John Acock talks to Paul White in the tranquil surroundings of the H&SR studio in the shadow of the Malvern hills.

Originally I was a keyboard player in a fairly successful local band here in Malvern, but after we went into the studio to do a bit of recording, I knew straight away that recording was for me. It gripped me from the minute I walked into the studio and I thought this is really what I want to be doing. Although I didn't really know how to go about it, I knew that it would mean moving to London so I wrote around to every studio I could find in London, about 40 in all I suppose.

After about a year I managed to get in as a tape-op at a place called De Lane Lea which was an 8-track studio in Kings Way, but is now closed down. At the time (1970-1) it was one of the most successful little 8-track rock studios around. It was on the crest of a wave then because it had Micky Most who used to do a lot of his work there, and at that time he was really riding high with loads of bands; Hendrix had done his first singles there, the Animals had done 'The House Of The Rising Sun' there and subsequent spin offs from that.

The chief engineer was a bloke called Martin Birch, who was and still is one of the most foremost heavy metal engineers. He specialises in that and works with Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult. He was very particular, very professional yet very easy going and good to work with; he taught me a lot really. It's who you have the luck to work with in the first months in a studio that can make or break you, and as I didn't have any electronics knowledge, I was just going on instinct and what musical knowledge I had, which wasn't very much looking back; it was very much a case of 'suck it and see.'

Luckily I was working with Martin who was very well respected and a good engineer and the place was very busy. I was working all the time tape-oping and looking over his shoulder, and subsequently I started to do demo sessions. Eventually when the big day came and I was thrown in the deep end on a real session it was a sink or swim, and luckily I just managed to swim, albeit with armbands on to stop me from sinking.

It was 8-track; a 3Ms machine and an old Sound Techniques desk, which was actually a valve machine and it had quadrant faders, which you don't see much these days. It was a good rock 'n' roll desk, as they say, and although temperamental, was a good old workhorse. The monitors were Tannoy Lockwoods.

I stuck there for about 2 years and De Lane Lea then opened an ambitious venture which was based at Wembley which was going to be called the Music Centre. It comprised 3 studios plus video facilities all under one roof and it opened in 1974. I was involved for the 6 or 9 months before it opened, to actually install the gear and get the place into running order. That was subsequently taken over by CTS and it's now called simply CTS Studios.

That was interesting, because although a lot of mistakes were made in the original concept of the place (and I wasn't in a position to impart knowledge about building it because I didn't really have any), but it was interesting to see a place being built and fitted out with all the gear from scratch, and then subsequently to see what hadn't worked. About two years later it was apparent that some of the designers' ideas were a bit far fetched at the time and just hadn't come off, so they had to come out. That taught me a lot; if ever I get to build a studio for myself, which is possible. They made some expensive mistakes on the air conditioning.

That's an expensive thing to do properly anyway isn't it?

That's right. But it's absolutely catastrophic to try and cut any corners in air conditioning. The mass of material you need to effectively isolate rooms that you put in from scratch is quite daunting. Anyway, I stayed there until 1979. Although the place was geared up for doing film and classical work I found myself being asked to work in other studios, because some of the bands I was working with didn't like to record at De Lane Lea, but they liked to work with me. They asked me to go with them recording in other places, and as the grass always seems greener, I used to go. Eventually the time came when I had to make a decision between a full-time job there or going completely freelance, so I went freelance and the first major project was a Steve Hackett album which we did in a place called Cherokee in Los Angeles, which was a real experience. It was the first time I had worked outside England.

Why did you feel necessary to do it over there?

We did that because he wanted to use Chester Thompson as the drummer. Chester lived in the States and at the time it was cold here in England and he also had Randy Crawford and Richy Havens and a few other Americans we wanted to use. It was actually cheaper for Steve and I to go over there than it was to bring them all over here.

How did you find the studios compared at that time?

At that time they were thoroughly professional. I was really impressed, by the degree of professionalism at Cherokee. I hadn't seen it to that extent in London anywhere really. The maintenance was absolutely top class. The maintenance engineer used to come in and line up the machine virtually every time we took a break, he would demag it daily. Our pots didn't even get time to crackle before they were replaced. The desk was an old A series Trident which are still quite revered in the States. They've a really top class reputation as a rock 'n' roll desk and there's still a lot of them around. If they are looked after, then they'll last, and they have a certain character to them which is very pleasant.

