On Hand for the #1 Hit: How Producer Howard Benson Recorded “The Mountain” by Three Days Grace

It’s a long way up to #1.

Save for the most indie-minded of musicians, topping the charts is pretty much a universal dream. Whether it’s the Billboard Hot 100, Spotify Global Top 50, or any other official measuring stick, seeing your song at the highest peak represents supreme validation. Whether it’s for a moment, a week, or a month you can say that your music unequivocally was the best of the best.

Howard Benson has the knowledge that leads to a #1 hit.

Producer Howard Benson knows that feeling well. The LA-based producer has been generating platinum and gold for decades, collaborating with top artists including My Chemical Romance, P.O.D., Hoobastank, Papa Roach, Gavin DeGraw, Santana, Saosin, The All-American Rejects, Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry, Bon Jovi, Rascal Flatts and many more.

All that time in the studio has yielded multiple #1 hits for his clients, most recently “The Mountain” by the Canadian rock act Three Days Grace.  Featured on the band’s 2018 album Outsider, it went to #1 on both the Mediabase Mainstream Rock & BDS Active Rock charts in April. That brings Benson’s tally of chart-toppers to seven for Three Days Grace alone, spread out over the three albums that he’s produced thus far (joining their previous singles “Animal I Have Become,” “Pain,” “Never Too Late,” ‘Break,” “The Good Life,” “World So Cold”).

In this first installment of a new SonicScoop series, “On Hand for the Hit,” Benson provides priceless insights on the decisions made between band and producer that allow a song to top the charts. As this worldly-wise music pro will point out, no one in the studio can be sure that a song — even with the most killer hooks – will prove itself as a hit until it reaches the outside world.

What matters most in a song? And what are the “food groups” that make up a hit? He’ll tell you. Benson (who also helms his own LA audio facility West Valley Recording Studio) also reveals how to organize the recorded tracks so that a top mixer like Chris Lord-Alge can take the ball and run with it. And don’t miss his formula for the perfect vocal signal path. Hint: It’s not just about the gear. Plus, a secret ingredient for recording next-level vocals that you may be overlooking. He also reveals his personal “Holy Grail” of guitar players — and why Three Days Grace’s Barry Stock qualifies.

Ready to learn it all from this platinum producer that helped “The Mountain” reach it’s absolute fullest potential? Read on.

Howard, you said you discovered early on that, “The producer has the best job.” What do you mean by that?

As you probably know already, I’m from an aerospace engineering background. I graduated from Drexel with that degree. I like the technical part of this stuff, and I also was in a band my whole life playing in little clubs.

So, when I started to get demos done by other producers, I remember looking around the room and going, “The only person who’s really making any money here is the producer.” And not only that, but he has a certain amount of control over the session. He utilizes both his creative brain and his technical brain. For me it was just a great fit.

And I didn’t like touring and also being a keyboard player. In all the bands I was in, I was always the guy who arranged everything because I was the keyboard player. But you’re not the singer. The singer has usually the power in the band because most of the people, that’s who they see and that’s who they relate to. I just didn’t want to go through my whole life having a singer determine my fate, if I was in a band. So, I looked at it very pragmatically and said, “This [being a producer] is a good thing. It’s like summer camp. The bands come in for two months, and they’re out. Next band!”

That sounds like a major gestalt.

Plus, when we started figuring out how to do records in a way where we could do more records per year, we were able to have more shots at having hit records. It became more of an odds thing: If you only do one or two records a year, your odds are that much lower, and a lot of people do that, which is fine for them. But for me, once I figured out how to make hit records, I started making them faster and faster and we were making ten albums a year. Our degree of hits was a lot higher than most people, just because we had more product.

(Former Sony Music CEO) Doug Morris had a good quote. He said, “You can’t win unless you’re at the table.” So we wanted to be at the table more than we wanted to be sitting and watching. That had a lot to do with why we were so prolific in putting stuff out.

You’re saying “we.” Do you mean the royal we in this case, or are you referring to a team you have?

To my team of guys. When I say “we” I mean me and my management firm and my guys — I was with Nettwerk at the time and now I’m with 10th Street. I have a really good team of guys and I think a lot of that came from my engineering background. I used to go, “Well, this is really crazy” — producers are making the records by themselves. The same guy would set up the mics, punch the button, do the arrangement, edit the vocals. The stuff was brutal to do by one person. It would take a year to do these records.

So I thought, why don’t I bring in the best guys? The best engineer, Pro Tools guy, drum tech, guitar tech I could find. And by doing it that way, we were able to make records faster and better because it wasn’t like, “Well the producer’s a pretty good engineer but he’s not a good writer or he’s a mediocre drum tech.” And a lot of times, that’s really what happened with a lot of those guys. They were okay at one thing but not great at everything.

