Autobiography

The craft of mixing music that, in time, becomes classic and can endure throughout the ages, is steeped with engineering tradition, and requires a depth of knowledge and experience, which is acquired only in the great temples of the recording industry: the legendary analog recording studios of music lore. Sacred names like Kendun Recorders, Burbank; Artisan Sound Recorders, Hollywood; Wally Heider’s, Hollywood; Bearsville Sound Studios, Woodstock, NY; Glaser Sound Studios, Nashville; and Olympia Studios, Munich, Germany. Recording Engineer/Producer Tim Jessup stands among that breed of craftsmen who have been immersed in the analog world of these iconic studios; a 40+ year veteran of the very best sound recording facilities ever devised by the imagination of man. From these ranks, Tim’s legacy is woven into the fabric of music history itself, in the tracks recorded by artists such as Christopher Cross, James Ingram, Quincy Jones, Sheryl Crow, Gladys Kinght, Atlantic Starr, The Isley Brothers, The Temptations, Devo, The Gap Band, Bobby Womack, Ashford and Simpson, Randy Meisner, Lakeside, Adrian Belew, and so many others who left their enduring mark on the world of music over the last four decades. As the mix engineer and film sound designer for the 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees – Chicago, Tim now uses his analog skill set “in-the-box”, to achieve the familiar sound of this big studio band ~ without the big studio… and, without the $2,500 day rate.

How many new artists on the Billboard charts today can realistically expect to have a viable music career in 50 years? The secret to longevity in this volatile industry is still found in writing consistently great songs and settling for nothing less than outstanding production. That will never change. Both of these essentials require great patience, insight, craftwork, extraordinary talent, many years of experience, and a little luck. For Chicago, the road ahead is a no-brainer. No longer does the band have the luxury of time or the financial resources, to stop touring for 6 months to record a new album or to produce a documentary film. Yet these assets are as essential as they ever were, in order to remain current and viable. New production must hence be accomplished simultaneously, while the band is on the road! Chicago’s new album “Now” Chicago XXXVI was recorded in just such a manner. In the uncertain and rapidly changing economy of the music industry, this is what survival and longevity look like. The magic trick is to accomplish this feat without compromising the sound of the final master, and to deliver what their fans have come to expect thoughout the decades! Chicago has set a particularly high standard for themselves in this regard, largely because their 1980’s hits with Multi-Grammy Award winning producer David Foster and engineering legends such as Humberto Gatica and Phil Ramone were second to none. Together, they established new sonic precedents in recorded music. On Chicago XVII they created a massive wall of sound that few other artists have ever achieved. Harnessing this enormous sound today within the circuitry of a comparatively modest Mac Pro computer is quite challenging, not to mention filling the shoes of such music industry icons! This is where 40+ years of major studio experience is… helpful. It’s a brave new world, and we must make the very best of the hand we are dealt. As a longtime audio mercenary from the days of tape machine calibration, tape head alignment, razor blades and grease pensil, today Tim Jessup is successfully working around the quagmire of limitations that the “new” music industry has established for itself and helping bands like Chicago deliver great new music, in spite of their non-stop touring schedule. This biography explores the lengthy path that Tim took to get here.

