If you’ve not read Part One of this series of blog posts you won’t know that myself and my wife Helen had the pleasure late last year of getting to meet and interview Hans-Martin Buff in the extraordinary environment of Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios (in Box, Wiltshire, UK). When we left Part One , Buff was describing the creative processes and practices of his In-Side Dolby Atmos mix of Peter Gabriel’s i/o album, and his working relationship with Peter. He continued….

So you’re, you know, at the dinner table. So bring it on. And Peter’s very, very conscious about that and very inviting. I had that before with bands that I was really close to, probably to this day. And then they go, “oh, why don’t you just offer what you think is cool”? And then I’d offer what I thought was cool and it wasn’t what they thought was cool. All of a sudden I went down a step, a huge step, in their estimation because they figured, well, why would he? And I actually told Peter that at some point he goes, “Listen, I brought you here because I want to hear what you have to offer. If I don’t like it, I’ll say”. And so I took him by his word and thank God it was true. You know, a lot of people think that’s what they’re like. He actually is that way. And so I added overdubs here and there, and I think the biggest one is Road to Joy, which was the one mix where it was  like, I can’t get through this. It’s just everything is on everything’s toes. There’s this endless intro and then comes a verse and then a pre-chorus, but the pre-chorus doesn’t really rise above the verse.

So I started putting my Prince training to good use, which is, you know, funk. So, “funk isn’t about what’s there, it’s about what’s not there”. That’s the big quote I got from the Purple King. And so I started weaving shit out and like, hearing these back and forth conversations between the synth and the strings and the guitars, and making sure everybody had their little moment. And then I added percussion stuff in the pre-choruses to make it rise. And then Peter got excited and said, oh, we need more of this and that. And so we added this and that. And then actually, that’s the one song where my stuff was given to the other mixers (Spike Stent and Tchad Blake) as well to use if they wanted. I think it’s on Spike’s Bright Side mix.

And my Road To Joy intro, for example, is totally different. So at first I was like, okay, I’m going to add stuff. I’m going to make little sound noises of stuff that’s happening later, kind of quoting what’s what’s about to happen. Just coming through, and starting very small, and then just like stars flying above. Peter once again was really interested in that. But really it was about just the groove, how to improve the groove in the beginning. The little weird; Da da da da da da. It’s not on the other two (mixes), it’s from the actual demo of the song and I remembered that and always thought that was cool. So I said, oh I’ll take that, and I just ran it through a speaker and an amp in mono to make it smaller and as it builds up and then explodes everything starts. I don’t think Road To Joy is the most effective of all the Atmos mixes, but it’s certainly the most spectacular. There are others, like Love Can Heal, that just, you know, offer themselves.

There’s a little detail I spotted in Love Can Heal which I really like. I was listening to it yesterday before we travelled here. You used the sibilance on the voice, in the reverb and bussed it to the back. I just love that.

I’ve been found-out! Yeah, I did that. I did a couple of things there. I love that song. I mean, it’s just set up with a huge soundscape that just surrounds you, and you can put anything in it. And that’s, craft wise, one of the things I did. So, on the original sessions there’s one track from some of the previous performances of Love Can Heal, before it was finalised. It’s just one track and it’s like a bit of bongo and a bit of, er, triangle. I assume the others used it as well, but it was just one track, and it was, you know, really muffled. And I was like, wow, that’d be great if we could have that separately. So I just replayed it so I could move it somewhere in the space. So that’s the type of recklessness that I’m talking about.

So how do you make the decisions where to put things when you’ve got so much space? I guess the In-Side mix implies that you’re inside the music. But deciding how to implement that in terms of where you put things. Is that just instinctive? You just think, “oh, that’ll be nice over there, I’ll do that”?

You know, the interesting thing is, if I lost  my memory of the last year and a half and did it again, would I go in the same direction? I believe it’d be fairly similar. There’s two things about it. One is, just let me rewind a bit. So when I got into producing immersive music, one of the unexpected side effects was that I understood more how stereo works. You don’t think about stereo because you’ve done it all your life, but some of the things that you do come from, you know, just the rules of perception, if you will. And one of them is, for example, that you guide attention. That’s what you do in an arrangement. So you have to understand how we as humans perceive. So spectacular things happen from the front. So if I put the vocal behind you, that’ll distract you in a huge way. So why would I do that? So things in pop music, specifically, things that are  important, still belong at the front, because that’s where we look. And then, you know, when you take a walk, and you hear a plane. The reason you look up is because, you know, it’s a plane. You’ve seen them before. You know, they’re up there usually but you can’t spot it because it’s the wrong frequency. It takes a while until you hear the part of the sound that you can see (localise). Okay. It’s about there. But a  bird you can spot instantly. Meaning high frequency sounds are great for the top. More dull things, un-attacky things are more for the sides, and low endy ones, mid ones for the back. 

