Good sound comes from good people

TUE MADSEN

Tue Madsen. 40-year old, very successful Danish sound engineer and music producer. The owner of famous Antfarm Studios (his customers' list is impressively long and features such renowned and famous bands as MOONSPELL, ROB HALFORD, HATESPHERE, ILLDISPOSED, THE HAUNTED, SICK OF IT ALL, DARK TRANQUILLITY, BARCODE, GOREFEST, HEAVEN SHALL BURN among others). Very friendly and talkative person. Exclusively for Metal Portal the guru of atomic metal sound shares some of his deepest secrets. Sit down, shut up and listen.

-First of all, could you tell me a bit about yourself, your background etc? Did you come from a musical family? Are there any other family members with musical ambitions?
Nah, not really. We had a piano in my house and I was given a guitar around the age of 9 maybe and that immediately caught my attentio to the point where I got blisters on my fingers. My Older sister was the main inspiration for my own interest in music. She had records by Led Zeppelin, Manfred Manns Earth Band, Pink Floyd etc. I remember playing those records way before having a a real idea about music, just knowing I loved the moods that came from them. Those records are still to this day my favorite records. I kept playing guitar, starting a band in the tenth grade with my friend Tomas Nevergreen who later became a big popstar in Russia, haha... thats the way shit goes sometimes.

-How did you start a producer's career, what was the first band you worked with? When did you first become interested in turning the knobs?
I think I always had the interest. It started when I was playing in a band in the late 80’s and we figured that since noone (we could afford anyway) knew how to make the heavy sounds we wanted, we might as well buy the studio ourselves... but had no money of course to do so... But the bass player made the investment and we did our first record like that on a 16 track tapemachine. He later quit the band to pursue his studio carrer and I started making 8 track demos in rehearsal rooms for my new band, Grope. Then for a few friends in other bands, then took it to a real studio and on and on... The first album I produced was Autumn Leaves debut album. It came out ok I think, but when I think back on how I did things in those days, I have no idea how that happened! I did everything wrong, but my ears must have guided me through it ok, cause it sounded alright in the end, hehe.. Flemmeing the guitarplayer from that band now plays in The Arcane Order.

-These days you are one of the most welcomed producers in metal music industry. Was it difficult, for a unknown guy from Denmark to get into the industry at that time when you started? Do believe it was just a matter of persistence and talent that you finally broke through?
That yes, and luck. You can be as talented as you want, but if you don’t get to work with good bands, nobody are going to care... I was lucky to get to work with Mnemic and Born From Pain and that broke down a lot of walls for me. Specially BFP helped me get jobs with Heaven Shall Burn, Cataract, Destiny etc But I guess to get lucky like that you also have to have a certain amount of talent, in deed if you want to keep it going. If you suck that is going to shine through pretty quickly.

-How could you describe the job of a producer and the sequence of the whole production process? In other words, how does your working day look like?
That very much depends on the project at hand. If I am mixing it’s one thing, producing is a whole bunch of other things... Mixing is something I usually do by myself. I like to get a mix going pretty fast, then take it somewhere else, home for instance, to listen to it like „music” not like a protools project where you can stick your fingers into it everytime you some little thing. And then when I listen at home while cooking or reading or something I hear everything. Then I make my litlle list of things to change and fix and go and do it. Production is a whole different ballgame. Primarily I like performers to perform! I want musicians to play music! I don’t like half assed performers who think you can then, and should, fix everything in the computer. I hate that! I will help if help is neede of course, but the majority has to com from a human being! The computer is not human! I donøt know where exactly we went wrong starting to think that the computer is better at communicating human emtions from one person to another, because that is what music essentially is. Emotions. And computers don’t have them. There is no plug in which can add emotion to a track which has already been deprived of it.
So I like to make the people do the work, hehe.. And give them input and ideas hoping that they will go home with more than they thought they came for. And sometimes all that comes from within themselves... I just have to drag it out of them, make them take some chances. And sometimes it is just a matter of keeping up with the flow of things and make sure everything gets recorded well when ideas are flowing freely.

-On your studio website you described yourself as a producer who always like to make band's ideas the starting point of the whole production. How much do you interfere in the whole process? At what point do you separate yourself from the project? At what point do you say "I'm over and done with this project"?
When I give the cds to the Fedex man. Then it's over. I am ok with it. I am not one of these guys who think there is a perfection to be reached. I think you take it as far as you can with the means you have. You try to create something special, and later sometimes little mistakes turn out to be little strokes of genious, which is also why I like to bring my mixes home to listen to it in a different environment. Because maybe the little part you been struggeling with for two hours doesn’t really matter. Maybe it was something completely different that was the important part and I then realize that I need to look at it with a different approach. But when it’s done, it’s done. I don’t think too much about it anymore. I will listen to it from then on like any record I went to the store to buy... as the fan of good music that I am.

-Let's say that you're producing and the band wants to go down a path that you know from experience won't work? What happens? Do you let them try it?
It depends... there are many types of paths here. But for the most part I will state my views on the matter and then lucky for all of us, these days it only takes a minute or an hour to try something with Protools. And if it sucks you push undo and its back on track. Back in the day with limited tracks and all you had to erase something to try out something else... And you know... Sometimes you THINK it’s a bad idea. But you havent heard it yet, so you don’t actually know do you? Try it out. Listen to it, and if it still sucks, get rid of it. But maybe it will inspire you to do something completely different which is even better. I am a big fan of doing random things and see where it might take you. One line of plug-ins used in a different song might be all wrong but could get you to rethink a part on that other song, and come up with something more interesting.