As a first call record producer and mixer, Ben Grosse has worked on countless albums as well as, worked with some of the best and biggest music artists in the pop, rock and metal genres. Known for his signature sound, perfect for metal and hard rock acts, the list of acts Grosse has mixed and produced albums for include the likes as Marilyn Manson, Sevendust, Disturbed, Filter, Fuel, Depeche Mode, Alter Bridge, Ben Folds, 30 Seconds To Mars and Underoath. Grosse currently operates out of his own studio, The Mix Room and adheres to a hectic busy schedule. Joe Matera managed to grab some time with Grosse to chat to him for Ultimate Guitar's popular "The Producers and Engineers" series. As you’ll read, Grosse discusses his production and mixing approach, why he believes the song is supreme and remixing on call.
UG: I want to begin by asking you what made you decide to pursue a production and mixing career path?
Ben Grosse: I was a drummer in bands when I was in my teens and I quickly learned that I didn’t like the democratic process, and that I wanted to be a dictator. So I started going with the studio world when I was seventeen years of age and this was long before the trend was to have a studio.
Do you remember what your first recording session was?
I can’t remember as I worked on so many thousands of different things, where I was learning and doing things. I came up in an area of Detroit and there were a lot of things going on there. I did a lot of stuff for a local radio station, and a lot of local bands and some of those bands ended up getting signed and so I kind of kept working up that way.
In those early days, what was one lesson that you learned that helped form the core of your recording philosophy?
I learned about personality, personality in that whatever you do, and to make sure that it [the music] is interesting. There is a lot of boring music out there.
So how do you approach a recording session from a production angle?
That’s a complicated question but I think that you can always draw an analogy from movies. I think that everything starts with the song. If you have a great song, it will make your job easier, but if you have a horrible song, though you can make it sound good and you can make it interesting, it is still at the end of the day, a crappy song. The song is by far the most important element and then the performance side of things after that.
You obviously started in the analog world and on the cusp of the digital recording revolution, how did you take to the changes of moving to the digital realm?
I was around when all that [digital] stuff was in its infancy and so I kind of developed all the digital techniques as they were developed. I am just glad that I learned how everything was done in the real world before they were able to simulate it in the fake world. Because it gave me a better understanding of where things come from and why things are good to use. Like why reverb is good or bad based on actually using it, than being able to just flick the switch on and having it come on everything.
"A lot of the sonic landscape of that record was how the guitars were layered. And where there are some fake guitars and some real guitars and how we made those all work together."
I came in when they were working on the demos and first of all I have to say that John 5 is an amazing versatile guitar player, and because of that, it made the production go really smoothly from my end. On the demos he’d laid down a lot of demo guitars with amazing tones just using a Sansamp PS1 and his pedals and I wanted to keep as much of that as I could, because it had this really full personality and grind-ey sound to it. And we’d layer it a little bit with real amps, but still I wanted to lean heavily on that fake sound because it really had that otherworldly distortion to it that I liked. Part of it was because he was such a good guitar player and it was really easy to get good tones from him. A lot of the sonic landscape of that record was how the guitars were layered. And where there are some fake guitars and some real guitars and how we made those all work together.
What about Something Like Human by Fuel which you also produced?
That was mostly real amps and I think we used a combination of…[sic] they had a Hughes and Kettner endorsement and we used some of those heads. I had a Diezel head and some old Marshall heads and so that sound on that album was just basically different amps. And Carl Bell the guitar player, that was how he sounded too.
You also worked on Animosity by Sevendust…
Yeah, those guys are amazing, there is a Sevendust thing that they do which I really love and it is the interplay between those two guitar players. When we made that record I made sure that we tried to capture that. Those guys each have their own individual sound and playing style, and once the meat and potatoes was captured, then we just had to bring in a bunch of pedals in and start experimenting with sounds and I’d ask them to give me as much as they could. Then I’d go away and edit it and come up with things and it was a lot of fun to do.
Is there any specific technique you prefer when it comes to capturing guitar tones in the studio?
I will always try different things, but a lot of the time I like to blend really close mics, like closer than they really should be just to kind of get weird scrapping sounds. A lot of times I will try ribbon mics too, and a lot of times I will use Shure 57s. But it really just depends on what I am hearing coming back. But again, it is so dependent on the guitar player.
What do you look for when approaching a mixing session?
Certainly in a modern mix, the vocals are the most important thing. But because I started out as a drummer, I like to get my drums right and then I will build everything on top of that. That just works for me. I know people that work differently, but that’s how I drive the bus, I have to make sure the drums are right and that I am feeling it. And then I can start bringing everything in and have it support that.
You have done a lot of remixing of tracks, what sort of briefing do you get when an artist or label comes to you asking for a remix?
It really depends but often times, especially in different countries, a band will put out a record that works somewhere else. Like a good example would be back when there was a period in England where nobody wanted to have guitars, so bands would have records with no guitars on them. But if they wanted to have them work in the States where the guitars were sort of the trend, then I would get hired by their record company to take the song and put guitars on it and make it a rock song. One example is the song by Republica called ‘Ready To Go’, which had no guitars on it. It was basically a synth track and they sent that to me and I made a whole guitar song out of it and it ended up working in England as well, even though they didn’t expect it too. So it was successful here in the US and in England and that was an example of a remix where they ended up using that as the main track. Sometimes it [remixing] is to use a different format or to give it a different life that the original version wouldn’t be able to have.
"The song is by far the most important element and then the performance side of things after that."
It is what it is, it is a constant battle in having a record that is louder than the last one and also having it so that when your chorus hits, it explodes. There is a fine line you have to walk and personally, I like loud records for making them to radio, but I don’t like listening to records like that at home, but on the radio you’ve got to have your records that will jump out.
You’ve worked in some many different styles, using a comparison say, working with a hard rock or metal genre band to a pop genre band, is any style harder to capture on record than another?
I don’t think so. I think it is always a trick to make something sound good and interesting. I think for me, working in the hard rock world, is just more fun. It is more interesting to work on and I really love it and it’s not necessarily what I’d listen to when I am not working, but if I have a choice of what to work on, that is what I prefer. I like the energy and I like the power and I like to make that kind of music speak.
In recent years home studios have become very popular with musicians and recording enthusiasts. Do you think that’s been detrimental to the whole recording industry?
I don’t think it is detrimental, though I think it is detrimental to the recording studio business but I think putting technology into the hands of artists is a great thing. There is still a bunch of crap as there always was, but it just allows people to have better sounding crap. I mean good music is still good music and it doesn’t matter how much technical…or what tools you have, it is still just a tool. Creative people make great music on any kind of tool. People who aren’t creative, well it doesn’t matter how spectacular their tools are, as it will just be expensive sounding crap.
Finally, what are your current musical projects?
Right now I have just finished mixing a song from Daughtry for the new Batman video game that just came out. I’m also working with a new artist from Norway called Saivu, an indie artist. And I’m overseeing a bunch of other things too.
Interview by Joe Matera
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