Producing, engineering, and/or mixing credits include: En Vogue, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Tony Toni Toné, Herbie Hancock, Jody Watley, Tower of Power, Brownstone. See the Appendix for Ken Kessie’s full bio.

Most of the horn section work I’ve done in the last four years has been recording the infamous Tower of Power horns. I’ve been lucky because these guys are so good that they make me sound great every time. Punchy, raw, and somehow still sophisticated, this group calls for a simple, high-quality recording method that just gets out of the way and lets the music speak for itself. This method was developed jointly with Maureen Droney, who actually recorded all the horns on T.O.P., their 1992 Epic release. [Besides being the Los Angeles editor of Mix magazine, she records a fat horn section.]

The whole philosophy behind the Tower of Power horns is funk, funk, funk! This is accomplished by keeping the horns raw and live-sounding. We record as quickly as possible to keep the boredom factor down and the excitement factor up. Only slight compression is used—and only on one instrument—to retain live dynamics. All the horns are close-miked to retain that in-your-face attitude. Separate room tracks would be nice, but we never seem to have enough open tracks. Ambience can always be added later but is impossible to remove. Feel free to try this at home—but without the cats themselves and the impeccable arrangements of Greg Adams, you ain’t gonna get the flavor.

The horns are always set up in a straight line, like they play on stage, and parallel to the control room window. The order from left to right is Lead Trumpet, Second Trumpet, Baritone Sax, Sax 1, and Sax 2. Any player who flubs during a take holds up his hand (or starts playing another song), and I can instantly back up and pick it up from before the mistake.

Mic choice is as follows: trumpets, Neumann TLM 170; baritone sax, Electro-Voice RE20; saxes, Neumann U 87s. I always kick in the mic pads because these guys are way loud. [Years of live on stage and bad monitors.] Mic pres are always Neves. I will use any Neve console preamps, but on any other console I’ll rent 1073s. Neves seem to have the proper amount of musicality, richness, and just enough edge to keep things exciting. Using this combination, I’m able to cut without EQ. The only instrument that is compressed is the baritone sax. I only knock it down a couple of dB, just to keep it in place. A Summit tube compressor is my first choice.

Doubling horn sections is an oft-discussed issue. Usually, Tower of Power will double the trumpets and saxes on their own records. Sometimes inversion and notes are changed, sometimes not. The bari is never doubled, as that always subtracts from the “funk factor.” However, on the blues and other old-school tracks, doubling sounds too slick and is avoided like the plague.

Solo horns are another story. Neumann U 67s sound great on the sax, what with the added “tube factor,” although I’ve been known to use an 87 or even a 57 if I need a little more rock and roll. Solo trumpets, especially if muted, require a very dark mic. One really sweet combination is an RCA 77 with a Massenburg preamp. Other combinations that work well at my home studio: Use a Shure Beta 57 (!) and either a Neve, Mackie, or Aphex Tubessence preamp. Sometimes I’ll throw a shirt (!!) over the mic to simulate a vintage RCA. I’ve never had to record a baritone sax solo, but if I did I would stick with the RE20. This mic adds the right funky mids to make all the bari notes stick out.

Remember to keep it simple. Keep the signal path short and get it on tape while the talent is fresh.

Credits include: Tower of Power horns lead arranger and trumpet player. Session credits: Elton John, Santana, Eurythmics, Little Feat, Rod Stewart, Grateful Dead, Luther Vandross, Bonnie Raitt, Terence Trent D’Arby, Huey Lewis and the News, Michael Bolton, Phish, Linda Ronstadt.

There are tried-and-true microphones that work well with horns. My favorite mic for trumpet is an RCA 44…the big old behemoth. It is really warm, personal, and it expresses well.

