{"id":2177,"date":"2012-11-05T13:00:48","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T13:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arpjournal.com\/?p=2177"},"modified":"2012-11-05T09:44:05","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T09:44:05","slug":"interview-with-ken-scott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/interview-with-ken-scott\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Ken Scott"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you feel modern recording technology has made producers and engineers more indecisive?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think the whole decision making thing is a problem that is affecting mankind completely.\u00a0 We are now at the point where we can\u2019t make decisions. You will go to a video rental store and you will find at least 5 people on their cell phones saying, \u201cYes, hunny, you want this?\u00a0 OK, what about this one?\u00a0 Alright, never mind.\u201d It\u2019s the exact same thing as making records these days. I started off in 4-track. You had to make decisions right up front as to what it was going to sound like, and you lived or died by that. Luckily,\u00a0we\u2019re not in the business of operating on brains or anything that could kill someone.\u00a0 If we make a mistake, no one is going to die from it.<\/p>\n

People shouldn\u2019t be afraid to make decisions, these days.\u00a0 It\u2019s so much, like, \u201cWe\u2019ll record it and we don\u2019t know if we are going to use it; we\u2019ll make the decisions when we come to the mix.\u201d It makes mixing so much harder, take so much longer.\u00a0 It finishes up not being anywhere near the way it could have been. In fact, too much now the decision is given up on and the mix is passed to the mastering engineer, who over here has become a God.<\/p>\n

What is your experience with mastering?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As part of the EMI training, I had to do mastering.\u00a0 They wouldn\u2019t allow you to sit behind a board and put sound onto tape before you knew all the problems that could later happen, because it\u2019s so much easier to put things onto tape than it was onto vinyl. You had to learn what you were doing.\u00a0 Invariably, the first three days that anyone was alone in a mastering room, you\u2019d put on a tape and say, \u201cAh, you know what?\u00a0 That needs a little more high end.\u201d\u00a0 You go full ball at 10.\u00a0 \u201cOh you know what?\u00a0 It\u2019s better but its lacking a little bass.\u201c\u00a0 You go full ball at 16, and it\u2019s like, \u201cThat\u2019s almost there.\u00a0 Now if we could just get a little mids on it.\u201d\u00a0 That would last three days and then you’d start to realize this tape needs a little high end\u00a0and you put one notch at 10 and say, \u201cThat\u2019s perfect!\u201d The engineer and the producer are the ones that know what it should sound like in the first place. It\u2019s not up to someone who wasn\u2019t there from the beginning, and has no idea what was intended.\u00a0 They shouldn\u2019t be the ones in the position to completely change everything, in my humble opinion.\u00a0 These days, too many mastering engineers say, \u201cOh, you got to give me the stems of the guitars, stems of the drums, stems of the vocals.\u201d\u00a0 They actually want to remix it themselves.<\/p>\n

Do you think that the digital side of things necessarily requires a different approach to recording today?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I do feel that a lot of the people would gain an awful lot if they spent three months using a 4-track so that they could learn to make decisions.\u00a0 We\u2019ve taken everything to such a ridiculous degree of coming back and doing\u00a0another remix of something, because you want an extra half dB of hihat in the second chorus.\u00a0 It\u2019s absurd, the level that we have taken it to.<\/p>\n