What I focused on was the songs and the vocals. That was what I made my job in the studio, primarily because I thought that’s what mattered. After a lot of failed records, I finally figured it out. I was like, “OK, it doesn’t matter about the guitarist.” I mean, it matters to the band but really what mattered, if you didn’t have a great song and a great vocal, it didn’t matter if you had a great guitar sound. So you sort of had to prioritize certain things.

 A Song’s “Super Bowl” Moment

Let’s fast forward to the current situation. What makes you and Three Days Grace a good match as producer and artist?

From Ontario, now #1 worldwide: Three Days Grace.

Well, when I met them that was their second album [2006’s One-X]. They trusted me to keep the vision they had in the writing process.

I think, beyond that, my relationship with both lead singers, the first one being (ex-lead singer Adam Gontier) and the second one being Matt Walst, is really why (drummer) Neil (Sanderson), (bassist) Brad (Walst) and (guitarist) Barry Stock. They trust me, because I think they realize that vocals matter, and I know, from Neil, that he really cares a lot about the vocals and that’s my specialty. I’m great at getting good vocals, I’m great at good arrangements, I’m really good at harmonies.

And they’re really good at other stuff. I trust that band to come up with great guitar riffs and they always have a great rhythm part but the vocals — they know what that’s where the money’s made.

And Let me tell you something, of all the bands I work with, they’re one of the most professional bands. They know why they’re in the music business. They get it, and they get what someone like me brings to the party. Not every band, by the way, does. Some bands look at me and go, “Oh, you’re gonna make us sell out. We’re gonna have hits with you. We can’t have that. We can’t sell out. We want to be cool.” Well, don’t hire me for that. You know what I mean? I’m not into that. I want to have hits.

 Was there a pivotal judgment call you can point to that, in retrospect, helped make “Mountain” a #1 song?

You know what really works too with me and them, and this is a big thing: When we had a really big decision to make on “Mountain” it was a critical decision. Neil came to me with a feeling about something, about the song. And he trusts me enough to know that I’ll listen to him and not just shut him down or just say, “Oh, it’s just the artist being the artist.”

There are moments in the record that are critical moments. It’s kind of like when you watch the Super Bowl, and you watch one or two plays happen and you go, “Oh my God.” Those are the plays you remember, that won them the game, you know? And in “Mountain” we had one of those moments and it’s a phone call that we made.

What was it?

Apparently, they had written a song, I believe, in E major, and they ended up recording the song in D. It was a whole step down. Neil kept saying to me, “It’s not right.” And I kept thinking to myself, “You know, it isn’t right.” We tried everything. We re-sang it, we did all kinds of stuff.

Then one day Neil calls me up, and he goes, “You know, we recorded the song. We’re doing it in D right now. But the demo was a whole step up.” I said, “Well why’d you bring it a whole step down?” He goes, “Well, in this process with our other producer, we decided to lower it because he thought it sounded heavier lower.”

And I said, “That was a mistake.” Because Matt, the singer, does not sound as urgent in that key. He sounds urgent in a whole step up.

Think about that, that’s a huge call. Because it means you have to go through the entire session, change the key on everything. You can do some of it using elastic audio in Pro Tools, but some of this stuff you have to re-record. And you obviously have to redo all the vocals.

You’re also in the middle of ten other songs and there’s a lot of stuff going on but this is the critical moment, so I said to Neil on the phone, “I think you’re right. Let’s do it.” And the song is now back up to the key that it was on the demo, and I think that makes, to me the vocals sound so much more aggressive and so much more urgent. And I think that was the critical moment, and it was because me and Neil trusted each other. We have a trust level that exceeds a lot of other artists and producers.

I remember thinking, “Boy, this could be a game changer if we rerecord it and do it up a step.” Man, what a difference. It was almost like a different song because when Matt hit those high notes in the choruses, it sounds desperate. And it sounds exciting. And then he gets to the end where we vary the vocal melody, where he’s going to the really high notes, and you can feel him struggling getting up the mountain, you know? It’s rock music, it’s gotta be like that.

That is a big moment. What are the times you remember that happening with past projects?

That’s happened to a lot of my records. It happened in the Hoobastank record [2005’s The Reason], in All American Rejects, in My Chemical Romance. There’s always times when you have those critical decisions, where you go, “Okay, this is a big one.” That comes with experience and also your gut — you have to go with your gut.

If you can think back to the very first time you heard “Mountain,” what were some of your other initial impressions?

