Alan Meyerson: Mixing The Movies Part 1 - Immersive Audio

[Music] thank you Alan Mason is perhaps best known for mixing Hans Zimmer's work including most recently the Dune soundtrack buddy has an incredible career story too we met him at his Studio to tell us his story talk about mixing and more I started out as a as a trumpet player in high school I was I was a good player I was a musical guy and I thought that what I really wanted from life was to be a classical trumpet player but what I found out later on is how if I had practiced all the time when I was supposed to be practicing I might have had a shot but by the time I got to college there were so many young players that were so much better than me and they weren't going to make it and so I realized that you know that wasn't going to be a path for me and I didn't know what I was going to do and I was at school in Brooklyn College and I was walking through the hallways and I hear music and it was like the Pied Piper thing you know and I just started going towards the music I peeked in the door and it's this studio it's this sound studio and there's this little booth and I just looked in and there's this little mixing board and a glass look overlooking the theater and and um and then an office with a piano and microphones set up and then they hear hi it's like oh hi oh it's got I'm I'm out I'm just looking around I don't know what's go you know and it was this guy Frank Angel and and uh we had a conversation and he offered me an internship so I started there and honestly the minute I realized I wasn't going to make it as a trouble player my interest in school was non-existent so I I was on the best of days I wasn't a great student you know on on but once I got to that point I just lost interest in going to school so I only stayed a semester at the school but I actually stayed a year as an intern at the studio and then um this amazing piano tuner I'll always be grateful to Peter Crosby passed away many many years ago told me that they were opening up a new studio in Midtown Manhattan to do TV and radio commercials called Counterpoint she says you should you know give them a call and see if you can get an interview so I did that and I got an interview and I showed up at 10 A.M for a 1pm interview and I got the job but it was interesting because I I I kind of the minute I walked into a Sound Studio and and now a recording studio I realized that I have an aptitude for this this is I'm not looking at it going oh my God what do all those dials and knobs do I'm like oh that looks like it's doing that and that's doing that and that's how you get there and oh he's doing that for the headphones and so it sort of just clicked in so I started as um you know a toilet cleaner in in the studio and it was a new studio and they had had an assistant in there who it wasn't maybe uh as experienced as as she as she could have been and it slowly became obvious that I knew you know I knew what I was doing and I could handle a session so I started I didn't we both worked and you know I didn't try to overtake her or anything like that I was young I was at this point I was 18 or 19 and and and I just started doing a lot of sessions and what was amazing about it was doing jingles in New York in the 70s only the best players played you know so you're sitting there and Steve gads playing drums or will Lee is playing bass and the Brecker Brothers are in the horn section and stuff like that so I got to kind of see and meet all my Idols you know in the first session which I still remember was a Volkswagen commercial called art dealer I couldn't sing it to you but it was a little and that was when the Volkswagen logo was Volkswagen does it again and so I we did like 30 of those so that became a day-to-day thing I was working with this amazing engineer named Gary Chester and assisting and we do the the great thing about learning in that world is from uh 7am in the morning to 4 P.M in the evening you do the whole process so you get there you make coffee you sweep the floors you set up the microphones the Rhythm Section comes we record Rhythm Section the Rhythm Section leaves and then those strings come in and then the brass comes in and then the singers come in it's like two o'clock at this point you know a group of singers and they sing their Volkswagen does it again then they leave Gary Chester mixes it almost magically fast and uh before you know it I'm sending out what they called Full coats and Stripes for delivery for it to be uh duplicated to be sent to radio stations and television stations uh rinse repeat every single day and for I did that for a year and I just everything started becoming automatic I I started kind of using just my instincts to set up and stuff and I started doing the headphone mixes for him Gary immediately saw that I had something so he was giving me a lot of room to learn and grow and take chances and stuff like that and and so I started doing the headphone mixes and then he would show up late and I'd start the mix and then you know I would do my sessions during the day everyone would leave and then at night I would bring in people I knew who were at Juilliard or you know and and start recording them so I could learn how to record on my own terms you know and it was amazing I had this opportunity to have the studio the owner said you could use it anytime you want as long as we're not on a session you wake up