I think one of the worst things that has occurred is the change in the recording contracts where artists no longer have to make 2 albums a year. That\u2019s what it used to be and my God those albums are still classic. The records that were made under those conditions where we had to be fast, we had to make decisions, and there was no going back once you determined something.\u00a0 Those records are classic.\u00a0 All of the ones today, even with the ability to go in and bring up the hihat half\u00a0a dB in the second chorus, I wonder how many of those are still going to be around in 40 or 50 years.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Obviously, technology is available to all and sundry these days \u2014 including the artist.\u00a0 You know they can sit in their bedroom\u00a0with Logic or Pro Tools etc. on their laptop and record themselves. Do you think that this has made the artist more aware of the production process?\u00a0 And does that mean that it is different dealing with an artist today than it might have been before?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, and finishing up being jack-of-all-trades and master of none.\u00a0 A guitarist should spend all of his time in the bedroom practicing guitar or bass.\u00a0 Or, a singer should be learning to sing properly.\u00a0 Everything starts in the studio.\u00a0 You have to get the sounds in there.\u00a0 You have to get the talent in there. The way it goes these days, with people just taking anything that\u2019s done in the studio and then saying, \u201cOh yeah, that will work, we can cut and paste it together, or we can put all of these plug-ins on it to make it sound OK.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s all a half-hearted attempt to make something that isn’t great to start with\u00a0sound great, and that\u2019s not going to happen. You can\u2019t make a silk purse out of a sow\u2019s ear if it\u2019s not there in the first place. It\u2019s going to be OK, but you are not going to make it great.<\/p>\n

What is your opinion on a producer\u2019s musical knowledge or an engineer\u2019s musical knowledge?\u00a0 How much were you involved in writing, for example, David Bowie’s \u201cLife on Mars?\u201d\u00a0 How much were you involved in creating the arrangement for that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

With David [Bowie] I felt very early on that the reason that David and I worked together in the production arena was that he got fed up with having the bass player in his band producing the record, and basically doing all of the arrangements.\u00a0 Tony Visconti was a great producer but he sorted out all of David\u2019s arrangements.\u00a0 David had very little to do with it, and I think one of the reason why David pulled away from Tony was he \u2014 much like why the Beatles pulled away from George Martin \u2014 he wanted to experiment himself, he had his own ideas that he wanted to put forth. Much like I learned from the Beatles situation, I felt the best bet was to sit back and make sure that he could do anything he wanted to do.\u00a0 He would create the brush strokes, and I would create the colors that he used, if you like, always knowing that right at the end he\u2019s not going to be around so I get to finish it off exactly the way I want to finish it off, in the mixing stage.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

So in the production sense, you were there as a facilitator?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For him [David Bowie].\u00a0 But my involvement, musically, varies with different artists. For Supertramp, I was much more involved with arrangements and even came up with a few musical parts, if I remember correctly.\u00a0 Although I can\u2019t play an instrument, I obviously have temperament.<\/p>\n

Are there any particular key skills that you feel bring the producer\u2019s role together?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it really does depend.\u00a0 There really is no right or wrong.\u00a0 With making music and making records, it\u2019s such a personal thing. I am not one of these producers that can work on a project and make it for a certain area of the record buying public…. I make it for myself and I’ve been lucky that a lot of other people have liked the same things I have.<\/p>\n

What about the role of pre-production?\u00a0 How did this differ working with David\u00a0Bowie on Hunky Dory<\/em> compared to Supertramp?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once again, it varies so much. \u00a0With Hunky Dory,<\/em> David and I sat down with his publisher Bob Grace, and we went through material and picked out basically what we were going to record on the first album, so that everything was demoed, and we went in and continued from there.\u00a0 On The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars<\/em>, I actually heard nothing before we went into the studio<\/p>\n

How did that alter the production process?<\/strong><\/p>\n

With [Bowie] it was fairly easy and straight-forward, because the band hadn’t even heard it either, so we were all learning from the same point.\u00a0 That was great because, to quote Woody Woodmensy, the drummer, \u201cThey were on the edge of their seat because David didn\u2019t like doing a lot of takes.\u201d David didn\u2019t like the studio.\u00a0 He wanted to be in and out as quickly as possible. I think that\u2019s why he never came along to mixes. The musician was always on the edge of their seat: \u201cAm I going to get it on this take?\u201d\u00a0 They knew they only had a couple of takes to get it, because David would get bored.\u00a0 There was an excitement that one got from that, unlike today\u00a0where it\u2019s like, \u201cOh, we didn\u2019t get it today?\u00a0 OK, we will come back and still keep going for another three weeks on the same title.\u201d<\/p>\n

