Jimmy Hughes, George Jackson... and Ralph's book on Russ

[heikki]

Hi!

Please find my recent interviews with Jimmy and George, plus a lot of reviews, at
http://www.soulexpress.net/deep310.htm

Best regards
Heikki

[mikey]

Great stuff, Heikki.

[ralpht]

Heikki,
Many thanks for the review on "Russ Terrana's Motown". Much appreciated, my good friend. I feel I need to address your "buts' and "howevers" regarding the technical aspects of how Russ mixes. To put it simply, there is no one given formula. The game changes according to the dictates of the song. I'm sure I could have included how Russ might deal with this or that but the realities wouldn't measure up to the mystique of the completed mix. If you were to discuss this with Russ, he would quickly point out that the most important set of tools needed to successfully obtain a good mix are stuck to the side of the engineer's head. His ears. The equipment is simply the tools to do his ear's bidding. Somewhat the reverse of many of today's younger engineer's method of getting a mix. The tools are there to ASSIST...not create the mix. If Russ has any secrets, I'm sure his main asset is his ability to use his God given gift of listening carefully and then dealing with where he wants to take the music.
He gives much credit to this fact to Pete Rivera, of The Sunliners and Rare Earth. Pete was fastidious when it came to tuning and adjusting his drums, to the point where it was basically a continueing process between songs while on stage. Pete was always searching for the perfect sound of his drums. Russ would observe this and he claims it taught him to do the same when working with a mix.

I actually did begin to write some of the more technical aspects of his process, for the book, and did an entire chapter on the complexities of recording and mixing the piano, arguably one of the most difficult instruments to deal with due to it's incredibly wide dynamic range and variables from instrument to instrument. I finally discarded this chapter simply because it bored me and I was certain it would bore the future reader. I took my cues from the Soulful Detroit membership and tried to write what I thought would be of interest to them.

For informations sake, we did do a video on his mixing process a while back which I will attach here for those interested. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqwAy4iK7i0 Ooops...upon reviewing this clip, I see it was the one where we had a camera battery die during the interview. Here is the remainder of that interview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9uiouUw2PY

Once again, Heikki, I appreciate your review. Your thoughts are always respected.

[heikki]

Hi!

...and thank you, Mikey. Unfortunately I couldn't reach all the artists I had planned for an interview this time, but hopefully I'll get them later.

Hi Ralph,
and thank you for your answer. I would have read that "boring" chapter - you could have placed a warning about the contents in front of the chapter [[smile) - but of course I understand a sharp contrast in one chapter to the overall style of the book can be disturbing and even distracting. Perhaps you just could have added a couple of examples - well-known hit songs - and tell about Russ' solutions on those ones. In general, I think people more or less know about working practices of producers and arrangers, but engineers and mixers and their work still for the most part remain a mystery.
Those video clips that I remember having watched earlier explain a lot.
As I wrote, it is a nice and informative book about Russ.

Best regards
Heikki

[chidrummer]

Hey Ralph,

You wouldn't still have that lost "boring" tech chapter on ya, hmmmm? Could I persuade you to make it available to us tech heads and semi-tech heads who just might find that stuff interesting?

[ralpht]

Chris,
Sorry dude, I must have sent it into cyber space. It really wasn't very interesting though, so you didn't miss anything.