The studio veteran who made Hendrix sound even better spends a week at Berklee.

By Rob Hochschild
(April 6, 2001)

	Nick Thomas (left) graduated shortly after working in the Berklee studios with Eddie Kramer (right) and is now employed at a studio in California.

One of the lessons Music Production and Engineering majors learned when Kramer visited Berklee recently was that making a band sound good goes way beyond issues of EQ and reverb to the broader issues of songwriting and musicianship.

"Not bad. That was a pretty steady take, actually," Kramer says. "Let's keep that one. Do one more straight away, while you're in the groove.

Sponsored by BASF Corp. and Shure Inc., Kramer's clinic marked the the third time in the last few years that the engineer/producer has spent a week at the school, creating a professional demo recording of a Berklee student group. It has proven to be an exhausting and exhilarating experience for students on both sides of the sound board.

Before Kramer began recording Fools Rush In, he gave a talk about his career in the industry and showed slides of photographs he had taken at sessions over the years. He plans to publish the photographs and his recollections of the artists and sessions in a book he will title, "From the Other Side of the Glass." He is also the founder and director of a production company called Remark Music Ltd.

Kramer took a break from recording basic tracks for Fools Rush In to talk about his work as an educator and a producer.

What are the steps in the recording process during this week at Berklee?

This is really me finding a band from the college and working with them and actually doing the whole process, from soup to nuts. Selecting material, working with the band, doing preproduction, recording the tracks, overdubbing them, and then mixing them. It's an entire process, from beginning to end. So it gives the students an opportunity to experience in real time what it takes to make a record. It can be very boring at times, it can be very challenging at times, it can be very exciting. All the emotional ins and outs of constructing the song, deconstructing the song, and reconstructing it. again.

How many tapes from student bands did you receive?

I got a box of about 80-odd submissions, either in CD or cassette form. The last time I was here it was 70. There's this wide range of material from jazz to rock to pop to heavy metal and hip hop and death metal and everything in between. The band we picked was Fools Rush In and they're very, very good.

How did you select this band?

Well, I do a lot of listening in my car. If you don't get them in the first 15 seconds (of a song) then you've lost them. That's only a small portion of how I judge things, but it is an indication, unfortunately, of what the attention span is. As far as I'm concerned, I look for a band that's had some sort of experience in the studio. I don't want a complete neophyte because that would be death-defying; we wouldn't have the time. So a band that's had some experience, and that's put out a CD that sounds fairly mature, and sounds like they really have their act together. The sound should be musically complete with interesting songs and intriguing lyric content.

When did you receive the tapes?

The week before I came up here. I picked the band and then talked to the band. We met and they brought me a cassette of their demo and we picked a song that was worthwhile. They came up to the hotel on Monday. I gave the lecture on Tuesday and preproduction was on Wednesday. Preproduction was rehearsal day. It was the day we deconstructed the song. It gives me an opportunity to give the band my input and help structure the song in such a way and make it better. And I definitely think the song has improved. The band is ecstatic that it sounds the way it does. It's grown from this basic idea to a fairly complete song. I mean there's a few things that are missing, but essentially it's all there.

What was the most significant change you made to the song?

When they met me at the hotel, they brought a friend of theirs who is sort of on the periphery of their nucleus and he said, 'Well, I do scratching on turntables.' I thought it might not be a bad idea to incorporate some sort of looping as part of the song. For the whole band it was a whole new thing; it was diving into the deep end without a life preserver. They'd never even worked with a DJ before. I just made this suggestion and it worked out very well. I also changed a lot of the guitar parts and a lot of the vocal parts and just generally altered things to make it sound better. The key to my philosophy is how to make things sound better.

How does Eddie Kramer the engineer make decisions about a recording in comparison to Eddie Kramer the producer?

I think I'm probably schizophrenic in that I can switch back and forth really rapidly. It's relatively seamless going from one thought process to the other. It's very hard to define where the thought process changes, when I go from thinking about the sonic quality versus the melodic quality, or the song quality. Where those two things cross over is a very gray area in my brain, and so I automatically and instinctively make decisions based upon experience, my musical heritage, and being exposed to music my whole life.

I don't sit down at the console and say I have to get this specific sound. I react initially to the song - that in and of itself will suggest to me what the final product is going to be. I hear the song in its raw demo state and I can picture 20 or 30 steps down the road to when it's a final mix and what it's going to sound like. I think most producers can do that.

How did the student engineer, Nick Thomas, do?

He's a very good kid. When I go into institutions like Berklee, I pick one or two students to work with who are obviously just at the point where they're ready to assume the role of engineer in the real world. (Nick) is very close, he's ready to go, certainly will be after this!

Describe what it's been like working on new releases of Jimi Hendrix recordings.

It's a monumental part of my work. It's just always there; I'm always doing stuff for the Hendrix family. We just did the box set with four CDs (The Jimi Hendrix Experience, MCA, 2000). Four hours of the best Hendrix you've ever heard. I just did my first 5.1 Surround Sound of Hendrix music, from the Isle of Wight. We've reconstituted it and put it back to its original length: two hours. I'll be working with a band down in Mexico next and I just finished a record down in Rio de Janeiro down in Brazil. I'm always flying around the world doing different things.

What is it like to do that work and then come to Berklee and switch gears to become a teacher for a week?

They're students, they're learning and that's the challenge and thrill of it. You pass on something of what you've learned over the last 30 years and give to the next generation and hopefully they'll pick up on it and become better recording engineers and producers.

What do the engineers seem to need most at this point?

It's discipline, and I will say that Berklee is my benchmark by which one judges every school in the country. Berklee's the best as far as I'm concerned, in terms of its program and what it can deliver. That's not to say the other schools are bad—the other schools are fantastic. They all have their great programs, but the way Berklee teaches—the fact that it's so intense and that you have to play an instrument. That, to me, is so critical, and that's not always the case in the other institutions. I'm not knocking them at all. They do a fantastic job, but I have a personal preference for schools that insist upon music being the driving force behind the whole thing. An engineer comes out of Berklee and he or she really knows their stuff.

Links of Interest
•	Kramer '97 Four years ago, Eddie Kramer gave a clinic for all Berklee students.
•	The Hit Maker Producer/Arranger Arif Mardin '61 reflects on a career that has earned him a NARAS recognition previously given to music greats like Count Basie, George Martin, and George Gershwin.