Tyler..and Elliot: You have done a GREAT service to the industry by doing this interview. I thank you both tremendously. And especially Elliot Scheiner. I am well aware that Phil Ramone was so secretive about his methods, and thats a shame, now that he is gone. his skill went away with him. Same with Roger Nichols. So Thank you Elliot, you have advanced the whole field by speaking freely about your experiences. Thank you.
Phil Ramone has a great autobiography. Read it a few years ago. He speaks on his in studio technique quite a bit and the stories behind the songs, how he met Billy Joel, etc. Nice read.
I met Elliot on an Acura TL press event years ago. He had developed the sound system for that model. I was a photographer for the TV show Motorweek and he rode with us. Just the nicest, unassuming guy you will ever meet. He had such great stories and it was fresh to not have a Honda press person in the back seat. We then cranked Dragon Attack (Queen) the rest of the trip. Good Times!
Mr Scheiner's memory is amazing. i can't even remember the stuff i did 5 years ago. but this interview reminds me of the countless times, as a journalist, in the countless interviews i'd done with famous people (Don and Walt were among them), when i thought they must have done something really special or something beyond the ordinary, but they would say something like "Well, I just did what I thought I needed to do." often we think something is magic, but it turns out that it was just very talented persons doing something very normal. they're just super good at it.
Very well put. I sometimes have to remind myself these iconic albums that sound like they literally descended from the heavens, were made by guys that ate lunch that same day, might have stubbed their toe on a door on the way to the session....they're mortals like us, just EXTREMELY talented.
One thing Elliot forgot to mention is that the quality of the arrangements made mixing easy. There simple weren’t any conflicting sounds to deal with. Every note in the arrangement was open for discussion. So much of the “balance” was decided upon during recording/arranging. * (To avoid any misunderstanding, this comes directly from Elliot, I had many talks with him about this) Fredo
Yes. Arrangement (and eliminating what doesn’t need to be there) makes mixing so much easier. And lets the mixing process be more creative and artistic, rather than problem-solving, like fighting collisions.
I knew Roger Nichols. I remember asking him about these sessions and I was fascinated by how he’d explain them. It’s great to hear him mentioned here on such a timeless piece of work.
I’m surprised there was no question about Donald Fagen doing something like 274 mixes of Babylon Sisters. That’s a crazy amount. I read that the studio gave him a mock award for it.
Thanks Tyler, fantastic interview with Elliot. The knowledge, the experience and the stories he's shared with us is immeasurable, so very generous of him and so smart of you to have him on. Bravo!
Pretzel Logic should be added. My fav SD album is The Royal Scam, then Aja. However, I was listening to Countdown To Ecstacy the other day. There are elements of this album that one could say is the best work SD have done. In terms of sheer muscianship etc. Countdown is one of their best. They are all great albums so I'm splitting hairs. I just remember hearing The Royal Scam for the first time thinking it was a perfect album. The title track which has the 1920's horn with the bell sounding section. At the same time, The Royal Scam is their funkiest album. The range of musical influence is broad on this record.
Great to hear from Elliot about these sessions; between he and Schnee, there's some greatness to be heard on Aja & Gaucho. Back then these top shelf engineers were just trying to make great sounding records with relatively primitive tools, and we are the better for it. Back then, the band and the arrangement was king - no need to carve out vocal space - it was written that way. Today's DAW operators cannot fathom the pressure of live rhythm dates and live-to-2 track sessions, never mind the set up and signal path to achieve their goals. Try mixing with one EQ on each track, 6 or 8 dynamics plugins total, no automation, no bus processing, maybe 2 reverbs, tape delay, and 24 tracks with all of your instruments.
Sounds like the difference between drawing with ink and drawing with pencil. When you use pencil you are not as technical or accurate because you know you have an eraser. With ink, very calculated on what you do. I’m not a music engineer, don’t even play an instrument but I love Steely Dan and this intrigues me how great they sounded so many years ago
Wow. Gotta say. I LOVE the Dan and this interview was so far over my head and yet answered so many of my questions about the sound. Fantastic interview… Great work, keep it up!!
It's also the audio capture of the death of a career, via perfectionism. I guess the album has a whole mythos behind it now, but Fagen has said in interviews that their pursuit of sonic perfection made them pretty miserable/anxious as music makers. The whole creation of Gaucho (particularly the Wendel incident, and the destruction of the Second Arrangement) was the pinnacle but also the very bottom. It's a minor miracle it ever got released.
Wonderful to hear Elliot Scheiner give his insights into this legendary album. There is so much to the 'Dan story that it even deserves a second interview, at least! 4,718 views May 28, 2021
Fascinating discussion. Thanks & kudos. On YT & elsewhere, the Dan gets lots of play for & about the great musicians who performed on various tunes, but of equal (arguably, greater) importance is the resulting sound that comes out of the speakers or headphones. All too seldom discussed. Listening to Mr. Scheiner's recollections, admiring his steel-trap mind & amazing recall of equipment, techniques, processes, etc., was a real treat. Also appreciate learning about those who influenced him, like Al Schmidt, Phil Ramone & of course Roger Nichols. This was time well spent. Thanks again. No denying the ultra-professional, unforgettable sound quality of Gaucho. For audio aficionados, it's so pristine that it can't help but leave an imprint in one's DNA.
