Mack Major
Mack Major was built to be an audio engineer. His calm, affable, unassuming demeanor allows recording artists to take up lots of space in the room while he deftly and quietly presses the buttons and turns the knobs behind the scenes. Even with a new baby, his impeccably organized home studio (painted serene blue) reflects the clarity with which he works. In eight years of audio engineering, Major has established residence at The Parlor Recording Studio, Neutral Sound Studio, Esplanade Studios, Downman Sounds, and Marigny Studios. He’s recorded for The Rumble, Avery*Sunshine, Crowe Boys, DTF (Adam Deitch, Ari Teitel, and Sam Fribush), The Revivalists, and Maggie Koerner, among other notables. He’s not one to rattle off his resume, and if we weren’t casually sitting in front of the Grammy he won for a PJ Morton album in 2020 (Gospel According To PJ), it likely never would have come up. He was happy to answer all of my questions about gear though, since asking a million well-timed questions of his peers and mentors was how he developed so quickly into a confident engineer.
What’s the DAW that you use for everything?
I use Pro Tools, mostly because I came up in a traditional studio-internship-to-engineering-pipeline and the studio I was interning at used it. A lot of people complain that it’s not intuitive and it can be tougher to get around than Logic or Ableton, but all major studios where you’re doing multi-track recording generally have Pro Tools and, as far as editing is concerned, I think it’s the best DAW for that. I’ll do a lot of sessions with bands, and people will come up after a take and be like, “Can you splice this section over to this one?” And I can do it really fast on Pro Tools. I’ve been doing this long enough to know what can be edited and what can’t, or what would take too long to edit. Sometimes someone wants to go back and re-record something and I’ll say, “You don’t have to do that. I can do it super fast.” But if it’s in drums or cymbals, it’s really difficult and a small thing could take an hour. When I was first interning at The Parlor, I would just watch my mentor, Nick Guttmann, and ask him endless amounts of questions about, “How do you do this? How do you do that?” And he would give me all of the shortcuts and I would go home and practice.
Did he mind that you were being almost like a kid, asking all those questions?
No. Honestly, I was interning for a year and a half when the guy that owned [The Parlor] had to leave and then Nick’s wife, who’s an entertainment lawyer, got her dream job in Nashville, so he moved, and then I was just the only person there. The very first solo session I did was with Tank and the Bangas and Robert Glasper, so I was thrust into the fire really quick. It was high stakes right off the bat, so having asked endless questions, then going home and practicing and experimenting was what I needed. Basically, learning by doing and messing up. Eric Heigle had also worked at The Parlor and done sessions—it was the kind of studio where a lot of artists would come in with their own engineer, so then I would basically be the assistant and could learn from someone who was more tenured than I was at the time. So I learned by figuring it out and by not being scared to ask questions.
Any advice on the most tactful way to ask questions in a studio setting?
I think with my questions, it was the specificity and the timing. I wouldn’t just ask a question immediately. I’d be like, “How did he do that?” but note it and ask when there was a break, not when he was in the middle of his flow state.
I’m noticing that you have a really calm, balanced vibe in this home studio and every surface is buffered… Did you customize it all?
I did! I made the [sound] panels. I made the desk. I go all-in on projects. During the pandemic, The Parlor got sold and I needed a space in my house, so I started doing some woodworking and I had enough time and the wherewithal to want to go at it. When we bought this house, I remember walking in and saying, “This is the studio room.” It was already light blue and matched the color of my [Gretsch USA Custom] drumset. There’s no sharp angles in here. The only bad spot for sound is right where you’re sitting, ‘cause there’s a hardwood floor and drywall right there. But the panels, which seem randomly placed, were designed to minimize the amount of parallel walls and hard surfaces. I’m not an acoustician. I’m someone who has some idea of how acoustics work, so if that wall doesn’t have absorption on it, the wall across from it does. I made them with wooden frames with insulation and burlap. They’re lightweight. I hang them on picture wire. Even the ones sketchily hung at angles are done that way so there’s more interaction with the sound waves.
Can you record full bands in this room?
I do mostly mixing and editing in here, but I do some overdubs and I’ve done one or two full band sessions, which is a little crazy, because you don’t really know what’s going on until you press play after the takes, because the drums are right there in the middle of everything. I did a session for Noah Young’s wedding band in here, which was really fun. Thomas Glass was the drummer, so he knew what he was doing. They’re a great wedding band, if you’re ever looking for one. The other session I did was with [Noah’s] other band, called Slugger, and the drummer was Terrence Houston, who’s a very loud drummer. He hits hard, so it was a little crazy but it’s all good. To me, capturing drum sounds—I play drums myself, not as much anymore, but I did play—is the most interesting part of the recording process, just because there’s so many variables at play.