in the morning and show up so I did that and and that took me for two years doing that with Gary and then one July 4th 1979 uh there's a Belgian artist that was coming in with this producer Mark Ariane and it was July 4th and they wanted to do a vocal session and no one wanted to do it and I'm like I'll do it you know I'll do anything you know so I I got they put me on this session I did it it worked out well I did a rough mix that they loved I've always had a pretty good Instinct with mixing even when I didn't know what I was doing I always could put together a balance that kind of worked you know so I did this mix and he offered me a job in Belgium so I give up my job I moved to Europe for six months and I work in the studio in the outskirts of the outskirts of Brussels and and uh but funnily enough that I got to record a Chet Baker album and I got to hang out with Chet Baker and do all that stuff so these life experiences were just incredible and um I eventually got fired because I deserved to get fired and and uh I tried to come back and then I came back to LA and I went back to my old job and got fired from that you know it's like as as I gain more stuff I it was hard to go back and um from there I mean not to go into the real you know minutia of it I ended up at the Hit Factory uh because I was working RCA records and the engineer there was leaving and going to the Hit Factory and he took me with him so I went to the Hit Factory for two years I got the hair with John Lennon I got to start learning how to make records which was completely different because you didn't do everything like that you spent the day on a drum sound in the 70s you spent the day on a drum sound and and you know it was just a whole different mindset and I started thinking more about sound in a more abstract way you know when I was working with Gary Gary was the greatest engineer at getting a fast sound that works all the time but he's not a guy that's going to put up a couple of room mics and add some compression and see what that sounds like with the delay on it and so on and so forth and Flash that wasn't who he was so now I was working at the Hit Factory with the engineers like Chris kimsey and Ed Sprague and and these guys are like bringing in garbage cans with leaves in them and doing that and making a loop out of it we made I remember we made um our own melotron we took a piece of 24 track tape and we got the singer in and she sang two octaves of chromatic scale and just by how you put the faders up you could build chords and then it's like early sampler you build the chord you record it the two track you put back up the multi-track that you need and you fly it into where you want it so I had mad tape skills I just was really really good at flying stuff around and I was having the time of my life you know and then I went to a r Studios because that was owned by Phil Ramon or no longer owned by Phil Ramon at that point um I was one generation away from Elliott Shiner so I was assisting his assistants and they got me because I now I had this record experience but I also had this jingle experience and they were doing a lot of jingle work so I went there and I was there for about a year and uh I got fired for gross neglect and I thought my career was over and right as I got fired almost like it was meant to be this this client of a r this guy Roger Tallman who I worked with as an assistant called me up because you don't happen to be able to do engineering work do you he says you were really great and I really feel like you were the the backbone of that session and we have this Cadillac campaign and I was wondering if you'd like to record and mix it it's like uh yeah I mean let me check my schedule so I became a freelance engineer just almost by default and I've never had a job since then I've been freelance the closest I've had to that is I'm sort of the the uh de facto chief engineer of remote control but I'm not really you know I'm not paid by them I it's just something I do through that process I started uh working with uh the kind of dance music world in New York at the time just again because I did a rough mix that some that author Baker liked you know so I went to work for author and I was I was the night guy at Shakedown sound and uh Andy Wallace who went on to you know produce Nirvana and stuff like that he was the day guy and it was a 24-hour cycle there so I was you know working from like 11 to 10 and then he would come in and we work all the time and I got to work with all these amazing producers so I'm like well maybe I'm going to go in the record business and I started mixing and I did uh I was working a lot for Tommy Boy records and they liked me so she Monica Lynch introduced me to Brian Ferry and uh I they said they asked me to do a couple of remixes for him so I did these remixes and then now I'm working you know this is a couple years now I'm I'm well into my career you know and and uh jokingly around I said to Brian's assistant this guy Simon I said if he because I knew he had mixed the album three times already you know and I said if he wants to mix it a fourth time tell him I'd be happy to do it you know and so the next day it's like uh Alan this Brian Ferry and first I'm like okay he's like I love the mixes you did I understand you would like to mix the album would you would you feel would you want to mix it so I said sure So I did it for like fifteen thousand