I don't really understand much of anything being said here, but I just wanted to say I really love your music. You deserve so many more subscribers. Keep up the great work!
Great work. Thank you for posting. I love the reverb explanations. Mono with pre-delay of 150 ms, interesting. Roger Nichols was pretty proud of the "No EQ" ethos back then. I usually worked with some sketchy plates i- hand tuned in mysterious ways by Phil Ramone indeed, cool stuff. Right up there with Sun records stairwell, Abbey Roads stacked tiles and Roy Halee's office building elevator shaft snare reverb on "The Boxer". The verbs were always everybody's secret sauce. I never really got a satisfactory explanation of "The Andy Williams verb" vs "The Tony Bennett verb" Maybe someone will do a secret verbs of the sixties TH-cam series.
Incredibly eye opening. Glad to know that they decided to go with the sound from the console and leave any comp up to the mastering. Also just the amount of "No's" returned from Elliot shows how conservative the whole process was from start to finish. You did an excellent job on this and I really appreciate how you conducted the interview.
Great interview....how can your channel only have 189 subscribers?...Well you just got one more.....looking forward to seeing what other gems you have on this channel. Thanks very much. Al
Not sure that’s right… The Aural Exciter added brightness/sizzle to material (a sophisticated high frequency booster, basically, that used psychoacoustic trickery to do more than what was achievable just by boosting with EQ). I don’t think it did anything to the stereo image.
More likely an MXR 126 flanger/doubler - or possibly lunchbox-style autophaser or autoflanger. Remember, this is 1978-vintage gear. The Roland Dimension D debuted in 1979 too.
This is such a cool interview! I was always curious if that was an oxide flub on Time Out of Mind. Its funny how you strive to create such a perfect record and in that pursuit, incidentally create an imperfection as a result of it.
It’s fascinating to hear technical explanations for these type of things. At approx 1:20 in Time Out Mind there is definitely a wrinkle or flub during the transition into the pre chorus. My best guess was mix buss compression, because at that moment there’s a flourish on lead guitar (panned right), a staccato jab on keys (panned medium left) and horns (panned far left) all at once, and maybe pushed threshold & recovery was too slow? BUT, as Elliot says, there was no compression on the mix buss! In fact nothing on it. So “oxide flub” is an explanation I’d never have realised without this comment, following this cool interview! Ha. Cheers to that.
I guess they were very wary of noise reduction after the Katy Lied experience. A lot of the equipment model references went over my head, but I got a lot from the video. Never realised that Gary Katz was the man who did Don and Walt's 'Dirty Work'! Interesting to find out how Scheiner, Nicholls and Katz worked together. Fantastic interview. Thank you!
@@MonkeyBars1 They used dbx technology, which was supposed to have a better signal/noise ratio than Dolby, but there was a problem with the encoding that made the tapes sound dull and lifeless. It's quite well documented on-line.
I love listening to people who's language is totally beyond my comprehension. I do it all day listening to the business channels who's guest are using economic lingo that I have no idea what-so-ever what they're saying. I don't know what these guys are saying as well but I love Steely Dan and the music they've created over the years
greetings from rio de janeiro. thanks for the amazing interview. he is so humble that he makes us think that the recording process is very simple (we all know it's not)😀😀😀
My favorite part of this is when you ask him about digital fx and Elliot's like , "Do you realize what you're saying?!" Lol, cranky old timer... Great job Tyler. Thank you so much for this interview. I've rewatched it countless times.
The device that they used to widen the stereo imaging could have been one of a couple of things. One was the Eventide harmonizer, which was almost always set to 99 percent of pitch on one side. We had a Roland Dimension D, which was a subtler effect, but did a great job of widening the stereo image of an electric piano track.
Glamour Profession. 6:05 - Outside the stadium” refers to Pittsburgh Pirate Dock Ellis’ no-hitter against the San Diego Padres on June 1, 1970.:: Supposedly he had flown to LA to try LSD and came back STILL under the influence at 6:05**, when the game started at San Diego Stadium. The basketball references are there to obscure just WHOM Steely Dan are talking about. And Dock Ellis was a high school basketball star in Gardena, California.
Interesting connection! In the documentary about this, Dock explains how he thought he had a day off that day and dropped in the morning in San Diego then as he was coming up his friend saw in the paper he was scheduled to open the game in LA that evening, so he flew up high off his ass and threw the ball down the glittering tube of light for a few hours, pegging a couple hitters and scaring the rest in his legendary no-hitter.
At 22:00 - the stereo device he is referencing, I'll bet it was the Aphex Aural Exciter which was brand new in those days. Possibly a Harmonizer with some delay L/R
Fabulous interview even if you don't really understand all the high tech talk. A delightfully humble man - I just mix! Computers will never be able to add the human element - setting the levels by "turning the knob". The mixers of the world are the true heroes of sound.
