John “Spud” Murphy: Filling in the Frequencies

I first learned about your work via Lankum. You got connected with them doing sound for a television show?

Yeah, it was called The Parlour. It was shot upstairs in [Dublin music venue] Whelan's, in a room that's called Parlour Bar, with mainly Irish music. That first event with Lankum [then known as Lynched] was a three-part show; it was a live band, then an interview with [presenter] Danny Carroll, who conducted it with two industry people, and then they included previously-shot footage from the main venue in Whelan's with Lankum and Sleaford Mods. The broadcast itself was a pre-recorded show with some post-production.

Were they interested in not sounding like a traditional folk group?

Yeah, exactly. I manipulated the low end of that track, and the band initially got a little bit apprehensive, saying, "What did you do? It's too much." I invited them out to my mix room; we played around with the track for a while, and then everyone was in agreement that it sounded great. I wasn't after destroying the track. We seemed to have a bit of a rapport and were chatting. They were telling me about how difficult they were experiencing being on the road, because of different engineers and traveling around Europe with instruments that are Irish. A lot of the engineers they came up against would have never seen or heard any of these instruments. They did not know if any processing needed to be done to them or what way to mic them. Because they were playing so many instruments, and had so many live microphones on the stage, they were experiencing a huge amount of feedback issues. I had a bit of live engineer engineering experience with bands from a decade previous and I said I'd go and see if I could help them out. Initially it was supposed to be short term – I was going to set up things for them and make it a bit streamlined. But it kept developing and growing over the months and subsequent years that I worked with them. I started to add a few contact mics to some of the lower frequency instruments, and I was ultimately able to run them into lower octave manipulators. They signed with Rough Trade and recorded their album [Between the Earth and Sky] in a different studio. They were having a bit of a difficult time getting a sound that they liked out of those mixes, so they got the stems and brought them to me. The process for the rest of that record was a combination of me re-amping and re-recording different elements. For instance, for the uilleann pipe drone on the start of the first track on that album, “What Will We Do When We Have No Money?”, I rented out a church in Dublin City Centre for the day, went in with some speakers, and re-amped it out extremely loudly into the church and recorded it. I then sent out a lower octave into the same church and captured that. Then I sent another distorted version into the church and captured that, and then combined it all again in the computer. There was a lot of that manipulation of the source sound going on. Coming towards the end of the album being mixed, Ian [Lynch] from Lankum was writing a new song and the band thought the album was missing another original number. We decided to track that, and that was “The Granite Gaze.” That was recorded in my project studio, which is called Guerilla Studios – a very rough and ready space under a train line in an arched red brick tunnel.

What type of mix set up did you have at that point? Did you have a console?

I had an AMEK TAC Scorpion desk that I was tracking in on, and I had Universal Audio converters. When they asked me to mix the album, I bought a Neve 8816 summing mixer, so I was running everything out of the computer into the summing mixer and then tracking it back into the computer through the Universal Audio card.

Did higher profile work start coming in?

Prior to Lankum, I was embedded within the underground noise rock, to psychedelic rock, to the improv jazz scene.

Any favorite projects from then?

Yeah, I enjoyed a band called The Jimmy Cake and their record Tough Love. The three members of the Jimmy Cake that were on that record are brothers of Cormac [MacDiarmada] from Lankum. It's quite a small scene in Ireland. Before I moved to Dublin I was in the Cork School of Music, which is a conservatory for orchestral musicians. I was there to up my game on arranging skills and notating.

Did you have a primary instrument?

Electric bass and piano. They had an amazing studio, and I made a lot of use of it while I was there. Obviously, there were lots of orchestral players, so I was recording a lot of strings, brass, horns, and experimenting with their frequency range and manipulating them. Because I had been a bass player for decades, I was extremely interested in manipulating the low end of all the acoustic instruments. Within orchestral, acoustic, or folk-based genres, there are generally no bass frequencies. Obviously, that's not 100 percent accurate, but if the lowest instrument was an acoustic guitar, there's quite an area of the frequency spectrum that's left unused. I had been experimenting with low octave shifts and messing with different sample rates to get in lower frequency energy.

