I was playing back some tracks that I had recorded for a song called “True Star”. I had long since decided that these tracks were complete. However, as I tried to work up a preliminary mix, I became convinced that something was wrong with the bass. There wasn’t anything I could do to this track to get the instrument to sound alive. What happened? I thought I had this. The performance of the part was great, but the tone was just DOA.

I can’t understand how I didn’t notice the problem during the tracking stage because I was recording the bass direct and was convinced that I was capturing everything I needed to sculpt the bass sound during the mixing process. It had a thunderous quality to it in my cans and I hardly ever EQ anything on the way in, for fear that I might filter out a crucial part of the signal that I might need later.

OK, a lot of jargon there. If you’re not in my head or not a recording engineer, I might have lost you.

Direct – Recording direct means that you’re recording an instrument by connecting its output directly to the input of your mixing console or recording device, without the use of a conventional instrument amplifier. It is fairly common practice to record electric bass or electronic keyboards direct. Yes, sometimes you put a mic in front of an amplifier, but for bass, I only do that when I need the sound of a speaker flopping around.

“EQ on the way in” – An equalizer is a tool used in audio that enables you to cut or boost certain parts of a signal’s frequency range. Think of it as a high class tone control. Some recording engineers apply equalization to instruments to alter their tone before they’ve recorded anything. The drawback to this practice is that when you record all of the instruments to separate tracks and then play them back together, some of them may require a different tone altogether. If you’ve captured the instruments as purely as possible, you have a better shot at using equalizers to get the sound you want. If you’ve EQ’d on the way in, you might not have the frequency spectrum that you need to cut and boost.

For example, assume that while recording guitars, you notice that the guitars are a little boomy (too much bass), so you use an equalizer to make them sound thinner. The sound is filtered but the guitars sound better. During mixing however, you decide to go with one guitar for the song instead of two, so you mute one. That one guitar, which you thinned out with an equalizer “on the way in” now sounds too thin (not enough bass). If you’d have recorded the guitar without any EQ, you might have that fullness you want. You might be able to use an equalizer to bring it out. However, you recorded the guitars thin by equalizing them first. The lower, fuller part of the frequency spectrum was filtered out and never recorded. Therefore, it can never be brought out with EQ. You’re hosed. I knew an engineer who used to call recording “taking a picture.” It was a pretty good metaphor in this case. If you cut off the top of grandma’s head when you framed the shot, you’re never going to make it appear when you print the picture. Her head was never in the shot. You’re hosed.

Oddly enough, I’ve read that Todd Rundgren always EQ’ed on the way in. In the Meat Loaf autobiography To Hell and Back, Meat describes the problems it caused when he hated Todd’s mixes of Bat Out Of Hell and tried to give the job to another engineer. Eek!

Cans – Another word for headphones.

So what was up with my bass sound?

Impedance mismatch. Impedance is resistance to alternating current, but it’s not important that I explain the physics in detail. Suffice it to say that electric guitars and basses are high impedance sources and mixer inputs are generally suited to low impedance sources. I recorded my original bass track using an input that was supposed to have been designed for direct recording of guitars. Somebody’s guitar maybe, but not mine. The impedance rating was just too low. After a lot of research, reading of specifications for my various pieces of gear and experiments with 4 different methods of recording the bass, I determined that due to impedance mismatching, I simply wasn’t taking the picture of my bass.

Because of physics and junk, when you have an impedance mismatch condition, your bass signal loses a lot of the frequency spectrum and sounds dull and lifeless. I had plenty of low end, which I heard in my headphones, but when it came time to mix, my signal didn’t have the goods. So much for these new-fangled digital audio interfaces, eh? “You don’t need a direct box! Plug your guitar or bass right into the input of your insert audio interface model of your choice here!” What nonsense, at least where the Echo Layla 3G, my interface, is concerned.

So, like I would have done 15 years ago, and should have done a long time ago, I bought a new direct box, which converts a signal from high impedance to low impedance. I had one back then and always used it for bass (before I went digital). I re-recorded the “True Star” bass part in short order. I just played it back and wow! Do I love Fender Precision Basses! When you record them correctly, they sound fantastic, right off the pickups, no amp required.

Like Levon Helm said when listening to the piano track of “Rag Mama Rag,” it’s easy when you know how. Despite my adoption of new technologies, sometimes what I used to do still works best.