dollars and I spent seventeen thousand dollars on gear to do it that's where I was at I was like I'm and I put notes up everywhere you know uh uh nothing's impossible no limitations you know and just sort of like trying to convince myself that this was going to be okay I really didn't know of course Bob Clear Mountain had mixed the previous Prime Ferry record and Roxy Music's Avalon and and and and and all of a sudden here I come in so I'm like well I can't do what he did so let me do it with my own style and I did it like a dance record and people liked it and sold very well you know and and through that I started getting a lot of more remix work and I ended up working with New Order and I did that and that went very well and I started doing a lot of r b polygram I did this group Cameo you know very popular group in the in the 80s and um I um worked with them and that the a r guy that like that was representing them liked me and started giving me other work and I started working with like Nia peoples and Jody Watley and Howard Hewett and Keith Washington and and my clientele started building up and I was doing quite well and and I was living working on both coasts so I decided to move out to LA okay so I'm figuring if I'm going to be on both coasts I can either live above a pizza place or I could live on the beach and look at Brazilian girls in their bikinis now remember I'm 28 at this point so it's like there was it was a no-brainer you know I bought myself a Jeep took the top off and that was my lifestyle and it was it was awesome until it wasn't you know and and it was easy at first and then it got harder and harder and it became a real grind and I realized that you know the level of competition in you know they in mixing records you know the people I was competing with the Chris Lord algaes and the and the Bobs and and uh you know it was before the many Americans and the you know Tony Maserati who assisted me um so this was like or still mid 80s and stuff like that and and I did well with it and I was trying to do it but I I wasn't really loving it and I really felt like an imposter I don't know it was it wasn't for me and then I had a situation where a client just didn't show up for like 12 hours so it finally left after 12 hours and as he's pulling up and he goes you're fired and I said that's fine with me and I really just made a decision that this I'm not going to do this and uh I had a period of time where I I went through all my money I ran out of money you know I took my retirement fund and paid my mortgage and stuff like that and I had no idea what I was going to do I was going to apply to Chiropractic College and then uh this young guy who I used to help get internships uh ended up in an internship at here at Media Ventures at the time as it was called and I asked him who who's hans's engineer and he told me it was a guy I knew from New York so he said hey tell Jay I say hi so he did that and they called me they said hey why don't you stop by and so I stopped by and and uh they showed me around and I said look if you ever need anyone to cover for anything I'm happy to do it and two days later they called me and I did a session and and uh and then they asked me to just come visit The Lion King recording session to see you know they wanted to see if how I you know so I did that and um that's my first time I met Hans actually outside he's like he was smoking a cigarette and I was smoking a cigarette you guys I can't believe I can't smoke on my own session you know it was like the first thing he ever said to me and uh and then they they asked me to uh they actually asked me to do a session with Hans and uh it was on a Saturday it was with Penny Marshall it was for this movie Renaissance Man and it was a percussion thing and I said sure okay I usually didn't do sessions if they called me the day before because it makes you look too valuable but in this point I was actually quite available and really had no idea what I was going to do so I figured I'd hang out with Hans Zimmer for a day what how bad would that be right and Penny loved me she loved me from Brooklyn I'm you know Jewish and everything so so she's in the back and she's like she goes that sounds good and smacks me in the back of the head and all that stuff and Hans is laughing right so then he leaves and I I thought I pissed him off I must just you know I have a outgoing personality and and uh it's easy for me to put my foot in my mouth I thought I'd put my foot in my mouth and he left and I finished the session myself and then I get a call the next day can you come in and I'm like ah they're gonna they're gonna give me a check for one day's work and read me the riot act and they come in and Hans just like why don't I know you you know and uh he said what are you doing for the next two months and that was renaissance man and I helped finish up Lion King and then that two months turned into nine months you know the the movie Nine Months and the movie As Good As It Gets and the movie you know something to talk about and it just on and on and on and on and on and I became part of the fabric of this place so it was a very different environment then it was a much smaller group of people now it's quite large but it's you know at that time it was me Hans his his assistant and uh a studio Chief and one Tech and that was it so and I was single and I once I realized what this world was I was like