Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Jacquire King

Only By The Night has been Kings Of Leon's first hit album in their native America, but is their fourth overall. Petraglia has worked on all four, while Ethan Johns (son of the legendary Glyn) and Jacquire King have swapped places twice. The former engineered, mixed and co-produced Youth And Young Manhood (2003) and Because Of The Times (2007), while King performed the same duties on Aha Shake Heartbreak (2004) and again on Only By The Night. Grammy Award-winning King has also worked with Tom Waits, Buddy Guy, Modest Mouse and Josh Ritter, and, like the band, makes his home in Nashville, Tennessee. This meant that preparations for the recording of Only By The Night began with informal social meetings.

"We just hung out together last year," recalls King, "and of course you start talking about the record and about the songs. Caleb would get out an acoustic or electric guitar and would show us some ideas that he had, including 'Sex On Fire'. Everyone felt that it was a great melody and song, and the band already has a reputation for singing about sex, so we encouraged him as much as we could. In any case, rock & roll has always been fairly explicit.

"We identified 18 songs that we wanted to work on for the record, and we had a couple of weeks of proper pre-production a few months later, with the band set up in a large rehearsal room, on a stage with a PA and so on, as if they were playing live. We really fine-tuned the arrangements and approach in the recording studio later on. I don't like to develop set ideas during pre-production about how a song is going to be executed, because you don't really know how things will work out and feel until you actually record them. Pre-production is about getting organised and having conversations about the songs and being ready to be efficient in the studio."

"For the current record, they again all played together in the studio, but the room at Blackbird was bigger and we had a little bit more isolation. I don't mind spill and bleed, because it gives you a very nice texture and a depth of sonic quality, but our main goals on the new record were to spend more time on the production and on Caleb's vocals. Although Caleb sang guide vocals while we were tracking, the only guide vocal that made it to the album was 'Cold Desert'. All the other vocals were overdubbed. Caleb is an insanely good singer, and we wanted more perspective on the vocal performance. It was nice to have the backing tracks down, and then talk with him about how he wanted to approach the vocal. He typically sang each song two, three or four times, and then we'd either make a composite of the different takes, or just used a complete take.

"In addition, we were experimenting with sound on the new record, instead of just going for energised, magic performances, as we'd done with the previous record we did together. We were still looking for that, but we also wanted broader textures and more layering of sounds. We changed drum setups, guitar amplifiers, effects, and so on, just trying different things to get a vibe going. We took our time, and at Blackbird we had the best gear in the world at our disposal. I recorded through Studio D's newer 96-channel API as well as a Neve BCM10 sidecar."

With Blackbird owning a staggering 1300 microphones, along with a wide range of vintage preamps and outboard gear, King certainly wasn't short of recording options. His approach was to set up many different microphones in the room, and then choose the mics and signal paths that were most appropriate to a particular song. "As I said before, one of the things that we really wanted to do with this record was to find the sonic placements and vibe and approach for each song that was right. We wanted to make a real production out of this album. The guys had made other records in a more simplified approach that moved faster. That was beautiful and appropriate because they are amazing performers, but they have grown as musicians and they wanted to shake things up a bit and spread their wings. So I had a general layout in the room, which would change from song to song, depending on what was most appropriate for the sound. I'm a real believer in recording the sound that you want, rather than keeping things safe and figuring out a way to make it work in the mix. It's an essential part of recording anything that has some meaning. With each decision you shape the next stage. If you leave stuff you record with too many options, you never really have a sense of where you're headed."

"I also put an AMS delay and a Cooper Time Cube on the bass, just to give it a little bit more ambience. The latter is something made by Urei. It's a tiny box with a speaker at one end and a mic at the other, and you get 11-14 milliseconds of weird, hollow, echoey delay/reverb. It gives a nice early reflection type of texture. Because the delay is so short, it also gives a chorus-filter like effect. I had several such additional effects running during recording. I set these effects up on a separate channel on the desk, but didn't record them to the 16-track. Instead, during the transfer to Pro Tools, I recorded them on separate tracks. This meant that I might record 22 to 24 tracks in Pro Tools during the transfer."

"The snare was recorded in similar fashion to the kick. I had the option of various mics that all went through a BCM10 and were submixed, through a GML 580 EQ, then a [Empirical Labs] Distressor, just to give it some control and make sure the snare hit the tape at the right level. On the track sheet a transformerless Shure SM57 is indicated. It was something I read about a couple of years ago, and it's a really good thing. It gives a nicer, more transparent, usable sound that requires less EQ. You lose a bit of level, but typically the things that you record with a 57 are so loud anyway that it doesn't matter. So I asked the people at Blackbird to take the transformer out of one of their 57s and they were gracious enough to do this. After recording I also ran the snare and kick through an Eventide DSP4000 on a Big Muff setting, and recorded that in Pro Tools during the transfer to the computer.