Since I spend a lot of time making them, I listen to records obsessively. It’s what I do. I love to seek out patterns and similarities as I pore through my record library. Many of them involve what I know to be artifacts of the actual recording process. They show up in my recordings too. It’s also fascinating how regardless of the genre, making records can bring out the same fallibilities in even the best musicians. The act of attempting to capture the definitive version of a particular composition in a recording is about judgment, environment, ability and unfortunately sometimes, compromise. Many mistakes are made and parts done over. Technology allows all kinds of magic, especially now. In fact, part of producing a great recording now is about knowing when not to make the work surgically perfect, when to let the humanness of the performance shine through in all of its flawed glory. I heard Todd Rundgren say in an interview once that he sometimes leaves the flaws in a recording, because allowing a flaw to be expressed can be a form of catharsis. Hmm…

Nevertheless, sometimes a recorded performance goes sour almost immediately, in the first measures of the piece. Most of the time, the engineer or producer would just call the take a false start and tell the musicians to start again. For some reason, and probably for one of those I mentioned earlier, sometimes those flubs make the record. I always wonder why, having not ventured very far into a take, they didn’t just try again. Here are some of my favorite examples of “Didn’t that deserve another take?”

Majestic Dance by Return to Forever – I actually just heard this cut again for the first time in years. It has always been my favorite track from the Romantic Warrior album. It featured the most notable line-up of the band, with Al DiMeola on guitar. As early as I can remember, being a musician in grade school, I was hearing my guitarist friends rave about what a monster player Al was and how they hoped they would play as well as Al one day. (To my knowledge, few, if any, ever did.) An experienced guitarist, I can hear a typical guitar flub in measure one of “Majestic Dance.” He plays the chord on beat three, but I know what it sounds like when you just don’t grab it perfectly. Al barely got this one out and, like when I discover such a flaw in one of my own recordings, the weirdness gets louder every time I hear it. It would have been so easy to hit it again. I wonder why they didn’t. The piece is so badass.

Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out by Bruce Springsteen – This was the first Bruce album on which Max Weinberg appeared. Fresh off a run in the pit orchestra for the Broadway musical Godspell, Max got his break with the E Street Band because he didn’t play like Ginger Baker. This track begins with a nice little soul fanfare. Then, it’s a solo buzz roll by Max leading into the main groove of the tune. They’d only played 3 measures and Max muffs the buzz roll! I’m sure Max had played a million buzz rolls, but this one, for posterity, sucked! Poor Max. I heard him say once in a talk he gave at my college in the 90s about his experiences with the band that the muffed buzz roll always bothered him. Me too. He’s still one of my favorite drummers. I only wish they didn’t allow him to be so horribly misrepresented. Even if the horn section had gone home, it wouldn’t have been impossible to punch in that buzz roll. It’s amazing what you can decide to live with when you’ve been in the studio too long.

Why Can’t We Be Friends? by War – This was a big single from a very interesting 70s band from East LA off an album of the same name. This track’s even got that feel-good off-mic chatter like a 60s party record. I managed to locate an original vinyl pressing of this album, still in the shrinkwrap, back in the 90s. It even had the poster in it! I love the sound of this it. It was the soundtrack for my summer barbecues for ages. In this single, there’s a high keyboard riff at the beginning that forms the foundation of the groove when the entire band enters. This record was a major hit, but in the very first measure, Lonnie Jordan just totally butter fingers the chord change! Happens to the best of us, but that’s a false start if I ever heard one! Hey barely even makes it through the second pass! Geez… To misquote a rap that appears earlier in the album, “Lonnie gonna make it real sloppy for you…”

Ventura Highway by America – This one is hard to hear. Maybe that’s what they thought too. With all of that wonderful California acoustic sweetness, your brain might be candied to numbness and never notice. I have a friend who’s a radio producer. He introduced me to the concept of the “post.” The post is that part of a record when the vocal starts. When DJs were important on the radio, it was always fun to hear the good ones talk up a record. A good DJ could run his yap during the intro of a hit record and sound completely effortless, finishing his sentence just in time for the post. It requires a good bit of musical feel and pacing to get it right. I think it works the same mental process involved in merging onto a highway without inconveniencing anyone. Sometimes, a lame DJ wouldn’t make it and he’d step on the post. (My buddy also told me about the unwritten rule of “Hotel California” and its exception to the post convention. Never talk up a record with an intro as long as that one. ) Anyway, listen to the wrong chord at the post of “Ventura Highway.” If the DJ was good, you would never have heard it.

