GARY BARLOW: Recording, Production & Songwriting

Most people knew that Gary Barlow was the songwriting force behind boy‑band stars Take That, but his long‑term interest in production and recording is less well documented. Now recording and co‑producing his second solo album, he looks set to put the memory of his former band far behind him. Matt Bell pays him a visit at his impressive home studio.

"Are you sure this is it?" I murmur uncertainly in the general direction of the passenger seat, whilst craning my neck out of the car window to survey the surrounding North‑West countryside, "I think it might have been down that lane there on the left". All of a sudden Richard Ecclestone, SOS's photographer for this particular day's work, brightens perceptibly. "This is definitely the place, Matt," he grins, and points some 200 yards down the road, to a double gate in some roadside railings remarkably like the padlocked rusty affair outside which we have come to a halt. This one, however, is freshly painted, and is further distinguished by an attendant gaggle of about 20 teenage girls, patiently waiting for the occupant of the house behind the gates and railings to emerge. Some even vainly clutch what look like gifts.

It may be over two and a half years since the demise of Take That, but Gary Barlow's fans are a terribly tenacious lot.

Hello To All This

Ren Swan compiling backing vocals on Pro Tools at Gary's studio, August '98. To Ren's left is the corner containing the keyboard synths, where drum programming takes place on the Akai MPC3000. Behind Ren's monitor is another Pro Tools setup for audio editing. At the back of the room is Gary's writing/sequencing/sampling setup, and in the middle is the Euphonix CS2000 desk and Otari RADAR remote control.

Sitting with top‑notch freelance engineer Ren Swan in the fantastically well‑equipped home studio located at the side of his English country manor house, Gary Barlow, once the sole songwriter in the massively successful boy band Take That, and now a solo artist, has a couple of shocks in store for us. Firstly, despite the oft‑ego‑enhancing effects of seven years of dealings with the mass‑market music industry, teenage adulation on a global scale, and the accumulated proceeds of a respectable brace of self‑penned number ones, he's a tremendously nice bloke. Secondly, he is very keen to talk to Sound On Sound.

"I've always bought Sound On Sound, and I've wanted a feature for ages," he explains, beaming us welcome. "Unfortunately, this isn't the obvious kind of thing for a press person to consider, 'cause naturally they don't really know what goes on here. I'm really into talking about gear and production, I love it, and it's a side of me that people don't even know exists."

Ah yes, a distant bell rings... wasn't Gary the one who actually wrote all the songs in Take That? Well, that explains it then; he must have at least a passing acquaintance with the inside of a studio. But surely Ren Swan will be handling all the real work? As we while away the afternoon watching him hard at work on his second solo album, however, adjusting outboard valve EQ here and bouncing a set of finely textured backing vocals through Pro Tools plug‑ins there, it becomes abundantly clear. Forget everything you might have thought you knew about Gary Barlow. When it comes to modern hi‑tech recording and production, this guy knows exactly what he's doing.

Off The Road

Gary's writing, sequencing, and sampling setup: (left rack, top to bottom) Sony DAT, Roland JV880, Korg 01R/W, Studio Electronics SE1, Roland JV2080, Akai S1100; (mid rack) Denon cassette deck, Tascam cassette deck, Apple Mac running Logic Audio; (right rack) Denon cassette deck, Oberheim Matrix 1000, Korg Wavestation A/D, Emu Morpheus, Emu Proteus 1, Roland JV1080, Akai 3200; (below) Genelec 1029A monitors, Roland A90 master keyboard.