A child of the 1950s, I was raised in a very musical family. My grandfather taught me to play the guitar and mandolin from the age of four, my mom sang opera and taught piano and voice, and my father was an engineer for IBM. My Dad’s hobbies included building his first Dynaco stereo system circa 1959, building our first color television set, and my first electric guitar amplifier. In the early 1960’s, he had joined our local Audio Society and was quite the Audiophile. I was fortunate to grow up listening to all the great new records coming out back in the 60’s and ‘70’s on audiophile speakers, such as the infamous AR3a. At the age of eight, I was given a gift that would transform my world, a small battery powered tape recorder, with 3” reels, which quickly became my favorite pastime. A few years later, when my father brought home a Sony reel-to-reel with a new feature called “sound-on-sound”, I began experimenting with the machine by producing original music and dramatic programs with foley sound effects, to explore the seemingly endless boundaries of overdubbing. Sound design became my favorite hobby, though there was no classification for the artform at the time. By 11 years old, emulating my older brother Brian, I joined up with a garage band and later, went on to play the ubiquitous school dance circuit in upstate N.Y. during the early 1970’s. Following my passions for music and engineering, I built a radio station in high school, and broadcast daily shows to the school “study halls”, which were more about hanging out, getting high and listening to music. It was natural to go on to study communications in college. But my true passion was audio engineering and there was no curriculum that I could find in the field. In 1974, I had begun producing demos with a local band at a small four track studio in the small town of Red Hook, N.Y., Dondisound, which boasted ownership of the very Crown tape recorder used to record Nixon’s infamous Watergate tapes. The studio owner, Dave Moulton, offered an audio engineering course and I learned to edit tape, mic placement, and to calibrate the multitrack recorder. It was just too easy to excel in my communications program at community college, and I had soon discovered a private school in San Francisco that specialized in Audio Engineering and Disk Mastering. The College For Recording Arts. I immediately enrolled in their program and anxiously waited for an entire year on the school’s waiting list to begin my studies. While waiting, I took a temporary position at IBM, working in a failure analysis group, associated with the development of IBM’s first personal computer.

IBM’s early units had modules encased in Freon gas to keep them from over-heating, but they had a tendency to explode when they got too hot.

By the end of the year, IBM offered me a full-time, permanent position, with all of the mega-benefits that came with working for IBM in those days, just when it became time for me to begin my studies at The College for Recording Arts. I was standing at the proverbial crossroads, asked to follow in my father’s footsteps and choose the safe, secure pathway in life, or to risk everything and follow my passion for audio engineering. Being young and unwise, I chose to follow my passion. It has not been an easy path to follow, and I question whether I would have made the same choice, knowing what I know now, but I imagine I would have had many more regrets had I taken the safer road in life. Life is simply too short to not follow what we love to do with it.

I began studying under Tom Lubin, a staff engineer for CBS Recording Studios in San Francisco, and Mastering Engineer Leo De Gar Kulka, the school’s effervescent proprietor. The College for Recording Arts was located at Golden State Recorders, one of those classic bay area studios, like Wally Heider’s, from which sprang forth the sound of the late sixties, being home to acts like Quick Silver Messenger Service and the Jefferson Airplane. At the time, Tom Lubin had been mixing for Eddie Money and was also a contributing writer for Recording Engineer/Producer magazine. His personal interviews with engineers such as Bill Szymczyk, with regard to the production details on Joe Walsh’s album “But Seriously Folks” were inspiring. The tricks of the trade were being revealed and it was a very exciting time. Samplers and drum machines did not exist in 1978, so the Bee Gees were using 2” multi-track tape loops for their drum tracks on their infamous “Saturday Night Fever” hits , to achieve the infectious, extremely stable, machine-like rhythms that became ubiquitous with disco. Without the existence of digital reverbs, Led Zeppelin once used microphones placed on various floors of an elevator shaft to gain the acoustic time delay needed for the explosive drum sounds of John Bonham. Joe Walsh achieved his monstrous guitar sound by cranking up a tiny little Fender Champ amplifier to “10” and panning it center between the stereo mics of a slowly rotating, overdriven Leslie speaker cabinet. While learning to find ingenuity and technique, I mastered the art of editing tape with a razor blade, studied electronic design and studio maintenance, while learning to calibrate the electronics and align head azimuth on the studio’s vintage Ampex 440 2-tracks and Stevens 16 track tape machines – all the while trying desperately to wrangle competitive sounding mixes out of the studio’s Quad-Eight recording console and vintage Altec 604 monitors.

I was never satisfied with the mixes I had achieved on the Quad Eight console, especially my drum sounds, and I began doubting that I had the ears that it took to produce the kinds of sounds that I was hearing on the newly released Steely Dan “Aja” album, which had just raised the bar on the entire recording industry. Never-the-less, I had to persevere. It was in my blood.