I went through\u00a0a situation at laboratory 2, where it was one of the hardest projects I\u2019ve worked on.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t even any material before we went into the studio, or very little. They tended to like to play in the studio and come up with a groove.\u00a0 That groove would then be turned in to a song. I found that very hard because, at least with demos, even if we hadn’t worked it out and gone into pre-production at the start,\u00a0at least with a demo\u00a0of a song, I have an idea of how I can see it being at the end.\u00a0 With a band that\u2019s already done a lot of work on it themselves, you can hear where they feel it should go and you say, \u201cLook, that\u2019s wrong you need to change this.\u00a0 Or, yeah its sounding great, let\u2019s just carry on this way.\u201d\u00a0 But when the song isn’t even there to start with, you don\u2019t know where it\u2019s going to finish up going and that was a little disconcerting for me to say the least.<\/p>\n

At what point does somebody jump into the process and say, \u201cLook that just isn’t going where it\u2019s supposed to go, so we need to change it\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s experience and inherent knowledge.\u00a0 Starting off my career with the Beatles, they would literally try everything. They would say, \u201cNo, that doesn\u2019t work,\u201d and then move on to something else.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t just batter it to death if it wasn\u2019t working.\u00a0 They would realize quickly, and move on.\u00a0 So I guess I got a lot from that as well.<\/p>\n

What were the most significant changes that you can perhaps remember from your earlier period to when you gained control for the \u201cWhite album\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was learning what the hell I was doing. I have been asked so many times what it was like when Eric Clapton came in and played on \u201cMy Guitar Gently Weeps.\u201d\u00a0 I know I was the engineer on that but I have absolutely no recollection of that happening. I was learning my gig.\u00a0 During my career, I\u2019ve jumped from one style of music to another, and I\u2019ve done that because, basically, although I have a ridiculous amount of patience in the studio, I like to jump around.\u00a0 I get bored. \u00a0 I can\u2019t be doing the same thing, time and again.\u00a0 I like to learn all the time.\u00a0 By moving on to a different genre, I’m learning.\u00a0 Right from the beginning, I\u2019ve been learning my gig.\u00a0 I am still doing it till this day.<\/p>\n

Could you think of the two most entraining examples of styles or genre that you have worked on?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Probably, just in sound and content, from Ziggy Stardust<\/em> to [Mahavishnu Orchestra\u2019s] Birds of Fire<\/em>.<\/p>\n

How is one individual such as yourself\u00a0able to make a big jump from, say,\u00a0Ziggy Stardust<\/em> to orchestral production?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is a love of what you are doing and I think it\u2019s doing it to please yourself.\u00a0 For me, I’m doing it to please myself.\u00a0 I’m not doing it for anyone out there.\u00a0 It\u2019s always for the act and for myself.\u00a0 As long as we are happy with it, that\u2019s all that matters to me.\u00a0 This hasn\u2019t enamored men from record companies quite often. They would have liked me to bow down to them a little more than I did.\u00a0 The principle of how I make records is there no matter what the\u00a0genre of\u00a0music is. So I guess I see them all the same.\u00a0 People ask me, \u201cOK, you recorded Woody Woodmensy, which was 3 toms and a very dead drum sound.\u00a0 They you moved to Bill Cobham, with Mahavishnu, and his kit was huge and really live.\u00a0 How did you make the change to that?\u201d I didn\u2019t.\u00a0I did exactly the same for Bill as I did for Woody. I just had to use more microphones.\u00a0 But they were still the same microphones, still the same equalizers.\u00a0 It was all the same for me. The change came from a different musician\u00a0who tuned his drums differently, and that\u2019s why I say everything starts in the studio.<\/p>\n