We did all the backing tracks for the album there using Chester; Richy Havens did some singing, Randy Crawford was on some of the tracks and also a guy called Tom Farlow, the bass player who used to be with the Mothers of Invention. It was a fairly A-team American bunch of L.A. session guys. We brought the tapes back and mixed them on the NECAM desk at De Lane Lea, now become CTS.

"I've got a great respect for producers who don't engineer and yet manage to imprint their mark on what they do."

NECAM and SSL

Steve was and still is an incredible perfectionist when it comes to mixing, so the NECAM desk actually suited him perfectly because we could label up the piece, and most of Steve's numbers are really quite lengthy pieces. We'd go through and stick labels on sections as short as two seconds, break it up into as many little short sections as necessary, and just work on little sections at a time, then chain up and update if necessary. It was a floppy disk-based system which actually spoilt me in a way for automation because I hadn't had much experience of working with the other sort of automation: the Alison-based systems.

When I did, I found it a bit restricting because the NECAM was actually more comprehensive. The Alison was a bit too simplistic, so I tended to go off automation for a bit unless it was NECAM or SSL, but I've always mixed fairly slowly and carefully and worked in short sections. I've always done that and then edited together afterwards, ever since the music I was working on started to become slightly complicated.

SSL was really a major step forward of course but I stil I like the NECAM system. I've just done some stuff on the Master Mix which I think is excellent as well; it does all that you want, it's simple and it does it's job. I think if I were equipping a studio, I would think of that as a viable alternative to an SSL. At least it makes it possible now to get a cheaper desk and equip it with Master Mix and still it would be a viable alternative.

Does it give you control over more than just the levels?

Just levels and mutes, so really for most purposes it is quite adequate. I find myself getting bogged down with SSL although it's unquestionably a brilliant desk, I do find that I spend longer to mix with it than I would normally. I tend to get bogged down with it a little bit in fine detail, whereas normally you'd accept one or two minor blemishes. Once the computer goes on I know I'm there for the night.

Engineering and Producing

So when did you get into fully blown production work. I know you've been doing a lot of that for a few years?

I'm still primarily an engineer. I tend to be engineer or co-producer on most of the recording I'm involved with these days. I've never actually claimed or wanted to be a Producer with a capital P, because I've always felt happiest when I'm actually on the faders. I've done some straight direction work where I haven't actually engineered and I felt very uncomfortable - like an outsider. I'm so used to being behind the desk and just reaching out and tweaking when something needs to be done. When I was sitting at the side of the engineer, I felt almost like a fish out of water really, and wondered why I was there. It was only then that I realised how different producing and engineering really are. A lot of people say that the two jobs have become fused, which is true to a certain extent, but I still think that if you're producing and not engineering, you probably have a more objective view of what's happening than if you're engineering and co-producing. I find that I can give my best input on a production level if I'm engineering because I can demonstrate exactly what I'm trying to say in seconds, without having to explain to an engineer exactly what I want to do.

I've got a great respect for producers who don't engineer and yet manage to imprint their mark on what they do. To actually go through another person, an engineer, and still get your own stamp is actually quite difficult. But I think most engineers have had at least one session when they wonder why the producer was sitting there. Producing's an unenviable role sometimes.

It seems to vary a lot as to exactly what the role is.

It's a bit of a nebulous term these days, especially with young bands, because most artists have had some recording experience, whether it be on a Portastudio or a B16. They're pretty well up to date with what's happening. You don't have to assume they have no knowledge of studio techniques, indeed some have got a frightening amount of knowledge. This is great because it saves a lot of time explaining and arguing if they know what they want. A few years ago, a band signing up for the first time would probably have very limited studio experience and would need to be guided through the ropes, and subsequently this would inhibit their performance because they would be a little bit in awe of the studio situation. That has all changed for the better now.

Recent Projects

What sort of bands have you worked with over the last few years, to give a general idea of what you've been up to?

Well I've done five albums with Steve Hackett and his various bands, one a year really over the past five years. He's now involved with Steve Howe in a band which is currently recording an album and they're being produced by Geoff Downs. (He was one half of the Buggles with Trevor Horn and has been in Yes and Asia since then.) He's got his own engineer so I'm unfortunately not involved in that project.

I've been doing a fair cross section stuff really. I did an album with Rick Wakeman for a film called Crimes Of Passion, which is on in the West End at the moment after being heavily censored. I think most of it's probably on the cutting room floor.

That was an interesting project. It was a Ken Russell movie which Rick did the score for. He hadn't done a movie himself since one about four years ago called Altered States. Ken had a pretty shrewd idea of what he wanted and he had given Rick a fairly tight brief to work to. We had a U-matic of the film with SMPTE on it locked up to do all the stuff.