I will never forget my final exam at CRA. It was an editing nightmare! We were given a Bartok recording on two track tape, which sounded very much like two marching bands passing in a parade. Musically, it sounded like total, complete chaos. We were also given the conductor score for the piece, with markings of which measures and passages needed to be cut out and swapped with other sections of the piece. There was nothing as obvious as a steady drum beat to follow or a kick drum to use as a definitive edit point. I remember scrubbing the tape reels ever so cautiously, looking for the precise spots to mark with the grease pensil, and praying when I cut the tape. We were to seamlessly make the changes with no audible glitches, clicks, or pops, and of course it had to be musically accurate to the revisions on the score. In addition to my diploma, Leo De Gar Kulka wrote for me the most wonderful personal recommendation, which I still have today. Leo has long since passed on, and I will always remember his effervescent personality and his passionate encouragement.

After graduation, I was hired by a production company in Nashville, which had recently leased the Glaser Brother’s Studio for an entire year, to produce songs for the up and coming contemporary Christian market in 1979. My very first recording session was with some of the A-list studio players of Nashville, including Shane Keister on piano, and Larrie Londin on drums. I placed the drum mics and sat behind the studio’s MCI console to get the levels and EQ set-up. When Larrie began to play, suddenly, there it was, without reaching for a single EQ, the elusive drum sound that I could never achieve on the Quad Eight console at the College for Recording Arts. Real world experience had just taught me how very essential a console’s mic pre-amps are to the over-all quality of a recording. I felt a tremendous sense of relief, as if I had been given a reprieve from the Guillotine. I was now free to excel in my sonic quest for excellence.

While working in Nashville, I received a phone call from my former college roommate, Curtis (aka Dr. Gonzo), who was now working at Union Studios in Munich, Germany, where most of the Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder dance hits were being recorded on the studio’s Cadac console. Another studio in town was also looking for an American engineer and after an interview with Ralph Seigel in Manhattan, I was hired by Olympia Studios to work with the artist’s of German record label, Jupiter Records, including many of the Eurovision entries from Germany in 1980. The studio was an elegantly converted wine cellar in the basement of a pre-war German mansion on the Isar river, designed by renouned “Westlake” studio designer Tom Hidley and featuring a Harrison desk, such as that employed by Bruce Swedien on Michael Jackson’s albums. The studio quickly expanded and added one of the very first Solid State Logic 4000 E consoles ever built, to a newly constructed studio B. The difference between the SSL and the Harrison console was astonishing, just as my earlier comparison of the Quad Eight to the MCI console in Nashville was so enlightening for me. The SSL console was a very powerful, surgical tool, which included a number of exciting “firsts” in the studio, including an extremely powerful, surgical EQ, a Dynamics section on every channel !!, Instant selection between mixing and tracking modes for the entire console, an incredible Quad-buss Master VCA compressor, full computer control of the Studer A-800 tape machines and powerful, full console automation. It was like trading in a Chevy Vega for the Starship Enterprise! I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Nothing that came before could touch the capabilities or the sound of the SSL in 1980.

Returning to the United States after the death of John Lennon, I was interviewed by the world-renowned studio complex Kendun Recorders, in Burbank, which featured four Tom Hidley designed studios and two mastering suites, including Artisan Sound Recorders in Hollywood, which had been recently purchased by Kent Duncan. Along with the Record Plant and Sunset Sound, Kendun Recorders was about as fine an achievement ever built in the record business, anywhere in the world. REO Speedwagon had recorded their breakthrough album “High Infidelity” in studio D the previous year and the studio had a long history of classic hits going all the way back to Neil Diamond’s early records, which were mastered by Kent himself. I was standing in hallowed ground. In 1981 there were very few SSL consoles in the United States and Kendun Recorders had won the sales franchise for the console in the U.S. The studio’s sister company, Sierra Audio, represented the studio design concepts and construction of Tom Hidley’s “Westlake” studios internationally (called Eastlake outside of the U.S.), and Kendun Recorders also served as the showroom for the architectural design products of Sierra Audio. The company had previously designed and built the former studio I had worked for in Munich, Germany.

After three grueling days of interviews and some very stiff competition, I was hired by Kendun Recorders as a staff engineer, primarily due to my familiarity with SSL consoles and the fact that I had previously worked in a Tom Hidley designed studio in Europe.

Barney Perkins was an imposing figure. The 400 pound former L.A. RAMS linebacker was not someone you ever wanted to piss off. He was also a man of very few words. My primary job at Kendun Recorders was to sit next to Barney, 18 hours a day, learn to read his mind, to intuit what he needed next, and have it set-up and patched up – before Barney ever had to ask for it.

