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Mix engineer Mike Shipley has displayed his talent across several genres of music. LISA ROY reports on his
time-tested and successful recording career.
Without a doubt, Mike Shipley is one of the music industry’s most talented mix engineers. Let's face it, in the highly
competitive, extremely fickle world of mixing for audio, time is either your enemy or your friend. In Mike Shipley’s
case, after two decades and literally hundreds of millions of records sold, it is safe to say things have only gotten
better.
Shipley’s career as a mixer began in London in the midst of the punk rock era of the late 1970s. Shipley, who was
born in Sydney, Australia, moved to London with his family and was bitten by the studio bug early in his teenage
years after a French teacher asked him to sing on a record. “I thought, wow, what is this? I want to do this!” he
says of the early epiphany that put him on his career path. “I looked on the back covers of my favorite albums and
many said Wessex Studios, so I set out to get a job there. I called them to see if they had any positions available,
and the studio manager liked my voice and said ‘Well, if you can find your way here without calling us back and
asking for directions, you've got the gig’.” (Wessex is located in an obscure part of London.) Shipley passed this
unorthodox hiring test and landed his first studio job. Even he would agree that this incident was a ‘lucky break’, but
it is there the luck ended and true talent took over as the driving force of his phenomenal career.
As an assistant engineer at Wessex, he worked with such British icons as Queen, The Sex Pistols and The Damned.
“The first assistant engineering job I got was with the Sex Pistols. I had virtually no training. Bill Price, who was one
of the best engineers to come out of Britain, was the engineer on that record, and I asked him a lot of questions.
He was very patient and taught me quite a bit,” praises Shipley. Price's teaching skills proved fruitful for the young
Shipley, because the next person to take an interest in the 19-year-old engineer was a then little-known producer,
Mutt Lange. Lange, notoriously precise and equally brilliant, became Shipley's mentor and the true lessons of audio
began. The two embarked on a 20-year journey of learning and experimentation that would ultimately result in
millions of records sold as well as an undeniable influence on the sound of music in genres across the board. “He
works so fast and furiously.
If you can work with him in the whirlwind, keep up and not mess up, then you are pretty much accepted as part of
the team,” he recalls of the early days when he assisted Lange's engineer, Tim Friese-Greene. “I used to bug Mutt
with so many questions about recording. He spent some time explaining things like how effects worked, and then
one day he called and said he was building a studio in London and he wanted me to be his engineer!”
Lange gave Shipley the responsibility of finding and purchasing their console, which turned out to be one of the first
SSL consoles ever made. “I saw an ad for the SSL console, which was a relatively new concept then. I called and
they ended up bringing down a prototype. I knew immediately what decision to make,” Shipley recalls. With their
studio in place, the power pair started making records together, beginning with Def Leppard. The result was 1981’s
High N Dry album. This, of course, led to their breakthrough success with Pyromania, Hysteria, Adrenalize and Retro
Active. Shipley admits that the recording process with Lange was lengthy to say the least, but it was also
rewarding in countless ways: “Working with Mutt back then was a full-time job. Due to all the experimentation, each
record took a long time to make; it was all about making records different and more interesting. Fortunately, with
Mutt there was a lot of latitude to come up with something different. We experimented with sound and the
placement of sound. Sometimes it was about as technically incorrect as one could get!” Shipley confides that a
defining characteristic of their working relationship is their shared desire and ability to constantly experiment with
sound: “England is a very different place to learn in than America. The English way is much more experimental. In
America, I find a more purist approach. My process was this massive experimentation. We had a good meeting of
the minds.”
All their hard efforts and long hours have paid off as the two have arguably created
the most definitive sound in music. “We went through so much to get certain kinds of
sounds. He gave me the time I needed to learn how to do everything — to
experiment,” Shipley continues. “Mutt is a brilliant producer, teacher and friend. Yes,
you must learn to be very open minded with him, but when you are trying to create
something that is in someone else's mind, you can't give up... you can't bail. Every
record I've worked on with him has been an awesome experience. There has been a
lot of hard work and a lot of hours, but such a great experience.” One of those great
experiences came in 1996 when Lange began making a record with his wife Shania
Twain, a fledgling in the sea of new artists changing the Nashville landscape. Five
years and 33 million records later, Shania Twain and Mutt Lange have changed the
face of country music forever.
“Mutt went into her records like everything else he approaches. He wanted it to be
different, three dimensional,” Shipley recalls. “I've been fortunate to be able to work
on records with Mutt that really break down some format barriers. Shania's records
are examples of that. It's a country record, but it’s really a pop record. Again, the
experimentation always comes into the studio. Whether it is trying to figure out how
to sonically make Shania Twain not sound so country or something else, he gives me
the time. For example, we mixed several different versions of her record, each
tailored for a specific country — that takes time.”
One of their most recent projects to begin collecting kudos from around the world is
the newest release by Irish band The Corrs. In Blue, their fourth album, is getting
high praise in the United States, has gone to number one in the UK and has sold over
five million records. A world traveler for years, Shipley has put down roots in the Los Angeles area in more ways
than one. “I now live full-time in Santa Monica and divide my time between Ocean Way/Record One and Record
Plant, two of my favorite studios.” He praises the set-up at Record One because of their relationship with a rental
company called Classic Audio. “I have access to tons of eclectic analog outboard gear. My room is filled with
incredible gear like several LA2A compressors, a couple of stereo Fairchild's and a bunch of Lang and Pultec
Equalizers,” he shares. “Having access to all that incredible gear helps me when I'm trying to mix something from Pro
Tools, which is often the case these days.” Shipley is quick to praise the popular hard-disk recorder, adding that he
hasn't done a record in over two years without Pro Tools. “Pro Tools has affected everything in the process of
making a record. It turns mixing into an even more creative process. You have to go about it a different way, but it
is an interesting bit of technology because it opens up a whole new way of manipulating the sound.”
A particular dilemma presented itself recently when Shipley went to Boston to begin mixing Aerosmith's next project.
Steven Tyler and Joe Perry asked Shipley if he could put a world-class studio, complete with an SL 9000 J, in Perry's
17th century farmhouse. The project was recorded in 64 tracks of Pro Tools, so he relied on the Cranesong HEDD
192 (Harmonically Enhanced Digital Device) for some of the tracks, which allowed him to stay in digital yet sound
more analog, along with 80 channels of Mytek converters.
This combination suited the overall sound of the record and added warmth and depth. “We used the HEDD 192
modified by Dave Hill, which emulates the harmonics you get from tape that you don't get from digital. The good
news is there are ways of putting things recorded in Pro Tools through gear that makes it seem more full. On some
people's vocals, I find myself bouncing from Pro Tools to analog. Quite often it just doesn't translate well if it stays
in the digital medium. I mult up the vocal as many times as needed, which means different compressions for
different parts of the song. When Steven is singing softly, it needs a different kind of compression or EQ than when
he is belting. You have to vary the amount of compression. I have found if I mult up things like vocals, using
different compression and EQ possibilities across each channel, I can make sure for each part of the song I'm not
compromising the most important part — the vocal performance.”
Like the Aerosmith project, Shipley has found himself doing more and more independent projects from his early
mentor, Lange. While his mixing style is sought after from every genre (Country, Pop and Hard Rock), he remains
humble, grounded and true to every project. Shipley: “People always ask, ‘is there a Mike Shipley sound?’ And I
have to say, I don't think so. How I mix is not just a standard thing. I know the things I like to use, but it's always
different, because every artist is different.”
Thanx for postin it! 