Freaking amazing! I didn’t even understand half of the technical stuff they were talking about, but the absolute LOVE AND RESPECT for the subject matter and THE MUSIC was there throughout the interview. Well done! 👍🏼🎸🎼🥂❤️😎
This was a great Q&A session. I would have loved to hear Elliot talk about the DTS surround mix he did. That surround mix sounds incredible. There are element flowing around all 6 speakers. The bass and kick are in the pocket on that mix.
@@TylerBurnsOfficial I didn’t hear any problems with the interview. A couple of jokers are always around the comment section. I learned a lot. Thanks Tyler.
Hey Tyler, that's just the internet. Bunch of dweebs hiding behind the lack of social consequences. Lean into your role as content creator and let it roll off you. It's a good lesson to ignore the losers and focus on the positive. This was a very special interview and we are so grateful.
I was waiting for the question about the "Second Arrangement" incident, when an engineer or assistant engineer erased by mistake a mixdown of that song.
Main takeaway: the production quality of Steely Dan's records is not the product of twiddling the knobs on stacks of boxes with blinking lights. It's the result of solid recording fundamentals and LISTENING.
Was shocked at Elliot’s reaction to high passing! Being obsessed with reigning in low end within mixes personally, and of course how well the low end is balanced on Gaucho, one assumed there must have been high passing! So cool.
I was also quite surprised, but they put a lot less bass in mixes in those days. It really sounded so much better because it did not eat up the headroom of the mix.
@@TylerBurnsOfficial ~ oh cool, it’s feels like a good lesson. And yes that definitely comes through on Gaucho. When you crank it (on any system really) it’s very satisfying.
@@TylerBurnsOfficial ~ I was waiting for this! Elliot mentioned recording at 30 IPS, and mixing at 15 IPS. That’s just what the SD posse - Nichols, Fagen, Becker & Katz - asked for. Presumably to reintroduce a fullness or sense of roundness above 30HZ back into the instruments / whole mix?
@@Jalliams I think the purpose for mixing at 15 IPS was to have as flat of a frequency response as possible and to avoid the "head bump" inherent with 30 IPS. Personally, I like mixing at 30 IPS because you get more top end clarity, but they were probably mixing on an A80 RC, which is discrete and kicks butt at 15 IPS, I'm sure.
Fascinating interview! 16 bit digital recording would've been very cutting edge in 1980... after all 16 bit was pretty much the mastering standard until the late 90s when 24 bit became available. Even today 16 bit is considered good enough for the final product.
*Gaucho* I felt they left everything in the recording studio on this album. They were panned by critics, exited the music scene and we didn't see them live until 20 years later. I also feel that the song 'Gaucho'; it's the pinnacle of their musical career.
Hindsight is 20/20. It's bizarre how some things are panned at the time and then hailed later. Case in point: 90s comedies were largely panned by critics when they were released, but are now considered masterpieces. Comedies just weren't considered high art at the time...now they are. (Tomatometer represents the critics' score at the time of release.) Tommy Boy (1995) - Tomatometer: 44%, Audience Score: 90% Billy Madison (1995) - Tomatometer: 41%, Audience Score: 79% Heavyweights (1995) - Tomatometer: 29%, Audience Score: 77% Happy Gilmore (1996) - Tomatometer: 61%, Audience Score: 85% Black Sheep (1996) - Tomatometer: 28%, Audience Score: 70% Baseketball (1998) - Tomatometer: 41%, Audience Score: 74%
Please do a follow-up interview to ask Elliot about the 5.1 mix that he also did for Gaucho. Lots of folks curious about instrument placement decisions and challenges.
@25:00 - what about the title track? Real or machine? Also, on this topic, I've got this method where I get the AI stem, use the beat analysis of Emulator X and measure the length in samples. So for verse 1 of Hey 19, which is done with Wendel, I measure where each snare hit came as a percentage of the way to the next beat. It went like this for the first 8 bars: 53%, 51, 50, 50, 50, 50, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 50, 50, 50, 50. So basically, Donald was quantizing but tending to nudge the snare a bit later - sort of a subtle "fatback" effect.