How do you like to mic the drums?
I just recorded an organ trio record with drums and used an old black British ribbon mic for the overhead, a Coles 4038. It’s very chunky, very heavy. Ribbon microphones have magnets in them and these have super strong magnets, like, stuff will get pulled into the grill of them because of how strong the magnets are. It’s a great overhead mic and great for anything you’d want to sound really beefy.
To me, overheads can be used in many different ways. I guess, really, two different ways: One is for an overall capture of the drum kit, which, when you only use two or three microphones, is what it’s for. That’s when you want heavy. But if you have tons of close mics, and that’s what you’re leaning on, going for a more modern sound, you might use the overheads more as cymbal mics, in which case, you want to roll off the body and maybe capture less low and mid information. You want more high end, so then you might want to use condenser microphones, ‘cause those are brighter and faster and give you more shimmer.
I know so many audio engineers who started as drummers.
It’s a very common pipeline. I think it has to do with needing to balance many things at once. When you’re playing drums, you are mixing. You have to decide how loud you want each part to be. You’re not playing one instrument. Every single thing you’re hitting is at a different volume, so you have to blend that as you’re going. And living in New Orleans, there’s such good music. I would go to shows and be like, “There’s 30 people here and I’m the sixth best drummer in the room right now.” So once I got into engineering I thought, “This is something where I can differentiate myself and stand out more than by just being a drummer.”
What are your favorite microphones for other purposes?
This is the main vocal mic I use. It’s a Warm Audio [WA]-47. They’re a company that does a lot of recreations of vintage microphones, so it’s relatively affordable. It feels large and in charge and has that old energy. I’d say it works best for male vocals. It’s also a good drum room or overhead mic. A lot of people will just use a 47 as almost the whole drum sound, so it’s versatile, it sounds great, it didn’t break the bank, and I’ve used it on a bunch of vocal recordings I’ve done here. It’s a great mic.
As far as vocal mics are concerned though, it’s interesting, because you kinda have to experiment with people to see what really works for them. People sing in different frequencies. You might be looking for a different vibe, depending on the record. You might not want the pristine clarity of a condenser. If you’re a really project-y belter of a singer, condenser microphones can get brash and aggressive sometimes, so in a lot of situations, I’ll prefer a dynamic microphone. With The Rumble, their front person, Chief Joe [Big Chief Joseph Boudreaux Jr.], he’s more of a rapper than a singer and, when they perform, they’re performing loud and live—that’s the energy and his vocal performance is in that environment. So what we did on the last record and what we’ve been doing on this one is, all his vocals have been done in the control room on an [Electro-Voice] RE20 with the speakers on. Then he can move around and feel the energy and maybe the fidelity of the recording is slightly lower and there’s bleed from the speakers a little bit, but getting his performance energy out is the more important thing.
Warm Audio WA-47
It must have been wild mixing The Rumble’s first album, since it was all done live at the Maple Leaf, which, I learned from Cam Smith on one of my first Sound Check interviews, is a notoriously challenging sound room.
It was, but Evan Martin, who’s the main engineer over there, assisted on the session. He’s an amazing dude. We used the house console, the [Midas] M32. There was no producer in the room, so I kinda became the de facto producer but every member of that band knows how to produce, they all know how to listen to each other, they all have finely-tuned ears and recording them is such a luxury. They can really, really play. They’re all technically proficient and they can listen and create parts that serve the song and each other really well. They’re so good that sometimes I’m just pressing record and not changing a thing, just balancing the tracks.
Getting back to your home studio, I’ve been waiting to talk about that gorgeous vintage tape recorder sitting to your right.
This is a TASCAM 388. This thing is a vibe machine. Just right off the bat, things are going to sound amazing when you use it, especially if you record drums through here.
It’s an 8-track tape machine that also has a mixer. It uses quarter inch tape, so it’s really thin. This was a prosumer machine in the ‘80s. I don’t know if you’re familiar with TASCAM Portastudios? They’re these little multitrack cassette tape recorders. This is the step up from that, so it’s not a full hi-fi tape machine. It’s kinda lo-fi and gritty, which is kinda what I want if I’m using a tape machine. It breaks up really nicely. Drums through it sound awesome. I’ve done records where I’ve recorded a full band through it, where you do two drum mics, bass, guitar, keys, record the rhythm section on this, then dump it into Pro Tools for further flexibility. That’s probably the main way I’ve used it. And recently, I’ve set up my studio where I can send stuff from Pro Tools into it and then back into Pro Tools. Depending on what I want to have that tape vibe to, I can pick and choose.