It was about keeping the session flowing effortlessly. Barney’s skills as a mix engineer were beyond anything that I had ever experienced. He was a human hit maker and he consistently achieved some of the fattest R&B mixes ever heard on the planet. Barney had a very distinctive sound, especially his fat low end, and as a result he was the A-list engineer for Motown and many other R&B artists, but he also worked diversely with artists such as Steely Dan and top jazz artists as well. Although I worked on many other sessions, with a variety of well respected engineers, including Joe Chiccarelli (Frank Zappa, Elton John, Poco, Journey, U2, The White Stripes, Larry Carlton) Taavi Mote (Lakeside, Cheryl Lynn, Janet Jackson, Natalie Cole, Patti LaBelle), and Chet Himes (Christopher Cross, The Alessi Brothers, Carole King), I was primarily Barney’s assistant engineer during my tenure at Kendun Recorders. Over time, Barney started to impart more of his engineering tasks for me to handle, and took more of a producer role on some sessions. To this very day, there are certain aspects of Barney’s work that no other engineer utilized, which were a uniquely essential part of his sound. Barney passed away in December of 1993 and the world lost one of its most gifted sound mixers. I worked with Barney on many R&B albums

including: DeBarge, The Temptations, Cheryl Lynn (To Be Real), Atlantic Starr, Gladys Knight, Dr. Strutt and many others. I am proud to call him a mentor.

The music industry also recently lost another gifted engineer in the R&B world, Mr. Taavi Mote, who was also a regular at Kendun. I worked with Taavi on the Lakeside album “Your Wish is My Command” on Solar Records. Taavi was mixing the album in Kendun’s studio A on an SSL 4000 E console. The album was recorded on 48 tracks, utilizing two Studer A-800 recorders as master and slave. At one point, after Taavi had been struggling with one particular mix for several days, he decided it needed some additional guitar parts. I took the slave reel into studio B to add the guitar parts, while Taavi continued to mix on the master reel, expecting to have the slave reel, with the new guitar parts, back in Studio A within an hour. Kendun Studio B had a vintage API mixing console, which is revered to this day for its open, fat sound. I put up the slave reel and quickly got up a monitor mix for the guitar player and we started to record.

The guitarist was so impressed with the sound of his guitar through the API console, that he decided to re-record all of his guitar tracks for the song. More than an hour later, Taavi came wandering into studio B wondering where his slave reel was, and why it was taking so long. He stood there for a moment listening, with his jaw dropped wide open. He had been mixing away on the SSL console for days trying to get the sound he wanted, and there, in studio B, on the API console – with just a quick rough mix put up in 10 minutes, was the very sound he had been trying to achieve on the SSL. It seemed as though Taavi was going to cry. He hung his head and left without saying a word.

Although the SSL console was a major breakthrough in recording technology, the lesson is that you must always use the right tool for the job. The SSL was so powerful and clean, but the 4000 E series developed a reputation for being harsh and brittle, which the company would address in later versions. But for pure R&B music like Lakeside or The Gap Band, the API console was far more appropriate for their sound. Software manufacturers such as Universal Audio and Slate Digital now make Plug-in versions of the revered API console, which are some of my standard go-to tools for much of what I do today, but especially for the electric guitar!!!

With so many digital models of analog consoles and vintage processors available today, I prefer to use the sound of different consoles to optimize the character of specific instruments, a hybrid console, something that was simply impossible to do while mixing an album 30 years ago. More than ever, we can now use exactly the right tool for the job.

By the mid 1990’s, I had long since left Los Angeles, the magnificent Kendun Recorders had fallen victim to an industry recession, bad management, various lawsuits, and Cocaine (lots of it). As I recall, the bank eventually called in their notes on the studio’s loans and the glorious complex was forced to close its doors. Even during the 1980’s, the studio sometimes had trouble making payroll. As a result, I lost my apartment in Burbank and found myself sleeping in my car in the parking lot of Kendun’s studio D. There I was, working for one of the most respected recording studios in the world, homeless. Being a recording engineer is sometimes not as glamorous as you might think it is.

