Producer/engineer Michael Beinhorn has crafted a well-respected respected reputation and lengthy resume over the course of a 20-plus-year career. He’s worked on seminal recordings by bands including Soundgarden (Superunknown), Red Hot Chili Peppers (Mothers Milk), Ozzy Osbourne (Ozzmosis), Hole (Celebrity Skin), Marilyn Manson (Mechanical Animals), and Korn (Untouchables), to list but a few. His keys/programming chops can also be found on a slew of other projects from Brian Eno and Lenny White to Violent Femmes and The Golden Palominos.

Kicking around the New York music scene as a teen in the late ‘80s, he hooked up with Bill Laswell to create Material, described by allmusicguide.com as a “groundbreaking fusion of jazz, funk, and punk that also incorporated elements of hip-hop and world music”. The band backed a number of artists on stage and in the studio, including Nona Hendryx and Herbie Hancock. They produced Hancock’s Future Shock album, which garnered a Grammy award and including the hit single “Rockit” that rose to #1 atop the Billboard charts.

What are you currently working on?

I recently worked on a record with a band called The Bronx, Mew and an English band called The Fields. They released an EP in England and this is their first long-playing recording.

How’d you get your start: assisting, mixing, as a coffee boy?

I started out as a kid with a lot of really silly ideas and no way to articulate them in a nomenclature that would be applicable to a recording situation.

I have no college training, degree or any formal training. I wanted to be in a band so I bought a synthesizer. I was primarily an illustrator. Somehow, I met up with Fred Maher when were both fooling around in New York looking for something interesting musically to do. We met Bill Laswell and started Material, and the rest is pretty much history—after a fashion.

With Laswell, I was working with ideas. I didn’t have any technical skills per se. My primary function working with him was synthesizer stuff—programming synthesizers and coming up with musical ideas. That sort of metamorphosed into record production because you could apply those things to other instruments and orchestrate them.

Was the Herbie Hancock Future Shock record project a pivotal one for you and Material?

I would say it was. We’d done a record before that with Nona Hendryx and Patti LaBelle, which was actually our first proper production, outside of Material. But really it was the Hancock record that helped establish us. In its own way, it was pretty groundbreaking. I’m very proud of that. It was a very fertile time as well; a lot of people were doing some very interesting things. It just felt like a period where you could stretch the boundaries of what people had done up to that point, musically.

Are you known for certain technique or sound? I read on allmusic.com that you “helped to create the Ultra Analog recording format which uses two-inch tape recorded at 7.5 ips (inches per second) tape speed. This approach brings out the low-end of the sound spectrum…” Can you elaborate on that?

I’ve never really tried to have any specific direction or technique to how I did stuff. That whole ultra analog thing came from a desire to get things to sound as good as they could in a recording studio. It was basically a little bit of common sense combined with stupidity. If 16 tracks sound good, then 8 tracks would sound better! And as it turns out, 2-inch 8-track sounds considerably better than 16! That’s one angle that I was pushing for; I just wanted to get the recordings to sound as good as they could. Every project is different, so you can’t really apply any techniques, or rules to them. They all have their own life. The good ones take on or develop their own kind of existence, and you have to respect that and go with it. If there is one rule that I follow, I’d say that that’s pretty much it.

Is the analog format your preference?

It varies quite a bit. The last couple of projects I’ve worked on have sort of been hybrids—between analog and digital. Ultimately, if I had my way, I would always work on hybrids, working between a high-resolution analog format and a high-resolution digital format like DSD. I haven’t been on a project where we’ve recorded to tape for several years now. The ultimate place where the music winds up will always be digital no matter what I do.

What particular software platforms do you like to work with?

The last couple of projects I’ve worked in have been in Pro Tools by default, but my preference would always be Nuendo if I were working in a PCM platform. The Sonoma DSD system that I’m using is the only system I know of, apart from the Pyramix, which is multi-channel, and which uses Meitner converters that are absolutely stunning. There’s nothing in the world like them. Unfortunately, a system like that is extremely expensive, and for the requirements that most people have nowadays at least when they track, it kind of makes owning a system like this prohibitive. I would definitely say that if you have the money and you’re interested in recording in DSD, that’s the best way to go.

What’s your gear philosophy?