On my solo record, Hidden Agenda, I played a lot of Harmon mute. We used an Audio-Technica version of a 57, and it sounded great. Ken Kessie, who is my producer, didn’t even use the room sound for those parts. With a windscreen or foam pad in front, it was like I was pushing against the mic just to get all of that lip and the mouth noise. That was part of the whole performance. We are not talking about acoustics here. It was just about capturing the sensuality of the instrument itself.

I liked it because it sounded intimate, like the way some of the old Miles Davis stuff sounded. I think that the way we did it, we took it a step further and put it right in your face. When you listen to my record, it comes across almost more like a voice than a trumpet.

If we are performing in a really dry room, we will say, “Wet it up and get some reverb going on in the phones.” We want to sound like we are making a record. It is role that we are playing, and we are adding to the whole tapestry of the song.

Even if you are recording in a nice, big, live room, and the engineer is using that room mic 10 feet above you, you may not be hearing that room sound in the phones. You may only be hearing the direct signal from the individual mics, which are like a foot or two away, and you are not getting much slap off of them. A little reverb goes a long way if you are not getting that from the room.

We will always ask for stereo phones, but inevitably, everybody will have the left or right side of the phones off just a little bit to hear the room. It always seems to be that way.

You depend on the engineer to give you a good balance of the horn section in the stereo phones, along with the track. You should be hearing enough keyboards or guitar for the pitch and drums for the time. The vocal is always important because that’ll help you find a spot on the tape, if you have to stop and go back and punch in for a lyric cue or something like that.

There are engineers who stand out in my mind as really taking time to make it all work for horns. Ken Kessie, Al Schmitt, and George Massenburg are engineers who really take the time to do it right. Another engineer I like a lot is Russ Kunkel’s son, Nathaniel. He has done the last two Lyle Lovett records, which I worked on. He is a brilliant up-and-coming engineer.

Probably my favorite room is Studio A at A&M in Hollywood. It is a big room, and there is a lot of wood. It has a great vibe, and I have worked there for years. It just seems to always be there. Capitol A, Skywalker, and Conway are great rooms, too.

Engineering and/or mixing credits include: B.B. King, Memphis Horns, Afghan Whigs, Bob Dylan, Primal Scream, Stevie Ray Vaughan, 16 Horsepower. See the Appendix for Jeff Powell’s full bio.

Overall, I generally don’t like compressing horns to tape. I know a lot of people do that, but if you are not very careful, you can thin out the sound and squash the dynamics, which I try and bring out as much as possible. I like the little things that are swelling in and out, going from inaudible to the mighty sound that they can have. I think it’s very important to keep as much of that as possible, and you need to get as much of that to tape as you can.

I usually don’t EQ the horns to tape either. I move the mics around until I get the sound I’m looking for. I basically go straight to tape with them, no compression and no EQ. I just keep my finger on the “trigger,” on the channel fader, as it is going down. If I compress anything, that is how I do it. [Laughs]

The Memphis Horns are a lot of fun to work with, and they definitely have a formula on how they stack their parts. They usually do a pass with just the sax and the trumpet. Then they double that and either switch parts, do a harmony, or double a part. They do all head arrangements on the spot. Then Wayne [Jackson] adds a trombone to it. He usually plays the bari sax line or something similar to that. With the trombone, it is really the glue that holds it all together. It is really cool, and it is an instantly recognizable sound.

Typically, I would use a Neumann M 249 on Andrew Love’s saxophone. It is an old tube mic, and it is really warm-sounding. It does a good job of capturing the air around it. I don’t ever mike it directly coming out of the bell. I’ll put it off the side a little bit, to the side where the keys are. It is also back a ways, about a foot and a half to 2 feet away.

On Wayne, I will use a Neumann U 87 or sometimes an AKG 414. I usually have to pad it with him because he is really strong. I don’t usually compress to tape. But I usually keep my finger on the channel faders as it is going to tape, and I ride it to tape a little because they play very dynamically. I have worked with them so many times that I have a feeling when it is about to go up…or when I need to pull it back a little bit. That is kind of how I keep it within the realm and get it to tape at the right level. I don’t like compressing them because it really squeezes the life out of the sound.