While I was on staff at Kendun, I would often be working in the studio for three days at a time, without ever leaving, so the fact that I became temporarily homeless didn’t seem to have a lot of consequence, because I lived in the studio primarily. It was like working aboard a ship, or a space station. There was a kitchen, a shower, a comfortable lounge, and an SSL B Series console, what more could I want?

In the 1990’s, I built my own studio in Phoenix, Arizona and entered the world of sound design for film, television and advertising. Everything had changed with the introduction of Pro Tools and non-linear editing. My new company, Sound Design, Inc., became one of the most sought after post-sound studios in Arizona, creating the soundtracks for more than 30,000 television and radio commercials in its first five years, as well as sound design work on video productions and animated logos for Fortune 500 corporations such as Motorola, America West Airlines, American Express, On SemiConductor, Bank One, and many others. I also provided ADR services for a number of feature films, such as Anastasia by Fox Animation, Nightmare Before Christmas, Buena Vista, and Homeward Bound from Disney.

While working with animators Don Bluth and Gary Goldman from Fox Animation and Disney, I developed a long-standing relationship which led to sound design work on the cinematic sequences in the video game “I-Ninja” for Sony Playstation and Nintendo, and sound design for the animated sequences in the Sissor Sister’s Polygram music video “Mary”, which was broadcast on MTV. In just five years, I had received more than 100 awards for work in the field of sound design, including the prestigious CLIO, The London International Award, and many Telly and Addy Awards. In retrospect, I think that due to my early imaginative use of sound-on-sound, playing with overdubbing as a child, I had developed a natural love and talent for this area of audio production. But working an average of 100 hours a week, was burning me out. Something had to give.

After moving to Sedona, Arizona in 2000, I began working with music again,

now coming back around full circle in my career. While producing local artists in Northern Arizona, I was asked to record and mix select songs for jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan, a local Sedona resident, who’s unique tap style on the guitar gave him instant notoriety. I had first met Stanley many years before, in 1988 on an HBO shoot in New York City, featuring more than a dozen guitarists who were paying tribute to Les Paul. Young Stanley Jordan was in the company of Eddie Van Halen, David Gilmore from Pink Floyd, B.B. King, Steve Miller, Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats, and many other distinguished guitarists, including Les Paul himself. I was working on the show as a keyboard tech for Jan Hammer, who is best known for his work with John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and composing the soundtrack for the 1980’s television cop series “Miami Vice”.

The day before the show taping, I found myself sitting in a rehearsal room at Studio Instrument Rentals. To my right was Jan Hammer with his remote strap on keyboard, to my left was Eddie Van Halen with his guitar on. The two men began to speed duel back and forth on their instruments. I swear it was like watching a western gunfight.

I mixed Stanley Jordan’s album “State of Nature” in my home studio in Sedona, and then sent it out for mastering by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering in Maine. “State of Nature” earned a Grammy nomination later that year in the category of Best Pop Instrumental, for Stanley’s unique version of Joe Jackson’s 1980’s classic “Steppin’ Out”.

Since 1972, I have been inspired by the musical prowess of Dan Fogelberg, who often would play all of the instruments on many of his songs and sing all of his own harmony parts as well. Long before MIDI technology existed, this was a very impressive feat and I have often credited Dan for inspiring my own career in the music business. Since Dan’s untimely death from Prostate Cancer, in 2007, I have performed in a number of DF Tribute concerts to raise funds for the Prostate Cancer Foundation in Dan’s name. In 2012, I performed in Dan’s hometown of Peoria, Illinois, where I met and performed with Robert McEntee, Dan’s longtime friend and guitarist. Robert had toured with Dan Fogelberg since the early 1990’s. Well, we hit it off, and Robert invited me to co-produce a collection of Dan’s songs with him. But rather than simply re-create what Dan had done, the songs and their arrangements would be completely re-imagined, taking them back to the roots of those artists who inspired Dan: The Byrds, The Hollies, The Beatles, The Everly Brothers, Buffalo Springfield, Poco, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The Graylings Project was born. Two years in the making, the album “Fixed Wing Flight” was independently released in December 2013 to great anticipation among Dan Fogelberg fans everywhere. As would only be fitting, Bob Ludwig was again enlisted to master the album. Bob had mastered nearly all of Dan’s albums through-out his lengthy and multi-platinum career.

