Interview: Producer/Engineer Eddie Kramer (Part 2)

There's a reason why Eddie Kramer has endured in a fickle industry, and here a lot more reasons

by Craig Anderton

If you read Part 1, you know Eddie Kramer is pretty cool. And you know that Eddie knows recording. But his definition of the recording process starts long before he pushes the record button. “I feel strongly that records are made in pre-production, providing the band knows their craft, the songs are great, and I’ve done my job correctly by rehearsing the band or artist to he point where everybody knows what’s happening. And if you get into the studio and the rehearsed song doesn’t quite work, you have to have rehearsed a backup plan. Maybe the tempo or key is wrong; maybe it shouldn’t be electric or acoustic. At least we will have rehearsed alternatives.

“But you also can have the situation where a great thing happens by chance because a great bunch of musicians knows their instruments. You have to be sensitive to those circumstances as well.”

I of course had to ask about how digital sometimes locks out the chance to do something “wrong” that turns out to be “right,” because digital is normalized to a particular workflow.

“The ‘vintage way’ of recording allows one the flexibility of doing things by accident, of saying ‘Wow, check out that sound, I’ve never heard that before.’ When we first started using a digital reverb on Led Zeppelin, I had it set up wrong and it was feeding back on itself . . . it sounded like it was inverted inside of a long tube, and I could never have gotten that sound in the digital world.

“Analog is very forgiving. You can do bizarre, wacky things, which goes hand-in-hand with rock and roll. It’s not meant to be perfect.”

LET’S GET WRONG

Having covered when wrong is right, it seemed right to give equal time to when wrong is just plain wrong. And Eddie has some strong opinions.

“I must say this: If you look at the top 20 records and you A-B them, it’s all the bloody same. The level is just ridiculous. The record companies have instructed everyone to cut things as hot as possible. There’s no dynamic range; it’s at the point where it sounds horrible. I rue the day when some twit said ‘Yeah, let’s get it all the way up to the maximum.’ That has produced an insatiable demand for more and more level. Every mastering engineer — [bob] Ludwig, [bernie] Grundman, [George] Marino— they’re all quite upset about this. On the Hendrix stuff I’ve been working on, I turned things back a bit on the level because I want it to sound like the way it was in the studio.

“We work our balls off to get the sounds to be cool, to make it sound great, to inspire people. And it comes out sometimes like crap, and that’s terrifying.

“And the other thing that’s really terrifying is the sound of MP3s. We are raising a generation of kids who listen to MP3s and have no concept of what a great record should sound like. It’s compressed, it’s rolled off at 8kHz. I don’t know what the answer is; we’re soldiering on regardless. We’ll do the very best we can to serve the music, serve the artist. We are a service industry [laughs].

“Look at the top engineers. Eliot Scheiner, Bruce Swedien, Joe Chicarelli, Jimmy Douglass, Chuck Ainley—all of these guys are struggling with the same thing. We’ve been in the business, we’ve seen all the changes, we love to see the public embrace new technology but not at the expense of the music.

“Unfortunately the whole music industry from top to bottom is all about the bottom line. It puts us in a very bad position. We’re supposed to be in charge of helping the artist be creative, make them feel great about their music. But when it comes out as an MP3, all that work is for naught.”

THE HENDRIX EXPERIENCE

Most interviews with Eddie start off with Hendrix. But that’s arguably wrong, because Eddie is about so much more than just Hendrix. Still, it would also be wrong not to talk about Hendrix, who excelled at making wrong right: He wrote right-handed but played his right-handed guitar left-handed, and strung it like a right-handed version so when he strummed down, he hit the low E first and the high E last.

Listening back to his studio albums, there’s a flow that seems to imply a very intuitive artist. Well Eddie was there, so . . .

