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http://www.the-signal.com/section/70/article/32700/  (http://www.the-signal.com/section/70/article/32700/)

The comments by Al Schmitt regarding the 'original' mix are very, ah, fascinating.

Thank you for posting this!

Judging by Al's comments we should be very happy that he got the job!! Otherwise we would have gotten a cheap digital mix!

You think so ?

Wasn't it said elsewhere that the mixes barely differed?

Yes. I'd just say "barely" is in the ears of the beholder. Mixing includes a LOT of aspects, and going from digital echo to natural echo on an otherwise similar or identical mix could easily be considered barely by many people. (It could also be considered vastly different by others.)

Right, I'm sure that this guy, a famous mixer, would have more sensitive ears for these kinds of things than most people. I'm sure the improved mix makes a difference for most people, but at what would amount to an almost intangible level.

One other thing that's nice about this piece is the clarification of what may have been an ambiguous statement by Bob Ludwig in another piece. He said he hadn't talked to Wilson, just Schmitt, and that "nobody talks" to Wilson. Here, Schmitt makes clear that as the mixer, he did indeed talk to BW. Not saying Brian sat beside him and co-mixed it or anything, but it does make clear that Brian wasn't entirely uninvolved and in the dark about things. He gave a rough mix (as had been previously noted by AGD and others), spoke to BW, and got approval afterward.

I think what a professional engineer might consider "sounded like it was mixed in a box", and what the likes of you and I would make of it could very well be totally different things... plus, it's something of a slapdown for the original mixers, wouldn't you say ? It would be most instructive have find someone who's heard both mixes (and who, of course, doesn't have a vested interest). That Disney stumped up Al Schmitt's fee to do the remix could have a bearing on this statement. Just musing out loud, of course...

True enough. One can't imagine the man would say "actually I decided the original mix was fine and declined to do any further work. I did not bill on the project."

Interesting.

I will say -- the mix on the album is quite nice and natural sounding. Some of Brian's solo albums have a certain "flat" quality, for want of a better word, in the mix. BWRG really breathes.

FWIW, I'd urge folks to read Mark's past posts here on echo chambers. He wrote quite a bit about it, and his viewpoint seems to, um, differ from Al's.

On that note, it's important to remember that issues like these are truly matters of style and taste, not right and wrong. Before he died (I suppose obviously...), Frank Zappa wouldn't shut up about how much better digital recording programmed, digital performance were head and shoulders above analog recording and human performance, respectively. 

I just read an excellent book about this sort of audiophile debate, which includes the immortal fights between analogue/digital, mono/stereo, vinyl/CD, and various other proponents. The author, Greg Milner, argues that these debates are born of the larger debate begun by Edison when he created the phonograph: whether you're to capture solely the music as can be played live or if room ambiance can be admitted into the "picture" along with alterations of the sound itself, and how recording technology's development aided and abetted this debate (for better or worse). The book is called Perfect Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (2009) and it is very good if you're interested in this sort of stuff. It obviously also discusses the "Loudness War" as being only the most recent sort of debate on the issue of recorded sound, and there are lots of good quotes from people like Ludwig and Clearmountain and the Lord-Agles and so on. If I recall correctly there was even some Al Schmitt in there too!

I've heard Hugh Padgham say that records from the 70's often sound like they were "recorded in a box". Hugh means no real impact, no punch. Not quite the same as compression but no attempt to make drums sound and feel like drums, for example. Hugh was big on recreating the extra-ordinary experience of standing next to a live drummer.

Shcmitt might mean something similar....he certainly instantly recognised the use of artificial reverb. And interesting that he used an old analogue board to work on the individual tracks.

What was the process here??...Brian/Paul provided a rough mix saying "this is kinda what we want to do with the music" ??

A word on Greg Minler's book 'perfecting sound forever' which I read last year....very good read even if I don't agree with everything he has to say.....he does know what he's talking about and has researched his book well.

It would be hard not to recognize it, since it was presumably clearly visible in the tracks he was mixing. XYZ Reverb applied to Track 1 with xyz settings, etc. EDIT: I ought to clarify that this would depend on how Schmitt received and heard their mix. Obviously if it were just a final stereo track on CD or something, my earlier statement isn't true. Then it would be his ears alone, not his eyes. Whereas if he were given the raw files themselves (the ProTools--or whatever they use--files), it would be as I said above.

Brian, Darian and Paul (booklet names Nicky for some reason) submitted a finished mix to Disney. It was rejected.

Al referred to that mix when making a new one.

The article also says BWRG is #42 on the jazz charts, not #1.

At least that's an easy answer to confirm. http://www.billboard.com/charts/jazz-albums#/charts/jazz-albums

Exactly....that was my point. :lol

Points are for suckers.

Surely if he were to remove the artificial reverb, Al would have to have been given the PT session files.

If said reverb was already printed to the tracks he mixed, surely his comments are a bit pointless?

On a side note, the less sparing use of reverb is for me personally a welcome change from the drier sounding TLOS mix, which I think in part contributed to the lukewarm reception the CD received sound-wise.