Steve Levine
Finding Relief Around PeakBy Randy Alberts
Dialing a world class British producer with three decades of credits to his name and then hearing a soloed rhythm guitar track on the other end when he picks up the phone in London, one can't help but wonder who played that part. Is he remixing a classic Gary Moore track for surround? Is it Lemmy? Something new from Ziggy? The Beach Boys? Another Culture Club box set? The Clash?
No, for Grammy-winning producer and longtime Peak user Steve Levine, at this exact time in world history that guitar track has everything to do with an effort far, far greater than all the combined tracks and albums he and everyone in music will produce this year, and the next. In January Steve was the producer for One World's "Grief Never Grows Old", the world's official Tsunami Disaster Emergency Committee band single recorded in London, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and Sri Lanka with global sales generating relief revenues directly to the peoples of the latter and those in Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sumatra, and anywhere stricken by the tsunami.
Tsunami Relief With Peak
"It was an honor that obviously one can't even begin to put into words," remarks Levine. "Grief Never Grows Old" is selling strong and, unlike most major all-star relief fund singles of the past, 100% of this single's funds funnel directly into the local DEC relief accounts. A DVD is scheduled for an April release in the U.S. and around the world. "The disaster was very, very difficult and so I'm all the more honored to be given the opportunity to help."
Levine got involved when Mike Read, a well known UK DJ, phoned to suggest a remarkably sad song he'd written just months before the disaster be considered as the relief single. Steve was already familiar with Read's song, one he'd himself heard earlier and described to friends as "so sad it may actually be impossible to place with an artist." As fate would have it, "Grief Never Grows Old" found its artist: anyone harmed by the tsunami.
"It is such a powerful song and lyrics. Mike phoned me to suggest it as soon as the tsunami hit, and he already knew this chap in the Disaster Emergency Committee, as well. As soon as he offered to do it, it became the official relief record from day one."
Levine said he used Peak extensively on the relief single project as he brought together an all-star lineup, including some artists he hadn't seen or worked with in years. He produced The Beach Boys and last saw Brian Wilson last year at the Smile concerts in London; it had been 20 years since he'd recorded with Brian and Gary Moore; and with the likes of Steve Winwood, Bill Wyman, Boy George, Rick Wakeman, Cliff Richard, Jon Anderson, and Barry and Robin Gibb on the record. Levine even found himself asking Barry over the phone to give him his best trademark signature vocal sounds.
"As I was getting vocal track from different studios all around the world I didn't have time to comp everybody's vocal," says Levine, "the exception being Brian's because he was busy rehearsing at the Grammies at the time. I, of course, comped the vocals recorded at my studio, and what a tough job it was for me comping four takes of Stevie Winwood — every take was so very good it was hard to choose, he was just magical on each take. Because time was short I just told all the vocalists, 'You need to give me your sound' because I needed everyone's trademark on this single, their nuances. I used Peak all over the record, from fiddling around with samples and tweaking things and removing any clicks. I sample rate converted Barry Gibbs' tracks as their studio was geared up for 48 kHz and did everything all the way through to pre-mastering."
Peaking Ahead With The Master
Like many producers, Levine often spends time after an artist's session creating spot-mastered "final" versions of their songs for them for their critical listening on the way home. Mastering studios tend to handle the finalizing of most large release commercial CDs, such as with "Grief Never Grows Old," but to the bands he produces, Steve's pre-mastered rough final mixes with Peak are as close to the final product as it can get.
"I do a sort of quasi-mastering job for the artists using Peak so they can listen closely and compare tracks in their cars and at home," he says. "I need to make sure the levels are all cool and I do that using some of the mastering tricks I know within Peak. I also use the VST plug-ins that Peak addresses for my Powercore and UAD cards."