Do you export something in a different sample rate to lower the pitch?

Exactly – similar to what you'd do with a tape machine. If I halve the speed, everything drops down an octave. If I export at twice the sample rate and bring it back into the same project without changing the sample rate, it'll be an octave lower. Because of that, extra artifacts are created. It doesn't just sound like a pitch shift; it sounds a bit otherworldly. I had done a little bit of experimentation with that. As soon as I heard that Lankum track [for The Parlour], I thought it’d be prime for doing something similar; especially since it was acoustic guitar or accordion, fiddle, and vocals – a huge area of the frequency spectrum that's unoccupied. Those instruments are all upper-mid clashing frequency instruments.

What other tools were you using to create low end?

I was using my own octave pedals, and then DAW pitch shifters like Waves' SoundShifter or [Devious Machines'] Pitch Monster. There are quite a few of them. When I was at conservatory, they had an "early music" room, with clavichords, dulcimers, and all these instruments. They also had quite an extensive percussion section. That would have been the first time I became acquainted with orchestral bass drum and timpani drums. I had a lot of fun with the orchestral bass drum. It took me quite a while to find out how to get a good tone out of them, because my initial reaction was to hit it as hard as I physically could, thinking I'd get all the low end I wanted. But I found that by hitting it as lightly as possible, and mic’ing it as close as possible, I was able to achieve what I wanted to get out of the instrument. A lot of the time, with recording audio the opposite of your initial thought is how to get the best tone. Another classic one is electric guitar players with 15 distortion pedals, five amplifiers, and massive 4x10 speaker cabs. If you strip it back to a tiny Fender Champ with a 6-inch cone and no distortion, you'll get a better heavy tone. They’re awesome. As soon as I used one, I was like, "Ah, that's the trick."

Are close microphones something you do with other folk instruments now?

In live scenarios, closer is generally better. But within the studio I can exploit proximity effect to my best ability by putting the condenser mic as close as, or well up to, the sweet spot on a source to get extra sustain, as well as doubling of frequencies down there.

Are there any mics you like for how the proximity effect behaves?

It depends on the instrument. I'm getting a lot of good results out of a Flea 47; they're awesome. The studio I've been working in for the past week has one. It also has vintage [Neumann U] 67s and 87s, as well as quite an abundance of condenser microphones. I even had a Neumann CMV 563 up against it; it's winning every battle, hands down. I'll also sometimes use a combination of a dynamic microphone with a condenser, something like an [Electro-Voice] RE20 or a Sennheiser MD 441. Or a combination of a ribbon microphone with a condenser microphone. It changes from source to source and project to project; whatever sounds best.

It seems you're also moving from studio to studio for tracking.

Yeah, quite a bit. I do a lot of traveling around. Hellfire [Studio, Dublin] is my home-away-from home, at the moment.

What do you bring to a session at another studio?

Generally, I will bring a bunch of items that might work with the band. Whether it's distortion pedals, octave pedals, or a collection of microphones that will work. When I start a project, I'll invest some of the upfront money in something that I think will work well, whether it's an instrument or a piece of equipment. I will travel with my best dynamic microphones. Most studios have a series of amazing condensers, but sometimes they're a little bit light on having much more than a couple of [Shure SM]57s and [beyerdynamic M] 201s.

You'll bring the RE20 and your 441?

Exactly, and I have a lot of old beyerdynamic microphones that I'm enjoying at the moment.

Do you vary the preamps for dynamic versus condenser mics? Or do you find they work somewhat interchangeably?

Somewhat interchangeably, but, again, it's depending on the source and the project. With a dynamic or ribbon microphone, I might use a [Triton Audio] FetHead to bump up the gain a bit. Or, if there are some high gain preamps like APIs, I might put the ribbon to that, so I'm not gained too high. I'm a big fan of Neve preamps. I know it's probably a very standard opinion to have. I got the [Neve] 1073OPX [eight-channel preamp] recently. I was traveling and working in a studio, and I couldn't believe how much gain I was able to get out of them without any hiss coming up. I decided I needed those.