Okay, so Elliot says Hey 19 is machine and Time Out of Mind is real. Both, conveniently, have Rick Marotta and have similar tempos and drum patterns. Hey 19 is 119 bpm and uses what I call the Ringo beat (K S KK SK - actually first played by Marvin Gaye in 1962) on a Stevie Wonder record as best as I can tell. Time Out of Mind is a bit faster at 125 bpm and uses the basic K S K S rock beat. So, when I did the same measurements for the snare, again starting where the vocal comes in, Time out of Mind was all 50%. So ironically, the real Rick Marotta (albeit probably playing with a click) was more "quantized" than the Rick Marotta whose drum sounds were body snatched by Wendel. Now ... having done a ton of these with Ringo beats, I find that even if a drummer stays consistently at 49% or 51%, if I do a blindfold test, I can't really hear it. It has to be 2% or 3% difference for me to hear a gradation in the swing (with 8ths and 16ths) or the "fatbackness" (with snare backbeats). I'm assuming that these guys have such great muscle memory and reflexes that they can stay consistently (relatively speaking) around 49%, 50% or 51%, and obviously Wendel can do it precisely. So all I can conclude from this experiment - and this is a guess at best - is that Donald likes to hear the snare a little late, or "fat" and that's why he nudged it on Hey 19. But what do people think, comparing the grooves of those two songs? Can you hear that Hey 19 is Wendel and Time Out of Mind is Rick? Can you hear a difference in the feel of the snare backbeat on the first verse of each? Does anybody have any links to more info on any of this? The main thing I could point to is the book Dilla Time which goes into a fair amount (but less that is really needed) of detail on how Dilla nudged his snares (he moved them earlier - there are a lot of confusing things involved into trying to measure them and Dilla changed his approach drastically over the years so it's very hard to really figure out conclusively what's going on. Maybe D'Angelo's Voodoo would be a good one to try next. It's not Dilla but presumably is trying to emulate Dilla and generally more consistently done. Ugh ... this stuff could seriously make one lose one's mind.
Appreciate you geeking out to the max on this... sounds like he was settling lot of arguments... a few dollars were exchanged, I'll bet. You also have to understand that these guys really knew how to be purists... and not really mess too much with effects or sweetening... or in house mastering... they sound like that because they didn't do that and used acoustic spaces to shape the sound and Bob Ludwig to master... and like so many masterworks, it's more shaped by its limitations, than special effects or tricks..trucks... there were so few at this time.
Absolutely! The "Goucho" album gave out a certain atmosphere that I haven't heard on any other record. Schneider obviously was responsible. But you also have to hand it to the gear they used. The A800 running at 30 had a lot to do with it. I've cut lots of tracks on it, and I haven't yet been able to replicate the texture and 'warmth' that it delivers. I remember soloing just the kick drum up in the monitors, and it seemed that it actually breathed. A stunning machine, to me the best recording device ever known to man -- digital or analog. Fantastic interview, thanks so much for posting.
Some tape emulation plugins seem to be improving, but I haven't heard an actual owner of a Studer (like @WhiteSeaStudios) say they can replace analog tape yet.
Tyler..and Elliot: You have done a GREAT service to the industry by doing this interview. I thank you both tremendously. And especially Elliot Scheiner. I am well aware that Phil Ramone was so secretive about his methods, and thats a shame, now that he is gone. his skill went away with him. Same with Roger Nichols. So Thank you Elliot, you have advanced the whole field by speaking freely about your experiences. Thank you.
Phil Ramone has a great autobiography. Read it a few years ago. He speaks on his in studio technique quite a bit and the stories behind the songs, how he met Billy Joel, etc. Nice read.
Nichols wrote a book about his recording method, correct?
Yup, totally agree, a vital historical document, thank you so much! 🍾❤️
Gaucho is my favourite Steely Dan album, too. It has an atmosphere.
16 years old in 1976 my first real job, 1st paycheck, I bought the album royal scam and played it relentlessly. Amazing music.
Thank you for making this important historical document 👍👍
I met Elliot on an Acura TL press event years ago. He had developed the sound system for that model. I was a photographer for the TV show Motorweek and he rode with us. Just the nicest, unassuming guy you will ever meet. He had such great stories and it was fresh to not have a Honda press person in the back seat. We then cranked Dragon Attack (Queen) the rest of the trip. Good Times!
Mr Scheiner's memory is amazing. i can't even remember the stuff i did 5 years ago.
but this interview reminds me of the countless times, as a journalist, in the countless interviews i'd done with famous people (Don and Walt were among them), when i thought they must have done something really special or something beyond the ordinary, but they would say something like "Well, I just did what I thought I needed to do."
often we think something is magic, but it turns out that it was just very talented persons doing something very normal. they're just super good at it.
Very well put. I sometimes have to remind myself these iconic albums that sound like they literally descended from the heavens, were made by guys that ate lunch that same day, might have stubbed their toe on a door on the way to the session....they're mortals like us, just EXTREMELY talented.
I don't understand half of it but still find it absolutely fascinating. Hats off to these guys who made this masterpiece.
One thing Elliot forgot to mention is that the quality of the arrangements made mixing easy. There simple weren’t any conflicting sounds to deal with.
Every note in the arrangement was open for discussion.
So much of the “balance” was decided upon during recording/arranging.
*
(To avoid any misunderstanding, this comes directly from Elliot, I had many talks with him about this)
Fredo
Yes. Arrangement (and eliminating what doesn’t need to be there) makes mixing so much easier. And lets the mixing process be more creative and artistic, rather than problem-solving, like fighting collisions.
I think that's a good point. Good arrangements definitely make the mixing process easier
100%
I hear engineer hearts breaking to learn there was nothing on the 2 bus. Everything upstream was platinum quality.
Lol -- yep. Mix as if there's no mastering...@@ColinJarrett
Thank God the subject is interesting because this interviewer has the style of a prosecutor on the spectrum.
I knew Roger Nichols. I remember asking him about these sessions and I was fascinated by how he’d explain them. It’s great to hear him mentioned here on such a timeless piece of work.
