Greg Norman Outside Electrical Audio

What a regular day at the office looks like for Greg Norman.

Greg Norman has been Steve Albini’s right hand man at Electrical Audio since the beginning. He has worked at the influential Chicago studio since 1996, serving as staff engineer and “chief technical officer”.

Though Albini may cast a long shadow, Norman is sought-after in his own right, recording and mixing for artists including The Killers, Atari Star, Das Kapital, Bang! Bang!, Andrew Bird, Bottomless Pit, Michael Bassett, Sweet Cobra, The Bitter Tears, Pan American, and Kim Deal of Pixies fame.

I sat down with this Chicago based recording engineer and tech to talk about gear, studios, his work with Russian Circles and Godspeed You Black Emperor, and what plugins have in common with frozen fish.

You recently assisted Steve Albini at Mix With The Masters at Studios La Fabrique in France. What was that experience like?

Steve invited me to come along with him for the MWTM thing so I could set up an analog tape listening test that I’ve done on other occasions.

The listening test I do illustrates the effects of recording at different speeds, EQ standards, and operating levels in a real apples-to-apples way. I calibrate the 24-track so I can record a band on three sets of eight tracks at different operating levels: Low, medium and high fluxivity. I use a hard-wire “mult” to send the basic tracks to the machine inputs (1-8, 9-16, 17-24). Then, they come back on the board, where we meticulously level-match the corresponding faders.

Using mute groups, you can toggle between the three different sets easily, and not be thrown off by level inconsistencies at the console. The result is always more dramatic than people expect. We’ll record a pass at 15 ips, 30 ips, and a version of one with the bias set too low. It’s actually helped me get the most out of that format.

I also talked about tape and tape machines for a day, describing the ABCs of it: calibration, tape formulations, work methods, random features that different machines have, calibrations, the different technologies companies employed to solve different problems, “the Great Tape Scare”, calibration, maintenance, bias, then calibration again.

Have you guys considered doing something like a MWTM course at Electrical Audio?

Greg Norman at Electrical Audio.

Not seriously. I’ve hosted a few different analog tape demonstrations, like the one we did there. There’s a lot of prep work, and the payoff would have to be so high that participants might as well just book the studio with me or whoever and grill us with questions all day.

The MWTM thing has the whole South of France experience to sell with it. You stay in this palatial renovated olive oil mill turned BnB, and they stuff your guts with good food and wine. At the end of the day you get drunk, look at the stars and talk about music with people from every continent.

One night/morning, I ended up in a drunken bottle rocket war in the forest with some Irishmen. I suppose you could do that here in Chicago, at the BMX trails near DeVry, but it wouldn’t be the same. Especially with the police station across the street.

Outside of Electrical Audio, are there some other studios you like working at?

I like going to random out of town places that don’t make much sense being there. It’s an interesting vibe where there are almost no expectations. When you go to a studio in the middle of nowhere, you avoid a lot of distractions. There isn’t much else to do other than work on the record.

I’m a fan of the reformed Pachyderm studio in Minnesota. The [man who purchased the studio in 2011] John Kuker, unfortunately passed away recently, but he and the current owner, Nick Tveitbakk did the hard, expensive work of ghostbusting that place, and making it working again. When I was there years ago, I was stoked because of the rooms, the history, and the playboy mansion. Unfortunately, when it came down to recording, shit was broke, and I had to do a lot of improvising. The place deserved—and finally—got some love.

I got to record at the Fidelitorium, Mitch Easter’s studio in a small town in North Carolina. That’s a cool place, that’s built from the ground up. There’s a nice large live room and endless toys to play with.

I’ve been recording at Matt Talbot’s Earth Analog outside of Champaign, IL for more than 10 years, probably? I stopped paying attention to time somewhere around 2005 or 6. There is always something new at the “compound” that Matt Talbot has built, which now includes an abandoned grocery store and an amazing bar. The town has a 10 years-after-the-zombie-apocalypse vibe to it that gives you some good focus.