While Gary might not yet have succeeded in making many people outside the record industry aware that he knows the difference between, say, an Otari RADAR and an Atari ST, his other talents, those of gifted vocalist and songwriter, have never been in doubt. If by nothing else, his place in the pop star firmament is forever secured by his superb 1995 worldwide number one single for Take That, 'Back For Good'. At the time of our interview, Gary is charging headlong into work on his as‑yet‑untitled second solo album. At this stage (August 1998), he conservatively estimates that no more than 40 percent of the new record is in the can, but already it seems to be shaping up quite differently to his first post‑Take That album. The adult contemporary leanings of 1996's Open Road weighed perhaps a little too heavily on Gary's still very youthful shoulders; but then, as Gary's friend and now producer and co‑producer Jon Douglas will say later, "Gary's still a young lad; he hasn't started sitting about in his country house with his pipe and slippers on yet, you know. I think on his first album he felt he had something to prove as a solo artist; on this record, I'd like him to be thought of as a bit more relaxed." Certainly, if what we hear of the work in progress is anything to go by, the new 'relaxed' approach is paying off: the song Gary and Ren spend the afternoon working on, 'All That I've Given Away' is, in my opinion, the best thing Gary's written since 'Back For Good'.

I'm Only Here For The Gear

The formidable Rack Of Doom (or highly expensive outboard): AMS Neve 1081 mic preamp, Manley compressor/limiter, Anthony DeMaria tube compressor/ limiter, Lexicon PCM70 effects, Manley VoxBox voice channel, Otari RADAR digital recorder.

Gary's studio, as should be apparent from the pictures accompanying this article, is pretty impressive. It's not huge, but it's beautifully laid out, being built around a main control room containing a 48‑channel Euphonix CS2000 digitally‑controlled analogue console, three Macs each running Digidesign Pro Tools systems and Emagic's Logic Audio, and two Otari RADAR multitrack digital recorders. A wooden rack packed with synth modules and controlled from a Roland master keyboard takes up most of a wall, while a variety of keyboard synths line another, and racks of outboard — some of which is outrageously expensive — nest lower down, at crouching level. Off to one side is a live room for vocal work, which contains a Neumann MK149 mic and Gary's enormous white Yamaha Disklavier, the impeccably engineered acoustic piano which is also capable of recording all of its outpourings over MIDI. It's clearly not just any old home studio, and yet Gary is as relaxed in it as if it were a bedroom containing a couple of second‑hand reel‑to‑reels and a Studiomaster mixer.

Gary's fascination with home recording and production goes back almost as long as his interest in songwriting. Although, like so many others, he was the victim of a sustained campaign of piano lessons when he was young, the first keyboard he owned himself, at the age of 13, was a Roland SH101 monosynth, although he rapidly outgrew it and began playing a Hammond organ. By 14, he was playing in working men's clubs at weekends to save up for a Yamaha DX7. He was hooked. "All the money I earned, I put back into gear. It took me 13 months to get the DX, but it was worth it. I used to go out playing club gigs and get in at two in the morning, and then put on my headphones and play until four... I was mad. That was another good thing about the DX7, though; I could play with headphones and not disturb anyone.

"I earned 140 quid a week, which most people would have thought was a lot of money then, but not if you had a bedroom studio, it wasn't! Studios are like black holes when it comes to money. I got the Roland D50 workstation then, which was brilliant for the time, and bought an Atari ST and Cubase. I had a tiny Boss 16‑channel mixer, and a Roland TR707 drum machine — that seemed the real deal, then, because it was on Top Of The Pops every week!

"I began to write when I was about 14 or 15, and wanted to start putting stuff down onto multitrack, so I got a Fostex 260 4‑track. I had a 8‑track cassette multitracker for a bit, but then I went back onto reel‑to‑reel, with a Tascam 24‑track. I had that for quite a while, until I worked with a guy called Nigel Wright on the first Take That album. He had two ADATs; that was when I first experienced digital recording. Anyway, Nigel said that if I had a couple of ADATs, I could record the whole band at my house, and just send the record company the tape. I thought that was a great idea, and the guys loved it, because it was so relaxed; they could just hang out at my place, and it didn't matter if anyone made mistakes when they were singing. I had three ADATs and a BRC. The only bad thing was, you needed to leave them about 30 hours for them to rewind and lock up together. That proved frustrating for singers; for example when I was recording the lads at my house, we'd often have to re‑take because the ADATs hadn't started together in time."