this is for me you know this is perfect for me I'm a trumpet player they're asking me to read scores that I can do you know I can hear in an orchestra what's working and what's not working and I turned out to really have a high level of skills when it came to recording orchestras which I I probably developed from doing jingles you know and uh it just worked out great and and um so it became a long-term relationship and then when Hans became the head of DreamWorks music and we did Gladiator and we did uh the first uh animated feature was ants and then the next one was Prince of Egypt the it all just started to build up and you know I had a movie that won an Academy Award for best sound mixing speed and then Gladiator one and you know and I just started having this career and then I started getting outside work from other people and stuff like that fast forward to now and uh just what you see is what that gave me I just happened to have a skill set that Hans was looking for at that point how to make his stuff I mean honestly Hans is so good at what he does he's actually a fine mixer that to to give some added value you have to bring something to it so you know I decided at this point I'm just going to do what I do and see what happens you know I wasn't going to be squeamish about it and and he liked it you know not always and and a lot of times he would shoot me down but he'd rather have the ideas than to not have you know than just be throwing a ball at a rubber you know at a rubber wall you know so I was giving him stuff to do and most of the time I was doing well my favorite Han story is um you know he would in the early days he would come in and mix with me now of course she doesn't but um I don't remember what what the score was but he writes these big long sweets that sort of you know um indicates what all the melody things and we record it and it's a you know it ends up on the soundtrack album most of the time so I had this like eight minute one and I was mixing it for like a day and a half because that's the thing I spend the most time on and he comes in and usually he comes in we listen to like half of it then he stops and we start doing some Automation and stuff but he's listening and he's listening and he's listening and then it stops and he sits there for a second he pulls out his wallet and hands me a dollar and walks out in other words there's nothing to change so I ran after him I said sign this dollar and so that is in my studio at home on the wall and every time I think I'm an imposter I look at that dollar reminds me well at least at that point in time I wasn't an imposter the technical differences between music that is Cinema bound and music that is going to be played in a home Cinema is really about scale you know it's about the fact that in a similar Cinema you have so much more air in space and lowen sort of Acts a little bit differently and and everything but the problem is that I'm mixing it in a small space you know even if I had a much bigger room it's still unless I'm mixing in a theater so what I tend to do for you know large Motion Pictures is I'll I'll do a couple of mixes and I'll go to this stage and listen to it and sort of gear myself as to what it is sounding like they are and maybe I need more surrounds or maybe the low end isn't for this theater is is too big or not big enough or stuff like that but um you know in in my um when it leaves here my goal is that it's going to work in any surround environment that it's in you know it it is different and if I know if say for example I'm doing television you know then I'm not worried about that larger scoundscape I'm I'm more interested in like really hearing it in the environment that it is and that in that case I'll listen to it I'll mix it in surround and then I'll put it through the television speakers and listen to see how it's translating through that in video games I have a little video game um speaker system in the other room and when I do video games I do a lot of video games um uh I'll listen through that so it's more just listening to it in the delivery that is probably going to end up being heard by 90 of the people you know I was a good recording engineer I'm still a good recording engineer so I could get a decent Rhythm Section sound um and it all sounded great but until you get into the world of film you don't understand it's all different you know and certainly in record production everything needs to be like up front and everything needs to be louder than everything else you know and and so that is you know I worked on that and then I tried to develop my style where I had a little bit more depth than other people and I had varying success with that um but in the film world it's you're in this large immersive environment with this 100 piece Orchestra or or 40 piece Orchestra or whatever it is on a good scoring stage that has a good sound signature you're almost recording the room more than you're recording the individual instruments so you sort of the way I look at it I have three perspectives I have well four actually I have the room which is my Deca tree configuration and a couple of what they call Outriggers and they're all somewhere between nine and a half and 12 feet you know and then um I have a mid distance which is an individual mic above each section whatever it is the strings one strings violence one violence two Viola jelly bass French horns brass