Weird lie
What a super interview, great technical details and such clarity for a album recorded 40 years ago.
I just heard the song gaucho for the first time 2 days ago and I was completely floored I was in love with it halfway through the song
Part of the title track Gaucho was used in a movie, I forget which one, Tootsie maybe?
Such an unbelievable record.
just finished listening to this for the first time, definitely one of my favorite interviews of all time, thank .you
I’m surprised there was no question about Donald Fagen doing something like 274 mixes of Babylon Sisters. That’s a crazy amount. I read that the studio gave him a mock award for it.
Was not aware
But it's so perfect
@@violetmoondance8182 it was likely mix #7.
@@SPAZZOID100- either that or #167
@@SPAZZOID100 If I remember correctly, it was #3. (According Elliot)
Thanks for doing this interview. Great to document these historic sessions.
Thanks Tyler, fantastic interview with Elliot. The knowledge, the experience and the stories he's shared with us is immeasurable, so very generous of him and so smart of you to have him on. Bravo!
Elliot, this is one of the most sonically beautiful albums I have ever heard. New Gold Dream by Simple Minds is another. Thank you for the music.
I LOVE that album. Holy cow. I've interviewed Peter Walsh about it...but only over email.
Woa! We couldn’t possibly agree more. What a brilliant comment to mention those two records in the same sentence!
22:02 "...enhance the stereo imagery" perhaps the Aphex Aural Exciter, which was the thing for that at the time.
Which is literally just a pass filter
Royal Scam/AJA/Gaucho ...imo, the best back to back to back album trio done to date...change my mind
Foxtrot/Selling England/Lamb weren’t too shabby.
Pretzel Logic should be added. My fav SD album is The Royal Scam, then Aja. However, I was listening to Countdown To Ecstacy the other day. There are elements of this album that one could say is the best work SD have done. In terms of sheer muscianship etc. Countdown is one of their best. They are all great albums so I'm splitting hairs. I just remember hearing The Royal Scam for the first time thinking it was a perfect album. The title track which has the 1920's horn with the bell sounding section. At the same time, The Royal Scam is their funkiest album. The range of musical influence is broad on this record.
I would say Can’t Buy a Thrill-Gaucho was a great 7 album run
I love gaucho / and this probably is agaisnt the rules but i would swap that one for nightfly even though it was solo work. But yeah. ❤
Sure, I can do that!
Cartas Caatingueiras/Na Quadrada das Águas Perdidas/Árias Sertânicas.
Great to hear from Elliot about these sessions; between he and Schnee, there's some greatness to be heard on Aja & Gaucho. Back then these top shelf engineers were just trying to make great sounding records with relatively primitive tools, and we are the better for it. Back then, the band and the arrangement was king - no need to carve out vocal space - it was written that way. Today's DAW operators cannot fathom the pressure of live rhythm dates and live-to-2 track sessions, never mind the set up and signal path to achieve their goals. Try mixing with one EQ on each track, 6 or 8 dynamics plugins total, no automation, no bus processing, maybe 2 reverbs, tape delay, and 24 tracks with all of your instruments.
Sounds like the difference between drawing with ink and drawing with pencil. When you use pencil you are not as technical or accurate because you know you have an eraser. With ink, very calculated on what you do. I’m not a music engineer, don’t even play an instrument but I love Steely Dan and this intrigues me how great they sounded so many years ago
This one's incredible- to get to hear from a legend like this is so rare- Thank you Ty!
This is a good interview: th-cam.com/video/M8omvDhw2MQ/w-d-xo.html
I feel a little better about my tracking/mixing methods now... Thanks guys!!
Wow. Gotta say. I LOVE the Dan and this interview was so far over my head and yet answered so many of my questions about the sound. Fantastic interview… Great work, keep it up!!
Elliot is fucking awesome those songs and mix are fucking amazing
I love Gaucho. It was the epitome of a great career. Ultra sophisticated. Hey Nineteen makes me want to crack open the Cuervo Gold and go skating.
It's also the audio capture of the death of a career, via perfectionism.
I guess the album has a whole mythos behind it now, but Fagen has said in interviews that their pursuit of sonic perfection made them pretty miserable/anxious as music makers. The whole creation of Gaucho (particularly the Wendel incident, and the destruction of the Second Arrangement) was the pinnacle but also the very bottom. It's a minor miracle it ever got released.
My fave SD album as well. Every song is just perfect.
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!!
Finally some authoritative info on Wendel credits! Been wondering about that for a long time.
Wonderful to hear Elliot Scheiner give his insights into this legendary album. There is so much to the 'Dan story that it even deserves a second interview, at least!
4,718 views
May 28, 2021
Fascinating discussion. Thanks & kudos. On YT & elsewhere, the Dan gets lots of play for & about the great musicians who performed on various tunes, but of equal (arguably, greater) importance is the resulting sound that comes out of the speakers or headphones. All too seldom discussed. Listening to Mr. Scheiner's recollections, admiring his steel-trap mind & amazing recall of equipment, techniques, processes, etc., was a real treat. Also appreciate learning about those who influenced him, like Al Schmidt, Phil Ramone & of course Roger Nichols. This was time well spent. Thanks again. No denying the ultra-professional, unforgettable sound quality of Gaucho. For audio aficionados, it's so pristine that it can't help but leave an imprint in one's DNA.