I’ve got a certain amount of equipment that I own that I will always have with me on a recording project, and I do consider some of it to be quite indispensable. The rest, whatever is in the periphery, is based on things that one has to have to make a record. So, I kind of work with stuff that I’m familiar with, and the rest I leave up to fate.

Do you keep up with what’s current as far as technology?

It’s hugely a matter of utility and necessity. If something’s ‘in’ and current and applies directly to what I’m working with in a recording studio, then I’m going to find out as much as I can about it. As far as stuff that doesn’t pertain to me, I don’t really get involved in that.

Any must-have tools?

I have a rack of Neve M-57 mic-pre EQs, which are the best things on drums that I’ve ever heard in my life. Some of these are things you’d find in a recording studio, but the Neve’s are very rare, and they definitely have an unusual sound.

What inspires you creatively?

There are lots of things. Primarily hearing music that has a strong emotional content to it, no matter how abstract it is, really gets me going. If I’m listening to a piece of music and I really hear the artist, if I can really feel the artist’s soul and their intent through what’s in there, that’s what makes me the most interested. And, it gets my creative juices going. I find that a good song is very important, as well, but there’s something that’s a little bit deeper than just merely a good song. I mean, a lot of people have written good songs, but do they actually have the artistry to back it up? Beyond that, if I’m working with an artist and we have common ground and are able to communicate well, that pretty much closes the deal. That makes things a lot easier. I feel that I’ve been the most able to be of service to a project when those things are in place.

I don’t want to put you on the spot, but can you talk about some of the records that you’re the most proud of working on?

I knew you were going to ask that! I have to say, almost all of them. They’ve all got a unique characteristic to them. They’ve all come about at different points in my life. The recent stuff that I’ve done, I’m particularly proud of. I just did a record with a band called The Bronx that I’m very proud of. I would be remiss if I didn’t say anything about Superunknown by Soundgarden—A), it’s a classic record and B), I’m just incredibly proud of it. It’s a wonderful record. I also did Social Distortion and Soul Asylum CDs, I’m very proud of those records, as well.

How has the way you work changed over the years—or has it?

I think it has, and I think that if you consider myself to be a creative person, making records, I’m honor and duty-bound to be open to change. I feel that I’ve become a lot more sensitive to the artist I’m working with and what we’re trying to achieve. I think I feel much more comfortable with my ability to help people arrange music. There’s definitely been a maturation process to doing this that I’m really happy with. It’s also nice because it makes it so that the process of recording doesn’t become this ‘by rote’ thing where you kind of sit down and you just do it and you don’t feel anything and you don’t experience anything. It’s been a constantly wonderful experience, even in times where things were somewhat frustrating.

How have studios and session changed over the years? Lots of the great studios have closed in recent years. What is the future?

Well, you said it yourself: studios are going away. It’s painful to those of us who’ve relied on having great rooms that are well maintained with good equipment, and its immense difficulty to have to contend with that, with losing some of the best recording studios in the world. But at the same time, something similar happened in New York in the late part of the ‘80s. We lost some of the great recording studios due to economics. It’s a similar kind of situation. So people have to adapt. The truth is, that there is always going to be a need for music; people are always going to want to listen and they’re always going to need it in their life. The burden is upon us to be able to figure out new and different ways to meet the challenge. I think that the interim process is a rough one because the recordings that people are making these days in my genre don’t sound particularly good—rock records. That’s a bit of a challenge. I think that people have to get better at what they’re doing. There has to be more of a sense of technique. Because with this change and with the advent of people recording in their houses or their basements, comes the guy who can basically operate a Pro Tools system but does nothing more than open up a new channel and hit the space bar. There are no engineering chops. And this guy hasn’t had a chance to be in a real recording studio, working under a master engineer—which is the way me and a lot of the guys I work with have come up. It’s that of sense of apprenticeship, and a lot of that skill has gone away. I’m hopeful that there are people that actually seek out ways to be able to become better technicians at the art of recording, and that we as a community put more of ourselves into trying to make records that resonate emotionally with people that listen.

Well, perhaps that’s what OBEDIA is all about, helping folks to become more educated and savvy about recording techniques, learning different software platforms—and ultimately making really great sounding records.

Oh, there’s no question about it. Those guys have been a major help to me in many situations. They’re very competent in what they’re doing.

By Diane Gershuny

Tags: Producers

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 11:11 am and is filed under PROfiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.