When you use an octave pedal under an acoustic instrument, where in the chain do you go out of the preamps? Is it through a re-amp, and then back in?

Depending on the studio, a lot will have direct outs of channels. I can track it in clean and then take the direct out into a chain of things and back in. As I track it back in, I need more EQ and manipulation after the fact to the octave pedal. The harmonic content of some instruments – harmoniums, accordions, uilleann pipes – they have so much information going on that the pedal will have a nervous breakdown and make up different chords. It's whatever way the chip is reading the harmonics. It gets confused.

It’s not what they were designed for. Have you also got tricks for the high end, once you've got the low sitting where you want it?

Yeah, I end up putting a smiley face [EQ] on the mix instead of where most people put a frown face! Once I get the midrange solid – midrange is always the most difficult area to get – then I can batten out the low until it's not too cloudy. That also leaves the upper extremities to be able to push elements into. Again, that’s due to going back to the acoustic instruments versus a drum kit having cymbals up in the high end. There's a lot of space, even though I know low end and ultra-high end takes up a lot of space in a mix. But if I'm sparing with it I can still add it in to create some weird psychedelic effects.

Do you use the sorts of trickery that you do with lows to get the highs as well?

Yeah, it's similar trickery. I'm exploiting reverbs in that same capacity, tuning the reverb weirdly, or using shimmer reverbs and different plates. A combination of plug-ins and some outboard gear. Hellfire's got a couple of tape echoes, and I have a [Roland Space Echo RE-]501 that I love. I'm manipulating and destroying them, I suppose.

Are you EQ’ing the sends or returns on these?

When I'm bringing it back in, then I'm taking out everything I don't want. A lot of what I do in the high end is subliminal – you would only notice it if it's muted.

Can you recreate that live?

Yeah, I'm able to. I have it easier creating the low end manipulation, but with a small bit on so many instruments it works. Like an Electro-Harmonix POG pedal; the filter sweeps on those are pretty cool.

Where in Ireland is your studio?

I've been in Dublin for the past ten years.

Do you have a control room and live room, or is it all one room?

Yeah, a control room and a live room. I think it was a mechanic in there before me. A big, dirty, greasy space. We brought in a carpenter and split it into four rooms. Half of the space is a live room: There's a control room/mix room, and there's a little workshop. There’s also an editing suite; it's bigger than a cupboard, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a room! [laughter]

Do you get train noise in the space?

Oh, yeah, a huge amount. But it only becomes a problem if I'm recording an ambient, room-mic’d instrument. For instance, on another record [ØXN's Cyrm] I did last year – I played with this band as well – and as I was coming to the finish of the mix, I was soloing vocals and listening to the EQ. Then I was like, "Oh, shit, a train went overhead." But if I unsolo’ed it, and it's back in the mix, we don't hear it because it's passing up to above 100 Hz. Because the room is an arch, it acts like an amplifier, so it's very loud in there. If I'm close mic'ing a drum kit, and I don't have the gain very high, then if a train goes overhead, I can't really hear it when there's a loud signal or audio in the room.

Do you still have the AMEK console and the Neve 8816?

I do. I haven’t used them in quite some time.

Because you mix in other studios?

Mainly because of mixing a bit more in the box. I have become obsessed with Universal Audio plug-ins for the last couple of years, so I'm doing a lot of my summing through them. I'm currently in the process of reconditioning an Otari tape machine. I also want to go back to mixing on a board – like an SSL Origin or some kind of desk like that – just to change things up. I think you need to keep reinventing the wheel for your own brain.

What is the Otari deck?

It's a 24-track.

Such great workhorse machines.

Monsters. I'm building a new mix space at Hellfire Studio, in the extra sheds that they have at the back. I have a corner set aside for the Otari. We're running a lot of tie lines, so it's going to end up as an option to track from the main space in there. Or I can have it as a send effect, for wont of the better word.

Is there any favorite gear at Hellfire that you've grown attached to from working there?