Do you find a lot of difference working to a set of fixed images rather than a piece of music that stands up on its own?

"I tend not to like live rooms unless you're absolutely sure you want a very coloured, ambience sound."

Yes, it gives a very different dimension to things when you're working to picture. It's quite exciting, especially. We had three or four monitors around the studio and Rick was using a small band just drums, bass and guitar; most of the backing tracks were done together. The drummer had his own monitor and so did the bass player and guitarist, and they were actually all glued to the screen (which was not surprising, because some of the stuff is actually X-rated standard) and really giving the music all they could. Having seen the picture that the music was going to, gave them extra dynamics that I don't think they would have had otherwise. The same can be said for me in the mixing actually, it makes you mix aggressively or softly when required.

What are the most diverse acts that you've worked with?

I did a single a few months ago with Samantha Fox singing, which was quite enjoyable. The music wasn't bad either! She actually has a very good voice but I don't think anyone took her seriously as a singer which is a shame because it was a good single. At the moment I'm doing an album with Steeleye Span which covers a very a broad spectrum.

I think it's good to work with a live band again with real guitars, and drums that people actually hit.

Look no MIDI.

That's right. It's been quite refreshing and I've just finished an album with a band called the Korgis which really revolves round James Warren who is the main force behind it. James used to be with a band called Stackridge in the 70s and then, he and Andy Davis (also from Stackridge) formed the Korgis in 1980. They had a couple of top ten hits over here. Of course there was 'Everyone's got to Learn Sometime' which is a real lush ballad, but they had a really duff record deal and things folded up for a few years. Now they've resigned under the label. We're currently doing an album which is nearly finished. That's been good, mostly keyboards and sampled sounds mostly using the Emulator 2. I've got a fair stock of drum samples that I use with it.

We usually drive the Emu from the new Korg sequencer which has got 16-channels. I am very impressed with it.

Have you found that since things like sampling and digital reverbs have come out that it's changed your attitude to engineering?

It's had to change to some degree. I think the biggest alteration though, is the advent of compact disc which is something I've had to come to terms with. You have to be so conscious of noise levels these days. Whereas you could live with a bit of hiss from an old AC30, you just daren't anymore, and that's a shame. Undoubtedly compact disc is a great medium, but I think it's a pity when you sometimes have to avoid using a certain bit of equipment because it's a bit noisy, whereas the sound it makes is actually rather pleasant; on analogue you would never have questioned it.

I've noticed, especially with guitarists who may sometimes have to use a newer, cleaner amp than they'd like, that they can't quite get the same sustain that they had on the old amp, so it affects the playing. You've got an example there of modern technology affecting the playing to some degree. Having said that, I'm glad that the compact disc has arrived. I think that most consumers probably have never realised how good analogue recorded stuff really is until they hear it from the compact disc.

It actually sounds good if it's done on modern equipment with due regard to levels and that kind of thing.

I find that a lot of the old records that I used to rave about are virtually unlistenable to. Drums are the main thing that give it away because drum sounds have improved such a lot over the last few years. I still think that a lot of acoustic stuff from about ten years ago still stand up today - a lot of James Taylor albums for instance. If you consider that the Neumann 87 is probably still one of the most widely used mics in the world, that was used then as it is now.

Drum Miking

Do you have any particular angles on drum sounds yourself when you're working?

I've always had one basic rule which is to stand in front of the kit when the guy is playing it in the studio for a good five minutes, just to get the sound of the kit that he hears into my brain before I put up any mics at all. Obviously the choice of room is of paramount importance with drums. I tend not to like live rooms unless you're absolutely sure you want a very coloured, ambience sound. I think for me the ideal room for me to record drums in is about 12' x 20' x 14', with a wooden parquet floor and brick walls and a couple of movable screens. That would be my ideal drum room.

Do you work conventionally with close up mics plus some ambience?

We always use a combination. There was a time when I threw away all the close mics except bass drum and snare. But I've gone back now to a compromise which usually involves either an RE20, D12 or DD25 plus perhaps an SM58 on the bass drum, with the SM58 about 3" from the shell of the drum to get a bit of shell sound mixed in. Sometimes that's quite nice. Snare mics are variable really depending on the drumming and I guess if I were on a desert island I'd probably take a Beyer 201 because it's got a good off axis response and it's nice and bright.

What about ambience mics?

I usually use a couple of U87s and two or four PZMs scattered around. The PZMs are cheap and adequate for ambience and I'll add subsequent compression and gating as required.