Once Take That got their first taste of fame, the everyday pressures of boy‑band life made it impossible for Gary to keep up with developments in studio technology. Access to his Cheshire‑based home setup was also restricted because of the amount of time he spent in London. "For the first three years of Take That, I was hardly in the studio. Only to write, really. And even that was hardly ideal. 'On Monday and Tuesday, you go home and write some tunes for the album...' I couldn't just turn a key and come out with an album. So what I used to do was, when everyone would get the occasional week's holiday — that's when I would go home and write. I knew that if I didn't come up with the goods, we'd be doing cover versions for our next few singles, which would be the worst thing.

"I didn't have time to experiment with recordings in the studio, either. When I was in Take That, people would say to us 'right, for three hours on the 22nd of May, you're going to do some vocals in the studio... and then you're going to fly to Germany'! There was never any time to really get involved in things.

"My first proper experience of recording after the band split was in 1996, when [producer] Chris Porter came up to my house for a whole month; after the way things had been before, that was just brilliant. I learnt so much from him at that point, and I started to get back into gear again..."

With his interests in recording reawakened, Gary had his current studio constructed with the aid of Manchester‑based hi‑tech retailer Sound Control. "It was worth doing, because I knew I'd be spending more and more time here for writing, and I'd always dreamed of having a studio like this."

Radar Love

Keyboards, keyboards, everywhere: (left) Roland Juno 106, Yamaha SY85, Roland D50, and Gary's original pride and joy, the Yamaha DX7; (right) Clavia Nord Lead, Roland VK7, Korg Trinity, Roland JD800.

As already mentioned, the key elements in the control room of Gary's studio are the Euphonix desk and the Otari RADARs, of which he is very fond. "I make a lot of my gear purchasing decisions from talking to other people I work with. I usually look at something really carefully before I buy it, especially software. The only thing I rushed into was the RADAR, and that was just because I was so tired of waiting for my ADATs to lock up. I like to ask myself: what do I need this new thing to do? You've got to have a reason for wanting something; there's no point just buying something for the sake of it."

So what attracted him to the Euphonix? The answers, it seems, lie in the CS2000's instantly repatchable digital routing flexibility, instant recall, and uncoloured sound, although it took producer Chris Porter to bring the latter to Gary's attention. "The main difference was the instant recall. It means I can be working on three or four songs at a time. Something as simple as an EQ move can inspire me, and then all I have to do is press a couple of keys and it's stored. It's also quick to use. I have a lot of musicians coming up here, and it's so fast for getting balances and mixes right... it's just the best desk there is. I also love it because you don't hear it. SSL desks have a sound that I just don't like; they make everything sound very compressed, they almost shave off all the top end. But Chris Porter's mixes on his Euphonix always sounded crystal clear. He pointed out that it was the SSLs that were giving the other mixes the sound I didn't like. Ever since then, I can hear it. I can listen on on the radio and I know when something's been mixed on an SSL.

"The RADARs are the other best two things I've bought. One travels with me to sessions elsewhere, the other stays here. They're so quick to use. I can do hundreds of tracks of backing vocals in no time — and it feels like a tape machine to operate, as well. Last week, we did a vocal session in London with Leslie Garrett, the opera singer, for the last track on the new album, 'Yesterday's Girl' — and it was done in two hours! The RADAR was backed up onto an Exabyte, packed into the car, and that was it!

"Basically, though, I think the RADAR is designed with singers and writers in mind. I love the way you can stick the recording bit in a rack out of sight and just forget about it. I can even just set up a mic here in the control room and sing straight to RADAR, controlling it from the remote transport panel myself, even on my own vocal sessions. George Michael did that a lot on the Older album, apparently. It's addictive to have control over what you're doing!"

