GC PRO ADVISORY BOARD: John Paterno

John has been particularly generous with his time and I can’t thank him enough. He is always willing to share his knowledge or beta-test a new piece of gear. John’s passion for making records and his love of music remind us why we got into this business.

Sometimes less really is more. John's home setup features a G4 laptop, a pair of monitors and a small rack of killer gear. "I don’t think that records are made in the computer. I think they’re made by people, for people, and with people." Mixing in the 21st century. "I always try and put myself in the position of the musician. Man, if I were a drummer and I had to sit there and hit the kick drum for half an hour and then the snare drum for half an hour, I’d be bored out of my mind." John's cool Z-Vex NanoAmp.

GC Pro: What got you into this crazy business? JP: I’ve always been a big fan of music. The first music I remember hearing was the Beatles and I’ve been hooked ever since! I’ve always had a love for gear and the way things work. My dad’s an airplane mechanic, and I’ve always had a bit of this, "Open it up, get under the hood and check it out and see what’s going on." So I think the engineering thing was a combination of my love of music and my love of systems and how things work together - that synergy. So yeah, I love gear. I was the guy in college who got that Mike Landau guitar sound because I always had a little rack full of gear and was able to figure out how to maximize switching it back and forth to get what I wanted out of it. GC Pro: When did you start playing? JP: I started playing around seven or eight years old. My dad played, so I used to watch him, and I’d kind of steal his guitar and play it. I’ve been playing for a good portion of my life. GC Pro: You went on to school to study music? JP: I ended up in the University of Miami’s music engineering program. I never thought I was going to major in music, but I ended up with a major in music and a minor in electrical engineering. You had to be in the music school to be in the music engineering program, so I took a six-month crash course in jazz to get in. Two weeks after I got out of Miami, I moved to L.A. GC Pro: You knew you wanted to be where the record industry was? JP: Nashville didn’t interest me. I had friends in L.A., and I ended up with a job offer. I had a place to go, which was pretty rare. And I started out as an assistant; I didn’t have to start out as a runner, which was a big deal to me at the time. The first place I worked was Cornerstone Studios out in Chatsworth, and I got the job through my friend Joe Barresi. GC Pro: Did that lead to other projects? JP: It’s weird. It’s like, I started out my first year as an "independent assistant". I was working - I had five or six studios that were one-room facilities and I was the second guy. The main guy would need some time off so i would get a call to fill in. So I always seemed to be able to find work, or have enough work. "So-and-so can’t make it this week, can you do it?" Yeah, okay, great. And I had enough of those places where I was able to stay busy. Sunset Sound was one of the places on that list, and they actually hired me on as a staff engineer in the summer of 1991. I worked at Sunset for five years as an assistant, and then was independent by 1996. GC Pro: When did you meet Mitchell [Froom] and Tchad [Blake]? JP: I met them at Sound Factory. The first whole record I did with them was in the fall of ’91. The manager at Sunset put me on it because felt sorry for me since things were slow in town that summer. The manager told me, "Bring a good book, because you won’t be doing any work for the next six weeks." GC Pro: Is that because he’s so hands-on? JP: Tchad was completely hands-on because he’d come up through the Sound Factory. I was determined not to sit on my ass for six weeks. So I would sit between Tchad and the patch bay. After the first day, he was either going to ask me to do things or he was going to have to go around me, but there was no way I was going to sit around…(laughs). So we hit it off, and I was his guy for the next several years. GC Pro: What were some of the records you did together? JP: Los Lobos’ Kiko and Colossal Head, Suzanne Vega’s 99.9, American Music Club’s Mercury, Sam Phillips Martinis and Bikinis, Soul Coughing’s Ruby Vroom. I have a lot of great memories…that was when Tchad was really coming into his own with his sound and his thing. GCP: That was with Mitchell? JP: It was with Mitchell primarily, but the Sam Phillips record he mixed was a T-Bone Burnett production, and Soul Coughing Tchad did on his own. Mitchell was very much involved with almost all those other things. They were a great team to work for. I learned how to make records from those guys, absolutely. At one point, I just decided I just couldn’t assist anymore. I couldn’t sit around and