I don't really understand much of anything being said here, but I just wanted to say I really love your music. You deserve so many more subscribers. Keep up the great work!
Great work. Thank you for posting. I love the reverb explanations. Mono with pre-delay of 150 ms, interesting. Roger Nichols was pretty proud of the "No EQ" ethos back then. I usually worked with some sketchy plates i- hand tuned in mysterious ways by Phil Ramone indeed, cool stuff. Right up there with Sun records stairwell, Abbey Roads stacked tiles and Roy Halee's office building elevator shaft snare reverb on "The Boxer". The verbs were always everybody's secret sauce. I never really got a satisfactory explanation of "The Andy Williams verb" vs "The Tony Bennett verb" Maybe someone will do a secret verbs of the sixties TH-cam series.
This is GOOOOD!
Good to hear from you, Doctor Mix!
Incredibly eye opening. Glad to know that they decided to go with the sound from the console and leave any comp up to the mastering. Also just the amount of "No's" returned from Elliot shows how conservative the whole process was from start to finish. You did an excellent job on this and I really appreciate how you conducted the interview.
Great interview....how can your channel only have 189 subscribers?...Well you just got one more.....looking forward to seeing what other gems you have on this channel. Thanks very much. Al
This is what I was thinking! Maybe it’s a new channel.
This is amazing! Thank you so much for doing this. Truly appreciated.
At 22:14 the stereo device he is referring to is an Aphex Aural Exciter. Back in those days you had to rent them, as they weren’t available for sale.
Awesome. Great to know!
Not sure that’s right… The Aural Exciter added brightness/sizzle to material (a sophisticated high frequency booster, basically, that used psychoacoustic trickery to do more than what was achievable just by boosting with EQ). I don’t think it did anything to the stereo image.
More likely an MXR 126 flanger/doubler - or possibly lunchbox-style autophaser or autoflanger. Remember, this is 1978-vintage gear. The Roland Dimension D debuted in 1979 too.
Thank you so much for this great interview.
This is such a cool interview!
I was always curious if that was an oxide flub on Time Out of Mind. Its funny how you strive to create such a perfect record and in that pursuit, incidentally create an imperfection as a result of it.
It’s fascinating to hear technical explanations for these type of things. At approx 1:20 in Time Out Mind there is definitely a wrinkle or flub during the transition into the pre chorus.
My best guess was mix buss compression, because at that moment there’s a flourish on lead guitar (panned right), a staccato jab on keys (panned medium left) and horns (panned far left) all at once, and maybe pushed threshold & recovery was too slow?
BUT, as Elliot says, there was no compression on the mix buss! In fact nothing on it. So “oxide flub” is an explanation I’d never have realised without this comment, following this cool interview! Ha. Cheers to that.
Imperfection and grace 😂
This is an amazing interview! Loved every minute of it
Thanks! Glad you liked it! Cheers!
That’s great work man. Thanks for doing that.
Amazing info! We need a part 2 🙏
Great interview and questions but I was really hoping you were going to ask him about the second arrangement and what went down
Great stuff! Thanks for capturing it. Would have liked to hear the story about the lost track, though.
What a lovely man, very accommodating.
I guess they were very wary of noise reduction after the Katy Lied experience. A lot of the equipment model references went over my head, but I got a lot from the video. Never realised that Gary Katz was the man who did Don and Walt's 'Dirty Work'! Interesting to find out how Scheiner, Nicholls and Katz worked together. Fantastic interview. Thank you!
What happened with NR on Katy Lied
@@MonkeyBars1 They used dbx technology, which was supposed to have a better signal/noise ratio than Dolby, but there was a problem with the encoding that made the tapes sound dull and lifeless. It's quite well documented on-line.
This are so good please do more vids like this ....
Fantastic interview. Love the story about the "original Gaucho band". Priceless stuff, man!
Wow great questions !
Please do another one like this. Awesome 😎
22:14 Donald would go stereo with the Rhodes and use two MXR phase 90s at slightly different rates to create the swirly stereo Rhodes sound.
Thank you for this! Great to have this information captured for all time.
I love listening to people who's language is totally beyond my comprehension. I do it all day listening to the business channels who's guest are using economic lingo that I have no idea what-so-ever what they're saying. I don't know what these guys are
saying as well but I love Steely Dan and the music they've created over the years
Thanks for posting this informative interview.
greetings from rio de janeiro. thanks for the amazing interview. he is so humble that he makes us think that the recording process is very simple (we all know it's not)😀😀😀
Seems like he has his eyes closed the whole interview.
My favorite part of this is when you ask him about digital fx and Elliot's like , "Do you realize what you're saying?!" Lol, cranky old timer...
Great job Tyler. Thank you so much for this interview. I've rewatched it countless times.