A Question Of Environment

Gary's priceless aid to composition, the circa 1980‑vintage Panasonic ghettoblaster.

Though compact, the studio has a definite feeling of having different areas devoted to different jobs. There's the live room for vocals and for Gary to write while at the Disklavier; there is the wall of modules and samplers with a computer for working up programming‑based backing tracks or demos; there's an Akai MPC3000 sampling workstation for building up rhythm tracks; and now Pro Tools workstations for editing and compiling tracks, complementing the facilities running under Logic Audio. All this, I venture, together with the natural airiness of the room, make it a very pleasant environment in which to work. Gary's response is emphatic and reveals something of his creative process: "This is a great room to write in. I've always thought of music as environment‑led. For example, if I've finished writing the melody to a song, I'll move out of the studio to write the lyrics, because lyrics are not a musical or technology‑based thing. I like it so that if somebody sits down and reads just the lyrics, they'll mean something without a melody going across them. And if I can sit at a table and be happy with the lyrics, then I usually know that they'll sound good in the track!"

Gary prefers to keep technology to the barest minimum when he is writing a song, either by composing at the acoustic piano, or by making use of his synths and technological aids, but in as unobtrusive a way as possible. "I'll just use a piano patch and bass, and a simple kit sound for just the basic rhythm, long before I start messing around with drum sounds and all that." he says. However, due to the complex way his vast array of modules and processors are interconnected, he paradoxically needs to use technology to keep technology out of the writing process: "Logic's Environment page. I have six Environments in Logic to help me route everything. The reason I like this setup is that if I'm writing, and I think 'oh, I can hear French horn part going over that bit' I can press a button and boom! there's my French horn sound; I don't have to mess about setting things up and plugging things in. Most of the outboard is set up in a standard way too, so every time I set up the Euphonix, for example, it'll have compression on the snare, and so on... just stuff you don't want to be bothered with when you're writing, because you have to keep focused on it. Writing's the hard bit; then comes the fun part, which is building it up from the original idea, and making it sound like a record!"

From Idea To Demo & Beyond

Gary in his studio's live room with his principal songwriting tool, the Yamaha Disklavier acoustic MIDI piano, and his favourite Neumann mic.

To turn a completed song into a finished record production, Gary often enlists the help of other producers, either to co‑produce the final track, or to take over all production responsibilities. If the latter is the case, he will always produce his own 'demo' for the producer to give them an idea of what he had in mind for the track. This much‑abused term is, however, quite inadequate to describe what Gary puts together for the benefit of his producers: havi ng heard some of his 'demos', I think they are better described as fully developed arrangements, complete with intricate rhythm programming, ear candy, sampled loops, and carefully layered synth textures, frequently underpinned by the acoustic piano. Ren Swan puts it best when he says "For a lot of people, Gary's demos would be releasable on CD as they are." Nevertheless, he prefers to have collaborators help him out: "You never move on unless you work with different people; it's how you grow, and it's also how you learn.

"With the demos, what I always try to do is present not only the song, but the instrumental and structural arrangement, because that, to me, is part of the song. To me, a demo isn't just lyrics and a melody; it's also the string line and a chorus, and where they come in that's important. Also, people frequently have their own ideas about how you should sound. So if you give them a demo that's too open‑ended, you can guarantee that they'll try and take it in a direction that you don't want to go. A lot of producers do feel they have to put their stamp on something. It's a waste of time and money, that, and it's a bit soul‑destroying as well, especially when you think you had a good song in the first place. If there's a demo, though, they know exactly where you wanted to go.

"That's why I chose to work with people like Grant and Jon for the next album, because they add something to your track without going in and totally reworking everything — they remain sympathetic to what I do. And that's the job of a good producer, I think."

The Producers

Gary's producer Jon Douglas.