A record I really like, Changes, from this artist Neal Francis (he also played keys on the David Shaw solo record that I helped engineer a couple years ago) made me think, “This sounds like an Allen Toussaint record from the ‘70s. This is so nostalgic.” I found out that that was recorded on this tape machine. They’re worth a lot and the market on them has inflated recently, so I was looking for one for a while on Reverb and then, early in the pandemic, I found one in Florida for, like, a thousand bucks. The guy didn’t really know what he had. He was more of a live sound guy, so this was just sitting in his place. He hadn’t used it at all. He was like, “I think it’s working.” So me and my wife went to Destin and had a little beach excursion. I picked up this machine. I only had to replace one thing on it, the capstan belt that actually gets the tapes to spin. These machines generally go for $3,000 to $5,000 when they’re working, so it was worth the gamble to buy it as-is, and then I found the replacement part on eBay for, like, 10 bucks. This thing is like 80 pounds. It’s super heavy, so I was trying to work on it, but I’m not a super handy electrician, so I was troubleshooting quickly.
TASCAM 388
Show me a few other studio gems!
I have this 8-channel Neve preamp that I just got recently, [the Heritage Audio Súper 8, a Neve 1073 clone] which is really sweet. I use it for the [Beyerdynamic] M 160, which is probably my favorite piece of gear in here. It’s this tiny little microphone that kinda looks like an SM58 [Shure] but it’s sweet. It’s a hypercardioid microphone. Most ribbons are a figure eight. They pick up in front and back but this one picks up just in front and a little bit behind, so it’s very directional and it sounds awesome on drums as a full overhead. It has a lot of midrange but not a lot of the bright, shiny, aggressive, in-your-face stuff. It’s a crispy microphone.
Ribbon microphones have a very low input and a high impedance, so you want a high impedance pre-amp to match with them and that’s what this is and then I have a couple compressors. This [AudioScape 76A] is an 1176 clone, which is like a classic for vocals, snare drum, or guitar. We have an [AudioScape Opto Comp] LA2A clone as well. This is my favorite compressor ‘cause it’s just very simple to use. You only have two things you can mess with: the peak reduction (which is how much it compresses), and gain (which is how loud it is after it compresses), so there’s not a lot you can mess up or play around with. Whatever the circuitry is in there, it sounds really awesome on vocals and bass. It can sound awesome on anything but those are the two main things I use it on, and there’s tubes in there as well, which are always great to run things to.
This [AudioScape] V-Comp+ is also a tube compressor. It’s based off of a Retro Sta-Level, which is a compressor from the ‘50s. This one has a lot more parameters to play with: different attack times and release times, and then a cool feature is you can actually turn off the compressor and just make it an amplifier for running the signal through the tubes, which is an overdrive gain thing where you can get a tube breakup like you would through an amplifier, if you’re playing guitar through there, so it’s a fun thing to play around with.
The final piece of cool gear I have is this Hear Back [OCTO System] hub, these different stations that are around here. It’s for artists to listen through, and mostly, when I’m recording, so everyone can control themselves.
It’s astounding how much gear is in this small room without anything feeling cluttered or chaotic. I feel like we only discussed half of it.
I try to keep everything as compact as possible and close by. I’m a very succinct person. This is all a recent development for me. All of this outboard gear and patchbay—which allows me to connect any piece of gear—I got this all within the past few months and installed it two weeks ago. If it’s possible to build things myself, I like to, because it feels more personal and it has a vibe. But you have to have the time, so these projects come in bursts. Gear is all great but you need to be able to use it quickly and be able to access it without thinking about it. Before the patchbay, I barely used the TASCAM, because of how many cables needed to be unplugged and plugged in to set it up. Now I have no excuse.
You mentioned having the most alliterative Plan B of all time.
I did. I was originally a math major. I thought I was gonna do computer science or something adjacent to that, or be a teacher. My mom is a teacher, her mom was a teacher, I like teaching, and I worked in summer camps and all that. I sustained myself as a math tutor when I was interning at the music studio and that was how I balanced myself out. Mack Major, the Math Major. That’s why I did it, just for the alliteration. That’s the fallback, if the engineering dries up.
Photos by Sabrina Stone