The device that they used to widen the stereo imaging could have been one of a couple of things. One was the Eventide harmonizer, which was almost always set to 99 percent of pitch on one side. We had a Roland Dimension D, which was a subtler effect, but did a great job of widening the stereo image of an electric piano track.
Thank you so much:)
Glamour Profession.
6:05 - Outside the stadium” refers to Pittsburgh Pirate Dock Ellis’ no-hitter against the San Diego Padres on June 1, 1970.:: Supposedly he had flown to LA to try LSD and came back STILL under the influence at 6:05**, when the game started at San Diego Stadium. The basketball references are there to obscure just WHOM Steely Dan are talking about. And Dock Ellis was a high school basketball star in Gardena, California.
Interesting connection! In the documentary about this, Dock explains how he thought he had a day off that day and dropped in the morning in San Diego then as he was coming up his friend saw in the paper he was scheduled to open the game in LA that evening, so he flew up high off his ass and threw the ball down the glittering tube of light for a few hours, pegging a couple hitters and scaring the rest in his legendary no-hitter.
holy crap this is freaking amazing!!!! thank you so much :)
Every Steely Dan album is good to great. Gaucho is transcendent.
Truly awesome
Excellent job interviewing. I subscribed.
At 22:00 - the stereo device he is referencing, I'll bet it was the Aphex Aural Exciter which was brand new in those days. Possibly a Harmonizer with some delay L/R
More likely a Roland Dimension-D.
Thank you very much.
This is a great interview, I’m glad you talked gear with him. 👍🤟👏
Excellent interview! Subscribed.
Fundamentals. Great musicians make the engineers job so much easier. Humble man.
Fabulous interview even if you don't really understand all the high tech talk. A delightfully humble man - I just mix! Computers will never be able to add the human element - setting the levels by "turning the knob". The mixers of the world are the true heroes of sound.
The very last thing he said was so cool and a great emotional payoff to all the great tech discussion. Solid interview.
Just fabulous. Thank you.
Freaking amazing!
I didn’t even understand half of the technical stuff they were talking about, but the absolute LOVE AND RESPECT for the subject matter and THE MUSIC was there throughout the interview.
Well done!
👍🏼🎸🎼🥂❤️😎
This was a great Q&A session. I would have loved to hear Elliot talk about the DTS surround mix he did. That surround mix sounds incredible. There are element flowing around all 6 speakers. The bass and kick are in the pocket on that mix.
Brilliant insight. This is gold
Excellent. Thanks!
You had me at Aja (maybe my favorite album of all time!!) Gaucho is my 2nd fave SD album.
Bravo Tyler!! 🙌 Have Elliot back to go in depth about his early years and career with other artists.
Appreciate it, but the amount of flack I've gotten for this interview doesn't inspire me to do another video.
@@TylerBurnsOfficial I didn’t hear any problems with the interview. A couple of jokers are always around the comment section. I learned a lot. Thanks Tyler.
Hey Tyler, that's just the internet. Bunch of dweebs hiding behind the lack of social consequences. Lean into your role as content creator and let it roll off you. It's a good lesson to ignore the losers and focus on the positive. This was a very special interview and we are so grateful.
Phenomenal interview. WOW!
Such a great interview! Thank you!
I was waiting for the question about the "Second Arrangement" incident, when an engineer or assistant engineer erased by mistake a mixdown of that song.
That very last statement, it wasn't about Christmas at all but that one hit hard nevertheless. Gave me goosebumps.
Great video, thanks a lot
Amazing interview ! Thanks
Main takeaway: the production quality of Steely Dan's records is not the product of twiddling the knobs on stacks of boxes with blinking lights. It's the result of solid recording fundamentals and LISTENING.
Gaucho is my fav Dan album. Hard to pick one but it is my go to sleep piece
Ha! Fired! Just for doing the exercise. Classic!
Was shocked at Elliot’s reaction to high passing! Being obsessed with reigning in low end within mixes personally, and of course how well the low end is balanced on Gaucho, one assumed there must have been high passing! So cool.
I was also quite surprised, but they put a lot less bass in mixes in those days. It really sounded so much better because it did not eat up the headroom of the mix.
Also analog tape at 30 IPS has a natural HPF at 30 Hz
@@TylerBurnsOfficial ~ oh cool, it’s feels like a good lesson. And yes that definitely comes through on Gaucho. When you crank it (on any system really) it’s very satisfying.
@@TylerBurnsOfficial ~ I was waiting for this! Elliot mentioned recording at 30 IPS, and mixing at 15 IPS. That’s just what the SD posse - Nichols, Fagen, Becker & Katz - asked for. Presumably to reintroduce a fullness or sense of roundness above 30HZ back into the instruments / whole mix?
@@Jalliams I think the purpose for mixing at 15 IPS was to have as flat of a frequency response as possible and to avoid the "head bump" inherent with 30 IPS. Personally, I like mixing at 30 IPS because you get more top end clarity, but they were probably mixing on an A80 RC, which is discrete and kicks butt at 15 IPS, I'm sure.
