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Dave Maughan
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Many successful records today are produced in home studios. Newcastle producer/musician Dave Maughan has had his share of succes. But in his case, it may be more accurate to talk about a “studio home”. The relaxed mood of this setup is surely part of the reason why both local acts and artists from other countries feel so comfortable working with him. And of course, Soundscape is part of the picture.
Dave, I understand that you work from home. How have you organized your studio? How many rooms and what kind of layout do you use?
Well it’s almost the other way round really. I mean, imagine trying to live in a recording studio – anyone in their right mind wouldn’t bother, but that’s effectively what we do here. So what should by rights be a dining room is a control room, an outbuilding is the actual studio, or “live room”, and a cupboard under the stairs is the machine room. There’s a Hammond C3 in the kitchen, a piano in the hallway, and the ability to monitor in all the downstairs rooms, making them all kind of dual function, recording studio by day, home by night. It’s a setup that’s not for the faint hearted. I’m lucky in that my wife, Gillian, is unbelievably tolerant.
The control room layout’s changed since we did the Sound On Sound magazine interview a few years back. The room’s not all that big, so I enlisted the help of David Prince, an acoustics expert from Chicago, who came up with a solution which involves a layout centered around one of the diagonal dimensions of the room. It looks somewhat unorthodox but it’s proved to be very effective.
Do you act as an engineer or producer for your clients? And do you play instruments as well on some projects?
Err, kind of yes, yes and yes! It’s rare now that I just engineer, although it does happen from time to time. For the most part, I’m both producing and engineering on projects. And additionally, I’m quite often called upon to master stuff that was recorded elsewhere. Apparently I’ve a knack of “making it sound like a record”, which I take as a compliment, of course.
As for playing – well absolutely – I’ll offer my services wherever it seems appropriate. More often than not, though, it’ll be very subtle - stuff you can barely hear, just you’d notice something missing if it wasn’t there…the odd guitar overdub here, a bit of Hammond there. I’ve also become a dab hand with shakers and tambourines, glockenspiels etc, those small incidental things which can make the world of difference.
You have worked on high profile projects in this home environment. What were the highlights?
Well obviously it was a tremendously exciting time when Kathryn Williams’ Little Black Numbers album was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, and needless to say, that whole thing became a turning point in my career. But I’ve done stuff since then that I’m probably more proud of – her covers album Relations, for instance, which at the time of its release was a Radio 2 Album Of The Week, and I think may actually be her most successful to date…It’s a fine record, and you still hear the odd track from it on the radio, which never fails to give me such a buzz…
And what kind of projects are you involved with today?
For a while it seemed like I’d become the default guy to go to if you happened to be a female singer songwriter based in the North East of England. And then as Kathryn’s music filtered through to different corners of the world, I started to get requests to produce people from other countries, so I’ve worked with artists from the States, other parts of Europe, even Africa. But while seemingly I’d inadvertently acquired the reputation for being a ‘delicate female voice’ specialist, the very first Morris Quinlan Experience album (which actually pre-dates slightly my work with Kathryn) was out there, simmering away, and telling another side to the story!
People tell me that the stuff I do displays a signature, which manifests itself as something of an organic late sixties/early seventies sound. Which I’m quite comfortable with, and I guess comes as no great surprise - many of my favourite records come from that era. So of stuff I’ve done recently, I’d probably rate the album I did with Hilton – Not Afraid To Be Happy, Beccy Owen’s The Singer Kicks, and of course the brand new second Morris Quinlan Experience album Follow On to be amongst my favourites. I guess it’s when the delicate fuses successfully with the slightly more raucous and edgy…that’s what does it for me.
How’s the Newcastle music scene these days? Are you working with any hot new acts?