Enter Grant Mitchell and Jon Douglas, Gary's chosen collaborators for his next album. The extent of their involvement varies from track to track, as Gary explains: "We're trying all kinds of different approaches to track production for this album. I have done my own productions here, and me and Jonny are doing a couple of co‑productions. Jonny has also produced some tracks on his own, and so has Grant."

Grant has worked as Gary's producer before, but Jon, best known for his production work on George Michael's Older, was an unknown quantity before this project. Gary: "You just have to try things out, and see how you get along. It's been a great success with Jonny. He's the same age as me, the youngest producer I've ever had, and I really feel we're on the same wavelength. The track that Jon has just finished, 'Lie To Me' is amazing; my demo suggested what the song could be, but his finished production really takes it up another level."

By way of illustration, Gary plays his demo for this song. And yes, he's right; though it's a polished, accomplished and fully arranged song in this version, the original demo of 'Lie To Me' (a dark, piano‑led song about deceiving oneself with respect to the amount of love your partner feels for you) doesn't hook you particularly. It's good, but not outstanding. Gary explains that Jon has now picked up on a very slight hip‑hop feel to his demo, and programmed an almost trip‑hop backing, which fits with the downbeat mood perfectly. In keeping with the Massive Attack‑style remodelling of the track, Wil Malone, arranger of the thunderous strings on the Bristol threepiece's 1991 classic 'Unfinished Sympathy', has now also been asked by Jon to supply the track with a 'dark' string arrangement. The results will no doubt be interesting...

Preserving The Tone

With so many different types of production going on, I wonder how Gary will ensure that the finished album remains stylistically consistent. This, explains Gary, is where Ren Swan comes into his own. It so happens that Ren is not only engineering for everyone working on this project, he will also play a front‑line role in mixing it.

"Ren will have been involved on nearly all of this album by the time we've finished, because he works with Jonny all the time, and he engineered Grant Mitchell's work too — so he's the tie that links everything together," explains Gary. "It's a joy that I've got someone there who's always considering what the last track sounded like, and also wanting the next one to move forward. We work very well together, me and him. I think in another year, he'll be producing too."

According to Gary, the technology he now has at his fingertips in his studio has allowed the team to approach recordings more freely than would have been possible several years ago. By way of experiment, a gospel choir planned for inclusion in one track was laid down on one of Gary's RADARs at an evening session in Sarm before rest of the track was recorded (traditionally the choir would have been laid to the multitrack last of all). "I just thought 'get the choir on, and that'll start the feel for the track off as I mean to go on'" explains Gary. "Then, digitally, we sync'ed up a band performance on top of the choir recording later. That was a nice way round of doing things; having the choir's energy to play to made the drummer do all sorts of things that he wouldn't have thought of. That's the power of this technology — there are no limits.

Writing's the hard bit; then comes the fun part, which is building it up from the original idea, and making it sound like a record!

"It's also fantastic to be able to run MIDI and vocals side by side. We did this orchestral session for the album closer 'Yesterday's Girl' a couple of weeks ago, where I wanted to try a string intro on the front which was similar to the chorus, but we weren't sure whether it would work out, so we recorded the intro and main track in two pieces, knowing we had the technology in Pro Tools or Logic Audio to put the two together later without any audible join. As it turned out, the intro was gorgeous, so we do have to knit them together now. But having the freedom to do that kind of thing is like a new world."

Ren mentions another great advantage of Pro Tools: "There is one major reason for having this software, and I think we all know what it is: Antares' Auto Tune plug‑in. It's extraordinary: such a brilliant program. Before I got Pro Tools, I had the old Spectral PRISMA PC‑based hard‑disk recording system, and me and Grant used it to comp the vocal to the track 'Wondering', which he produced. Gary hardly needs any repitching, but Grant has got such good ears, he can hear when individual syllables are a few cents out, and so it took us two days. It took an hour to do the same thing to one of the other tracks with Auto Tune."