It was a single, I knew it. Right away, I knew it could be a hit. First of all, when they were deciding to meet a producer, they sent me twelve songs, that was the first one on the list. So, that usually means they thought that was the single, too.

I listened through everything and that thing fit all the food groups: It was an up-tempo song, it had a strong guitar riff, it had a really good dynamic verse with a good melody chorus, it had a lyric that you could relate to, and it had that special quality to the chorus. I like it when there’s two parts to the chorus and this one had the first part, then you have the “Every time I think I’m over it.” It has a nice chorus and a refrain to the chorus, and I think songs like that have a lot more legs to them, sometimes, as opposed to just a repetitive chorus that doesn’t go anywhere.

I’ve done enough songs like that, that hit me and I went, “That’s the first single.” I didn’t have any doubt at all. Strategically, it’s almost like the commercial for the band. You’re putting it on the radio and saying, “Buy this,” or “Here’s Three Days Grace.” Here’s their Nike swoosh. That song sounds like them. The record is more diverse than that, but you got to have that song to start with.

Gunning for the #1

Talking about your experience and your instincts, when you hear a song as a single, do you take the leap to think, “This could be a Number One hit?”

Oh, absolutely, I gun for it all the time. I’ve had so many of them that I know what it feels like.

Let me tell you something, there’s a huge difference in spins from Number Two to Number One. You look at it on the Mediabase All Access list, a Number Two song will have 2,000 spins and a Number One song has 3,000 spins. Once you get to Number One, a lot of things start happening — you start getting the benefit of the doubt for lots of other things. You’re calling me (for this interview) because “The Mountain” is Number One, and you wouldn’t have called me if it was Number Two. That’s why you’re gunning for Number One, nobody remembers who Number Two was, you might as well be Number Ten.

It’s hard to be Number One. It’s great to have them. It’s awesome.

Delivering a Super-Organized Mix

What studio was “Mountain” recorded in and what were some of the attributes of the facility to make it right for this song sound?

It was sung pretty much all in Canada and really, the sound of it comes from my engineer, Mike Plotnikoff, he is an amazing engineer. The difference in this one is that there’s a lot more programming, than on the last few records I did with them. A lot of the programming was done by Neil, he did a lot of it himself and the new singer, Matt.

I think that was really a difference, I’m using the same vocal mic I used on their previous records, I know Mike probably did the same mic-ing and drum stuff and everything. It’s all very straightforward, what Three Days Grace does. It’s about the song and we try to stay away from getting in the way of the material. A lot of producers make records where it’s all about the production and not about the song. I’m the other way around, it’s about the song and we had a great mixer, Chris Lord-Alge, who you know probably mixed most of my hits.

He’s a great guy.

Chris Lord-Alge’s needs provides a powerful model for efficient mixing templates.

Yeah, he’s lights out. We know what to deliver to Chris, we’ve worked with him so much that we know what not to deliver to him, we know what he likes and what he doesn’t like. We know that if we deliver him this many drum tracks, he’s going to use that many drum tracks. No point in delivering him shit he’s not going to use. It’s really straight-forward the way it works with him and us.

Can you tell me what that magic number is, how many drum tracks does Chris prefer to receive?

We give him all of our live tracks, but then Chris has some samples he likes to use, and he’s actually given us the samples, so what we do is send it to our Pro Tools guy, who puts them in on top of the kicks and the snares. It makes life easier for Chris, because what we really want Chris to do is to mix, not have to worry about the details, we’ll worry about the details.

We’re very, very, very proud of how our sessions are delivered to mixers, they’re so organized. Nobody’s got better organized stuff than us, I’m very on top of my guys about that, every track is labeled correctly, we check every single clip to make sure there’s not glitches, we make sure that all the samples for the kick and snare and toms are what the mixer might want.

Then, what we do is we give him a stereo room track, I know Mike likes to record a mono-distorted room track, which we use for gated stuff. We also give him a stereo-overhead track, and a stereo-cymbal track. So, he has a lot of rooms to work with and a snare top and snare bottom, we don’t use kick front and back, we just give him the kick. We make a kick sound and kick samples. We isolate the high-hat, I like to isolate the ride cymbal.

For bass, we give him four bass tracks, so he has a bass DI, a bass amp, he has a bass distorted and a bass sub and all those are in one take, for example. It’s not like we’re doing it four times. We use a sub-bass amplifier.

What do you deliver for the guitar?

The guitar is usually stereo-guitar in the chorus. There are triple guitars in the choruses, we do a melody guitar in the choruses, then our verses are clean guitars. I’m being very, very, very, very black and white here about this comment, but that’s what we do. Everything is DI, everything is amped, but we record DI’s as well. We make sure that the mixer has a DI, if he wants to re-amp it.