Do you find problems with players who are not totally even in getting rid of snare rattle with gates because of false triggering and that kind of thing?

There can be problems. I always use Drawmer gates, if possible with a filter, and then I don't find too many problems. Most drummers these days come into the studio with a kit that's at least half way decent and that shows an improvement in everyone's knowledge really. A few years ago you could spend a day getting the rattles out of a kit; most drummers these days know that the kit needs to be fairly ship shape before you can even start.

"I think one of the most useful things you can do is to play records that you like, and then try and pull them apart and analyse what's been done."

Tuning drums actually is one of the black arts that I've yet to master. Chester Thompson is one of the great masters. He did a session for Steve in London a few months ago and we hired in a kit because his kit was at Wembley for the Phil Collins dates. The hire company, not mentioning any names, brought a kit round which had been well travelled, and which sounded like a kit of dustbins. Chester dismantled it all and started completely from scratch, and within half an hour the kit was sounding like a studio kit that had all the wrinkles ironed out of it over a period of months. There's definitely a knack to it which some people have got, but that's half the battle with drums. The hard part is the tuning to start with. There's no substitute for hitting the drum hard, obviously for separation and pure sound and keeping the cymbals out of drum mics. If there's a choice of cymbals, the flat earth ride perform well, especially in the live room because they decay quite fast and they don't tend to shear their way through.

Digital Reverb

What impression do you think equipment like AMS's reverb has had?

Digital reverb has had an enormous effect. There was a time when you could identify a studio where a band had recorded by the ambience on the drums. Those days, thankfully, have passed, because everybody now has access to colour and ambience which has really been the nail in the coffin for a lot of the smaller studios. The only thing they had to offer over cheap demo studios or home studios was perhaps an EMT plate which was their big plus. Some form of expensive reverb was the icing on the cake, which only the 'real' studios had. Now it's freely available to anyone with the money. The line between what would have been called demos and what can be called now masters has almost completely been erased.

I was in Switzerland six months ago, doing an album with a Swiss group, and they bought themselves a Fostex B16. I went over to sort out some new material with them and we decided to record it in their rehearsal room, which is a nuclear fall-out bunker. All the Swiss buildings have them, and you can rent some of them out if there's enough space left for people to go if the bomb drops.

It was a great place to record because it was underground with 6ft thick concrete walls, and it had a super ambience in it. So I thought we should go for real and put some drum tracks down, so we did. I already knew that the Fostex was a formidable little machine, and we recorded the drums in there and then carried on and actually managed to finish most of the album. We then transferred to a studio in Lucerne, and put it up through the desk there, and mixed it with the addition of the AMS and the Lexicon 224X just to polish it all up. We came out with a mastered album which is coming out in the next couple of months. It's really a combination of what is thought of as a demo machine taken into a pro studio environment for mixing. I would have been hard pushed to tell whether the sounds I was listening to through the desk, were coming off the studio's Otari, or whether they were coming off the B16. I was stunned when I first used the thing. I thought it couldn't fly, but it does.

With things like digital reverb, are there any tricks you like to use apart from straightforward creation of ambience? A lot of people are doing all kinds of things with it these days.

I've got a few favourite programs that I tend to use. I think most engineers probably have, and rather than spending hours and hours trying to search out the absolute perfection program which might not even exist, I'll have eight or so favourite programs on the 244X and I'll treat them as if they were actual ambient rooms. I'll pre-delay them and treat the return signal just as if it were a pair of mics coming back from a room with a speaker at one end. When I can't get the result that way, then I'll start messing around with the unit itself.

I've just done a review of the Klark Teknik. That seems very easy to work with.

They've got one at Millstream haven't they?

Yes. Muff at the Old Smithy's got one too.

They are very good and are pretty easy to use. The AMS is actually dead easy to use too.

You're not really into doing over-the-top production tricks with reverb then?

Only when necessary.

"A lot of people who start out tend to overdub too much, and if they don't like what they've done they bury it under something else."

Sampling

And sampling? Presumably you just treat the sampled sound as an instrument and treat it accordingly.

Yes, I try not to use second hand samples. I always try and sample from scratch if at all possible, because it's getting to the stage now where you just hear the same old sounds turning upon different records and you just know where they got it from.

There's a big backlash against sampling at the moment. I think the initial euphoria of being able to do it has just about worn off and people almost feel like they're copying if they sample. I certainly feel like that. I'd much rather spend a bit more time and actually create the sound that I want, unless it's something ridiculous like the Queen Mary going into Southampton harbour. Particularly drum sounds; I would rather spend the time with the kit and come up with a real sound.

