Rich Oliver Designer Engineer MIX Magazine August 1997 pp. 155, 168 and 237 Story by Gary Eskrow His rooms are home to the creators of thousands of commercial scores, film dates and record sessions. Phil Ramone says his work is "great," and Keith Richards greets him with a hug and a "hello, mate." Still, triple-threat engineer, songwriter and audio architect Rich Oliver is something of a secret to those outside of the New York music scene. Oliver's career path is easy to follow. Eschewing a chance to attend M.I.T., he followed a low road into the world of smoky nights and dirty panpots. An electronics buff since his early days, Ol,iver parlayed his math skills and engineering chops into a series of studio gigs that culminated with his work tracking the Stones on Black and Blue and Emotional Rescue. In the early 1980s, Bob Blank asked Oliver to design what was to become Blank Tapes Studio A. Currently operating as Back Pocket Studios, this Oliver-designed room has been one of the area's most popular spot-scoring rooms for over a decade and has attracted more than its share of film and record dates, as well, with an emphasis on recording acoustic instruments. What made his first attempt at room design so successful? "I would say that my experience as an engineer and musician allowed me to come at room design from an angle that's a bit different from that of some of my colleagues." Oliver's speech is inflected with bits of techno-speak and the kind of gutter talk that this writer, for one, is more comfortable with. Fortunately, he was able to reduce his design theory to a level that your run-of-the-mill cheesehead could deal with. "There are three major tricks that I've used in my work. First, although you have to have complete command of all the math involved in the business, you can't be a slave to it. Let's draw a parallel between tuning as measured against a tuning fork or electric tuner, and a way a guitar player in the real world works. If he's going to be playing a song in the key of E using Barre chords toward the top of the neck, for example, the player will tune his instrument to that piece of music. Of course, he'll refer to the tuner and use its mathematical basis as part of the tuning process, but he won't be a slave to it. "I use an analagous approach when I design a room," he continues. "I'll take the blind math and expand it to an extended musical staff -- a big one with super-huge note values standing for the Hz centers. You have a problem at 500 cycles? That's approximately C5. How important is that note in relation to the other notes that will be used in the room? An engineer knows that cutting and boosting frequencies always involves compromise based on the relative importance of parts and frequencies. When I'm designing a room, I'm looking ahead, trying to make things easier for the engineer who'll be working there in the future. "The second trick is to avoid standing waves not by relying on padding the walls but in the design of the room itself. You want to simplify the construction process wherever possible and minimize the use of traps. "Finally, I try to design not a control room but a premastering room. Almost every control room has a third-octave EQ on their speakers, but none of my major rooms do. I try real hard to make the room sound correct without any EQ. You should be able to hear an oboe, a kick drum or the Dalai Lama screaming in your room without needing any EQ to make it sound right!" Oliver's conviction that a designer should blend empirical knowledge with real-world experience has been influenced by his work with some of the top musicians of our day. "Let's consider Keith Richards for a moment," he says. "When I tracked his guitar work on Emotional Rescue, I found him to be absolutely focused on his sound but not wed to a preconception of what it should be. By that, I mean that he would insist that we tinker around until the sound was one that he felt comfortable with, and then he played wide and open within the sound that we created. He'd open up anywhere in that window and release something special inside himself. That sense of being tuned in to the larger issue while you deal with the specific environment is what I strive for as well." Tony Smythe was a wildly successful jingle producer who tracked at Back Pocket Studios extensively before having Oliver design his personal studio, which he used for his company's dates and would open up for select record clients, including Chicago's Robert Lamm, who recorded a solo album there under the direction of Phil Ramone. Oliver laid down all the tracks on that project, but commitments kept him from executing the final mix. "Robert is another example of a person who is exacting on himself, needs to have a room that he can hear well in and a rough mix that gives frequency space for his singing, but he never gets so caught up in the minutiae that he loses the greater picture," Oliver says. "Being familiar with the way things work in the real world -- that knowledge can be critical to the success of a room design." Piers Plaskitt, former president of SSL in the U.S., has known Oliver for several years. "Rich designed Mystic Studios on Staten Island, which has one of our consoles," Plaskitt says. "He's an enthusiastic and perceptive individual. I see him as an epitome of the way the industry attracts people who have opposite characterisitics within their makeup! Rich can seem radical, way off in the stratosphere somewhere, and yet he can figure out grounding schemes at the drop of a hat! He gets things done. "The notion of working in the real world is an important one," Plaskitt adds. "I would say that a good room designer has the flexibility to adapt to the needs of the client whilst working within the constraints of a budget and maintaining timetable dead lines. It's all very well to be able to build a room at any price, but most of us have to live with the fundamental requirements of making mortgage and lease payments. Having a room designer who knows the market and what can and can not be achieved at different price points is essential to a venture's success." His work over the years at Back Pocket Studios has earned Oliver the honorary title of "ultimate hairbag," an accolade that studio manager Jim Doherty says was well-earned. "It just seems that whatever problem you throw at Rich -- from the early days of synching picture when nothing really worked, to fixing tielines or mixing a session, he always gets the job done. And I've never heard any musician, including the high-end artists who have worked in Studio A over the years, have anything but good things to say about the room. That includes horn players, who generally don't like the way any room sounds!" Oliver recently put the final touches on New York Noise, a commercial studio in the up-and-coming Gansevoort Market section of Manhattan. New York Noise is the partnership of engineer Craig Bishop and composer Rick De Pofi. Bishop has worked a lot of rooms in his career, which stretches back to his work on Tommy James' Number One hit "Three Times in Love," and includes mixing stints with Billy Cobham and Dave Valentin. He's also a confirmed Oliver fan. "Richie definitely brings something to the party. I strongly believe that we are getting more room for the money we're spending than any major design firm would have given us. Rich uses studios every day as an angineer. He knows what sounds good and what doesn't, and he also knows the whys of why things sound good!" Oliver sits at the helm of Richard Oliver Productions and his credit list also includes Sting, Yes, Hall & Oates, David Byrne and the B-52's. He's garnered no less than 13 RIAA Awards, including nine Gold and three Platinum albums, not to mention a Grammy, and his rooms are widely praised by his clients -- and his clients' clients. Still, his name recognition is not yet what his track record would suggest it might be. "You know, I respect those peers of mine who have made the effort to extend their business reputation in the industry," he says. "Maybe if I could go back and retool myself for self-promotion, I would. But you only get to go around once, and I've strived to learn and experience as much as possible about the music-making part of this industry. That's what's driven me since I was a kid playing the guitar and singing in basements with bands. I'm fortunate in that by sticking to my guns, I've gotten to the point where the people I work with view my contribution as a unique one. When all is said and done, who could really ask for more than that?" - Gary Eskow is a New Jersey-based writer, composer and producer.