A while back Gearwire spoke to Mary Pastorius (aka Queen Mary) about the release of her first CD, From Then Until Almost Now. During that interview she deferred on a number of questions to Eric Young, who has produced a lot of her music over the years. The CD is a collection of ten years of work.

When it comes to which piece of gear he thinks is most important Young doesn’t hesitate.

“My computer. It is all things to all aspects of the project - It was the instrument through which the sync clock ran, it provided midi machine control, it provided the environment for recording - both MIDI and audio: early on, just midi, then later, both,” says Young. “It provided the environment for the virtual instruments to run, for the editing of parts, tracks, songs, it provided the mix down environment, it provided the mastering environment and finally it provided the environment for producing and tweaking the graphics and final submittals of all things related to the CD to the manufacturer, including the correspondence.”

The earliest tracks on the record were recorded to a Teac 4-track reel. One track was striped with SMPTE time code that was brought back into an Atari 1040stf w/a 40MB Seagate HD and sporting a Hybrid Arts SMPTE Track Pro external device that translated the time code into midi time code for use with the Hybrid Arts midi sequencer, which then spat out midi signals from the onboard midi I/O ports that the Ataris had on them.

“Those taped tunes were all recorded at +4dBu, 15ips, still stored tails out (but probably useless now). I had access to some nice remember the names of the gear now, but they were all Class A, discrete components borrowed from different studios I was working or had worked at,” he says. “The board we had access to at the time was a Carvin recording board, 32x8x2 and then later, a Mackie 32x8x2 with the additional meter panel on top. This setup accounted for most of the early stuff - some tunes which aren't even on the CD, but which I absolutely love. Maybe some day they can make an appearance on another CD. Plus, I'd like to re-record them and give them a bit of a technological face lift.”

Young says that as technology has advanced so have his own skills. Simply –he knows more about sound and mixing now than he did then. How does he doe things differently now?

“I'm much more apt to throw an SM-57 on a vocal and leave the drums completely unisolated or purposefully darken a part so much so to help build the bigger sonic tapestry woven with other parts lacking all darkness, etc. The possibilities are limitless.”

Half way through recording the earliest tracks on the record Pastorius and Young purchased an Alesis 8 ADAT with 20bit option.

“That opened up quite a few new possibilities for us, track-wise. We still ran the Atari for a good long time, but the real turning point was when we purchased EMagic's Logic Audio Platinum for PC. We also bought a J.L. Cooper ADAT Sync box to open up all eight tracks for recording and still be able to sync up with LAP's extensive and very powerful midi implementation. That continued on for a while until I had a computer that was powerful enough to actually record some multi-track digital audio and I made the full leap into the completely digital world with the song "Take." That's the very first song done completely in the digital realm, from start to finish.”

At around the same time they bought a Mackie Digital 8 Bus board.

“The quality and headroom on that beast was incredible. We bought one of the very first ones that came out. So much so that they didn't even have the 24bit chips on them yet. They had to ship us the Apogee 24bit chips a few months later and I had to install them myself. Again, a night and day difference for the final product,” says Young. “This piece of equipment, alone, really brought us to the next level, sonically. It was buggy as hell, but it just sounded incredible. The on board effects were stunning and completely editable and the output and input options gave us so much flexibility.”

At this point they were moving toward doing everything inside the LAP, using the D8B as a “very expensive” set of preamps. All 24 outputs of the D8B were sent via the ADAP lightpipes into a MOTU 240B with the PCI 324 card inside the PC.

“To date, this is still my very favorite setup. It just worked, period.LAP had a sound quality to it that was just impressive as hell,” says Young. “I macked it out with all the possible available Emagic virtual instruments and plug-ins - many of which i miss profoundly as I write this.”

More with Eric Young soon.