Their Hammond organ is awesome. They have a Yamaha [C7] grand piano that I'm using in a strange way – I put a weight on the sustain pedal, mic up the soundboard, and then use it as a strange reverb for drums, vocals, or whatever in the space. The Neve desk [6604] is a radio broadcast desk – it sounds awesome. The mic cabinet is amazing. There are some good old amps, like an original [Fender] Bandmaster.

From working with so many acoustic instruments, do you think it's changed how you mix rock bands now?

I think nearly every project I work on influences the next project – it's a constant learning curve. I'm definitely experimenting with different timbres and frequency ranges of instruments and combining them. Instead of quadruple tracking electric guitar, let's leave it as one track and put other instruments around it that have slightly different harmonic content to fill out the sound.

Do you add acoustic doubles when you record rock bands to get some of that quality?

Sometimes, yeah. The first time would have been with the black midi record [Cavalcade]. They're an amazing band, and they're virtuoso players. They seemed interested in trying out different instruments, so for the first half of the record that we tracked in Hellfire I got a lot of instruments from different friends of mine – from rock band musicians to trad musicians. I had two different bouzoukis, and one was a [1960's Danelectro] Bellzouki. It's an electric version of a bouzouki double bass. It's a really funky instrument – I don't know how well it would have done, even when it was a brand-new instrument. But it definitely had a tough life before I got to it. It's like everything – if you keep playing with it, you'll figure a way to get something interesting out of it. Geordie [Greep] is an amazing guitarist, so he figured a line out of it. When we went to the overdub section of the album, which was done in London, the studio had a huge amount of acoustic instruments as well. Some weird and wonderful, like a Marxophone. I don't know if you've ever come across those.

Yeah, I have.

They're awesome. With a Marxophone, an acoustic guitar, a bouzouki, and a mandolin all playing the same note, all of the upper harmonics are very different. You're able to get an interesting harmonic content source. It's blurring the lines between what it actually is and creating a new instrument. We did a lot of that. Then we brought in a horn section and a string section and fleshed it out.

Did you write those arrangements?

I wrote them, and a lot was improvised by the players and then directed in the heat of the moment.

If you have cymbals, how do you reconcile that with some of the high end reverb trickery that you like to use?

A lot of dynamic EQ and side-chaining to make sure they're not clashing with each other. It's more difficult within a rock band setting, where you have to have everything blisteringly loud and up in your face. Even with a regular rock band mix, you’re sacrificing areas of frequency spectrum to get more volume out of it. That's with a three-piece guitar-bass-drum band, and then we decided to try to squeeze an orchestra in around that. It's obviously quite difficult. It took a while to round the square or squeeze it all together.

Do you reach for surgical EQs or for more color, like '70s or '60s style EQs?

At the start when I'm trying to glue it together, I'll do some surgical EQ. Since I got FabFilter Pro Q3, I'm doing a lot less surgical but a lot more dynamic EQ, as well as more sidechain dynamic EQ. Once I have it all breathing or working together, then I'll bring up some of the '60s and '70s sounding EQs and warm it up or brighten it.

What do you send in to the sidechain for the dynamic EQ?

So, for instance, I'll find out where the kick drum is tuned to, and then I'll have a subgroup where all the bass elements are summing. I will have a dynamic EQ getting triggered every time the kick drum hits, so it's not getting in the way. Especially when using the orchestral kick drums, because they're basically a wall of solid energy, I'll have to do quite dramatic dynamic EQs. Prior to me having a FabFilter Pro Q3, I was automating on a shelf EQ every time each one of those hit, so it took quite a long time to get all that automation in.

Do you also group busses and use dynamic EQ on the bus for the mid and high instruments?

Yeah. I use [Steinberg] Cubase to mix on. I find it's good with the multiple routing it can do within, and the basically unlimited amounts of channels. I'll generally end up having about 300 odd tracks in a project – multiple microphones on each source that are getting summed into a group. If that's in the drum section, for instance, the snare top and bottom will be going to the snare group, then that'll be going to the close shells, then that will be going to a drum bus. Then, if there's extra percussion, I'll have that go into a further bus on each. Each bus along the way will have a little bit of compression or EQ going on it to get everything to glue together a bit.