Hotel2Tango in Montreal is cool to go to for sentimental reasons. I’ve mixed one record there, but done tech work there a dozen times, it seems. There is a lot of familiar gear with respect to Electrical. Montreal is just a great city. I love being up there.

Studio B Live Room at Electrical Audio

That’s all I can really remember right now. A lot of studios are kind of a bummer for someone who likes using consoles, outboard gear, or god forbid a tape machine. People are generally mixing in the box, so the console is largely forgotten other than being a front end bucket of preamps, and a summing box. I am usually the one guy who is trying to use the board as designed and running into the problems they’ve been avoiding, then awkwardly pointing them out.

I encounter a lot of, “oh, yeah, well we basically just use faders one through four, and they’re, like, fine if you don’t move them”, and “don’t use the EQs on channels 2, 5, 11, and 15, or was it 17? We used to have a piece of tape on that channel but I don’t remember what for… Anyways, we have the Eddie Kramer WAVES EQ Turbo Pack 4000 so you’re good right?”

I understand, it’s expensive to keep a place running. But man, your console? That’s the heart of it all. Pull the dead teeth out already.

Control Room A in use at Electrical Audio

Have you been doing much work out of your home studio lately, “Studio Greg Studios”?

I have. Most of the work there usually starts at Electrical or somewhere else for basic tracks. We’ll then do the time consuming stuff at my house. The most recent records I’ve completed there are the newest Daniel Knox, which just came out, a new band called Ne-Hi, and a Lovely Little Girls album.

What kind of gear are you using there?

I run Pro Tools 9 on a mac pro with the Native PCIe [card]. The computer is frozen in time: No updates, because everything works. I also have my Studer A820 24-track, which I will use as much as I can. I always mix to my Studer A80RC 1/2″ 2-track.

The console is a Sony MXP 3036, which is an unsung hero in the console world. It has modular mic preamps, and EQs, which is great if you want to Frankenstein or “hot rod” a board. There are several different Sony preamps and eqs to stuff it with, as well as 3rd party makes like API, John Hardy, Avalon, and of course, my super fancy Normaphone preamp.

The board looks ugly and anti-ergonomic, but it’s great. All the outboard there is pragmatic, and utilitarian. I think the fanciest compressor I have is my Urei LA-22, which is totally underrated, by the way. I have good microphones—enough to get a 4-5 piece rock band well tracked, but nothing too extravagant. I’ve been able to cheat by working at Electrical. I got to see a lot of gear flow through the place, and find out what really works the most for what I do.

Are you mainly using hardware when you are recording and mixing, or do you have some plug ins that you find yourself utilizing as well?

I use real outboard most of the time. I am not a snob, I just haven’t chased the plugin dragon. I’m not to precious about gear. I can make use of some of the cheapest shit out there, plugin as well as hardware. There’s always something you can do with a piece of garbage that makes noise. Whatever does the trick.

My favorite compressor is the GML 8900, but if all I have is a free plugin or a DOD compressor I’ll still have to find some way to make a good recording. It’s just easier with the GML around…

When I sense a recall situation brewing, I’ll make thorough stems. Sometimes, when I’m at a studio and there are hundreds of plugins on the computer, I have a sensation that I can only assume someone from North Korea would have if they walked into a Western grocery store. Overwhelmed with options, wanting to eat it all, but ending up gnawing on the frozen fish. I’ll usually just use the freebees, the frozen fish.

One thing I’ll always do is mix to 1/2″ or 1/4″ 2-track, even if it’s a DAW session.

Studio B gear racks at Electrical Audio.

You’ve been building and selling you Normaphone Preamp for a little while now. Do you have any new products in the works?

I took the Normaphone design and added a bass and treble shelf eq, which is based on an old eq design we liked at Electrical, and it became the Electrical Audio “EAPreq“. That’s the two channel preamp we sell on the Electrical site. Other than the EA Mid Side Matrix, that we’ve been selling since the aughts, there’s nothing new to speak about. I’d like to make an inductor eq for the Sony board along the lines of a Neve 1073, or even a Neve 3114 design. I don’t know if it will fit in the space though.