Is the artist to a certain extent\u00a0is the most important person in the room?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I tell you, in my humble estimation, without the artist we are nothing. So they are the most important.\u00a0 We are there to back them up.\u00a0 There are other producers that look at\u00a0every record they make as if it were their record, who forget the artist and change it.Richard Perry, an American producer, who did Harry Nielsen and some Ringo Starr stuff, produced an album for the major English act Leo\u00a0Sayer. Previously, Leo was produced by Adam\u00a0Faith, who had made some completely unique records that were unlike anything else. Then Richard Perry came on the scene and produced an album and suddenly Leo\u00a0Sayer became exceedingly successful.\u00a0 But he was like everyone else. Richard Perry takes over and it becomes his record and not the artist\u2019s.\u00a0 I’ve always tried to avoid doing that. I look at the artist as the one that\u2019s important.\u00a0 They are the one that came up with it in the first place, and [my work is] just trying to put what they want to put across as best as possible.<\/p>\n

On All Things Must Pass<\/em> with George Harrison, there is just a certain unique sound.\u00a0 What contributed to this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

All Things Must Pass<\/em> has a unique sound, which comes, of course, from Mr.\u00a0Spector’s input.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t do the original sessions with Phil McDonald at Abbey Road.\u00a0 However, Abbey Road was still 8-track at the time.\u00a0 Once they ran out of tracks, George then came to Trident and hooked up with me, and we completed it there with overdubs and mixing.\u00a0 Spector had his own thing, which was why he was brought in to work on it with George.\u00a0 He was regarded particularly highly at that point, when George and I were working on the master together.\u00a0 We were sitting behind the console of George’s house, and the first time we put up an original multi-track and listened to it, we turned to each other and burst out laughing, because here we were 40 years later, sitting in the exact same positions, listening to the exact same thing, and it was just hysterical that we both would have loved to have remixed\u00a0the entire album without the Spector influences.\u00a0 George had got so fed up with reverb, he hated reverb and so it would have been bone dry if he had anything to do with it.\u00a0 We were out to re-issue it so we couldn\u2019t remix it, and if he lived we may have been able to.<\/p>\n

The producer\/artist relationship is running through everything you have just said.\u00a0 How do you go about coaxing that performance out of an artist that might be a bit tricky to get?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anything that can get a good performance out of them.\u00a0 It might be giving them as much booze as they can take, just to instill confidence in them some way. It\u2019s so wide open. There is no right or wrong.\u00a0 Do whatever you have to do as a producer.\u00a0 You\u2019re the spouse, the shrink, the school teacher.\u00a0 You could be the general.\u00a0 All these roles come to play in\u00a0record production.\u00a0 The art of it is to know what roles to take on in different contexts.<\/p>\n

A key things\u00a0that is very difficult to teach someone is interpersonal skills.\u00a0 How does somebody actually learn that other than by\u00a0experience and doing it?\u00a0 How do you know when to apply a certain attitude?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was blessed with the training I had at Abbey Road as a second engineer, because I got to watch some of the top classical and pop engineers. You got to sit there and see how they reacted.\u00a0 You were in the same room, and the great thing was it was so varied, so you got more of an example of how to deal with all the different situations, which doesn\u2019t happen very often these days in today\u2019s studios. If you get success by doing a hard rock album in the studio, from then on that\u2019s basically all that the studio will do.<\/p>\n

So you get pigeon-holed a lot more?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Absolutely, and you don\u2019t get that training.\u00a0 One of the things that I have heard is that so many students come out at the end of their course with a piece of paper saying that they\u2019ve succeeded in this course of how to become an engineer and a producer, but when they finally get a job in the studio and they expect immediately to be working with U2 and other superstars.\u00a0 Whereas what they are actually going to do for the next three months is picking up Chinese food\u00a0from Kung\u00a0Pao\u2019s, or going to Dino\u2019s and picking up a pizza down the street, and every now again they will be\u00a0cleaning out the toilets. They don\u2019t like that.\u00a0 They feel like they are far above that kind of thing, so after a couple of months they get fed up and leave and go to do something else. Now I think It needs to be instilled in them that, even though going through theses courses they have been given a great starting tool, they still have to learn from other people, and they need to take every opportunity to sit there, shut up and watch.\u00a0 If doing that means that every now and again they go out to the Chinese restaurant or pizza place or clean the toilet, so be it.\u00a0 They are getting another part of their training, which can\u2019t be taught in a school just by sitting there and watching what goes on.<\/p>\n