For me personally, the release of “Fixed Wing Flight” is truly the completion of a full circle, for I may not have taken the road-less-traveled in my career as an audio engineer, if not for the inspiration of Dan Fogelberg and his brilliant song writing and production. The Graylings Project features both Robert McEntee and myself sharing instrumental duties on acoustic and electric guitars, bass, and keyboards. Robert also played mandolin, dobro, drums and sang all lead vocals, while I handled most all of the background and harmony vocal parts, with additional bass parts by Mark Andes, from the bands Heart, Firefall and Spirit.

Sonically, The Graylings Project was recorded to sound as though it was recorded in the 1970’s, using the latest analog modeled plug-ins from Universal Audio, Slate Digital, Waves and Sonnex, including analog tape and API console emulations. We wanted it to sound like so many of our favorite classic albums from the era. The Graylings album was recorded remotely, with Robert recording his parts in his Austin, Texas studio, and sending his Pro Tools files to me in Sedona. Even the final mix was tweaked and revised through file sharing. Robert and I never actually sat down together in the same studio at anytime during the entire project, yet it has the energy and the mojo of a live band.

Lee Loughnane, trumpet player for 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees – Chicago, moved with his family to Sedona in 2010. After nearly 50 years, the band still tours continuously and plays more than 100 shows per year, all over the world. At the time we met, Lee was about to begin mixing a live recording in both 5.1 and stereo, for an upcoming Blu-Ray release called “Chicago in Chicago with the Doobie Brothers”. The production company wanted Lee to oversee the mix in L.A., which meant taking more precious time away from his family between touring. Lee asked them to “find someone in Sedona that can do this mix for us”. After many calls around town, and referral after referral, Chicago’s management were eventually led to working with me. With an extraordinarily short deadline before its release, The Blu-Ray/DVD “Chicago In Chicago featuring the Doobie Brothers” was mixed entirely in one week, in both stereo and 5.1, in my home studio. It was truly a Herculean effort, 26 songs, more than 50 tracks of audio, with literally no sleep for 5 days. Miraculously, the deadline for delivery was met and everyone was happy with the mix. The situation reminded me of the old days at Kendun, when sessions would proceed non-stop for days. Being no stranger to the extremes of studio life, I was able to meet a nearly impossible deadline.

As our working relationship continued, I helped Lee design a portable recording set-up based on Pro Tools Native HD. Within six months, I delivered “The Rig” to the band at a show in Tucson, Arizona. After the show, to my surprise, I was kidnapped by the band and taken on the road. They were anxious to try out the system and prove that it could deliver professional results as the band traveled.

For the next week, we turned the rear tour bus lounge into a control room and began tracking the song “Dialogue”, one band member at a time. One night after a show in San Antonio, Texas, I remember tracking Robert Lamm’s keyboard part as we traveled down the road, sometime after midnight. It was challenging for Robert to keep his balance on the moving tour bus, as he prefers to stand when he plays the keyboard. I later took the hard drives back to Sedona and did a mix of the song for the band. Over the course of the following year, Chicago recorded their latest “studio” album, “Now” Chicago XXXVI, on “The Rig” as they traveled.

The system has made it possible for the band to remain productive and multi-task while they are on the road. According to Robert Lamm, “Gone are the days when the band can take (six) months off and do a lock-out session in a commercial recording studio”. In the new music industry economy, bands such as Chicago earn the lion’s share of their annual income from touring. Music sales and streaming represent only a small fraction of most artist’s annual income anymore and taking time off to record a new album is a significant loss. “The Rig” has made it possible for Chicago to continue to record and give us new music as they continue their grueling tour schedule.

In 2013, Lee Loughnane decided to build a dedicated studio for Chicago in Sedona, so that he could have access to a studio to write and record in between tours. It would also give us a “home base” to mix tracks recorded on the road. We found a perfectly sized commercial space, away from the main highway, and I went to work designing and building a mix room which is based on Tom Hidley’s acoustic design principles, with a large bass trap across the entire back wall and active trapping in the side walls. The facility includes an overdub space which houses Lee’s classic Steinway B grand piano, a vintage Fender Rhodes stage piano, and multiple guitars, vintage amplifiers, and other music making gear.

