Nashville Engineer Mick Conley Talks Tech
Mick Conley is an independent, accomplished sound engineer, producer and guitarist from Nashville, Tennessee, naming Cubase, Nuendo and WaveLab as his music software of choice when it comes to mixing and editing. In the many years he’s been pursuing his line of profession, Conley has been sharing the studio with many of the top producers the likes of Steve Lamm as well as priding himself on being the long-time engineer for Kathy Mattea, country music and bluegrass performer with more than a dozen albums and several US number one hits.
How did you get started in the music business?
Music is the only thing I ever wanted to do and I knew that it was going to be my life. I started recording overdubs bouncing from cassette deck to cassette deck. I was a jazz guitar major in college, and I was working in studios and had a recording setup of my own at home. It progressed to reel to reel in my friend’s father’s studio in Lexington KY. I found performing equally as interesting as recording. I think that it helps being able to understand both sides of the glass.
I moved to Nashville and started working with Kathy Mattea. I started as her live engineer before transitioning into recording with her. I also worked with her husband Jon Vezner for his songwriting demos and albums he was producing. They have always had a project studio at their house. I have worked with her for almost 20 years.
Are Kathy and Jon a fan of Steinberg products?
They have Nuendo, Cubase and WaveLab in their studio. We did a bunch of comparison tests and we chose Steinberg based on the wideness and depth of field from front to back. You can place things better in the sound field to achieve a natural sound which is extremely important for her recordings.
How involved were you with Kathy Mattea’s recent Coal CD?
Coal is a CD of mining songs. It was produced by Marty Stuart and I was the engineer for the recording and mixing. It was an important album for her as she is from West Virginia. We tracked at Playground Studio with everybody in the middle of the floor, in a semi-circle, with very few overdubs. Kathy is really picky about her vocals so she cuts most of her vocals live with the band for the energy. We mixed at CGR studios, owned by Steve Lamm, who is also a great computer guy in Nashville. Coal went on to be nominated for a Grammy.
How did you start working with Marty Stuart?
I started with him as a sub for someone who couldn’t make a few live shows. He liked what I did and offered me a job. I am now involved with his live work, recordings and his radio and TV shows.
What’s your setup for the radio and TV shows?
The radio show is called Marty Stuart’s American Odyssey and is broadcast on XM/Sirius satellite radio. For dialog, Marty and his Fabulous Superlatives use Shure SM7s going into an Aphex broadcast channel strip. Marty and the band go to different areas of the country and highlight the music that came out of that area. There have been some great guests including Merle Haggard, Wayne Newton and Dolly Parton. I’m using Cubase to record, edit and mix with only Cubase plug-ins.
We have done 26 episodes of the Marty Stuart TV show as well, with guests like Gretchen Wilson, Duane Eddy and the Oak Ridge Boys. I get a QuickTime file of the video and start mixing. I am pretty much using only Cubase’s internal plug-ins. I am also putting the finishing touches on a one-hour TV special, hosted by Marty, that features Kenny Wayne Shepherd, The Blind Boys of Alabama, The North Mississippi All Stars, and others. This show was recorded and mixed with Nuendo and Cubase.
What are some of your favorite plug-ins in Cubase?
I really like Vintage Compressor. Maximizer makes vocals pop over the instruments without it sounding like obvious processing. REVerence has a good sound. I use the Studio EQ quite a bit as well.
Have you played around with VariAudio in Cubase 5?
Yes, I love the pitch correction and it is great to have it included in the program. I love being able to hear the notes as I move it. I have used all of the other pitch correction tools and the Steinberg tools sound very natural and are so quick to use.
Do you find it hard to go between the live and studio sides of engineering?
They say: “If you do studio you can’t do live and if you do live you can’t do studio.” Live and studio engineering techniques are similar but completely different, and you just have to understand the differences. It is doubly hard to keep up with the technical changes. It is changing so fast on both sides, but it’s for the better.
What is your setup like?
I live in a 200-year old log house with an edit/mix room and use Cubase, Nuendo and WaveLab on a computer built by Steve Lamm. I mostly mix totally in the box. I had reservations about doing so at first but not these days. When I run the output to the big analog mastering boxes during mastering, sometimes the sound is just different, not better. I often take my computer to mastering and feed a digital output and I may tweak a few things as we go.
How do you use WaveLab?
I use WaveLab for a lot of 2-track editing and for putting CDs together. It allows me to do a bit of mastering to give the artists an idea of what it will sound like in the end. I had a project where the final 2-track mix had 3 different tempos that we wanted to make into one consistent tempo. We used the DIRAC time-stretching and it sounded amazing. It took a long time to process, but the results were worth it.
You were recently involved in a project with Kathy Mattea and Elliot Scheiner. What was that like?
Elliot was doing a surround sound session. At first glance, it doesn’t look like he is doing anything special, but everything sounds amazing. He’s like a great musician who makes it look easy. He has a great demeanor and terrific stories. It was a pleasure getting to see him work. Like Kathy, Elliot is a big fan of Steinberg.
Can you pass on any tips on mixing?
Headroom and headroom. It is good to leave some headroom on both the individual channels and the 2 bus. If you have to put on brick wall limiters, it is too much level. Your final product won’t be as loud, but it will be richer. I always work at 24 bit and 96 kHz, as storage is not really an issue these days.
Do you see a lot of your colleagues using Steinberg products?
It has a huge groundswell of acceptance in Nashville. You can really hear the difference in a comparison with other formats. I recently did an album for guitarist Bill Cooley. Nuendo captured such a true picture of his guitars that we hardly used any EQ. On the string sessions the musicians came in for playback and were amazed at how natural the recording sounded. Also, the mixes came together easily without sounding pinched or squashed.
Do you find that Steinberg products meet your professional needs?
I find Steinberg programs to be incredibly intuitive. I can edit other tracks, move notes or adjust fades even while recording. I love dragging the inserts around to other channels or different positions on the same channel strip. I find it to be very logical and easy to use. The most important thing is the depth of field so it actually sounds like people are performing in the same room. That is very important for the projects I do.