So that’s one thing. And then just in terms of arrangement, like, The Court for example, is a call and response song. So I can have the caller in the front and the response in the back. Then some practical things. So, as we commenced on this In-Side mix journey, it wasn’t like all in one go, you know, it was like little islands of three, four mixes. So in the beginning we did Panopticom and Peter then asked me along to the recording sessions that were still around. So I would just put up my little immersive setups, little (mic) arrays including for the orchestral recordings at British Grove. What you hear in Playing For Time for example, when the brass comes in at the beginning, that is just my mics. The way I set the mic up was pretty much in front of the conductor.

It’s not that huge an orchestra, but you have you have them around you. So just using that mic array gives you a setting. Now then the question is, do I put it in the front or in the back? So once again, with like The Court, it was a call and response thing, so I had it in the back, and then with Playing For Time, same thing and the piano which I recorded as well, or rather I didn’t record, which I was immersively helping along at the recording as well, is still, you know, mainly in the front with the vocals. So I figured, okay, I’ll just have that back there. So I fill the whole space. And that’s maybe the last part is, you know, what I found out when I did binaural. So one of the first things I did, I didn’t have a binaural head, but I had some of those, now unfortunately discontinued, Sennheiser ash? Um, they’re called, um

Ambeo, the little headphones (note: these I believe)

So anyway, I didn’t have a binaural head, but I had, in-ear microphones. So I was my own binaural head, and I did some experiments. And then I listened back to them and at first I thought this wasn’t working at all. I was like, you know, not anything like what it sounded like when I was there. Then I realised I didn’t have the visual when I was listening back. Big, huge learning point that, you know, what your eyes do to your perception. It was really hard for like, three people to have the same sense of movement of location. So, you know, I would hear something left top and then somebody else would hear it to the right, or like the whole front/rear confusion. Is it coming from the front? From the back? So I figured out that localisation wasn’t the main ingredient in my 3D soup; it was envelopment. So I’m trying to create a world around me that is complete in some way.

That’s the really important point. And also going back to what you were saying about like the call and response song, I guess if you’re thinking about this whole the technique logically a mix is kind of almost self-assembling. It decides where things need to go. Because once you start doing it, then the relationships have to be fixed and have to stay. And so you’ve got to put the high frequency stuff at the top, because that’s where it localises best. And as you were saying, the low frequency down below. It’s kind of a jigsaw. And you have to work out how that jigsaw fits together. Once you’ve worked out how, that’s kind of the only way it will go.

I mean, the cool thing is clearly, you know, that Peter’s arrangements are just very dense. So there’s tons of stuff to work with and they’re, you know, very well done. It’s just with a lot of things that I mix that are more pop oriented, I have to scramble to find things to put places without ruining the punch or the intention. So if it’s there, that’s great. I’m at a point in my career where I don’t have to polish turds anymore.

Helen and I were talking about it earlier when we were listening. It’s just the quality of the sounds on the record, they’re all great sounds. Dense and complex and beautifully recorded. You can’t really fault it in terms of the quality of the sounds.

(Helen) It is quite like my (theatre sound design) world in that it becomes real. You don’t doubt anything with your ears. You can see something on a TV screen and you have suspension of disbelief. But if I hear something move from there to there, it’s really there if it has good clarity. So I’d have to fangirl slightly at the moment because I think your mixes are absolutely stunning. I love them. And you know, we get in our studio and Phil says, oh, come and listen to this on Dolby (Atmos). And yeah, whatever, I don’t know. “Is there a point in that”? I’ve done a lot of, “is there a point in that”? And this is where I’ve gone. Yes, there’s a point.

Thank you. And I’m immensely proud of it. And it’s one of those, you know, when I have moments, when I’m at the airport or whatever, I just pinch myself. It’s like, wow, I can’t believe I’m in this. I’m stirring the soup. I mean, it’s just great to just be part of that. But to have, you know, the freedom to make immersive for its own sake rather than as a companion piece to something else. It’s a big deal. And, you know, so, you know, it’s not produced for immersive, but it’s augmented for immersive. And that’s what makes the difference in terms of what you can do with it. I proudly show that all the time, that stuff. But, um, couldn’t have done it with Bob Dylan, I think.

And that concludes Part Two of the Hans-Martin Buff interview. I’d you’d like a notification of the publication of Part Three, the best way is to sign-up to follow the blog.