How long does it take to mix a song this way?

With a lot of Lankum tracks there wouldn't be that many busses going on. Same with Ye Vagabonds, or even this new Anna B Savage record I'm working on, because it's pretty stripped back. But when it gets into a very dense mix, it's my way of trying to get control of it – my brain breaks it into different sections. I work each section separately to be able to gel it together. I don't know if that makes sense?

Yeah, it does. I'm not working on Cubase, but I know a lot of people used it at one point.

When I started to record, mix, and experiment with computer audio, [Avid] Pro Tools needed a license. At the college I was studying in, someone had Cubase, so I started to use it and I got familiar with it. I was able to use Pro Tools as well. The bands that I started to play in, they recorded all their own material and used Cubase, so I got familiar with it again. But the next studio I worked in was a [Apple] Logic studio, so I got used to Logic. I realized that they all have their own positives and negatives. But I was more used to using Cubase and was familiar with its workflows. I always went for the DAW I was fastest with.

Did I see mastering credits among some of your more recent work?

I wouldn't exactly consider myself a mastering engineer. It's just through acquaintances and friends that I have in the music world. Sometimes a band will ask, "We have this mix and we're not really happy with the master we’re getting. Would you have a look at it?’ I've always been experimenting with mastering. I never master anything I mix myself, but it started off mainly as helping out mates. Over the last 12 months I've had quite a few inquiries about it. Obviously Discogs is getting me some more work from people seeing my credits.

Do you do that in the box, or do you have an analog mastering chain?

A little of both. With that Neve summing mixer, the stereo width control is awesome. I'll maybe run it out through that. Or I’ll run it through some analog transformer, at least, to get a bit of reality in the chain.

I like your use of the word "reality." Were you in a session today?

Yeah. This artist called Anna B Savage – she’s English. Her first two albums were indie synth-rock, but the new record is more acoustic oriented. She moved to Ireland over the past couple of years, so it's an album about falling in love with both Ireland and her new partner. We're in this final stage of tracking. We had a cellist in yesterday and we were doing vocals today. Double bass is in tomorrow and then a little bit of editing. It's a beautiful album.

What else are you working on recently that you're excited about?

I'm in the process of finishing a Goat Girl record [Below the Waste], which are a London indie band. It's highly orchestrated, from drones to strings and accordions. Last year, I finished the first record I did for Domino [Records], for Tom Fleming [as One True Pairing] who used to be in Wild Beasts. That's a fleshed-out acoustic arrangement album as well, from acoustic guitar to bouzoukis to cello, double bass, violin, banjo, harp, and drums. It was for Tom's project that I bought a taish?goto; it's like a Japanese lyre that has keys on it with about two octaves of notes. It has five strings running through it. You can play it like a keyboard but it's monophonic, so I have to put in layers of it. You can bow it, pluck it, or play it like a dulcimer. But having five strings tuned (somewhat) together, you can never get them 100 percent in tune. Because of that, it gets really interesting harmonics.

When you began working with stretching and expanding ideas of folk instrumentation, were there records you were listening to that did a good job of that? Or did you have rock or electronic records you liked?

Basically, the latter. I have always been an admirer of the Dirty Three and Vic Chesnutt. Around the time that I met Lankum, I was extremely obsessed with Emptyset, which is a pretty obnoxious electronic record, as well as Ensemble Pearl, which is SunnO))) crossed with members of Boris – one of the best produced records [Ensemble Pearl] I've ever heard. It’s the perfect example of when there's so much low end coming off the speakers that I feel I can lie down in it. I'd been a massive fan of Swans [Tape Op #53] as well. It was always trying to not manipulate the band into letting me do these things, but subtly adding little bits and saying, "It's cool if you do this." With Lankum, on the first record that I mixed with them, it was manipulating the low end, adding in the octaves, and re-amping the rooms. On the next record [The Livelong Day], I rented one of those orchestral bass drums and we were able to layer that onto the record. I generally hate pigeonholes and genres. I like it when things squeeze together and create something new. That's always what's had me interested in music, continuing to work with different bands, or to buy different records.