As early as version 1.0.1 Levine was attracted to Peak's integration with music editing and hardware samplers, such as his Emulator 4 via SCSI, and to its precision in repairing errant audio tracks. When you haul in, chop up, correct, reassemble, and master the mind boggling amount of audio files as he has over the years — each album averaging 10 songs at over 48 tracks per song — you tend to get to know how to fix things.
"I have used Peak right from the very beginning," Levine continues. "I was using Peak way back then similarly to how we use programs like [Propellerheads] ReCycle today. Peak was absolutely superb for doing that sort of thing. Today, I use it literally every day, and when I use something as much as this, every day, and love it a lot like Peak, it then becomes an invisible extension to me."
Steve likes many of Peak 4's latest features, especially one that lets him mix and match his processing tools.
"I very much like now the integration of using VST plug-ins and Audio Units together in Peak. There are some products that are only available on VST but not for Audio Units, so the ability to do that is in fact quite an important new feature of this program."
Getting Clean, Nasty, Dirty Sounds With Sound Soap
"I just started using Sound Soap Pro and already I see two big improvements over what I was using before," says Levine. "Number one, the processing delay seems to be substantially less on Sound Soap than with other similar plug-ins or programs. And two, obviously, the price of Sound Soap Pro is substantially lower, as well."
Using a multitrack demo session someone sent him recently as a live example of how he's using Sound Soap Pro, Levine soloed and played back a pair of poorly-recorded bongos over the transatlantic distance. Holding the phone receiver up to his near field monitors, he says, "Can you hear that? That horrid kind of ssszzzhrrrr-ssszzzhrrrr sort of roaring in the background of this bongo track? O.K., now, here, can you hear that? With Sound Soap Pro punched out, there's all that nasty noise; with it in, the difference is quite astounding."
Steve is quick to point out the ups and the pitfalls of today's overuse of plug-ins causing lots of aliasing in the signal path — as well as Sound Soap Pro's perfect spot in the average chain to balance its use. He's first to say how much he, too, likes these types of sounds, but only when recorded with some proper studio decorum.
"All of that really crunchy sort of aliasing noise in hip-hop is cool and hip and we all like that, but when you've got a really good quality track with a poorly recorded sample like these bongos on it, that noise really, really hurts my ears. It's a kind of whistling, horrid sound that is very distressing! Sound Soap, even without having to delve deeply into its parameters or really analyzing the noise, instantly cuts out that aliasing problem.
But there's good noise and bad noise, right?
"Of course, but if you have a great crunchy MPC drum machine type of vibe going, you certainly don't want mains hum, or what you call 'AC hum' in America, to be in there with it all over the place," Levine continues. "That's just bad recording practice. You still want that crunchy, nasty, dirty, filthy sound to work in there, which is a totally different thing entirely! It sounds weird to say so, O.K., but what you want is clean dirty filth. There are things like clean distortion, you know?"
Steve also points out that, thanks to the screaming fast computers of today, there is an overabundance of plug-in use when it comes to most of the supplied session files he's putting together from assembled elements outside and prior his recording command.
"When you compress all that stuff to the nth degree with plug-ins, of course, the noise just comes up dramatically," he warns. "So you might find these days that you have to clean a lot of that kind of noise up, but differently from how you'd use a regular noise gate to do so. All of those plug-ins and that excessive compression makes it sound really fantastic, but when you're done there's this sort of aaahhhrrressszz-resssszzz [repeated loudly], that sort of 'standing by the seaside' sort of white noise thing really. Sound Soap helps to clean that sort of background noise up a lot. And, all of these tiny little guitar amps around these days may have a fantastic guitar sound, but all the way through the track you've got this sort of brrrrrrrrrrr running loudly through it! Sound Soap Pro is great for getting rid of these, as well."
Levine, who presented a Production Master Class program in the futuristic new 64-seat theater at London's just-opened Apple Store and will speak there soon again about using Peak, has one more bit of advice to all of us who pull down plug-in menus and press 'record' with a mouse.
"Always consider using Sound Soap Pro as the last plug-in in your chain."