On the technical aspect,\u00a0one thing that I feel is the most important part of a studio is the monitors.\u00a0 If the monitors aren’t good, you have no idea what you are listening to, even if you are using the most expensive microphones and the most expensive mixing console.\u00a0 If the monitors are off, what\u2019s the point?\u00a0 Here\u2019s an anecdotal to go with that. \u201cHey Jude\u201d, by the Beatles, we started off doing it at Abbey\u00a0Road.\u00a0 We spent two nights trying to do a basic track and it got messed up because there was a film crew there and they were driving everyone crazy, so we finished up getting a good basic track, which then the Beatles took to Trident where they wanted to try the 8-track. Trident was the only studio in London at that point that had 8-track. So they went there and, for one reason or another, they couldn\u2019t use the basic track that we recorded at Abbey Road.\u00a0 So they re-recorded the whole thing.\u00a0 I went down there the last day\u00a0that they were at Trident to hear what was going on, and I was played the mix of \u201cHey Jude.\u201d\u00a0 I sat down in front of the console and I had never heard anything sound that good in my life.\u00a0 It sounded amazing!\u00a0 Cut to a couple of days later at Abbey Road while the playback acetates were being cut.\u00a0 I got up to the cutting room and I listened and it sounded like there were a couple of pillows\u00a0across the speakers.\u00a0 Basically, Trident\u2019s monitoring system was set up as pure hype. There was a lot more high-end that was coming out of there then there actually was, so when it was mixed there wasn\u2019t enough high end on the tape and it sounded kind of muffled.\u00a0 We spent the next 5 or 6 hours just trying to EQ the tape that came in from Trident to get it anywhere close to decent, and luckily we did. Trident had the most modern gear at that point \u2013 they had everything going for them, but the monitors were wrong so it kind of defeated the purpose.\u00a0 So it doesn\u2019t matter what anyone gets, just make sure the monitors are good and then you can\u00a0work from there, because even with the cheapest microphones you can work with them, as long as you know what you are hearing is the way it will sound everywhere else.<\/p>\n

What are you favorite speakers now Ken?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, I don\u2019t have any particular favorite ones as long as I can get them loud.\u00a0I\u2019m certainly not a fan of near field monitors.\u00a0 I like big and brash and enjoyed Cadac speakers.\u00a0 They were absolutely astounding, 7-feet tall weighing a half a ton each, and they used to have them at a studio called Scorpio.\u00a0 I mixed Crime of the Century<\/em>, Some Crisis, What Crisis?<\/em>, some Billy Cobham stuff,\u00a0and some Stanley\u00a0Clarke stuff on them.\u00a0 With these speakers were just, you could just turn them up so loud and you could hear it crystal clear. They were phenomenal; I would love to find a pair of those again. I’m in the midst of writing a book and I tried to find them, no one seems to know about these speakers and I wanted to try and find a picture of one of them. You won\u2019t find them.\u00a0 I even contacted Cadac.\u00a0 They asked me to let them know if I found some.\u00a0 They were phenomenal, absolutely amazing, and still my favorite speakers.<\/p>\n