"The toms were recorded with three Josephson E22S mics, which are a modern type, and they're fantastic on the toms. There were a rack of toms plus two floor toms, and I also submixed the tom mics via a BCM10 to a stereo pair, panning the toms as was appropriate for the track. The overheads were recorded with a Telefunken Elam 251 going through a Neve 1081 preamp/EQ, then an Urei 1176, and then to tape. The ride cymbal and the hi-hat were recorded with RCA77 ribbon mics, the ones that David Letterman used to have on his show. When I use a mono overhead, as I did in this case, I like using ribbons, for a good stereo spread between ride and cymbal.

"I had half a dozen mics up for the room sound: a Neumann U67, M49, AKG C12, RCA 44, and/or a Royer SF12 in the echo chamber. I'd leave the door to the echo chamber open so the sound of the drums was happening in there as well, and I'd move the room mics around to get the sound that I wanted for a particular song. I would then bus different combinations to the two room tracks, depending on the song. In the case of 'Sex On Fire' I used a U67 and an RCA 44 for Room 1, and an RCA4 4 and an SF12 for Room 2. Some of these mics went through Neve preamps, some through an old RCA tube mic that Blackbird customised. The combination of room mics was bussed through a Fairchild 670.

"In general, I don't care for wide stereo coincident pairs of room mics on the drums. I would rather have interesting mono elements to pan as appropriate and then use reverbs or delay if I want to have a stereo spread in the background. My feeling is that the drums should be more centred in the stereo spectrum. I prefer to use things like guitars for the outer edges. Oh, I forgot to mention that there's also a drum loop that Matt [Followill, the band's lead guitarist] overdubbed. He played it on a keyboard, and it felt really good and we used Beat Detective for some manual editing to line it up better with the drums. I also overdubbed an old Simmons snare drum in the choruses."

"With the stuff I engineered and produced myself, mixing isn't so intense. I know what the artist wants and I typically record things as I want them to sound. So the mix is more about fine-tuning balances and EQ and adding some compression and effects and using the automation to bring the music to life. There usually is not a lot of surgery involved. Of course, it's harder to be objective when you've also produced something, and I've sometimes made the mistake of overdoing it in the mix. You have to put yourself in the mindset that you already did what you want to do, and the mix is all about balance and presentation.

"There is a method to my mix approach. When working on a song I haven't recorded, I will first push up all the faders to get a sense of the song and its the elements. With 'Sex On Fire' I did not have to do that, of course. After that I try to move very fast through the beginning stage and get the vocals in as early as possible. I typically start with the drums, because they have the most elements that need bringing together. I try to take only 15-20 minutes for them and then I start pushing other things up. I'll go to the bass next, and once I have the bass and drums roughed in, I'll push up the vocal, and only after that the other elements in the song. I've made the mistake of working hard on a track and getting all the elements in, and then finding that I didn't leave space for the vocals, which are the most important element of a song. For 'Sex On Fire' I worked like this, starting with drums, then bass, then bringing the vocals in, followed by guitars. Then I spent some time fine-tuning the drum loop. It wasn't finished, so I had to program it so it extended until the end of the song.

"I do a lot of mixing in Pro Tools, but don't mix entirely in the box because I also want the analogue components in my mix. I also think that summing to stereo is superior in the analogue realm, so I have a Folcrom passive summing network, which I use in combination with the desk. I like to be able to use analogue outboard gear. Analogue compression, for instance, is superior to plug-in compression, even though plug-in compression can be usable, and I do occasionally use it. I also like to use a lot of vintage outboard EQ, but it has a lot of fixed-frequency stuff, so it's not as flexible or precise as plug-in EQ. I use outboard EQ primarily for high-frequency shaping — digital EQ doesn't handle high frequencies very well. So a combination of outboard and plug-in EQs works for me. I also love [Audio Ease's] Altiverb, and combined with outboard reverb it gives me layers of artificial and natural reverb that can fit together really well. With regard to plug-ins, I think Waves and McDSP make great stuff and I have used it a lot, but I now try to use different stuff, to have more sonic identity. I pretty much use the Massenburg DesignWorks EQ plug-ins now all the time. I pretty much put that plug-in on everything. Even if I don't actually use it, it still alters the sound slightly."