When you actually come to the mixing stage, are there any tricks you use to create a space in the mix?

I try and build a perspective into mixes wherever possible, which is a case of trying to give the impression of the mix disappearing. It's rather like a road going off to the horizon. I like to use multiple delays on a vocal just discreetly tucked behind the vocal, perhaps three, each one half the length of the previous one and increasing in level as the delay gets shorter. This tends to give you an impression of it disappearing off into the background, and also to create an impression of size. However, especially when you've got a single voice to sit on top of a big wash of keyboards which is very often the case, you need to try and give the voice a fair size to compete. I either do that with echo or reverb, or I completely dry it up, which can also give the impression of perspective. If you're using resonant keyboard sounds, particularly piano-like keyboard sounds which have a degree of space in them, the opposite can be achieved by having a very dry vocal with perhaps a very short room ambience on it just to take the edge off it.

That's the great thing about affordable digital reverb; you can create and experiment with perspectives that you couldn't have conceived a few years ago, without a lot of rooms. I use a lot of foldback on mixdown from the desk and re-mike the tracks via speakers for ambience. I do this on keyboards and I still find that you can't beat whacking it out through a Marshall stack and miking the whole thing up, particularly on synths playing guitar style solos. There's a middle and a distortion that you can't create any other way really but again, you're up against the old noise problem. I found that a lot of the new guitar amps like the Peavey Heritage have got quite a sophisticated front end and master gains which are great for amplifying keyboards in a small studio. You can get quite hefty sounding noises at a manageable level. They're good amps. So are those little Roland Bolts and Cubes particularly for the price.

Tips and Hints

Do you have any tips you think you can pass on to anybody who's getting in at the bottom end doing a bit of mixing? Are there any golden rules that you think people ought to observe?

There's no substitute for emulation really, at least to start with. I think one of the most useful things you can do is to play records that you like, and then try and pull them apart and analyse what's been done. Next try and do your own version of what's been done before.

There can only be general rules because they're all there to be broken in the end. A lot of people who start out tend to overdub too much, and if they don't like what they've done they bury it under something else.

A guy working on his own is really arranger, producer, and engineer all in one and it's easy to go over the top with overdubs. Working on 8-track is quite a good discipline because it forces you to commit a lot of effects to tape at the recording stage.

I think it's good to make commitments fairly early on in a production because when you're actually mixing at the end, it's nice to have not too many extra aspects to think about. It would be great if you could just have a vocal and a backing track to balance up in a final mix, but that can't always be the case. You'll obviously make a lot of mistakes initially but I think it's quite good to do that rather than leave every decision to the mix because you can end up getting bogged down and concentrating on the wrong things. You get stuck in a little cul-de-sac, just trying to get a particular length of repeat on such and such a hi-hat beat, for one particular bar. Then you forget that you can't hear the vocal in the first chorus.

Ambisonics

Can you explain a bit about the ambisonic system for the benefit of those who haven't come across it? I believe you used it in some of your work with Steve Hackett.

I was introduced to ambisonics by the chief maintenance engineer at Marcus Music, a studio in West London, where I was mixing a Steve Hackett album, and they had been loaned some gear by Audio & Design. They were looking for some guinea pigs to use it so we gave it a try. Ambisonics is a system of encoding the surround sound, total peripheral surround sound, onto stereo.

Does that decode into 4-channels?

It can decode into complete spherical surround sounds, including upper and lower information.

It was developed originally in parallel with the Calrec Sound Field mic, which has four capsules. Then they manufactured a unit which could be used in post-production which was a UHJ transcoder. The U apparently stands for universal, but I don't know what H J stands for; that's something of a mystery. It effectively encodes surround sound information or 4-channel information from the desk into two for compatible stereo use. Also they make a pan rotate box, which is a box with eight pan pots.

The album we were mixing, Steve Hackett's Till we have Faces, had a lot of Brazilian percussion on it, because he's done a lot of recording in Rio with a Samba school, so it leant itself to surround sound because there was so much detail in the percussion. The way I approached it was to have a front stable stereo stage and to use the rear channels for ambience which was actually created artificially with digital reverb processors.

What are you going to do next?

When this Korgis album is finished I think I'm doing another album with Rick Wakeman — a band album — which will be a fairly lengthy procedure.

Will that be as a co-producer?

That'll be just engineering actually, but I'll also be doing some more ambisonic stuff hopefully for KPM, which is a library music company. So all in all I'm not likely to be short of work for quite a long time to come.

I know exactly how you feel!