Fascinating interview! 16 bit digital recording would've been very cutting edge in 1980... after all 16 bit was pretty much the mastering standard until the late 90s when 24 bit became available. Even today 16 bit is considered good enough for the final product.
God bless Elliott for doing this
Fantastic interview !
Love this. Thank you both.
*Gaucho* I felt they left everything in the recording studio on this album. They were panned by critics, exited the music scene and we didn't see them live until 20 years later. I also feel that the song 'Gaucho'; it's the pinnacle of their musical career.
Hindsight is 20/20. It's bizarre how some things are panned at the time and then hailed later. Case in point: 90s comedies were largely panned by critics when they were released, but are now considered masterpieces. Comedies just weren't considered high art at the time...now they are. (Tomatometer represents the critics' score at the time of release.)
Tommy Boy (1995) - Tomatometer: 44%, Audience Score: 90%
Billy Madison (1995) - Tomatometer: 41%, Audience Score: 79%
Heavyweights (1995) - Tomatometer: 29%, Audience Score: 77%
Happy Gilmore (1996) - Tomatometer: 61%, Audience Score: 85%
Black Sheep (1996) - Tomatometer: 28%, Audience Score: 70%
Baseketball (1998) - Tomatometer: 41%, Audience Score: 74%
Please do a follow-up interview to ask Elliot about the 5.1 mix that he also did for Gaucho. Lots of folks curious about instrument placement decisions and challenges.
@25:00 - what about the title track? Real or machine? Also, on this topic, I've got this method where I get the AI stem, use the beat analysis of Emulator X and measure the length in samples. So for verse 1 of Hey 19, which is done with Wendel, I measure where each snare hit came as a percentage of the way to the next beat. It went like this for the first 8 bars: 53%, 51, 50, 50, 50, 50, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 50, 50, 50, 50. So basically, Donald was quantizing but tending to nudge the snare a bit later - sort of a subtle "fatback" effect.
Okay, so Elliot says Hey 19 is machine and Time Out of Mind is real. Both, conveniently, have Rick Marotta and have similar tempos and drum patterns. Hey 19 is 119 bpm and uses what I call the Ringo beat (K S KK SK - actually first played by Marvin Gaye in 1962) on a Stevie Wonder record as best as I can tell. Time Out of Mind is a bit faster at 125 bpm and uses the basic K S K S rock beat. So, when I did the same measurements for the snare, again starting where the vocal comes in, Time out of Mind was all 50%. So ironically, the real Rick Marotta (albeit probably playing with a click) was more "quantized" than the Rick Marotta whose drum sounds were body snatched by Wendel. Now ... having done a ton of these with Ringo beats, I find that even if a drummer stays consistently at 49% or 51%, if I do a blindfold test, I can't really hear it. It has to be 2% or 3% difference for me to hear a gradation in the swing (with 8ths and 16ths) or the "fatbackness" (with snare backbeats). I'm assuming that these guys have such great muscle memory and reflexes that they can stay consistently (relatively speaking) around 49%, 50% or 51%, and obviously Wendel can do it precisely. So all I can conclude from this experiment - and this is a guess at best - is that Donald likes to hear the snare a little late, or "fat" and that's why he nudged it on Hey 19. But what do people think, comparing the grooves of those two songs? Can you hear that Hey 19 is Wendel and Time Out of Mind is Rick? Can you hear a difference in the feel of the snare backbeat on the first verse of each? Does anybody have any links to more info on any of this? The main thing I could point to is the book Dilla Time which goes into a fair amount (but less that is really needed) of detail on how Dilla nudged his snares (he moved them earlier - there are a lot of confusing things involved into trying to measure them and Dilla changed his approach drastically over the years so it's very hard to really figure out conclusively what's going on. Maybe D'Angelo's Voodoo would be a good one to try next. It's not Dilla but presumably is trying to emulate Dilla and generally more consistently done. Ugh ... this stuff could seriously make one lose one's mind.
Title track is all real- just a ton of different takes edited.
THE GOAT.
The title song is, in fact, Steely Dan’s highest songwriting and production peak
Appreciate you geeking out to the max on this... sounds like he was settling lot of arguments... a few dollars were exchanged, I'll bet. You also have to understand that these guys really knew how to be purists... and not really mess too much with effects or sweetening... or in house mastering... they sound like that because they didn't do that and used acoustic spaces to shape the sound and Bob Ludwig to master... and like so many masterworks, it's more shaped by its limitations, than special effects or tricks..trucks... there were so few at this time.
Absolutely!
The "Goucho" album gave out a certain atmosphere that I haven't heard on any other record. Schneider obviously was responsible. But you also have to hand it to the gear they used. The A800 running at 30 had a lot to do with it. I've cut lots of tracks on it, and I haven't yet been able to replicate the texture and 'warmth' that it delivers. I remember soloing just the kick drum up in the monitors, and it seemed that it actually breathed. A stunning machine, to me the best recording device ever known to man -- digital or analog.
Fantastic interview, thanks so much for posting.
Some tape emulation plugins seem to be improving, but I haven't heard an actual owner of a Studer (like @WhiteSeaStudios) say they can replace analog tape yet.