watch other people work. So I had a couple of months there where I co-produced a film score with the Los Lobos guys. That was my first step out on my own completely. I’d done some other things; I’d done a record with Ted Hawkins called The Next Hundred Years. But when I finally decided to go independent it was kinda scary. I was doing this film score and it was supposed to go one month, then it went two months, and after that I didn’t have a lot going on. I ended up wiring for a couple months, doing studio install things. And then I ended up getting called again for a couple things and it’s been a straight shot ever since. GC Pro: You’ve done a number of things as Mitchell’s engineer, right? JP: I did the Joan Osbourne record called ‘Righteous Love’, a couple of Vonda Shepard records with him. An interesting artist called Mia Doi Todd; a singer-songwriter from the East Coast named Jeffrey Gaines. Mitchell did a solo piano record that’ll be out this spring that I recorded and he’s been nice enough to give me co-production on it as well. So yeah, I did quite a bit with Mitchell. He’s unbelievable. There’s nobody quite like him, his depth of understanding and his economy . He’s an amazing guy to work for. GC Pro: In terms of technique, are there things you would consider your own tricks of the trade? JP: I think what happens is you end up finding your own voice. There are things that I’ve learned from Tchad that I use to this day, and there are things that I’ve learned from a lot of other engineers that I just picked up over time. You see something and think, "Oh, that’s cool, I’m going to remember that." You try to apply it to your own thing, and if it sticks, then great, it becomes part of your arsenal. If not, then maybe you try a variation. I learned early on that the worst thing I could do was to try to imitate somebody else, ‘cause it just doesn’t work. When I try to be Tchad Blake, I fail miserably. But I’m pretty good at being John Paterno most of the time... So yeah, I’ve developed my own things. You come up with mic choices that you like. I personally seem to like two microphones on everything that I record! Snare drums, kick drums, guitar amps, bass amps. I haven’t tried it on a vocal yet, but that may be my next thing to try. I’ve come up with little things that way. I have no problem experimenting; I like trying new things. Sometimes you’ll come up with something -- you’ll try a microphone like a Beyer M-160 or an RE-15, something you’ve never tried in a particular application, just to see. Sometimes it works brilliantly and sometimes it fails miserably, but at least you tried. GC Pro: You get those magic moments you don’t anticipate sometimes. JP: Yeah. And what’s nice is that as you go along, you educate yourself with your tools. Sometimes, for me, it’s the most gratifying when I imagine something in my head and I’m able to figure out how to do it quickly enough to where nobody else realizes that I’ve been thinking about it. GC Pro: You carry around a lot of your own stuff that you like. What are some of your favorite pieces that you always have on an important sessions? JP: There are certain things that I definitely love to have with me. The Little Labs stuff, the PCP and the IBP. Chandler Limited gear, because I really love what he does with his EMI-style stuff, and his EQs and pres. GC Pro: You’re talking about the Neve-style LTD-1 and the EMI-style pre. JP: And the EMI Limiter. They have a new thing coming out that I was beta-testing for them. It’s the TG Channel, which is an EMI-style mic pre and a 3-band passive EQ. It’s great. I have an ADL compressor that I really like; I use it on vocals. I have an Alan Smart stereo compressor that’s always with me, the C2. And a couple of vintage pieces, like LA-3As. I tend to buy things that I think: a) I’m not going to be able to find in other studios and b) the piece has something that’ll help me do my gig better and faster. I have a pretty good amount of stuff, and when I show up to a session it usually gets used, especially the mic pres and the compressors. It’s stuff that I understand, and it helps me get the sound I am imagining, whatever that is. GC Pro: What are your favorite vocal mics? JP: I love the Telefunken 251. I really like the Soundelux 251 and theU-95S. I think David Bock makes great mics. And I love U-47s when I get a chance, although they’re not always the right call. With vintage mics, it’s very hit or miss depending on where you go. You could put up four 251s, and one of them will sound amazing, two will sound okay, and one of them isn’t quite going to do what you needed it to do. GC Pro: You’ve mention speed a number of times. Is there more pressure than ever for speed on a session? JP: To me, speed is important because I always try and put myself in the position of the musician. Man, if I were a drummer and I had to sit