A Fry Pharmacy Studio Manifesto by Scott McEwen
The FRY PHARMACY:
Keep as much of the building's amazing 1930s-style interior intact as a time capsule.
Try not to change anything, maybe not even paint...
The kind of pale hospital green paint from the 50's (literally)
is such that you can't recreate it.
When you step into the Pharmacy you really get transported back in time...
It has the feeling of going into Motown, Stax, Sun, or Chess back in the day...
and the vibe is REAL.
It is not trying to be retro, It just is.
Keep the front windows boarded up (so nobody knows what we are doing in there).
Good old construction... brick and plaster.
Keep the 1950s tile (you know, like the floor at Sun Studios in Memphis)...
that sounds kind of dead but in a really excellent way.
One really bright reflective room and one neutral-sounding room is good.
For recording, bigger really is better:
(you can always make it small, but you can't realistically fake big).
The Pharmacy is pretty big but not huge...
the size of the room and solid construction amplifies the feeling
that you want to keep playing music in this building...
We don't have a control room...
all the gear is just out, open-air style on the neutral side of the building.
So everybody is in the same room... which I really like...
it is more like you are hanging out and not sitting behind glass, passing judgment.
The old front window displays are slowly becoming our iso booths...
when we need them.
We have a nice Furman multi-channel headphone system that we haven't used in months.
We have discovered that if you just get people comfortable
with their live blend of the amps and drums and stuff,
people play much better
(as opposed to the individual PERFECT headphone mix "kick and snare only please...
I don't need to hear those other guys")...
we have even set up a vocal PA in the room and just dealt with the bleed.
I would rather have a good performance than no bleed.
I have been hanging out a lot with this old bass player dude named Bob Babbitt...
he was the house bass player at Motown... played on like 200 or something #1 hits...
(listen to the bass on Midnight Train to Georgia... that's him, damm)
anyways, I have been learning a lot from him.
He told me that at Motown they didn't have headphones, they all plugged into ONE amp
and just made a blend...
if they couldn't hear the drums,
they played more softly and the drummer played harder...
but they were making a sound as a whole.
THAT is what we are after at the Fry Pharmacy.
We are more into documenting what is happening in the room.
Of course, we do whatever it takes for the artist to feel comfortable
and whatever feels the best for putting the song down to tape.
We are heavily into esoteric forms of mic placement
(I was obsesed with Mid-Side recording for years)...
but also "one 57 in front of the drums"
is what sounds right to me these days.
Something about the lowly 57 that just
holds things together in the mix...
Maybe it is the mono thing - I don't know.
What we are recording to:
a ragtag bunch of vintage recording equipment,
a decent stockpile of NOS USA tubes and amps
(we have a shit load of FENDER and AMPEG gear that is waiting for you
to use on your next record).
An Ampex 351
(with mono and stereo heads) from RCA Studios.
It is the actual deck that was in the RCA mobile truck throughout the sixties...
very well maintained because it was RCA.
It is also the same model that my idol Rudy Van Gelder used
to record all the beautiful Blue Note records.
We still have it and use the preamps daily...
almost every overdub goes through it, and two things when we track a band.
An Ampex AG440 from the sixties that we mix to
(we are Ampex freaks)
and also record kick and snare to first when we are recording digitally.
WE ALSO HAVE AN AMAZING 1974 AMPEX MM1100 2 INCH 16 TRACK
that we record on
then transfer to Protools to overdub if we need more tracks
(and don't want to bounce).
When we do an all digital session we do try to mix to tape
AND we also use our house reels to process stuff through (mostly drums)
on the way in on almost every session.
By the way, our digital rig is a 24/96 Protools system which gives us 16 ins and outs, plenty for the stuff we do.
We WANT the limitations of 16 ins!
Honestly, we truly think we are getting good sounds to digital...
we use a lot of tube/transformer based gear,
hit tape on the way in AND our room sounds really,
really good.
However, as good as digital gets,
it still really sounds flat and boring
compared to a well made analog recording.
Buy a reel of tape and do your project analog...
you will not regret it.
- Scott McEwen |