Sometimes, if I have the luxury of enough tracks, I will cut them each to their own track. If not, I will take the time to get the blend of the trumpet and the saxophone to one track, and then when we double, I will repeat the process and listen to the blend and ride it to tape, making sure I’ve achieved the correct balance. Horn players of this caliber work very fast, so you’ve got to be on your toes because they will do head arrangements.

They will hum out a part as they are listening, and it never takes them much more than a pass to come up with what they are going to do. They will get a lick going and they will vibe out. They will then go, “Okay, every time that appears in the song, let’s do that now. Now let’s go back and…”

They are really very good about vocalizing their opinions about whether or not something should go there. They will do whatever you ask them to do, but they are very helpful sometimes, like, “I don’t know if that part needs to be there. I don’t really think that we need to play there.”

They will go through the song and say, “Let’s do all of the choruses. Let’s back up now and get all of the verses.” You’ve got to make sure that you don’t run into the other parts. It isn’t like going from top to bottom with a song. You pretty much have to memorize the licks of the songs as they are playing them. [Laughs] It always helps to have a good assistant looking over your shoulder, saying, “They want the third ba da bomp bomp.” You’ve got to be able to get back there and punch that one place.

Generally, I’ve had the most success when I have just used three tracks. They sound very full and definitely have their own sound. Their instruments sound great, too. Like anything you record, the quality of the player and the instrument make a huge difference. Those two guys are some of the best in the world.

From working with them so much, I have learned that you have got to capture that energy out front. They really project. To just stick a mic right on them, you don’t capture the air and the blend of what is going on in the room. If you walk into a room and hear them playing together, it sounds amazing. Sometimes I will stick in an extra room mic farther back and get some extra ambiance. I might use a Neumann 67 or a 249.

For the trombone, I usually use a Neumann U 47 FET. I have that mic set up to the side, so Wayne actually points at the trumpet mic when he is playing trumpet; he sets it down and grabs the trombone and points at the trombone mic, off to the side a bit. He actually turns around sideways in his seat and plays pretty directly into the bell. Andrew and Wayne are very good at listening to each other and blending as well. They are among the very best at doing that. They know what is going on, and that helps a lot.

Credits include: Al Green, Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Rod Stewart, Sting, Jimmy Buffett, the Doobie Brothers, Neil Diamond, Willie Nelson. See the Appendix for Wayne Jackson’s full bio.

My philosophy is this: If it is not happening on the floor, it can’t get on tape. If it is happening on the floor, then there is little you can do to screw it up.

The ambient room sound is important to me when we play. Andrew and I prefer to work in a live room that has a lot of ambiance or natural echo, so that to our ears, we sound wonderful.

A long time ago, there was one studio [not Stax, Ardent, or American] in Memphis that was as dead as a Kleenex box. It was very painful to play in there. There were no ambient frequencies. I guess it was good pitch training, because all you heard were the core pitches, but there was nothing else coming back at us.

If an engineer deadens something behind us, that is okay. It is what bounces back from the wall in front of us and above us that is probably what we hear the most.

Andrew and I prefer the Neumann U 87 microphone for trumpet and sax. That is the microphone that has been giving us the sound we like since back in the Stax Records days. It is a timeless microphone. For trombone, I like the old RCA ribbon mic. It gives it sort of a splatty sound, but not too much.

We have a technique that we have worked out for overlaying horns that involves overlaying three tracks in sequence…trumpet, tenor sax, then trumpet, tenor sax, and finally slide trombone. We do that very quickly.

We have to have an engineer who is attuned to the process that we use, because we will listen to a song and at any moment, either one of us may hear a part that needs to be in the track; we stop the tape, and we stack all three parts to that little section immediately. Then we go through the song and find all of the sections that are just like that and do all of the same parts, because we have the phrase fresh in our minds and we are hot on that phrase. So we do all of them at the same time.