What are your thoughts on the loudness war in terms of mastering engineers?\u00a0 What can or can\u2019t they do?\u00a0 Are their hands tied these days?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ultimately, I think it\u00a0all comes down to one thing, and that\u2019s good riddance to the majors.\u00a0 I know that mastering engineers are told that you\u2019ve got to have a brick wall.\u00a0 They are told by the majors and the record companies, and they are being told it by attorneys and the money people. These aren’t music people.\u00a0 I think the day that the majors disappear, the music business is going to suddenly arise again like a Phoenix out of the fire, and it\u2019s going to be amazing again.\u00a0 Talent will always win out as far as I’m concerned.\u00a0 It will turn around the whole mastering thing. The actual brick walling thing is very easy.\u00a0 My answer to that is just rubbish.\u00a0 There are a lot of records I love musically that I cant even listen to just because of the brick walling and how it has affected the sound.\u00a0 The Beatles couldn\u2019t have done a lot of the things they do with brick walling.\u00a0 Supertramp certainly couldn\u2019t have done what they did. It\u2019s absurd and its just going to take a couple of acts to be successful and having the guts to stand up against the brick walling. There will be some success with that and suddenly people will say, \u201cOh, why didn\u2019t we ever do that? It sounds so much better without it!\u201d<\/p>\n

I can understand the purpose of doing different mixes so that if someone wants to listen to an .mp3 and they need it to be compressed a bit more because of that, that\u2019s fine.\u00a0 Sure, have a mix specifically for that.\u00a0 It\u2019s much like the Beatles. \u00a0 I\u2019ve always pushed that people should listen to the mono mixes of the Beatles stuff over and above the stereo, because the stereo was always just thrown together.\u00a0 For so long the mono mixes weren’t available to the public, which to me was completely wrong.\u00a0 The stereo was forced down their throat.\u00a0 As long as the originals are still available to the public, you can do whatever you want,\u00a0I don\u2019t care, but the original thing has to be there for the public.<\/p>\n

Has this led to a sort of homogenization of music these days?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a firm believer that record sales have fallen not because of piracy \u2013 it\u2019s because the records are crap. Unfortunately, the public has been forced by majors to listen to a certain style of music.\u00a0 Over here the vast majority of music radio stations are owned by one radio company that just makes tapes that are played all day, and keep on repeating the same things.\u00a0 It\u2019s just ridiculous. We need to get back to people like John Peel that have a personality, that people either like or dislike, but they are bringing new things to the audience the entire time, and playing things they like. Each week there is a new thing.\u00a0 We need to get back to that, not the homogenization that we’ve reached at this point.\u00a0 But that all comes because record companies and the majors are only thinking about bottom line.<\/p>\n

What are your thoughts on programs such as X Factor or American Idol?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m not completely against those programs.\u00a0 There has been some incredible talent that has come out of American Idol.\u00a0 For example, Carrie Underwood is doing amazingly over in the country market.\u00a0 But there has also been some contestants that have just been abysmal.\u00a0 Any way talent can get in front of the public, I am all for.\u00a0 But as with everything, you\u2019ve got the good side \u2014 which is some of these talent\u2019s getting to the public that would never have got there before \u2014\u00a0but you\u2019ve also got the point where suddenly everyone thinks they can sing. and everyone seems to think they have talent (or at least their mothers think they have talent), so you get all of this\u00a0other backswell of non-talent trying to get up front. That waters down the market so much for the ones that really do have talent, and it makes it that much more difficult for them to break through.<\/p>\n

What products are you currently developing\/working on?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The last four years, I have been working on something called \u201cEpiK drumS.\u201d\u00a0 We were going to put it out as epic drums with a \u2018c\u2019, and then we found out there was already something [with that name and spelling].\u00a0 So someone said, “How about messing around with the spelling?” Anyway, I got together with 5 of the drummers I’ve worked with over the years, and we emulated as closely as possible the drum sounds that we got on their records, and put it out.\u00a0 It\u2019s available as \u201cEpik drumS.\u201d\u00a0 There are samples of the drums, and grooves of the drummers playing along with the original recordings, so it\u2019s the same parts they originally played.\u00a0 Plus, we had them jam a lot, so there is other stuff as well.\u00a0 It\u2019s all-available, complete multitrack, every mic on its own track, so people can mix it the way they want to.<\/p>\n

