The Audio Chaos Tea Room – music production by jordan rory jackiew

I mix for a living. The company is called Resosound Productions, or Resosound for short. It consists of myself and various assistants, whoever’s not on tour or working a day job. My goal was to achieve a no-compromise setup that allowed for a ridiculous amount of creativity and diversity. And of course, being a new-school and future oriented company, Resosound had to accommodate the modern recording budget. Sigh.

You’re basically in a tight squeeze every way you go: there are just certain tools that are perfect for certain jobs, and others that are just compromises. My heroes, the biggest in the industry with last names like Lord-Alge, Brauer, Puig, Marroquin, Pensado, all have a similar setup in that they own everything under the sun, and have absolutely no-compromise setups. Add to that the fact they work on so much of what we hear, the bar is raised tremendously high for the newcomer. We’re just used to the sound of the absolute limits of great sound.

However, given enough time, energy, mixing like a madman, and of course, hard-earned money, you can end up with something that gives you as much sonic flexibility as anyone out there. Add to that the fresh and new perspective of a young gun, all you need is an artist or band that has a ton of creativity and loves working as hard at making music as I do mixing it, and you’ve got magic.

There’s a lot of cool gear here, and some of it I want to really touch on in the future, but it comprises a healthy dose of dirty and clean. In the dirty camp, we’ve got distressors, dbx’s, an old mxr limiter, a cbs volumax, and a valley dynamite. Those all impart a particular vibe on the sound that moves things out of the pristine category, as well as having a nice squish factor when needed. In the clean category, nothing beats the noble STC-8, which is no pushover for the way it keeps the fidelity while stile imparting some tone. As well theres some Neve comps, a drawmer 1968 tube comp that’s on the clean side, and a pair of LA3′s, which are barely in the clean camp for what they do. Then there’s the ‘awesome’ camp, some gear that transcends the dirty/clean thing and are way more than workhorse comps. The Retro 176 is in a league of its own, totally rad tone. You just can’t plugin that. 2 1176′s: the AE edition, way more versatile than your stock reissue, and my custom made Rev A – possibly my favorite right now for its completely unique tone.  There’s a new company called Airfield Audio that makes a positively stunning compressor with line amps so great you can just pass signal through it to add color to the sound. The Focusrite Blue 230 is a Red 3 stereo comp with the extra transformers and tone, plus stepped switches. Absolutely vibey on the 2-bus. And my custom pultec remakes have such a rad sound without any eq even dialed in. I think we’re at 30 or 32 channels of outboard. Plus some reverbs.

The digital tools are the usual, and I think just about every pro has an assortment of great plugins, drum replacers, groove aligners, transient designers, and vocal tuners. There’s probably a lot to say about these tools, too, it’s just that they’re so readily available, it’s more about how you use them than whether you got em.

Monitoring when mixing is usually ns-10′s through a slightly overkill Pass X250, cranesong and lavry conversion, and the obligatory boom box. All in a massive control room with 18 foot ceilings with something like a total of 9100 cubic feet of treated airspace.

These tools are fun to brag about, and hug at night, and boy do they keep the room warm in the winter, as well as provide me with a steady dose of gamma radiation. I’m waiting for the muscles to show up anytime now. But I think the point is more the commitment to rad sound and making great music, than sitting around tweaking knobs till they fall off.

If you’re an up and coming producer, indie band, or indie artist, definitely drop me a line. There’s nothing I like more than listening to new, fresh, creative music!

jrj

Jordan Jackiew
Resosound Productions
www.resosound.com