We may come back and do the first one again, because by the time we reach, say, the fourth chorus, we are hotter than we were when we did the first one, so we will go back and redo the first one again. Then we will go through the song and find another part that we like—whatever pops out of either one of our minds—and do the same process. The intros and the endings are usually spontaneous and inspired.

Andrew and I are big on unison parts because unison is powerful. We do harmony parts, but normally, on the first track, we always do unison. On the second track, we put on harmony parts, and then the final harmony comes with the trombone track. Still, it all just depends on the song.

Credits include: Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, the Temptations. See the Appendix for Ralph Sutton’s full bio.

For the brass instruments, trumpets, trombones, flugelhorns, and the many other valved and slide brass instruments whose tone is produced by vibration of the lips as the player blows into a tubular mouth piece, I like large diaphragm for most applications. They do a great job of capturing the essence of the player and the instrument.

There are two factors in changing the pitch on a valved brass instrument: pressing the valves to change the length of the tubing, and the player’s lip aperture, which determines the frequency of the vibration into the instrument, which is the sound of pushing air through a mouthpiece and their tongue and their teeth. All of those things play a important role in how it ultimately sounds.

With a large diaphragm, you can hear them before the note comes out—you’ll hear the attack of the note. I like this sound. It adds player character to the recording. For brass sections, I use small capsule microphones, which help me control leakage, along with a stereo pair of large-diaphragm mics set to the omni position, in front of the section, mid left and right. I listen to the mic and make the necessary adjustments. Remember, you are using these mics for more than room mics—you are capturing the section as a whole so that you can bring life to the section and the recording.

The Neumann 47s, 67s, and 87s have been my brass staples for many years. I also like the sE 5600 and 3300 large diaphragms. I like the sE 5600 on the trombone; it gives me a good, round, articulate bottom with a coherent trombone top. Placement is 8 to 12 inches from the bell—that’s a good starting point. I like the sE 3300 and sometimes the 87 on a trumpet, 12 to 14 inches from the horn. I like the sE 5600 on a flugelhorn, 8 to 12 inches away. The tube in the sE 5600 just sounds right on the sexy sound of this “big trumpet.”

Brass can be broken up into two groups—valved and slide. With the slide group, the player uses the slide to change the length of tubing. The main instruments in this group are in the trombone family. However, valve trombones are occasionally used in jazz. The next group is the valved instruments, and this is the action group. This group has a lot going on. It includes all of the modern brass instruments: the trumpet, French horn, euphonium, tuba, cornet, flugelhorn, baritone horn, sousa-phone, mellophone, and the saxhorn. If you have never recorded any of these horns before, start by listening in the room that you will be recording the player in. Ask the player to start warming up, and as he does, get close to the instrument. Then back away from the instrument and determine where the best sound or representation of the instrument is coming from. Once you’ve got it, place one mic and listen in the control room to make sure that you are capturing the best sound from the instrument for the recording being made. And by the way, start out with no EQ or compression. Get the best mic placement first and then use what you need to make it better.

Now, on some of these valved instruments, you may use more than one mic. These instruments are the tuba, sousaphone, cornet, euphonium, and baritone horn. The size and design of these instruments gives them areas that emit sound that can be helpful. For example, with the tuba, sousaphone, cornet, and euphonium, they all have long tubes that make up part of the sound of the horn. If you use a small-diaphragm mic in this section of the horn along with your other mic, that should be somewhere around the bell, capturing the essence of horn. Now blend those to taste, and you will be very happy you did. Remember mic placement, EQ, and compression techniques—brass has been known to add fire to any song and can be arranged in a way that brings excitement.

Credits include: The Band, Van Morrison, Lou Reed, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Bob Seger, Aretha Franklin, Blue Oyster Cult, U2, John Lennon, B.B. King. See the Appendix for Shelly Yakus’s full bio.