It’s all very laid out, our tracks are not labeled “John-left”, “John-right”, it’s labeled “Guitar-left”, “Guitar-right.” The mixer doesn’t know who the fuck John is, you know? He’s looking at it going, “What’s John and Dave and Sam?” If you’re mixing you don’t care about that, you want to know what instrument.

Pro Tools has a tendency to shorten the words in the track name, so you want to make sure the words are like, “GTR” and things like. You think about all the time it saves, when you don’t have to go through all that crap. You’re doing more music than you are being a pencil-pusher. Organization to me is super important. Super important.

A #1 Vocal Signal Path

You said that it was recorded in Canada, was it at a commercial facility or was it in the band’s private space?

It was done at a facility that was owned by some rich dude. I can’t even tell you the name, they don’t want to talk about, it’s some guy’s place and it was sort of sworn to secrecy. It’s a very long story, but it was on an SSL.

The way Mike and my second engineer Hatch look at everything is we can record things anywhere. It’s more about us than it is about that stuff.

Howard you talk about the importance of vocals, so if I could, I would love to just drill down with you a little bit more about how you record vocals.

The legendary Sony C800 is Benson’s weapon of choice on vocals.

I have a very specific way of recording. I use a Sony C800 mic, it’s a very rare tube microphone, used for pop singers, because it’s bright and aggressive. I use a Tube-Tech CL1B (opto compressor), a Neve 1073 and we don’t do any EQ at all. The only thing we use the Neve is for the preamp, that’s it. We adjust the levels with the preamp red gain-control knob.

One of our little secrets is, I’ll have my second engineer sit next to me and ride the vocals as we’re recording to lessen the amount of compression we need to use. We actually look at the lyric sheet and as the singer’s singing, Hatch or whoever is the person at the time, when he goes, “Every time I think I’m over it, I wake up,” and he’s singing louder on that line, we’ll just turn the pre-amp down right there. Or we’ll turn the gain down on the compressor so we’re not hitting the compressor as hard and that makes the sound not be so small and the vocal doesn’t get so tiny. It’s a lot more work, it just sounds a lot better. It goes from the mic to the 1073 to the compressor to the computer. That’s pretty much it and we don’t do very much to it, it’s very flat.

It sounds like that signal flow is working for you.

The one thing I do, do which is, I think a big advantage — I would say to anybody who’s reading this should really pay attention to — the most important thing in recording a vocal is the headphone mix that the singer hears. If they don’t hear themselves properly or they don’t have control over what they’re doing or they feel like you don’t give a shit, all that stuff adds up to a bad vocal.

So, what we do, in Pro Tools we give the singer from sub-five and sub-six or stereo-sub mix out, then get the mix for them, then we have a little mixer on their table, when they’re singing. So, they can adjust the volume of the music, then we send everything out another sub like number 4, and they have that knob on their sub-mixer as well. So when they want to hear more or less of themselves, they can just turn up that knob of volume control of their vocals, so they’re not going to keep saying to you, “Can you turn me up, can you turn me down, can you turn me up, can you turn me down?”

They can turn themselves up and down and you can’t imagine how much better that is for a singer, when he can control his own volume, because you’ll never get it the way he wants it. You can’t, you’re not them. We give the singer control separately over the music and their vocal and they can have it right at their fingertips. It’s huge.

I always give the singer a very compressed vocal coming into their headphones, so they don’t have to worry about working the mic very much. When it comes back to them, it’s smashed. So, they don’t have to hear themselves coming in and out, their vocal sounds like it’s right in the middle of their brain. It just makes them sound great, right away.

Going for it on Guitar

The other instrument I wanted to drill down on for a minute, are the guitars, because they sound so incredible on that song.

I’ll tell you the most important part of that guitar sound is Barry. Barry is an unbelievably in-tune guitar player and you could throw any guitar in that guy’s hand, any amp, any situation, and he’s going to sound like Barry.

This is always the same with musicians. It’s like what happened back in the day when Eddie Van Halen started playing guitar and Guitar Center was created. Everybody went into Guitar Center to try to sound like Eddie Van Halen, but nobody could, because he was Eddie Van Halen. It didn’t matter what you bought, how much money you spent, you’re still not going to sound like him.

With Barry, he’s one of those guitar players and there’s not a lot of them, but you have to watch him to understand why, he’s so in-tune. I know it doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, but when you have a guitar player that can play really hard, but play in-tune, that’s like the holy grail of guitar players. Most the time, when a guitar player starts to dig in, they play out of tune.