Steve and I have talked about some other things, but nothing concrete. My hands are pretty full as it is.

You recently recorded and mixed the new Godspeed You Black Emperor album, Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress for Constellation Records. Just from the Soundcloud sample I heard, it sounds massive. What was the production approach to this record? And did you have a hand in any of the production, or did you just engineer?

I was basically there to try to capture the “behemoth”. They had been playing this thing on tour and wanted to record it at the end. We had five days and one was easily eaten up with the mass setup. The rest of it was to get comfortable and playing. Since they had been doing it for a while, I just chimed in when things sounded weird to me. There wasn’t too much time to break everyone’s part down, see what’s working or not. It was all done collectively while listening to playbacks. We adjusted whatever seemed weird as we heard it.

It’s an interesting dynamic. You have eight personalities, eight voices trying to get through. I’d say that a lot of the production work was done in mixing. Everyone there had an equal say in it. I worked to feature the right melodies or riffs organically, while allowing the listener to pick up on different themes on their own. They would let me know if I missed something important.

This one has some [elements] hitting you square on the head hard, but the best parts are kind of swirling under and around the main themes. I kind of liken it to what used to happen to me when I was a kid in a loud car on a cross country trip: I would hear every frequency in the wind and road noise, and my brain would pick out a melody and play it to me as if a radio were on in the distance. Meanwhile, the motor was still loudest. The same thing happens on a plane when I’m half asleep.

Talk about high ceilings: A view of Electrical’s studio B from above.

Is that similar to the approach you’ve taken with the records you’ve done for Russian Circles?

A little different. Those sessions have been perfect as far as how much time we had. Maybe we could have used a few more days for recording Enter? I don’t know. I just remember that being a bang-bang, get ‘er done session. Not much time for fuckin’ around. For Geneva and Memorial, we had enough time to try weird stuff, and come up with cool ideas.

They have a great attitude while recording. They aren’t afraid of trying things that might lead to a dead end, because something good could come of it. It’s one of the few sessions where I can speak up about an idea because I know they can execute it without getting annoyed or burning much time. I have the most creative moments with people like that. Those guys are great to spend long days with.

During recording or mixing, are there any tricks that help you keep focus or perspective during a session, and do you have any things that you do once you may have lost it?

Aderall. Just kidding. But seriously, If I had easy access to speed, I would use it for all sorts of stuff. It’s a wonder drug. Do you have any?

I have a high tolerance for grating repetition. I can listen to the same 12 seconds of music over and over for… at least 2 or 3 days without needing to bury a knife in my chest. I am definitely not bragging, in case someone would think that was bragging. That’s a little like bragging you can hold a stack of plates for 3 days without complaining.

This is actually an handy skill when working in the studio (not the plate stack holding…). If a person has a guitar part he wants to overdub, and is experimenting with dozens of pedals and 7 different amps to get “the sound”, you have to not be bored with the part by the time you record it. This can go on for hours, hearing the same riff over and over again, seemingly getting nowhere. There’s a natural desire to just do whatever will get the part down fastest, especially with shorter sessions. However, sometimes people just have to know what the options are, and explore things for a bit to get in a good head space.

Whenever I feel like I’m becoming worthless, I’ll let everyone know before making any big decisions. I can easily do non subjective mechanical work at this point, you know, percussion, keyboard, guitar, other filler overdubs. Most of the time the band is crashing before me though. They’re doing most of the work and bearing the stress of it all.

I don’t listen to things loud in the control room, which helps keep my ears from burning out, and real meal breaks are vital. I also need a change of scenery, and to talk to other people once or twice a day. One pet peeve I have is eating while working. It’s almost never necessary.

Are there any records you have engineered with that you are most proud of?