Before I could finish building out the overdub space, I had to jump into a new project with another very tight deadline. Although this project would prove to be much more of a challenge than the Chicago in Chicago Blu-Ray mix. It was the mix for Chicago at Symphony Hall, featuring the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

I rushed to finish building the mix room and got to work. It was a two CD set with roughly 20 songs, mixed over the course of two months. This may sound reasonable, but I had to invent new methods of mixing to overcome some significant problems. Not the least of these was the band’s leakage into all of the orchestral microphones on the stage at Symphony Hall. This is one of those mixes that would not have been possible without a computer, and the use of extreme automation techniques in both level and EQ.

On the heals of Chicago at Symphony Hall, we began post sound design and mixing for the band’s tell-all documentary, “Now More Than Ever, The History of Chicago”, nearly a two hour expose’ on the 50 year history of one of the world’s hardest working rock and roll bands.

The film would occupy much of my studio time over the next year. Along the way, I gradually upgraded the entire studio, adding a new 8 core Mac Pro computer, Black Lion modified Avid interfaces, a 20 TB LACie 5Big Raid Drive to handle the through-put needed for large 192 khz High Definition mixes, many finely crafted new plug-ins emulating vintage analog gear, from Neve Consoles to Studer and Ampex tape recorders, three Universal Audio Octo cards to power many plug-ins running at 192 kHz, and Barefoot MM27 Gen 2 monitor speakers. My goal has always been to deliver audio mixes to Chicago that sound like they were produced in a vintage analog recording studio like Caribou Ranch, even though we are relegated to working entirely in the digital domain inside the computer. This system now delivers an authentically analog sounding result with a relatively cost-effective price tag.

In the midst of piecing together the film, we decided to take advantage of our powerful new system and also re-mix Chicago at Symphony Hall, but without a deadline this time. This album is a personal milestone for the band, the first live recording with a full symphony orchestra, and they wanted it to sound as elegant as the tracks would allow. I would ‘pull out all the stops’ and make the album free of any compromises. I first up-sampled all of the original audio tracks to 192 khz 24 Bit, to take advantage of the higher sonic quality of digital plug-ins at this sample rate. The Black Lion modified interfaces also sounded like an actual analog console at this sample rate. I spent the next year refining the mixes. To give the project the best finish possible, I would once again enlist Bob Ludwig to master the album. It is truly a masterpiece. In the wake of my efforts, going “above and beyond” in the production of Chicago at Symphony Hall, I was credited by the band as Co-Producer.

Simultaneously, we finished the final mixes for the documentary film, and took them out to Deluxe (formerly Todd AO) in Hollywood to master them on a large soundstage. The mixes from our small 5.1 mix room translated very well on the soundstage, with only minor tweaks needed. Within weeks, the film debuted at the Sedona International Film Festival and won best picture, while Chicago graced our small town with two sold-out concerts. The film has gone on to take top honors at two more film festivals in Florida, and distribution is now immanent through Showtime.

Most recently, Chicago has finally been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016, following the induction of their first album, Chicago Transit Authority, into the Grammy Hall of Fame the previous year. The band has started off big on the momentum of their Hall of Fame induction, with three back-to-back sold-out shows at The Hollywood Bowl in one weekend. Its going to be a big year for the band.

As an “old school” engineer working in a digital world, I prefer to work with legacy artists, and help them to navigate the new economy of music production in a cost effective manner, without compromising the “Big Studio Sound” that they are known for and love. I also enjoy working with young new artists who have an appreciation for and are inspired by the music of decades gone by. From mixing new projects in the studio, to recording new material for legacy bands on tour, to mixing documentary films that tell the tale of artists who have contributed greatly to the history of rock, I plan to stay immersed in all these aspects of music and film production as long as I am able.

For a consultation or schedule availability, please contact me here:

SoundDsgn@aol.com
tim@timjessup.com

928-266-4885

Tim Jessup
P.O. Box 385
Sedona, Arizona 86339

Website: www.timjessup.com