There’s a fantastic young band called Joe Byrne from up here who I recently finished an album with. As yet unreleased, but you can get to hear them on their MySpace – they’re definitely worthy of a mention – they’ve a song called Nine which is fantastic. Of course, it’s been a huge boost to the music scene up here that we’ve recently had bands like The Futureheads and Maximo Park breaking out to a wider audience. I have an inkling that Newcastle’s probably got more bands now than ever before – it’s really vibrant, and the success of those two in particular will doubtless fuel the ambitions of countless others. Which can’t be a bad thing.
How does Soundscape fit into your working methods?
Well, I still love my 2” tape machine. And I wouldn’t get rid of it for anything. But…nowadays I use it rather differently. So, four or more years ago, I would record everything to 2” tape at 30 ips, and anything that needed editing, I’d fly it off to Soundscape (the dear old SSHDR1, God bless it), chop it up, pitch shift it, whatever, and fly it back to the tape. Everything changed when I upgraded to the Soundscape 32, such that the majority of stuff now gets recorded straight to that. Occasionally I will employ the tape machine for certain things – say, if we want to create a particular drum sound, analogue tape is after all still the greatest compressor know to mankind. But immediately we’ll copy to Soundscape and the 2” machine will be switched off again. So it’s less a case of Soundscape fitting into my working methods, more it has completely redefined them.
What Soundscape hardware and software configuration do you presently use?
And have you already tried the new plug-ins (SSL Console EQ and Filters and EACM EQs)?
A Soundscape 32 rack unit is the heart (and soul ?) of my setup, with a Mixpander/9 providing the DSP muscle for the system. I’ve just upgraded the host computer to a reasonably high spec Pentium 4 - with great help and advice from Soundscape forum members Jim Laforest, Christo Curtis, Wolfram Dettki and John Cornfield - and I’m currently running Version 5.1 of the Soundscape Editor software under Windows XP. I’ve a pretty respectable kit of plug-ins, although I haven’t yet got round to trying the new SSL ones, largely because I’m halfway through the recording phase of a project, and it’s always been my philosophy to record totally flat, with very few exceptions. However, when we reach the mixing stage, the possibility to experiment, particularly with new EQs, will inevitably be too tempting…and yes, that’s something else that’s changed over the course of the last couple of years…I now mix pretty much entirely within the Soundscape mixer environment, so my big aircraft-carrier sized console is now predominantly a lot of input channels! I’ve configured it such that its group outputs are patched via a patchbay straight to either the analogue inputs of 2 (now slightly elderly, but still great) Soundscape iBox 8 XLRs, or the 2” machine. And I monitor Soundscape as a 2 track tape return, and as I say, mix on its internal mixer.
How would you define the pros and cons of working in a home-based studio, and do you have any plans to move to dedicated premises?
 It has its own set of advantages and disadvantages, I suppose. People definitely appreciate the relaxed atmosphere, and of course Spike, the new apprentice Studio Dog is always on hand to help them feel at home. From a personal point of view, it’s great not having to get in the car every day and drive to work (so I suppose that makes it quite green, too) but then there’s another argument that says you’re always at work, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week etc, when sometimes you just need to have a day off…
But all in all, I don’t think I’d change too much about it. We do harbour plans to move to somewhere bigger and more rural – a farmhouse with a barn in France is currently under serious consideration, but the home studio vibe would most definitely stay high up on the list of design criteria, even if physically, the setup wasn’t actually in the house. And it’s impossible to imagine anything other than Soundscape being at the heart of any new installation – for me it’s become more than just a recording/editing system, it’s a way of life.
And it’s something SSL/Sydec should tell their marketing people…I often say to people “Of course, this was all recorded to analogue tape…” and they say “Ah yes, you can really tell the difference, it’s got so much warmth and clarity…”
And in truth, was it hell! It was really recorded straight to Soundscape. Never ceases to amuse me…
Useful links:
Dave's personal website.
The Morris Quinlan Experience's official site.
The Morris Quinlan Experience's MySpace webpage.
The online home of the Maughan hand-built, all-valve guitar amplifiers… designed by Dave’s brother!
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