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With nearly eight decades of experience between them-including seminal projects for Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Van Halen, Aerosmith, AC/DC and Biffy Clyro, as well as a number of Juno Awards-Garth "GGGarth" Richardson and Mike "The Fraze" Fraser are two of Canadas finest, most well-respected producer/engineers. This month, Mix sat down with them to talk careers, the magic of music creation and a few go-to recording and mixing techniques.
Let's start with how you got started.
Richardson: 1 started hanging around my father [producer Jack Richardson] in the studio at the age of 5. He was doing a session with Bobby Curtola for Coca-Cola at a studio called Hallmark in Toronto. This was my first time being allowed in a session. 1 soon found out what the talkback button was, and, when he was out on the floor, 1 would keep hitting it, and...well, let's just say, never get Jack mad. Never have 1 seen a man run so fast to come up and tan my backside! 1 hid in the tape vault. The engineer felt so bad, he gave me my first reel of tape. That's probably when 1 first got the recording bug. At age 14,1 became the janitor at Nimbus 9 Studios. 1 would sleep at school all day, go and clean up the pee and puke in the bathrooms, and then sit in on sessions all night long.
My first gig as a second engineer was on Bob Seger's Night Moves. My father was asked to do four songs with Bob, but he only had two. They did a cover song for the third. After the tracking, Jack sent the band home and started to mix. Later, Jack fetched Bob to hear the mix and heard him playing this song "Night Moves," and Jack said to Bob, "This is a hit." Bob said he hated it. 1 happened to be there, and 1 got to set up the room and watch them record this song as a second engineer. 1 was hooked.
When 1 told Jack 1 wanted to produce records, he said he needed to have a sit-down with me. 1 was waiting for this long talk on how to make it in the music-production...