It’s hard for me to answer these types of questions. Partially because I don’t often listen to the records after they’re done. I’ll play things once in a while if I’m a fan of the band. What I think I’m proud of is:

Pinebender: Working Nine to Wolf
Call Me Lightning – Soft Skeletons
Thee Silver Mt. Zion – Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything
90 Day Men – (It (Is) It) Critical Band
Bottomless Pit – Hammer of the Gods
Russian Circles – Geneva
Make Believe – Of Course

Some of these records I just like a lot, and may have nothing to do with me.

What is your approach to mix bus processing?

Some people run their mixes thought a compressor and eq as kind of a safety blanket, to get it loud an proud. I don’t automatically apply anything to mine. When I do, I’ll use the GML 8900 when I can. I feel like I can get almost anything I want done with that thing, hard and fast, sucking compression, invisible limiting, everything…

In my studio, I’ll use the Urei LA-22. Unfortunately, the stereo link switch is on the rear, so I have to keep a space above it free for switching it.

As far as EQ, I generally only like broad strokes of subtle movement. There’s nothing more suited for that than the NTI EQ3 stereo mastering eq. The gain adjustments are rotary switched and the bands are fixed so you can easily match sides. The concept of the design is really clean. The bandwidth of the filters are extremely wide and are made to have as little phase mutilation as possible. It’s a broad-stroke adjustment. If there’s anything sharper needed, I’ll probably adjust the mix.

Electrical Audio, Studio A

What are your thoughts on Mastering?

Early on, I didn’t appreciate that most people in music don’t care or think about mastering, and trusting the label or even the band with signing off on the thing could be disastrous. Some bands just don’t want to deal with the recording after the session is done, or don’t know what to listen for, and may be confused about the process.

There are very few label people who know what’s going on with the record sonically. A lot of them just want the music loud, the vocals loud, the process to be cheap, and more importantly, the album to be DONE! Records usually run behind schedule, so it’s hard for them to deal with hemming and hawing over details that seem meaningless.

On one shitty occasion, a band I worked with was off on tour while the mastering was done. The label signed off on it before anyone in the band or I could check it out. When we heard it, the record sounded nothing like what we had done. One of the songs was actually summed to mono for fuck’s sake! It was like a bad joke, like when you make a hilariously terrible mix to give to the guy in the band who wasn’t there during mixing, just to see their reaction.

The band feared destroying their relationship with the label over it, since it was their first record and it had already gone into production, so out it came. If it looks like a lame situation is on the horizon, I’ll try to talk with those involved…

Do you have any mastering engineers you prefer to use?

I’ve liked the results with John Golden and Co at Golden Mastering., Brad Blackwood at Euphonic Masters, Joe Lambert at JLM, Carl Saff at Saff Mastering, Bob and Jason at Chicago Mastering Service.

Which of these worn out topics is your favorite and/or least favorite and why?: Analog vs Digital, Tape vs DAW, Illegal Downloading vs Spotify, Studio vs Home Recording/Mixing, Music vs. Recording Industry, Pono vs Ipod, Vinyl vs. CD, Self Release vs Label Release.

Keeping records.

I don’t think anyone has to argue about analog vs. digital or tape vs. DAW. It’s a working method that pretty much just relates to the engineer’s interface with the recording. If the band just wants to make an awesome record, it shouldn’t make any difference to them how it’s done. My job is to make that process as seamless as possible.

There is an advantage to having at least one stage of the recording on tape, and that is permanence. Yes, you can back up, and back up, and back up your recordings on never ending generations of storage medium, but the likelihood of that happening is slim, and at some point the session is just going to disappear.

I have been getting a bunch of messages from people I recorded years ago asking me if I want to buy their old master reels before they offer them up on Ebay. I’ve been telling them that the $20-50 they get for the reels is totally not worth it. I’ve dealt with a bunch of bands, who’ve been broken up for over a decade, scrambling to rebuild old sessions for some re-release, ad or movie placement. It’s just handy to have a version of the record on a format that’s a bit more fail-safe. It can just sit in a closet forever.

Dallas Thomas is a musician who plays in the Chicago based bands Pelican and The Swan King

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