percussion you know like that and then the then there's the spot miking which is actually the closer mics which I try to avoid using too much in a film but I end up using it more than I should and then the uh you know nowadays with everything you know we always record everything with an Atmos you know mic array set up so that we can always if they if they need it in Atmos they I can do it and those are just basically higher up you know it's 16 feet is usually where I had that and depending on what the score is it really I listen to the music that we're doing and I decide does this want to be like classically orchestral or is this something that needs to be sort of stylized in a way that's you know if you listen to for example Italian Job it's a score movie but the score doesn't really sound like you know a John Williams score so I take that into account am I doing like I just did this thing at Abbey Road for this video game Jedi Fallen order it was eight hours of Music 210 cues massive job all live and it that that is how they wanted it to sound so in this case I'm I'm just trying to take this recording I did and just detail it in a way that makes it as as clear as it can be and as powerful as it can be and still give it the Allen Edge but when I'm doing something that's a little bit more hybrid I I will um you know be less worried about the the orchestra sounding legit and just have fun with it you know like I'll put up Mike said I know I'm going to distort you know like I'll put a stereo ribbon mic up above the conductor and I'll just route that I'll record it with a lot of compression and maybe a thermionic culture vulture on it or something like that or overdrive in La 2A or something and you know and do that and I just have that and I and I commit to it because I don't want to have to think about it later I don't I don't want that to be part of my mixing process so I just have this little fader that I can turn up some dirt if I need it on an orchestra or a brass section or you know just unconventional stuff like that the final delivery for me actually isn't at most regularly unless there's a specific request for it and the reason they do that is because the the the um when I come into an Atmos mix in this environment I'm not taking into account the Final Mix of the sound effects so I can create conflicts and problems and I'm limiting the better dubbing mixer to being more creative with with the positioning in the atmos environment of the music so for example on Dune Ron Bartlett who's sort of been my partner for you know 25 years he's he's as close as I have to a brother we even look alike and he's he just won the Academy Award for Dune he's a world-class mixer I don't mind delivering him anything because I know that when I go here in the cinema it's going to sound great and he's not he's not a Fix-It in his mix kind of guy I go there and I look at my stems that I delivered him and there's no there's not a ton of EQ on it there's not he's not adding Reverb everywhere and everything he's just being very like careful about positioning and stuff like that so I can respect that and that to me is a very effective way to do Atmos because you know the way the way Ron and I do it as we basically build four boxes we build a ground level box and that's just basically the bed 7.1 bed which actually we don't use the bed for we use objects because early on Atmos days there was a latency between the bed and objects um and sometimes I use the bed and then the next one is you know imagine it being set 20 higher and in the front and the next one is 20 higher than that and in the middle and then the last one is at the top and more in the back and that way you could just set up your session so that you have four different outputs you can just pop between ground level one two three and see where this works best very simple and I'm not doing a lot of object automation you know I do sometimes if if it's something that's fun and effective and right for the score but I'm not a guy that's trying to you know it I wouldn't be a good guy to mix stuff for Atmos you know this uh references because I'm trying to keep it as just an immersive experience as opposed to you know just think of it like this if you're doing a movie the one thing you don't want to do is have someone turn their head right you don't want them doing that when they're watching a movie so if I have a sound like zipping around like that that's not connected to something on the screen it's going to be very disconcerting it's going to be very distracting so you know yes when something's on the screen and it passes by and it it's a musical element or something I can do that you know but I'm very very careful with that and that's better done on the stage with the sound effects with them doing it and having the time to do it right all right that's all for now if you like what you saw please be sure to like and share it and subscribe and click the Bell icon so you know when we upload new content to our YouTube also find us on Twitter Instagram and Facebook thanks for watching

Channel: Sound On Sound magazine

Views: 23,008

Keywords: music, recording, mastering, mixing, producer, midi, synth, electronic, synthesizer, microphone, mixer, eurorack, DAW, cubase, protools, plug-ins, music software, music production, audio editing

Id: 7NQJmAyM65I

Length: 28min 43sec (1723 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2023