As the afternoon wears on, Ren and Gary return to work on the catchy 'All That I've Given Away'. This track is a joint Douglas/Barlow co‑production, with a scratch rhythm track programmed at Gary's studio (later replaced with one of Jon's before the final mix), and featuring contributions from ace acoustic session guitarist Phil Palmer, strings, and a female backing vocalist. The strident string arrangement is by Gary's long‑time arranger Chris Cameron. "Chris will come here, and I'll give him chords to work from, and he then arranges them on my synths to give me an idea of how they'll sound first. Strings for a track like this need doing properly, with properly voiced parts, otherwise they sound a bit basic, I think. This track'll be ready to mix very soon, after a bit of cleaning up."

Gary and Ren both like to do as much work as they can before a mix, cleaning up all the tracks of the recording and removing all between‑verse coughs or heavy breathing so that no noise makes it through to the final mix.

Gary: "Then, when we come to mix, we don't have to do anything but press Play."

Ren: "You push up the faders, and all the tracks sound great already. It also makes sense to take time to do that here rather than in London, where it'll cost you a grand a day for a studio."

With the demos, what I always try to do is present not only the song, but the instrumental and structural arrangement, because that, to me, is part of the song.

Mixing It

Once again, Gary has very firm views on mixing; he hates to leave anything to chance. Fortunately, Ren, Jon and Grant all share his vision, preferring to record sounds to the multitrack that are as close as possible to the finished work, thereby rendering the final multitrack mixdown more of a level‑balancing session than a fine‑tuning of frequencies.

Gary: "I'm not the kind of person who likes to put things down flat with no EQ and mess with them later; I always want to get it sounding good to start with."

Ren is less damning of the alternative 'sort‑it‑all‑out‑in‑the‑mix' method, but still agrees with Gary: "I think different approaches work for different types of material. If you're doing a house tune or a remix, it's different; you can arrange it as you mix it, sling all your ammo onto the tape, and sort it all out in the mix. That's challenging too, and the guys who work that way are really good at it. With this sort of stuff, though, you want to know that it's right when when you stick it down — or as near as you can get it, anyway."

Although all the preparation for mixing is done at Gary's studio, he never actually mixes there. "I just don't feel that this is the right environment for mixing. Mixing is probably the soulless bit of making music for me. It's about buttons and speakers, and that's not the fun part for me... So I prefer to be in an environment where I don't want to be for very long to do it. London is perfect for that; there's that sense of it being the place you go to work... But because we put everything to tape pretty much as it's going to be, we don't need to take too long over it. But I love tinkering with completed stereo mixes once we've finished them, putting them through plug‑ins like DUY's Shape and hardware like the Neve 1081 or the Manley compressor to sharpen different aspects of them."

The Way Forward

As our interview draws to a close, Gary refuses to be drawn on a name for the album, saying that not only is it not finished yet, the track lineup may alter considerably before it appears. "There's never a day when you go 'Right, I've finished writing, now let's go and record it' — because that evening you might come up with something that's better than anything you've done up to then. You could be cutting the album and start singing a song on the way home from the mastering house which you just have to get on there!"

At present, assuming he comes up with no more killer songs (and he might; as were going to press rumours began to fly that he'd teamed up to write a song for the album with an ex‑member of 10cc), Gary's still‑untitled album should be out around next Easter. And what of life after this album? Might he consider producing other people?

"Production is something I've really wanted to get into," he admits, "I've just never had the time. But there will come a point where I want to do that; I certainly want to get into making albums and writing songs for other people from home... I don't want to be on the front page of the tabloids every week and followed round the streets by a cameraman; I want to just get on and enjoy music. Like now, I've got the time to spend in the studio. I couldn't even have done this five years ago — I'd have had someone on my back pressuring me to get the record out — but I've got the opportunity now. And I've also got the chance to experiment, rather than just being happy with the first thing I do." He smiles. "To be honest, I feel like I'm just starting now."