You have to make sure that it sounds right when you are recording the horns, or you won’t get anything worthwhile.

Recently, when I did Edgar Winter and the White Trash Horns, Edgar played baritone sax with two other players on tenor sax and a trumpet. Basically, what we did was record the horns in Edgar’s house in a hallway that had a granite or marble floor. I went into the hallway and talked to Edgar and the guys and listened to my own voice. If my voice didn’t sound right, I put a few small throw rugs on the floor in different places to try to make my voice sound more natural, as well as the other people talking. The key to recording anything is to have the instruments sound like they are supposed to sound, and not altered so much by the room.

We weren’t trying to deaden the room down; we were just trying to make it a little less wild-sounding because of the hard floor and the hard walls in the hallway. It tended to make it a little too live and a little too ringing for the track.

We then positioned the guys in a north, south, east/T-shape kind of position in this narrow hallway. The sax player and the trumpet player were facing each other about 10 feet apart. Edgar was intersecting them in the middle, and he was back about five feet from the center.

We positioned that way because you couldn’t put two people side by side in the hallway because there wasn’t enough room, but it worked out great. The hallway filled up with sound when they played. The mics picked all of that stuff up, and it translated into a good, solid horn sound from bottom to top. It was one of the first times that I have recorded horns where it absolutely fit this raging track.

Usually you have to EQ them a little too much sometimes to get them through the track, and then they start sounding small.

We put a U 87 on the trumpet. Normally, once you put a pad on those mics, they are only good for banging nails in the wall. They are like blunt instruments. It kind of kills them, and they just aren’t that great-sounding with the pads. But for trumpet, it sounds very good because they are loud instruments.

On a baritone sax, I prefer to use a tube mic, like an M 49 or a 47, but all we had to work with was the TLM 170, and it worked very well.

For trombone, I would use an 87. Trombones, even more than trumpet, tend to clip. They break up easily sound-wise. They seem to have overtones, and if you are not careful, the console will overload or the console or tape machine will clip. So I find that I have to use a mic where I can put a pad on the mic when I’m doing a trombone.

Sometimes, if you get the mic far enough away, you can use a tube mic on it, and they can sound really good. It just depends on what the player is playing.

If you were to put a bright mic on a bright horn, you are going to get a little sound. So I find that if I use an 87, it warms the horn up in the right way. I have tried other mics, and the 87—for me and my style of recording—seems to work the best on loud instruments—loud horns and stuff like that.

As far as positioning, I always pull the mics back quite a ways from the bell. I get it back as far as I can. I really believe that the sound doesn’t become the sound until it is a few feet away. What I am looking for is the fullness. Typically, we were putting them all on one track.

When you pull that horn section down into the mix, if you don’t get it right, all you are going to hear is the trumpet peaking through all the instruments, and you lose anything else. Everything is sort of in there, but it isn’t in there loud enough. So by getting a lot of body on the instrument, you are more assured that when you pull the horns down into the track, you are going to hear everything that they are playing.

What I would do is limit the low horn, like the bari sax. Typically, when you drop the horns into the track, you are going to lose the lowest horn first. The brightest horn, in pitch and frequency, is the one that is going to stick out. So if you limit the low horn a little bit—or the low two horns, like the bari or the tenor—it holds those horns in a place on the track so that you are not going to lose them in the final mixdown.

I don’t limit the trumpet because it just doesn’t sound right to me. You also lose a lot of the dynamics. The trumpet being unlimited seems to make the other horns sound not limited, even though they really are.

Another reason why I leave limiting off the top horn is that it appears to give the whole horn section life. It is sort of an audio trick.

If you put the mic too close into the bell of the horn, the result may seem to be exciting-sounding, when you are listening to the horn soloed on the speakers at a loud volume, but when you drop it back into the track, it is going to be this little farty sound.

I find that if I take the mic and move it around to get what I am looking for on the horn, there are enough places I can face that microphone and get what I want.