think you have better control over an effect

Tips for Stereo Bussing

When I first started, we never put anything on a stereo bus. These days I start with my slate mix rack which has the meter on it so that I can see, and then I use the virtual console, then depending on the song I go to API or Neve. You can strap the virtual console on groups like all the drums and you can just affect it with just one plugin so they all see the same thing. I don’t use individual faders these days, I’ll bus all of my drums to a master subgroup and on those busses I put my virtual console and I also use a compressor. Sometimes The SSL compressor but lately I’ve been using the Slate virtual bus compressor. When you put a plugin on in protools at first you should always bypass in and out to make sure you’re just not hearing it louder because whenever you hear something louder you instantly think it sounds better, so you should always set your unity gain on a plugin. Having said that with virtual bus compressor its louder because its compressing and limiting and what have you. The last thing I put in the chain in a tape machine.

Q - Share a favorite hardware tool for the studio
A- Drums are my favorite thing to record. I think a lot of people hire me because they love my drum sounds. When I’m recording a room sound, the UREI 1178 is my go-to. I hit the bottom button and the top button and I just slam it. I get it to where it’s blended in a little bit, but I love having heavy duty compression on my drums. Another thing I’ll do is take a mic, the Buyer 160 or any other kind of ribbon mic or maybe even a 57 and I’ll put it right above the kick drum facing the toms and the snare and just compress the snot out of that too. It really adds a nice effect to the overall drum sound so those are my go-to things in recording.