vile_ator said:
My God. Where can we see your entire Discography? I knew about the 80's pop bands you produced but there is so much more! You must have some great stories!!
Neil, one of my favorite all time recordings by you is Queensryche Rage for Order. The older non re mastered version. That is such a dynamic rock album. And the toms,(really one of your strong points), the toms were so huge! They must have been really big toms actually. Remember the ballad, "I Will Remember"? The toms!!! And there was so much creative overdubbing, Neue Regel for example.
I mix death metal now too. But have only recorded for about 10 years. But I was a home stereo audiophile before. I really like smooth high end and older dynamic recordings. Actually Ive lost a taste for older metal productions lately. Prefer a mix of cleaned up Pro Tools style with clean hifi tones. Actually one thing that gets me about some of your later extreme metal recordings is the slightly excessive high end(3-4k). What are your thoughts on that?
Colin
You can check out my website for a discography. Unfortunately, I've somewhat lost touch with my former webmaster, so it hasn't been updated in over 18 months. Also, the early years of my career were so busy and chaotic that I merely listed the artists I worked with rather than the projects. In some cases I might have done 2, 3 or 4 albums with some bands or artists (I did 4 with Mahavishnu for example, 3 with Billy Cobham etc.) but I only list them once in most cases. I think I'm somewhere near 350 albums now. I've been making records in one capacity or another for nearly 35 years.
RFO was a unique album. There was a great flow of ideas, and the synergy between the band and I was really strong. It just seemed that each idea would spawn another two, and so on. Definitely a very creative vibe. Glad you enjoyed it.
As far as the sonic aspect of some of the stuff I've done recently, the one thing I'm finding a lot is that when I get projects in to mix, they often sound rather dull and boxy. As a result I often have to use a lot of EQ to try to get them up to what I might consider "hi fi" quality, and sometimes the EQ ends up bringing up lots of cymbals or harshness in gtrs etc. It ends up being a choice of either doing that or having a really dull sounding mix, so I try to achieve as happy a balance as possible. The difference between a pro and a "home recording" signal path can really be massive.
To be honest, I don't emphasise the frequencies you mention very much at all, but it's possible that the harmonics/subharmonics respond if I'm adding higher frequncies. Of course, there's always mastering on top of that, so that even if my mix is punchy, the mastered result will often have more sizzle to it as well. Either way, I think it's something that doesn't happen all the time, but mainly on stuff that needs a lot of EQ/serious help on the mixing end of things.
but you said 
