It's a lot more work but you don't wind up having a live record that's three-quarters fake. Vocals can be tuned to a certain extent, so in a way you can preserve more of the real live performance by doing all this. I can edit them together to make them better. Yeah, because you couldn't do the things you could do with Pro Tools - where I can make a good live performance better. I've been doing live records my whole career, but in the old days, because of technology, we just ended wholesale replacing a tremendous amount of the stuff. Maybe that's why I still like doing live records. It was almost more factory-like but it was also more musical in the sense that it was still live people playing together. Pretty much everybody set it up the same way and had the same players every day playing different stuff. It's not the same as how Brian made his early records with 14 to 18 guys crammed into the studio and cutting it all to 3-track, which is the way everyone recorded in those days. Once we got to 8-track and used separate tracks for the instruments, overdubbing instruments and then from all of that trying to assemble something that sounds like a performance again. It's not really hard either because it's so much about the playing and the room and much less about all this technology. I did a 65-piece orchestra for John Lithgow a few years ago. That stuff is pretty unique to the recording studio.
#Mark spector pro audio tv
I did a big band for a TV show a month ago and I love that stuff. One of the things I like the most that I get to do the least is big, orchestral things. Is there any one part that takes more of your interest that you'd rather be doing more of, or do you like having a mix of these different jobs? Also for tracking records from start to finish, producing or co-producing in those cases, and mixing, mastering and remote recording. You're known for archiving and retrospective stuff, like the Good Vibrations box set. You really do quite a variety of different recording jobs. When we walked in Mark was finishing up some mixes for a DVD release of a SMiLE performance. It's a modestly sized place but the equipment in it would have a vintage gear collector salivating. We dropped in at Mark's home studio, Your Place or Mine (also the name of his live recording service), nestled in under his Glendale home next to the swimming pool. Mark has also done recent albums with Dave Alvin (they won a Grammy in 2001!), The Blasters, Los Straitjackets, Christy McWilson, Big Sandy & his Fly-Rite Boys and John Lithgow (Singin' in the Bathtub!).
Last year Mark engineered and mixed the release of Brian's long-stalled SMiLE album, his long-awaited follow-up to Pet Sounds. In the late eighties he ended up doing most of the engineering for Brian Wilson's first self- titled solo album, which led to work compiling The Beach Boys' back catalog for reissues, the Good Vibrations box set and Pet Sounds projects, including the box set, stereo and surround mixes and live concert recordings.
Later he was hired by George Massenburg to assist at Sunset Sound for several years before heading over to Amigo, Warner Brothers' now defunct studio, where he did sessions with Randy Newman, Rickie Lee Jones, Los Lobos and Michael McDonald. Grammy award winner Mark Linett is the veteran of many years in the studio, starting in Hollywood at Artist Recording, Paramount and Mystic Studios in the early seventies after running his own PA company.