Chris Lord Alge Mixing Masterclass.

Ah, so THAT'S how he does it ....

The Report.

Photo's here -
http://recordproduction.smugmug.com/Music/Record-Producers/Chris-Lord-Alge/8850436_8NBRc2#!i=825642453&k=JBPKE

Well it started of with the best scrambled eggs ever in a small caff down the road from the studio as we were too early having caught a 6.30am flight.

After that we were still too early so got to meet the Real World Studio Staff and have a nose around by ourselves. As is often the case in upper end of the UK recording scene (in my experience) people take you as you come - so info was very forthcoming from the studios technical staff, whom I quizzed and had a sneaky show around the whole facility.

People started arriving around mid morning and there ended up with about 80 people there.

CLA himself arrived mid morning with a hard drive of a couple of Greenday tracks which the house guy set up.

Then there was lunch after which CLA started talking about himself.

There were hourly coffee/fag breaks so no one nodded off.

It took til the 3rd session before we got on to something with meat - personally I had no interest in the Head's personal history.

By that stage Tony had to head for his flight and Les had to drive to London which was a pity for them as it was after that the 'stuff' started happening.

Part of his success (and why he mixed some thing like 526 tracks in 2011, Tony might remember the exact number) is that he does the 'same thing' to the tracks he works on.

For example he did one pass on Greenday and eqed the guitars which to me sounded like -
Sweep upper lows/ low mid for the cabinet resonance and boost that then horse on the top. Checking the console after confirmed that a boost at 160ish and 6+ db at 8k.

Similarly vocals went out through 1176 with -10db at 4:1 .

All stuff I'd read about in interview.

3 run throughs and it sounded like the record, more or less (though there was harmony part I'd not noticed before )

I quizzed him on how much prep went into the PT session and didn't really get an answer. However that night having had a bev or 2 a bit more info was forthcoming. He's 2 lads who cook the tracks to death before it even hits the console .

Again stuff I'd read about - but he didn't want to explore that for what ever reason.

After another break he was starting on another Green day track when the console blew up ! There was a puff of grey smoke out the back and that was that - the bussing card went down.

The upside of that was we went straight into a Q+A .

While that was interesting the nature of such was that really no areas were explored in depth.

Overall I enjoyed the experience and was impressed with Real World.
I met some old acquaintances and made some new ones.

Did I learn any 'secrets' ? Not really ...

woodsdenis wrote: »

Sony 48 track DASH. which would be reasonable sounding machines in their day and would still hold up I am sure.

He said he'd just bought 2 from Bruce Springsteen , so now has 4 !

He reckons he likes what they do to the midrange.