MIX: Do you cut tape much?

FLOOD: Oh, yeah, all the time. I'll work analog when I'm cutting tracks and overdubbing, because in some respects, I can control the specifics of the sound far better. But after that, nowadays I tend to end up mixing possibly to 15 ips SR, and then transferring it to DAT, and then I'll edit on Pro Tools and Sound Tools for compilations or 12-inches. That's a good way—you can spend a day in the studio doing a bazillion different passes and then take it home. 

Also, I've been using Pro Tools a lot with MIDI sequencers. (I happen to use Cubase Audio, but I've used StudioVision, Digital Performer and the Notator system.) For instance, I'll take a rough mix of the song, so we can continually cycle around one verse. It continually loops around, and you can play as the guitar player for an hour. Then after 58 minutes you can go: Stop, those two bars are brilliant, right, chop, click, bang it down through the verse, fine let's listen back, that sounds great, I think it sounds great as is, no I think you should replay it, no it's a bad idea, let's go back and do it again. 

Also I've done situations where a drum part sounds good for the first chorus, but the second chorus is crap. Okay, load it in, copy the first chorus, bang it over, done. It probably takes more time to load it in and load it out than it does to actually do what you want. But I think if you start getting into snipping every other bass drum beat out, then you start to tread on dangerous ground. But as a sort of writing tool in that situation for 8-tracks, I think it's really useful. Because then again, having done that, you can say, all right, well let's dump it down to tape, and off you go, you're getting the best of both worlds. You have something that's helped somebody write something, which might turn out slightly different from how you would have expected it if you weren't in that situation, and then shove it on analog afterwards. 

With things like Pro Tools and Sound Tools, the ability to edit between mixes in a creative way is really useful. Oh, that mix was done a bit later, it sounds basically the same but it's a bit louder, “click,” pull the faders down, unclick, lift them back, that sounds great, off you go. I mean I think if you're comparing it with editing on tape with just a hard and fast cut, it's probably just as simple to do it on tape, but I think that's not using the system at its fullest. But it's important not to be caught by the millions of options: I can EQ it, I can add compression, noise-reduce it—uh oh, what am I doing. It wasn't that bad when I started, but oh look at all these candies in the sweet shop. 

MIX: What about the other end of the recording process—do you tend to like to do much pre-production? 

FLOOD: It varies from project to project, depending on what it needs and on how the people I'm working with feel about it. Somebody like Depeche Mode had worked on so many albums and fitted themselves into such a strong pattern—usually the songs were written, then they were demos, then they went into pre-production, then finally they went into the studio—that after a while, it became blindingly obvious to me that they were caught in a rut by doing that. So one of the first things I suggested was, well next batch of recording, let's dump all the pre-production. Just make sure we've got the keys of the song right in the first place, but barring that, let's forget it, let's go in and almost experiment in the studio. So it opened their eyes to doing things in a different way. But you know, other people you need to sit in a rehearsal room for maybe a month. Each project is its own boss. If somebody wants to record in a house in the middle of Nevada by Lake Tahoe because they feel that's going to do the best thing for the record, and I agree with them, then let's do it. But obviously one man's meat is another man's snare drum. 

MIX: So when it's time to go into the studio, given your druthers, what kind of studio situation or vibe do you prefer? 

FLOOD: It depends on the band. Usually, I think the most important criteria is flexibility, because something that's flexible means that there's more creative stimuli for the people you're working with. So that if you're in a creative impasse, you can say, all right, it's not happening with these sounds, let's move the band into the back room. It may take half a day, but just by doing that, it will make people hear things in a different way, whereas if you're sort of stuck with one type of area, then you might not be able to have that luxury. 

But by the same token, I'm not that keen on places that have absolutely everything you could ever possibly want, because sometimes that makes you a bit lazy. If you haven't got the double overhead triple whammy bar reverb, you might actually try doing it in a different way, which may be a lot better. It's about working in a positive way to one's limitations. By the same token, you don't necessarily want to be sitting there with one compressor and one 910 Harmonizer. But I have been in situations where there hasn't been that much stuff, and then you do start to think of things in a different way—it makes your mind work in a different way. You have to use your experience to judge when something has moved on and is improving the music or when something's just a whacky effect for the sake of it. It's always hard, because sometimes if you're searching for something, the sound can govern how things are played. So if everybody's in a lull, and suddenly you pull x, y or z out of the bag, then that can really spur people on. 

MIX: What sort of things do you do to elicit a great performance? 

FLOOD: You have to be ready to capture the element of spontaneity. I've always cited, as a good example of this, working with U2 on Achtung Baby, the track “You're So Cruel.” What happened was we were in the studio working on another song, and they were coming up to have a listen to a take, and somebody suggested we should have a listen to an earlier take, which was on a different reel. I said, okay, give me 30 seconds and I'll find it. Whilst that was going on, somebody started strumming an acoustic guitar, and somebody else said, oh that's quite good, and started playing along with some bongos. All of a sudden, almost in the time it had taken for me to wind off the reel and wind the next reel on, it was quite obvious that there was a song about to pop out, and if I wasn't suddenly taking the reel off and getting a new piece of tape on, and changing from monitoring a backing track downstairs to everybody's in the control room wanting to record now, it would never have happened. 

You can change anything to your heart's content afterwards. And even if you've got the world's greatest part and the sound is totally crap, you can probably add something to it to add definition, uniqueness, whatever. You've always got to try to look on the positive side of things. But at the same time, you can't just ride—you've got to make sure that, by experience, you know that even if you haven't heard the person open their mouth, that your mic level and your compressor level and your EQ is going to be okay so that it's not going to distort as soon as they start kicking in the first note they sing. 

Next Page