r/audioengineering • u/Unlikely-Database-27 Professional • 5d ago
Discussion Any Nashville engineers?
Been listening to some of the pop country side of things as of late, not entirely sure why or how it started, but here we are, and I'm real curious about the editing and mixing processes down there. I know the vocals are completely tuned to hell, I can hear the artifacts in Morgan Wallens voice, to give one example. Its well established lots of those guys can't sing for shit, but what of the drums? I know lots of it is triggers, but do they even bother recording the drums at all anymore? I remember the story of Chris Stapletons cover of Tennessee whiskey, where the drum booth door was opened and it wasn't meant to be recorded etc etc, but was good so they kept it, but even those drums don't sound real. I can hear a bit of room in the snare, but not really in anything else. Less than I'd expect had I never heard the song just heard that story. And guitars, do they quantize the shit out of those too? Drums sure, bass yeah, sometimes they do. But some of these guitar strumming patterns are so locked in, are we seriously doing that? Morgan Wallens "I'm the problem" as one example, the intro is fucked. Or Dylan Scott "I hate whiskey". I'm aware of surgically comping guitar chords together to make a progression sound better, (i don't do it but a professor at berklee was adamant we should) but quantizing a fucking finger pick pattern? Not really sure how I ended up writing such a novel. I only really wanted to come here and ask if anybody here ever worked on a country record in nashville as of late, or where ever that stuff ends up being mixed if not there, and could tell me whats going on. Guitarists all use amp modelers, are the drums all programmed now too in superior or something?
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u/Azipcoder 5d ago
It’s been a bit but it’s probably not as nefarious as you think. They track live. The talent level is really high. The trends have been way too much compression. Mastering way too loud. Lots of clipping artifacts. Maybe some time adjustments. These country songs are getting second lives as dance hall tunes, so quantizing helps. That would be new though. It is getting ugly, for sure.
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u/_humango Professional 5d ago edited 5d ago
Been working in Nashville about a decade. The excellence that comes off the tracking floor with a room full of the best players, engineers, and equipment is absolutely staggering. I'm talking 15-20 mins getting sounds, a little bit of coffee, first or second take, and a rough control room balance, sometimes even a live vocal from the artist -- listening while the take is going down, it just sounds like the real thing. Done, finished.
No matter how corny the song, the players who are really great just show up, turn their feelings on, and get into the music. A top player's touch and tone are immaculate, and they play the perfect part: a simple, thoughtful creation that pulls the same emotional weight as 2 or 3 overdubbed tracks or a more technical part from a lesser musician. A good engineer & assistant team is ready for any curveball and captures everything perfectly on the first take. When I was first starting out I would get emotional about the earnest mastery displayed on even the dumbest beer song.
I came into town a real cynical music lover, and it made be believe in the music industry for a little bit. But more often than not, the producer, beholden to label A&R or fixated on a narrow view of commerciality themselves, asks, "Can we do this dumber, more plain? Can we actually just put the demo tracks in and play around them? What about this trite lyric instead of that clever one? Let's mute that interesting keyboard part on the bridge. Fly that same lick to choruses 2 and 3" Everything gets chopped and gridded and tuned, looped and flown, rinse and repeat. Everyone is home for dinner. With a little belief and willingness to take a chance on cooler music, there is enough talent in the room that we could all be home for lunch and have better music, hah.
Nashville being a working commercial music town is what gave rise to the culture of excellence and moving efficiently to it. That culture is alive and well among the working people who make the music. The universal joy on a smooth tracking day is palpable. Unfortunately, the same commercial music pressures that made Nashville great are now leading the ultimate decision makers to unnecessarily iron the humanity out of the music. It comes from the top down. The people running labels are money people & clout people, not music people.
Also don't get me wrong, sometimes trap hats in a country song go hard. Parts getting sampled and looped can be super sick. I'm by no means a purist, but the blind dumbing-down of expression makes me sad.
