CHRIS SHEPARD: My name's Chris Shepard from Chicago Recording Company. We're located downtown Chicago. We've been in business since 1975. We've got 14 studios, 9 posts, 3 music. We're in Studio 5 today going over some of our equipment.

The 201 gates: these are more of a creation tool. I like to use them on effects like let's say for instance a keyboard that's very much padded and it needs to have something happening to it, adds beat to it, what I call it as the disco element. I believe every song needs to have a disco element. Crucify me. What you can do here is you can use an external key source. What's great about the key source is it allows you to, let's say the hi-hat. We're going to take that keyboard pad that's just going [CHRIS SHEPARD IMITATING A KEYBOARD PAD SOUND], we're going to give it beat, so we take the key, insert the hi-hat, and suddenly it's playing the rhythm of the song [CHRIS SHEPARD IMITATING A KEYBOARD PAD SOUND WITH RHYTHMIC EFFECT] or [CHRIS SHEPARD IMITATING A KEYBOARD PAD SOUND WITH RHYTHMIC EFFECT] or the key source in tandem with the delay so that way you're doubling up the key source. And a lot of times you have two features on them. One is called the gate and one is called the duck. The gate makes sure that it shuts down when the key source is not active. The duck works just active; it shuts down when the key source is active, so in other words the hi-hat and the keyboard that we're talking about will not open at the same time: hi-hat strikes, keyboard plays. Maybe that gets confusing. Maybe when the hi-hat plays, the keyboard shuts down; it only opens so it pumps against it.

BILL HOLLAND: Okay.

CHRIS SHEPARD: If you can imagine how that would work, but this is something that you can play with for a whole day, you know, because you can use this in so many instances. I throw it on my room mics for instance, and I have it so that way it only opens when the kick and the snare played, so it adds [CHRIS SHEPHERD IMITATING A RHYTHMIC PUNCHY SOUND] instead of it just being [CHRIS SHEPHERD IMITATING A RHYTHMIC BUT BREATHY SOUND], you know, all the time. It's not open all the time so it adds to this mush it adds more power to it, so I definitely use it on my room mics. I definitely use them on toms, so it opens on the toms.

A lot of times, you'll use the first one on your bottom of the tom. If a tom-tom, by mic'ing the top and the bottom, the bottom running through a lot of phase, and you're printing that to one track in the analog world. Well, you would have your bottom of your mic and your top of your mic so that way you're not being false triggered by the cymbals or other things. You can very tightly mic or very tightly gate the bottom, and it'll open, the top mic of your tom-toms only open when that drums hit. It really works out great. It takes a little time. The late Phil Bonanno showed me that trick, and we used that for ages and sometimes we would spend ages getting it right, which you know today is not much -- not really affordable. Most folks will just go in and clean that up with Pro Tools, so I think that today most of the time is its in creation.

Also, keying snares, a lot of times you want to make sure your reverb go into your effects like let's say you want to put your snare reverb on.

BILL HOLLAND: Right.

CHRIS SHEPARD: Well you don't want the leakage going to the reverb. You only want the snare hit going to the reverb, so you use your send, you'll send it to the gate, you'll gate the send to the snare so it's just [CHRIS SHEPERD IMITATING A GATED SNARE SOUND] and that'll go to the reverb, so that way the reverb is only exactly opened on that shot. It's a great trick in order to clean up your tracks, creating more space and not filling all those gaps with mush. A lot of times it's creating panning effects with the gates where you're making let's say you're making one in the gate mode and one in the duck mode. Well then one is opening and one is closing, and so you're getting a panning effect happening through a gate.

BILL HOLLAND: Oh. That's really cool.

CHRIS SHEPARD: And if you throw that out, the one side out of phase, suddenly it's not just here; it's way out here, and it's on a keyboard thing that needs to have more space to it. You're not crowding your drum mix in the middle. You're creating a wider thing and it has a very good stereo effect.

Sometimes it can be on the effect of a harmonizer where you're trying to gibe a vocal maybe some space, so you gate the harmonizer and you're giving a beat to the vocal like [CHRIS SHEPHERD IMITATING A RHYTHMIC VOCAL SOUND] or a [CHRIS SHEPHERD IMITATING A RHYTHMIC VOCAL SOUND] on the effect of the vocal harmonized in its panning and it gives it a real stereo effect. There's just so many endless uses for these gates as a real tool. They do have them in Pro Tools in digital but I still like the physical ones because I like to turn the knobs on them and that's kind of like one of these old -- Yeah I know we said we weren't going to talk about these 42's but the PCM 42 is also a tool you can spend a good six hours on and just play with it. A really still a great delay tool that, as far as digital delays, being able to hit the repeat capture button, being able to sample with it. It's an amazing box so I think you could spend easy as six hours playing with a box like that and like this if you haven't before or taking some of those ideas and going at it. I think both of them have great disco elements.