This led to \u201cEpiK\u00a0DrumS\u00a0EDU,\u201d which is an educational thing.\u00a0 We are waiting for copies of it at this moment. It is due out any second.\u00a0 What I did was put together 4 \u00bd grooves \u2014 one from every\u00a0drummer \u2014 and all multitracked so that people can learn to mix live drums.\u00a0 So much is done with samples these days, and so\u00a0many engineers have never had to record live drums, so this gives them the opportunity to learn what happens with live drums. For example, you\u2019ve got the Tom microphone.\u00a0 There you are going to have the cymbal\u00a0bleeding through on it.\u00a0 How do you cut back on some of that to get it to sound good?\u00a0They can mess around to their hearts content.\u00a0 It comes in a package that can be used\u00a0on 7 different DAWS.\u00a0 There is Pro Tools, Logic, Reaper, Cubase, etc. \u00a0 It also comes along with a DVD that I did on how I record drums, which is very specific because I go through the microphones I use.\u00a0 I haven’t\u00a0compared microphones in twenty years \u2013 I know what works for me and I just use it every time. There is information on how I record, how I mix the different frequencies (I tend to always use the same plug-ins), plus there are interviews with the drummers, and they give tips a little on how they tune the drums.<\/p>\n

When did you start creating these educational products?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love giving back\u00a0to the community, whoever it may be: fans\u00a0of the artists, or young up and coming engineers. This all started a few years ago when I was working with Duran Duran.\u00a0 One of the ridiculous things with that band is that money was not an object.\u00a0 It was absolutely stupid, but I took full advantage.\u00a0I was in LA and we needed to do an acoustic overdub on one track and Warren Cuccurullo, the guitarist, was in London. They asked me where they could do this and I said \u201cStudio 2 Abbey Road.\u201d\u00a0 They agreed, we booked it for Saturday next week,\u00a0they flew me over, and I think that the guitar overdub took me 15 minutes.<\/p>\n

What this is leading to is that the engineer that was working at Abbey Road that Saturday afternoon picked the time specifically so he could talk with me. Bryan Gibson started at Abbey Road the same time I did, and he just wanted to chat after the session.\u00a0 So, we were just sitting down talking, and said, \u201cDo you remember when we started here and there were all these old timers that used to tell us these great stories about recording and how it all came about and the way they used to do things?\u201d I said, “Of course, that was amazing!” And he said, “We have now become them.\u00a0 We are the old timers and the kids today want\u00a0to hear our stories.” Then I suddenly realized that no one bothered to write down or videotape all these original stories from those amazing guys.\u00a0 Now only those stories are left,\u00a0and so it just occurred to me at that point that I can\u2019t allow this to happen again.\u00a0 People have to hear what it\u2019s like. \u00a0 I came up with an audio\/video presentation where I tell stories of what it used to be like.\u00a0 I break down multitracks of either Bowie or Elton [John]\u00a0or a George Harrison track, so people can actually hear the bass, the drums, the piano, and what they sounded like before we mixed them. So they get a feel for it all, and so I do that as often as I can.\u00a0I don\u2019t do it anywhere near as much as I like to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ken Scott is a legendary producer and engineer, having worked with the likes of The Beatles, Elton John, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Procul Harum, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Duran Duran, Supertramp and Level 42, among many others. His production credits include some of the most influential albums ever made, including David Bowie’s Hunky Dory, Aladdin Sane and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, and Supertramp’s Crime of The Century and Crisis? What Crisis? In the following interview, Scott discusses these records and some of his more recent work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-2177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-editorials-provocations","tag-interviews","author-craig-golding","author-daniel-rosen","author-jay-hodgson","author-russ-hepworth-sawyer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2177"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2373,"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2177\/revisions\/2373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arpjournal.com\/asarpwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}