Too High by Stevie Wonder – This one may or may not have been a candidate for another take. It depends on what instrument Stevie recorded first. He played everything on this. After one measure, the tempo takes a dive. It sounds like a burst of the musician’s energy that quickly got a hold of itself and settled. That’s not interpretation folks. That’s just what happens when you play all of the instruments yourself (I know something about this) without a timing reference. Any mistakes you make in the first track will always be there, no matter how many instruments you layer on top. If you try to overdub with a flawed first track, you’ll be a slave to that track’s idiosyncrasies on every pass and with every new part until you mix. Sounds on tape won’t breathe. They are on the tape, as is, for eternity. I’ve saved timing problems with a tambourine in my day, but no tambourine would have fixed this one. You just gotta follow it. If the rest of the tune was in the can by the time ol’ Stevland did the drums, I can see where they might’ve have wanted to live with it. However, if he did the drums first, they might have tried again, or at least cut the tape to include a more tempo-matched intro.

To be truthful, I kind of dig this one. To hear that even Stevie Wonder can be noticeably flawed makes me feel better about my own tracks. I felt the same way the first time I heard a tape edit on a Nat Cole record. Even Nat Cole’s takes weren’t all perfect. Now that I consider it, I listen to the tempo change on “Too High” for enjoyment.

Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty

Peter Guralnick wrote an exhaustive, two-volume biography of Elvis Presley. I read Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley when it was first published, but I’ve only gotten to the second one, Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, now. Unlike many people, I enjoy the 70s Elvis more than the early one. I know he was troubled and I know now just how troubled, but I just like the music and the show better late in his career.

Since the guy was said to have died by the time I was in first grade, I only know of the Elvis show what I’ve seen in the few concert movies that exist from the 70s era. I love the theatrical aspect of it and I just love the sound of that glorious band, raw in their sophistication, if you can dig that.

However, the more I read of this book, the more I’m struck by how different Elvis had it than I do. Sometimes, I just have to laugh. I know the guy was super huge and everything, but if you put that aside for a minute, as a recording artist, the guy had it so easy.

The book is full of references to recording sessions during which upwards of 24 masters were recorded. 24! How many times did I read stuff like this? “In August, a recording session was scheduled for which RCA hoped sides would be produced for the gospel album, a pop album and the four singles Elvis was contractually obligated to provide.”

All the guy had to do was go to the studio and sing. The band was assembled. He’d pick songs that he liked and they’d run through them if he felt like it. Other times, he would just give karate demonstrations to the musicians and then go back to Graceland. If he cut a tune that they hadn’t planned on, their guy would hustle to arrange the publishing particulars. Or, it would be, “Hey publishing guy, what kind of material do we have available to record?”

Good Christ. That’s gotta be a tough life.

I write songs, play and sing all the parts in the studio, engineer and mix the recording, review the test pressings, oversee the production and then promote and sell the records myself. That’s what a majority of recording artists have to do now. There’s very little money and you have to know how to do pretty much everything if you want to see your vision through. And it takes a little longer than a single recording session.

Sometimes I see singers in bands and I say, “You mean all the guy has to do is sing?” Elvis wouldn’t even do that sometimes. At Elvis Presley’s level, it was all the bread changing hands, but in the rest of the world, in the modern age, I have no idea what breeds that mentality when it exists.

I’ve had to train myself not to do everything. I came up knowing that no one would ever hand me anything and that if I wanted to make records, no one was going to make it happen but me. I’ve never felt that I had the right to claim something was outside of my expertise. Deep down I thought, “Who the hell are you to think anyone else would do it for you just because you can’t?”

It’s a slow process, learning to let go of certain things. It began with me saying that I don’t have to play the drums. I Ebayed my drums some years ago and got a nice new Telecaster, which in the distant past would have been an indulgence I’d have never allowed myself, since I had one Tele already. I’ve regretted not having my drum set a few times, but I still think I did the right thing. The other thing I’ve tried to loosen up about is graphic design. I’m not a designer, but I did my own album covers, because “who the hell else is gonna do it?” I’ve since tried to leave that to some designer friends.

I don’t want to get to a point where all I have to do is show up and sing. Of that, I’m certain. But for all of the legends surrounding Elvis Presley and the way he’s been deified over the years, I can honestly say that I know a ton of people, myself included, that he’ll never have anything on. Pfft… you mean all he has to do is sing?

That’s kinda cool.