Without a great guitar player, it doesn’t matter what we do. It’s still going to sound like shit. Same with Brad, as a bass player, his bass playing is super steady. He’s always in-tune, which is the reason they’re great. It’s not all about the producer, I’m just the one who’s gathering the cats.

What a Feeling! The Thrill of Producing a #1 Hit

Howard, we touched on this earlier, that each number one is big. In the case of “Mountain”, how can you characterize the validation or satisfaction or just the feeling you got when this particular song hit number one?

Giving “Outsider” a chart-topper is about more than just bragging rights.

I think it’s always special. What’s more special to me about getting to Number One is when I can get on the phone with Neil or Matt or Barry or Brad, I called them up when they hit Number One and I congratulated them and they say to me, “Yeah, man. It feels so good, our fans are singing along to the song and the concert and our ticket sales are going up,” and you go, “Mission accomplished.”

That’s what you’re doing it for. I make money when they go to Number One but, when that song goes to Number One, think of who benefits here: It’s not just me, it’s the band, it’s their families, it’s the record company, there are a lot of people whose lives become enriched when something does really, really well. A lot of it is very Ayn Rand-ish, I look at it as a very selfish business, I’m going to get this thing to Number One, no matter what happens. Rip and claw and pry and rerecord and do everything, but in the end it benefits so many people that you feel like a proud father, almost.

Wow.

There’s so many variables, so much can go wrong. Even with a band like Three Days Grace, we have a great band, we have a pretty good song, everything’s really in there, but it could’ve been a flop. We don’t know. The thing about it, we put these bands up at the plate, you have to swing at the ball, and it goes out of the park and everybody’s a genius. What if the ball gets hit by a gust of wind and is caught by the outfielder? Then it’s out, then you’re an idiot, then you fucked up, and everybody loses.

That’s the chaotic part, where you just go, “Okay, we all knew it could be a hit,” but when it becomes a hit, it’s magic, because you just don’t really know what’s going to happen. You know what I mean? You don’t know.

I’ve done so many records where I thought it was going to be a big hit, and then it wasn’t. I remember I did this for a Relient K record and there was a song on that record called “Must Have Done Something Right” and I thought that song was a smash. Out of all the songs I did that year, I remember saying to my wife, I said, “Oh, my god that song is so catchy and hooky.” That song came out and dud, dud, nothing, zero. It’s like it almost didn’t exist.

Another one of the bands I did, called Flyleaf, who was literally on the verge of being dropped and James Diener sent it to me and goes, “Hey, can you help me with this band? We might drop them, but can you go do the record for not a whole lot of money, I’ll give you some extra points.” I saw the band and I thought, ” This band can’t even play.” But they had songs, these great songs. In the middle of all the chaos were hooks and I said to James, “Let’s try it. It’s a Hail Mary. Let’s just try it.” The band went on to do a platinum record and another platinum record and so, who knows? Sometimes, I just don’t know.

With “Mountain”, I thought, but I didn’t know. When it happens, you know what it is, I’m not a very religious person, but you just go, “Okay. Thank God all the stuff came together.” You hit it at the right moment, and the public was ready for that.

It must be fascinating to watch that unfold, after a song you produced has left the studio.

You watch this happen in front of you and you go, “Wow, look how powerful this stuff is.” You don’t realize it sometimes, how powerful what you’re doing really is. Because you’re working on it, sometimes alone, sometimes with the band, but it’s only two-dimensional at that point. When it goes to the public, it becomes like ten-dimensional. People start talking to you about it, people call you about it, you hear it in CVS, you hear it when you’re walking down the street, you hear people getting moved by it, you see fans, especially the fans that send emails about how it changed their lives.

That’s really powerful. Somebody says, “I was ready to kill myself, then I heard “The Mountain” and it made me think about my life and how much of a struggle it’s been.” There’s a lot of that in rock music, you get a lot of people who get saved in their lives by listening to a song that moves them. It feels so good, when that stuff happens.

I get very emotional about things like that, actually. I think that’s why I’m a good producer, because I cry a lot when I listen to music. I need to feel it. You have to be in contact with your heart, you really do. If you don’t feel anything, you can’t do this job. You’ve got to feel it. You’ve got to be technical, but you also have to know who you are as a person, some people have blank spots and they don’t feel certain things.

So being a hit producer goes beyond having great ears?

You have to be aware of yourself, you have to really be aware of who you are and your feelings, because what are we selling here? We’re selling feelings, right? We sell emotions, so people can feel things.

When people hear “The Mountain” they relate to that, because they feel the struggle of their lives or the struggle of somebody they know, or the daily ups and downs of living. Being pushed back off the mountain every time, sometimes you can’t do it and sometimes you can. Sometimes you do get to the top.

• David Weiss

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