“Look at Jimi’s timeline: 4-track, 1/2" 15 IPS going four-to-four-to-four, three times. Recording drums in mono, then stereo, then hitting the US in ’68 and going to 12-track. Then we scrapped that 1" Scully machine and transferred over to 16 tracks. Think about the way we used to record: I always had a [variable speed oscillator] sitting next to me, and I’d always be fooling around with speeding up and slowing down the tape.” [Editor’s note: The earliest way to implement variable speed was by using a sine wave oscillator feeding a beefy power amp, and driving the capstan motor with the amp’s output. The motor synched to the line frequency, so if the oscillator was set to 60Hz, the motor behaved normally. But if you sped up or slowed down the oscillator, the motor would follow along. — CA.]

“The first time we demonstrated phasing to Jimi [while recording] ‘Axis: Bold as Love,’ he flipped out – ‘I’d heard that sound in my dreams.’ Of course that was a calculated sound, not an accident . . . but when you think about tape flanging, it’s never the same. You never knew exactly how it was going to sound. On ‘Electric Ladyland,’ I actually got a sound appearing behind my head for maybe two seconds — this happened by accident, and I could never re-create it. You can imagine how scary that was!

“It is true that with Hendrix, he could do stuff in one or two takes. He was very well-prepared, and always knew what he was doing at all times. Still, there were times when he would be dissatisfied with his performance, end up doing 40 takes, then come back the next day and say ‘I can do it even better.’ You can’t generalize; each circumstance in the studio is totally different.”

When it comes to latter-day Hendrix, though, Eddie has fallen in love with the potential of the DVD. “I love DVDs for their flexibility, there is a tremendous amount of freedom I can bring to the table. [When we] finished redoing the Hendrix Woodstock performances, we restored Jimi’s original performance back to its original two hours and mixed it in 5.1 surround; you really feel like you’re sitting in the mud. The only thing that’s missing is the mud!

“In the process, we found all this footage no one every saw before. That’s creative and exciting, I love being able to do archaeological digs. This is stuff that’s just been sitting around. Here we are, decades later, making the sound and movie sound and look so much better.”

Kramer’s photographic work is impressive, so it seemed natural to ask if he’s crossed over to doing video as well as audio.

“Well, I can’t help but be part of that video process. I mix first in stereo, then in 5.1, then they lock the picture to my mix. In that regard, the digital world is a big help because you used to have to match the sound to the picture. The beauty of 5.1 is I can place the instruments carefully, and get accurate spatial effects. You can actually hear the delays coming off the towers.”

EDDIE’S GEAR ADVENTURES

About a decade ago, one of Eddie’s side projects is DigiTech’s Hendrix pedal (since discontinued). It didn’t just model a Strat going through a stack of Marshalls; you wouldn’t need Eddie for that. Instead, it modelled the sound of Jimi’s Strat going through Marshalls recorded to tape, then processed using Eddie’s various engineering/production techniques. DigiTech called it “Production Modelling” because it modelled the entire production chain.

Eddie’s doing some more pedals called F-Pedals, and rather than try to describe them, it’s a lot easier just to link to the web site that will tell you all about them. And of course, his Signature Series bundle for Waves is still very much alive and well. You might also want to check out some of his videos, and of course, there's his main site.

He’s also working with a bunch of bands, including Xander and the Peace Pirates. But as the interview wound down, it was clear there was more to the story than his projects. Here’s a guy who could rest on his laurels, collect some checks, and kick back in a hot tub on Maui. But he’s remained relevant despite being in this business for decades. Why?

“If you don’t learn from each group of musicians you work with, you might as well hang it up. You have to keep your mind open; I’ve learned new techniques, I’ve learned how to work with the digital world, but I’ve found a way to integrate the two worlds to make them compatible with each other . . . to get the best out of both, and make them a unified whole.

“When I play the faders, I play them like a piano. I must have that tactile feeling — I want to be connected to the sound with my fingertips.”

Which is probably why the music he’s worked on connects with your emotions. Eddie is the first to credit the artist, which is not surprising. But look a little deeper: Eddie has served as an amplifier for the artist’s art — and that’s a type of amplifier no technology can create.

Craig Anderton is Editor Emeritus of Harmony Central. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.