there and hit the kick drum for half an hour and then the snare drum for half an hour, and then the toms, I’d be bored out of my mind. And it’s boring for me. Plus, as the day goes on, by the time they get to actually playing a groove, they hit the drums differently anyway. I’m much more into having somebody go out there and just have fun and play, because the odds are they’re gonna play like they’re gonna play when you’re doing takes, which is important. You don’t want to set a kick drum level one way, and then when they start paying have it be 30db louder than when they started! So I always think that it’s more comfortable for people to go out and play and have fun, and not waste their time. If you can minimize the setup, it keeps the vibe, keeps the flow going, and people aren’t bored. That’s the last thing you want, a bunch of bored musicians and then try to say, "Let’s get our excitement up now." So speed is important to me because I want to make sure people are having fun. It always shows. When people are not having fun, it’s the worst 12-hour day you can ever spend. GC Pro: In terms of technology, you got involved in Pro Tools and digital audio workstations pretty early on. How much do you still use analog in typical sessions? JP: I love using tape. Tape is where I came up; that’s where I learned how to make records. I loved using tape. But the economics and the logistics don’t always allow for the use of it. So, what do you do? You can either cry about the fact that, "Oh tape’s gone, I’m so sad, digital sucks," or you find a way to make it work for you. That’s something I’ve tried to do because I love making records. If people want to use a wire recorder, I’m going to find a way to make it work and to capture something - to document whatever’s going on, because that’s what I love to do. With the advent of Pro Tools, I grew into it; I learned it. I actually went into Pro Tools kicking and screaming at first, because I’d been around a lot of Pro Tools editors that weren’t very musical. And I had to sit there with these people for hours, saying, "Move this here. No, move this there." So finally I just bought my own system, and it was a good thing I bought it when I did, because it’s been a very valuable tool. And it’s just that; it’s a tool. It’s part of the whole record-making process. It’s not the center of it for me. It’s very advantageous to be able to edit and to mix and do things, especially now. I mean, I’m doing a lot of things on my laptop! It’s great to edit a vocal or try an arrangement idea quickly and at your convenience. There’s a ton of power in that. But I also don’t think that records are made in the computer. I think they’re made by people, for people, and with people. That’s always been the dividing line for me. That’s where I miss tape, because tape made you commit to things. But I try to bring my analog philosophy to Pro Tools: performance, performance, performance. In the end, no one’s gonna know that you spent six hours on that kick drum sound, or you spent two days editing that drum take. All the end listener going to know is if it moves them or not. My contention is that it sounds best if it’s performed. GC Pro: So in the tracking phase, get all the emotion and all the passion you can. JP: Yeah. Because it translates regardless of what the medium is. It’s a lot of work to make something that’s not performed well come across. GC Pro: What are some of the other things that you like do related or unrelated to music? JP: I still like to play. I got so busy with the engineering thing when I first started, when I was assisting, I forgot about the actual reason I got into it – the playing part, the music part. Over the last several years, I’ve just discovered how much I liked playing music still. I’d like to get together with people more. I’ve been buying guitars to use on sessions, but also cause I just like ‘em. I have fun playing. My other big interest is photography. I really like taking photos. There’s something about it, and this is what I’ve always gotten out of music. I can remember hearing "Meet the Beatles" when I was a kid, feeling the immediacy and the capturing of this spirit. I’ve always had it from music, and when I got into photography, it was the same thing for me. There’s this capturing the moment, or seeing something with some type of clarity. I guess I like documenting these moments; it’s what I enjoy doing. When I got into photography, my mixing got better. It made me think about the important elements of composition, and things I hadn’t been thinking about when I was recording – you’re so focused on the kick drum sound, the snare, the this-and-that when you’re first starting that sometimes you lose the forest in the trees. Photography really helped me get my focus – no pun intended – back onto how the whole thing is presented. It made approach things differently.