| Riporto un estratto di una intervista di qualche anno fa. Credo sia molto interessante (indipendentemente da cosa si pensi di Burnett) perchè tratta un po' tutti i temi relativi al suono e alla produzione di cui abbiamo discusso per mesi parlando di The Union e del nuovo disco (rapporto tra suono brillante/suono "opaco", volumi, effetti sonori, uso degli strumenti, compressori ecc.). http://performingsongwriter.com/t-bone-burnett/There seems to be a distinctive “T Bone sound” that runs through not only your own records as an artist, but the records you produce.It’s been a long, long process, but it’s been accelerating, especially the last 10 years, when I started putting a team together that I work with all the time. Everybody on the team is extraordinarily adventurous, and we’ve developed this notion of sound and music and rock ’n’ roll. I wouldn’t claim it as a “T Bone sound,” but we have invented a new dimension in sound.
I used to cast different engineers for different records, according to the engineer’s strengths and what I felt he could bring to the project. But finally I decided to work with Mike Piersante exclusively. He was a second engineer at Sunset Sound. We consciously developed this very complex, low-end world of sound. It grew out of an interest in modernist music and their approach to sound and composition. I wasn’t as interested in the very notes they were playing as the overtones being created.How do you go about creating complexity in the low end?First of all, I think of everything as a drum. An acoustic bass fiddle is just a big drum with strings attached that you attack with your fingers or a bow, but it’s still just attack and resonance. A piano is just 88 little drums—in fact, by combining notes, you can make thousands of drums out of it. And for me, it all has to do with the tribal storytelling that happens with music, so I don’t really care what’s hitting the backbeat, whether it’s a snare drum or a mandolin … as long as it’s getting hit in the right place with the right meaning.
So the attack of the instrument is just triggering the tone, and we’ve spent 10 years minimizing attack and maximizing tone. All of these other rhythms and beats get set up in the overtone structure, which creates a lot of mystery and a real sense of place. In contrast, the thing that a computer does best, which is to put all the notes on the right beats, becomes completely uninteresting.Do you accomplish that by using compressors and limiters to hold down the attacks and emphasize the body of the sound? Your productions don’t sound especially compressed.That’s because we actually accomplish it in another way: We play very, very quietly. The more quietly you play, the less attack and more tone there is. If you hit a guitar too hard, it chokes the note off; the volume of sound that’s attempting to escape from the box turns in on itself and cancels itself out, so the sound just collapses. The same with a drum: If you hit it too hard and leave the stick there, nothing happens. But if you tap it softly, you actually get a much fuller sound.Does that approach require different miking techniques?No, it mostly involves the kinds of instruments the musicians use—we have them play very resonant instruments. I use a lot of semi-hollowbody guitars, and the drums have mostly calfskin heads and they’re all double-headed, so there’s a lot of resonance. We’re not focusing on the slap of the bass drum; we’re focusing on the boom of the bass drum. I love the acoustic bass because it’s a less specific boom. Blending it with an electric bass can work well, too, and sometimes I even add a third bass—a six-string, perhaps, playing low chords. The idea is to get a great density of sound on the bottom end.
I’ve also long been fascinated by the way you can change the feel of a piece of music by changing its equalization, changing how quickly the note arrives in your ear. By changing the tone, you can emphasize the back end of the note, the low part of the note that arrives later than the first part. If you de-emphasize the high part and emphasize the low part, you can slow a song down tremendously, just by equalization.You’ve said, “I use the technology in a way that’s either absolutely transparent or absolutely apparent; any of the middle ground is distracting.” What do you mean?I’m talking about the fact that if you’re looking at a film and the lighting is too obvious, then it distracts you from the story that’s being told. Even if you find yourself saying, “That’s the most beautiful lighting I’ve ever seen,” it takes you out of the story. You want to light it so that, even if it is the most beautiful lighting ever seen, the audience doesn’t notice it. That’s what I mean by transparency: using technology in a way that attracts no attention to itself.
I could say the same thing about singers. I don’t want singers to attract attention to the fact that they’re singing. I just want them to say the word. That word has its own meaning; you don’t have to give it meaning, so just say it. If they do some affectation at the end of it, then they obliterate the word and you don’t hear it. |
