Psychology of a Mix Engineer: An Interview With Paul Gatehouse

Paul Gatehouse is a freelance mixer specializing in commercial music in all mainstream genres.   Based at LA Sound Studios in West London, Paul is fast becoming one of London’s most sought after up and coming mixers.   With a background of over 14 years in live engineering and sound design, Paul brings his experience of live performance and musicality to his mixes.

Recent releases include albums for Janet Devlin, Nell Bryden and Honey Ryder and singles for Alistair Griffin and Shinhwa’s ‘This Love’ which charted at #3 in South Korea, #1 in Taiwan and #5 in the Billboard K-Pop chart. This was the lead single form their recent album ‘The Classic’.

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Can you explain how you got started in the business and then how you transitioned into focusing on mixing?

Absolutely.  I came into the industry almost immediately after coming out of school.  I started work experience (I think you guys call it “interning”) at a radio station in my hometown of Plymouth in the South-West of England. I learned to play guitar at school and was also heavily into the equipment and the sound engineering side of things.  I always knew that was sort of the direction that I wanted to go in.  Although I was a pretty keen guitar player at the time, the engineering side took the lead in later years.

I became involved, through some voluntary work, with the theatre there. Luckily for me the theatre in my hometown was on the leading edge of many of the major musical productions (all the tours that would come through) as well as the self-produced productions.  So I was fortunate enough to get my start in Sound Engineering by working where a lot of things were happening.

I think that because I was there all the time and I was so interested, they threw a lot of things my way. I quickly progressed to mixing shows, designing sound effects and eventually was given the responsibility to work on my own with the creative team in the studio theatre.  Although I initially wanted to get into studio engineering, the theatre (through the internship) was the first path that led me into the professional side of the industry.

After working there for about 7 or 8 years, I progressed by moving up to London and into the real melting pot of the industry, where everything was happening as far as musical theatre is concerned.  I became a mixer on some of the big shows like The Lion King.

From there my interests turned to the production and sound design aspects and through fortunate circumstances met Mick Potter, an eminent Sound Designer in the industry, who gave me the opportunity to assist him, which turned into to me becoming his associate.  That led to extensive travel around the world being what’s known as an “Associate Sound Designer”.  You’re basically the right hand man to the sound designer and you’re responsible for mounting replica productions around the world as well as new productions.  I also used to mix the shows when they were first opening and in production, the highlights being many of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s and Cameron Mackintosh’s productions. So during this time I did a lot of extensive programming, sound FX creation, working with live orchestras and performers. The scope of these sound designs was huge and I learned many technical disciplines as well as professional ones, interacting with highly skilled musicians, actors, composers, producers and co-creative’s.

It was the very top end of the game, if you like, although I was still interested in the recording arts and music. Not having the opportunity to visit studios in my hometown, it was through the theatre work that I was able to go to the big studios in London and get a taste of what they were about.

Jumping about ten years ahead now I felt the time was right to keep moving forward and obtain my own equipment because of how accessible the project studios were becoming.  I acquired my own Pro Tools system and my own space to try and make a go of being a full time mix engineer.

 

And at this point, how long have you been focusing solely on mixing?

I found my own room back in May 2012 and before that I was doing a lot of stuff at home. I did a lot of mixes for friends, you know, speculative projects, and I did a few short films. Obviously, your acoustic environment is key, so I started hunting around on the Internet for somewhere to set up.  So I think the last 3 years I’ve really been focusing on mixing and actively transitioning from associate sound design in theatre to being full time mixer in the commercial side of the music industry.

 

If you’ve only been actively mixing in your space for 3 years, full time, how have you acquired clients that are willing to pay you a sustainable wage to live and grow off of?

That’s the hardest part really and I’ve sort of had to balance the two very carefully.  For the first two years of having my room, I wasn’t here very much because I was still out doing a lot of travelling.  I would spend eight weeks in Japan, then head to Germany for two weeks and I’d come back to the studio for a couple of weeks. So it was very hard to gain some momentum in the early stages. I think a lot of that time was taken up by doing work that was purely spec just to get my show reel up but also to make those all important new relationships.

So far this year I’ve mixed albums for Janet Devlin & Nell Bryden, plus a couple of single releases.

I think this year is the first year where I feel like I’ve really got my foot on the first rung of the ladder in terms of feeling like it’s been a solid start to the year with these releases under my belt.

