On “Company Calls”, right before the chorus, there’s a backwards swoop. Is that keyboards? A sample?

No, it’s a backwards tom. I took a SM 57 on the tom hit and then turned it backwards then sent that through the “Cathedral” and brought it back on to another channel. Then I turned the tom hit back around so it’s normal, but you get this pre-verb sound. A big suck up sound. And I know there are easier ways to do that, but... Then there’s an EQ sweep on that as well.

At the end of “Company Calls Epilogue” it sounds like a very distant mic’d recording of Ben and his guitar.

That song got recorded the day before mastering. We recorded another version of that song and it’s going to come out on an EP later this summer. But that ending was the old scratch acoustic guitar track from the other version of that song. We ended up keeping that and with the click track Nate [Good] could play drums with it. It just turned out really well and it’s almost a seamless transition at the end. That scratch track was recorded with a cheap four dollar mic, through my Rat pedal and then back into the board.

The thing that impressed me the most was the drum sounds. Do you have a set mic’ing pattern for the drums? Or do you just throw up anything?

No, drums are like anything goes. This record we had a lot of problems with drums. Ben can play the drums really well, but he is not a drummer. I mean he is, but he doesn’t have all the things that comes with being a drummer, like being able to tune the drums, and being an endurance drummer. Some of the songs were cake, but two days into recording the snare drum went flat, and it became apparent, really quickly, that none of us knew how to tune a snare.

Not even Nathan?

Well Nathan wasn’t even supposed to play on the record because he was out of the band at this point. But we called him in the day before mastering because we decided to record two more songs. Both of those songs got tracked and mixed the day before mastering - it was insane. I think that this is the record where I found what works and what doesn’t work for me as far as drums go. Up until now I had been trying to do the Steve Albini/photographic realism sort of thing. I’ve finally figured out, I think, when it can work for me and when it can’t. I think that most of the time it doesn’t. There’s this record that I’m doing now for the Revolutionary Hydra where I’m just doing something completely different. Most of the drums on the Death Cab record are either three or four mics. One in the kick drum and then two mics somewhere in the room, always a big, wide, and noncoincidental pairs. The Hydra stuff on the 8-track is done to a click track so 7 tracks open then I mix that to my CD-R and then bounce it back to the 8-track as 2 stereo tracks. I’ve just been close mic’ing things in lots of different combinations and learning that it can work for a lot of different things. Photographic realism, if you’re a genie at it, that’s all you do and it’s awesome, but I don’t have a consistent enough situation to figure out how to make it work, not room wise, equipment wise, not player wise. So I’m starting to get into the “anything goes” style.

So you aren’t the type of recordist that will spend three to four hours placing a certain mic to get that certain sound?

No, no. I am so impatient. Terribly impatient. I’ve gotten used to recording Ben and Ben is always ready before I am. When I first met Ben there was a big imbalance because he knew exactly what he was doing as a songwriter and a singer and I just bought all that equipment. I didn’t even know where the plugs went and I just had to totally catch up with him. I think just doing that has just made me feel that I have to move fast. I think I’m at a point where I can move fast and for the most part get some good sounds. I like to over-compensate as well, I mean if you have more mics than you need then just erase it as you go.

What’s the most important thing about recording for you?

I would have to say it’s doing right for the song. As a sound geek, it is easy to get tied up in something because it sounds good. But if it sounds good it doesn’t necessarily mean that it compliments the song. It could very well be doing the song a great disservice. My whole goal is to keep the songs focused on what is best for the songs. If the recordings are interesting to listen to then that’s cool, but the recording, at least in rock and roll, shouldn’t be more important than the song. It’s my job to get whatever on tape that best showcases the song.

Any last advice for those frantic home recorders that read Tape Op?

I guess that there are no rules to speak of. That’s something that is easy to say, easy to hear, but very tough to practice. It’s hard to let go and say, at least for me, “Oooh, can I do this?” and the answer is yes - of course you can. You might blow something up, but it’s worth trying.

It’s the consequence you’ll pay, as long as you got the sound of it blowing up on tape.

Hopefully you did, to use later on.