| The sound engineers at OEM Inc. have spent thousands of hours with the original masters of the most
famous songs ever recorded. They use them to create products like Jammit, an iPhone app that allows
you to remix and play along with those original tracks. There are many, many things to learn from
those original tracks. Through a partnership with Gearhead Communications, OEM Inc. engineers are
sharing their discoveries exclusively with Premier Guitar readers in what we like to call Secrets of the Masters |
From the album Hellbilly Deluxe (1998 Geffen)
Produced by: Scott Humphrey
Engineered/Mixed by: Frank Gryner
Recorded at: The Chop Shop in Los Angeles, California
Available in the JAMMIT “Rob Zombie Vol.1” application
I guess it was only a matter of time before
the tables were turned and some of my past
work was put under the same microscope
as other multi-tracks we’ve dissected here in
the past. This month we’re taking a look Rob
Zombie’s biggest hit to date, “Dragula.”
This song was the first single released on
Zombie’s debut solo record Hellbilly Deluxe
in August of 1998. Production was headed up
by Scott Humphrey, who had already done
a significant number of high-profile credits.
It was—and still is—one of my most notable
engineering projects. So the thought of revisiting
the tracks felt a lot like going to a high school
reunion—but without the alcohol and
anti-anxiety medication to get me through
it! Well, it’s not really insecurity as much as
it is the feeling that more than a decade of
additional experience must have advanced
my craft to a place that would make any
previous work somehow inferior. As it turns
out, I was pretty off base in that assumption.
These tracks held up remarkable well. Hellbilly
Deluxe has a sonic character that is tough to
compare to anything else, past or present—
even subsequent Rob Zombie albums. So let’s
begin our audio autopsy on the individual
elements of “Dragula” and get a closer look
at the anatomy of this modern-rock milestone.
Building a Pro Tools Frankenstein
Hellbilly was recorded in an awkward era
when computer-based digital recording was
not yet embraced as an industry standard.
But Humphrey had the technology in a headlock.
His digital artistry was very transparent,
which why he was chosen to work as a digital
audio editor on huge records by Metallica,
Bon Jovi, and Mötley Crüe when most
people didn’t even know what digital audio
editor meant. He had pushed the boundaries
of primitive DAW and was instrumental in the
development of Pro Tools features like Beat
Detective and batch cross fade processing.
So that same inventive mentality went into
Hellbilly’s production.
The Chop Shop was Humphrey’s laboratory
for piecing together the album. Even
though he was an accomplished musician,
Humphrey’s main instrument was arguably the computer. He maxed out the then-state-of-the-art Power Mac 9600 and ran a full-blown
Pro Tools TDM system that required
constant maintenance. We would joke that
you’d spend more time behind the recording
gear than in front of the screen. While
Zombie explored the prospect of severing
ties with White Zombie, he and Humphrey
brought in players like Tommy Lee, Danny
Lohner, and Mike Riggs to play what couldn’t
be looped, sampled, or chopped into place
with Pro Tools. While “Dragula” and most of
the other tracks on this album were the result
of a sincere effort to get a big, pro-sounding
record, what actually happened was more of
a makeshift, unique sound arrived at through
experimentation rather than pure expertise. I
remember other audio professionals telling us
we couldn’t make a record on Pro Tools and
that the Chop Shop was an unsuitable mix
environment. Hellbilly was tracked entirely
in Pro Tools (transferred to 3348 digital tape
only for archive) and some of the final mixes
were even done in the box. It seemed we all
had a lot to prove with this record as we were
all transitioning from one position to another.
Digging Through the Ditches
To say that Hellbilly was constructed unconventionally
is an understatement. There were no
basic tracks. Zombie and Humphrey “wrote”
the songs from recycled riffs and loops and
then built upon them through trial and error.
“Dragula” consists of combined drum loop elements
supplemented with kick and snare samples,
layers of heavy rhythm and high, droning
guitars, electric bass infused with synth bass,
Polyfusion modular synth (Humphrey’s specialty)
and Zombie’s stacked vocals.
The Chop Shop was an anomaly in the
Hollywood Hills just minutes away from the
heart of the Sunset Strip, but isolated enough
to be able to make as much noise as we
could produce. We converted the garage
into the tracking room and ran audio cables
through the floors and pretty much every wall
in the house (even concrete cinder blocks)
in order to have makeshift reverb chambers,
remote amp cabinets, and mic tie lines on
all three levels. I can’t say that we always
knew precisely what we were doing, but it all
seemed to make enough sense at the time.
Incidentally, Zombie was always a good sport
through all construction, deconstruction, and
experimentation at the Chop Shop—even
when we made him sing “Dragula” in a stairwell
storage closet.
Axes of Evil
The guitars on Hellbilly were, like most other
elements on this record, a melting pot of
“whatever works” in the mix. Nothing was
sacred. The integrity of any particular musical
performance was ignored and subject
to radical editing and processing. It wasn’t
uncommon for guitar parts to be Pro Tooled
out of recognition or replaced entirely without
warning. Riggs’ guitar parts may have
been layered with Danny Lohner’s—there are
even some rhythm guitar parts that I ended
up playing in the choruses of “Dragula.”
The in-house guitar rig consisted of a Diezel
VH-4, a Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier, and a
Marshall 2550 Silver Jubilee head through
various vintage Marshall 4x12s. The main
tracking guitar was a Les Paul standard with a
P-94 pickup in the bridge position. All in all,
the guitars got mashed together to function.
They certainly weren’t played with the precision
of Zombie’s current guitarist, John 5, but
they did have a vibe.
How to Make a Monster
Over the last 12 years, recording digitally has
become the standard and technology has
caught up with the demands of high track-count
sessions. Taking this trip down memory
lane really did highlight the significant progression
in DAW recording systems, but all
these advances don’t necessarily guarantee a
more compelling result. Today, most engineers
would turn their nose up at the rig that created
Hellbilly Deluxe, and even I initially had
apprehension over revisiting the tracks. But I
realized you have to view recordings as more
of a snapshot in time for which there should
be no apologies. “Dragula” was one such still
frame, and I’m pleased to be able to format
this song and others like it into a piece of software
that allows everyone to view that picture
from a slightly different angle.