Then you have to make that scary decision of politely declining the work that’s offered to you and dive into the murkier waters of the music industry [Laughs].  But I’m lucky enough to know a core of people who have given me opportunities on a few projects and I’ve managed to make that work.

 

Is there any advice you can offer to someone who is trying to build up his or her contacts?  How do you go about getting new clients?

I’ve heavily relied on my existing relationships, especially through a friend of mine, Lee McCutcheon who’s been a writer producer on a lot of the records that I’ve done.  Also Jon O’Mahony who is the owner of the studio here, he also writes and produces and is always extremely helpful in talking about and sharing information about every aspect of the business.  So I think it’s just doing what you can for the people you know and then trying to let your work grow from there and be heard by others. I think the important thing is that you’ve got to create a small body of professional work that can speak for itself.

I mean if you start with zero clients it is really hard just to get that ball rolling but if you do a lot of speculative work for people, without you realizing it your name gets thrown into the conversations.  I’m not one who goes out and majorly networks. I do what I can to meet new people and try to offer something. I hope that when there is an opportunity, I’m fairly good at making it known that I’d like to be involved.

 

I’ve noticed that your set up is hybrid but most of what you do is inside the box.  Can you talk about your setup and explain why you decided to go hybrid instead of going 100% ITB?

I have the Thermionic Culture Fat Bustard valve mixer and I chose that because I wanted something that would give me some colors to play with if I wanted them and also something that had plenty of features to manipulate the sound.  I didn’t just want a passive summing mixer or something like that because at this stage that doesn’t really add anything for me.  As soon as I start mixing something through the Fat Bustard, I’m immediately starting off with something that sounds bigger than it was before.  It’s packed full of features in terms of everything that would normally apply to the stereo buss like Pultec style shelving filter EQs, stereo spread and a low frequency to mono circuit. I really like the sound of the valves, the EQ and also the attitude control.  With the attitude control, it gives me a variable amount of harmonic distortion.  I have a base setting that I always start with and I can adjust accordingly.

I don’t have that many outputs right now because I have an Avid HD Omni.  I have my Fat Bustard inserted on my Mix Aux at the moment.  I’ve really been able to learn what it can do because you can bypass the inserts in Pro Tools.  The sound and flexibility was important.

 

I also have a Focusrite Red 3, which I’ve had a bit of experience with in the past and I know they’ve got a tight sound, which I like.  It also has a little bit of a forward sound.  So the outputs of the Red go into the first two channels of the Fat Bustard and that returns back into Pro Tools.  That’s always living on the stereo buss at the moment and in the future I plan to run more outputs going through the Fat Bustard to see what that does.

 

And what monitors are you using? Any other gear we should know about?

I originally started out with the Munro Acoustic Egg 150 monitors, which were good but a friend of mine was using the Focal Twins and I really liked them.  At that time Focal just had released the SM9’s, which we got in on a demo and we both really liked them.  Since we work together a lot we each got a set at the same time.  We throw a lot of projects back and forth between our two rooms.

Incidentally, Chris Walls (Level Acoustic Design) tuned both our rooms in terms of speaker placement and corrective EQ as we were trying to get the closest match we could get in terms of the equipment that we use and the sound of our room.  This way we have a base of reference with what we are listening to when we’re throwing stuff back and forth.

I’ve also just got the Grace M905 Monitor controller, which has given me a lot more flexibility in terms of monitoring inputs and speaker outputs.  I have my Avantone MixCubes and a little digital mono radio.

I wasn’t overly blown away by any of the reverb plugins out there at the time and I knew of the Bricasti so I factored that into my budget as one of my early pieces.  I really started with just the Pro Tools rig and the Bricasti, the extra outboard I’ve been building up as I go along.

I clock my system from an Antelope Isochrone OCX master clock.

 

I also noticed that you have the Avid Artist Mix.

Yes the Artist Mix, which I think I would be lost without because I’ve spent so many years mixing live audio on a console. I still find mixing in the box confining in some ways just because I can’t get to everything that I would like to as quickly as I would like to get to it.  There’s such a link between my ears and my fingers that when I’m moving the fader with the mouse I just don’t hear it the same way.  I really enjoy having the faders and I’d like to get a few more! I mean another one of these would be ideal.

