Keeping a Clean Record
Skillet is busy wrapping up the recording of their seventh album, Comatose, but front man John Cooper took time out in the studio to discuss the recording process.
by Andy Argyrakis | posted 8/07/2006
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It's not often fans have the opportunity to glimpse the recording experience of one of their favorite artists. For the better part of a decade, hard rock band Skillet has recorded at the historic Ardent Studios in Memphis, but because of a new crossover partnership with Lava/Atlantic Records, they chose to relocate to Chicago Recording Company for the recording of their latest album, Comatose. It doesn't release until October, but front man John Cooper granted Christian Music Today an early sneak peek in the studio, offering some insight into the early stages of the recording process.
Meet the Comatose recording team: Jay Van Poederooyen (engineer), John Cooper (Skillet, co-producer), Brian Howes (co-producer)
How do you go about picking a studio to record an album?
John Cooper I'm a little unqualified to answer that with my history at Ardent Records. Contractually we had to do all our records at Ardent Studios, so I've pretty much been at one studio my whole life until the Lava Records thing when they wanted to do an extra track on Collide and set us up at CRC. I love it here, which is why we decided to do this new record here as well. They've been around a long time, but they're also really up to date [with equipment], which some studios are not.
Have you noticed a change in recording techniques since Skillet's beginnings in the late '90s?
Cooper When we first started, nobody would record on a computer. It would all be done on tape, which is a lot harder. You can't make as many mistakes on tape, and you have very limited track space. On a computer, you can edit much more easily, and you're not limited by space. It's all changing now with the modern technology of recording—you don't have to be in a really amazing studio anymore.
I've heard stories that Prince's Purple Rain had to be recorded in a big studio with multiple tracking rooms, and they had to link [multiple mixing] boards together because there weren't enough tracks for him to [record all the instruments and parts] he wanted. There were like 100 tracks going, which was unheard of at that time. And yet for us today, almost every song on this new record has over 100 tracks on it. Things are a whole lot easier now and a lot more inexpensive compared to the costs of tape machines.
When you're singing in the vocal room, explain for us what the producers and engineers are doing twirling all those knobs and buttons on the soundboards.
Cooper The computer is where everything is recorded to, and the board allows you to control the levels of how you hear things. Basically the way they do it now is, I'll sing a part and they'll save it. Then I'll do that same part over and over, and they'll compile the best phrases from the different takes to make one super good take. When recording on tape, they called that "punching in," which was really hard to do—timing your corrections to your best take. Those old school engineers were really good with their work, and so computers today are like a dream fulfilled for them.
I wonder, however, if maybe we've lost something with this new technology—like classic recording techniques or the warmth of analog tape.
Cooper These days everybody wants to hear something that sounds a certain way—more modern and clean. You can still use the old techniques if you want and you can still record to tape, but these days people are less forgiving when they hear [what they perceive as] a mistake on a new band's recording. It sounds like a mistake because everything else is so polished and perfect.
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