I’m okay operating plugins on the screen and sometimes I’ll map them to the controller because it’s good to look away from the screen and just turn the encoders on the Artist Mix to adjust the plugin.  But definitely faders in terms of writing automation, doing rides, and general balancing is my main thing.  I mean I’m generally always on the faders.

 

This is something that I’m always curious to know with every engineer but how long does it take you to do a mix?

I would say that I would use up all the time that I had available to me, which may or may not be a good thing! But normally I’d say I’m 90% there within 8 hours and at that point it’s good to get someone else’s ear on it. Whether that’s someone that I’m working with at the studio or I send it out to the artist or producer to get feedback and then I would try to finish it the next day.  I always welcome as much feedback as possible because that immediately opens up avenues with places to go and stuff that you just don’t hear when you’re so close to it.  You might not necessarily hear that the snare drum is too loud next to the vocal, it might be the most obvious things in the world but unless your attention is drawn to it, because you’re focused on something else, then you won’t hear it as subjectively as someone else.

I would say I spend a good 2-3 hours on the preparation side of things in terms of looking at the arrangement/structure of the song, phase relationships between the individual sounds and then I’ll sort of dig in.  I’ll get to a point where I’ll print a version, listen to it at home on a few devices and then come in the next day to carry on.

The last album [Janet Devlin] was done within a very tight time frame so we were mixing a song a day on that one for two weeks.  We were working really late, usually until 4 am.

I definitely become invested in the music and like to commit to making it sound as good as possible, the time factor is not important to me.

 

One thing that a lot of the veteran engineers have told me is that they didn’t even know mixing was a thing when they started or they just it did because it had to be done.  You’re a fairly young engineer so was deciding to be a mixer a conscious thing or was it similar to what the other engineers have said?

Yes, I think the way the industry has evolved with there being a specialized role for a mixing engineer, which definitely appealed to me. It was something that I realized I could turn my talent to and make it a long-term career prospect; to be involved with the industry that I wanted to be in.

Before that, when I was at school it was still very much the big studios that everyone was working at and it seemed to me to be an untouchable industry in terms of having access to it.  There weren’t really any options at that time, so I took the first opportunity available to me in terms of getting in and being involved with sound and music.

I would like to experiment and further my experience in recording, especially orchestral and film score work.  That really appeals to me.  I’m not going to put myself into a pocket of just being a pop mixing engineer because there are many sides of the industry that I would like to be involved in. I’m excited about the opportunities and relationships that are going to develop over the coming years.

 

So London is your home base right now but do you think that not being somewhere like L.A. or New York hurts you in regards to getting gigs or do you feel location is irrelevant at this point?

In terms of meeting people, it helps to be in one of the big centers of music, but then again you never know where or when the next opportunity will come from, so I don’t think it matters where you are.  I’ve had a few requests from guys all over the world because of a music collaboration website called SoundBetter.  Obviously London is a major player in the music scene so it helps to be here, but I think you can find music anywhere.

The part of London that I’m in is really busy in terms of music; there are a lot of studios around here so there’s quite a community of people.

 

There was a track on your site by a Korean artist named Shinhwa, I was just curious how that gig came about.

That came through Lee, who has done a few things in the KPop genre before and has a publisher in Asia.  Obviously the JPop and KPop markets are huge in terms of the turn over of music that they do.  Shinhwa in particular, were looking for more of a tougher pop sound in terms of the production and the mix.  So that came through his contacts and it ended up doing really well out there for them; it charted well.  So there again, that’s an introduction into a whole new sector of the industry.

[youtube id=”45wH_HHnJBg” width=”670″ height=”377″ autoplay=”no” api_params=””]

 

Now moving into a more technical question, was that kick drum a conscious decision?  It sounded huge but yet it didn’t trample all over the mix.

That was definitely something that Lee (the producer) was going for in terms of the samples that he chose and the compression we were using to get the front end to punch on it.  We referenced a lot of Will.I.Am and David Guetta-esq music to make sure that what we were doing stood up to what’s out there.

The sound of that was a little bit of everything I think in terms of the samples and the channel processing.  I mean it all starts with the right sound basically but it probably was a couple of samples layered together.  On that one we had the API 2500 on the master bus so that gave it a lot of weight and we had a fairly slow attack on it which would have given it a bit of poke.  They also did a great job on the mastering, which always helps.

Paul’s Kick Drum Chain on “This Love”