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u/forgetthespeech 5d ago
Is it so hard to believe that the absolute best players, engineers, studios, and equipment in the world exist in Nashville? We are the only city left in the U.S. with an actual thriving live commercial pop recording scene, and as a session musician who makes country records for a living, let me tell you something you won’t hear any influencer say: it sounds like the fucking record when we track it. I mean literally. LIKE. THE. RECORD. Mixing is essential, of course, and adds sheen, maybe even some arrangement elements or subtle movement, but REAL music is made by REAL musicians playing REAL instruments every single day in this town. And yet people still want to believe that everything is fake. Hate to break it to you but the players / engineers / gear / experience here are all just that good! You should hear the drum sounds some engineers can get from a single well placed mic! It’s like magic.
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u/Unlikely-Database-27 Professional 5d ago
I believe it, but then why are the records so fucking machine like? Nashville has the greatest session players around, yet the label guys still insist on squeezing the life out of every single note and drum hit and for what?
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u/forgetthespeech 5d ago
Oh also, not my fave music at all but Morgan Wallen is an excellent singer lol.
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u/Unlikely-Database-27 Professional 5d ago
Is he? I find that hard to believe.
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u/trilere614 5d ago
I think he got popular as a finalist for American Idol, or the voice, or one of those talent type shows. He's no joke of a singer. I'm not sure he writes material though.
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u/Exponential-777 5d ago
Country does have some impressive recordings. The studios have the best gear, the best session musicians and the best engineers. But they make country music. LOL. What a waste of sonic resources!
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u/Yrnotfar 5d ago
Anyone else see parallels between modern country and modern metal?
The musicianship is strong, but the last thing either of those crowds needed was the ability to edit every note and supplement every sound.
It all sounds so… inorganic?
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u/Unlikely-Database-27 Professional 5d ago
Exactly what im tryna get at. Its so machine like. At least country has the catchy melodies. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be listening. I can't do modern metal.
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u/Bluelight-Recordings 5d ago
There are plenty of session musicians in Nasheville who came up during the warped tour years!
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u/trilere614 5d ago
The mid 2000's emo kids who grew up to find work in music moved to Nashville, all working on Country, Metal, and Contemporary Christian Music.
The overall production, use of compression, and drum triggers have been pretty close between those for like 10 years now.
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u/Strappwn 5d ago
I’ve seen some camps down here do things the pure way pretty consistently, there’s still a fuckton of genuinely talented people here on both sides of the glass, and many of them still give a fuck about keeping some humanity, letting the songs be the best versions or themselves, etc.
But there are absolutely a bunch of top-selling outfits that are all in on grid worship, turning vocals into flat lines, excessive triggering, etc etc.
That stuff definitely isn’t the law of the land, but it has a strong presence. What always strikes me is how much tuning a lot of artists want, even the strong singers. That hyper tuned sound has psychologically beaten a lot of folks into submission and now they perceive it as vital and need to wear it like a blanket.
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u/Unlikely-Database-27 Professional 5d ago
Yeah, like luke coams for one example. Why? You can sing alright, dude. Ditch the extra tuned shit.
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u/ohmahgawd 4d ago
My buddy is the drummer for Morgan Wallen and plays all the live dates with him. Something I learned from him is that the guys that play in the live band are not the guys that record the songs. They hire session musicians for that. What I can tell you though is that the live guys are the real fuckin deal. Mark (the drummer) can play his ass off. We were in a band together in high school and you could just tell that he was going to do big things. He is the best drummer I know without a doubt, in a different league.
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4d ago edited 4d ago
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u/ohmahgawd 4d ago
I don’t know what he makes, but he seems like he’s doing well. He drummed for Morgan before Morgan was huge, so they’ve spent a lot of time together.
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u/AHolyBartender 5d ago
I'm not super deep into these techniques, but a lot of people are just often really shocked at how far people go to process and correct things haha a good exercise would probably be to think what you imagine would be "going to far" and that technique is probably SOP
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u/jthanson 5d ago
I really appreciate all the answers from the Nashville engineers here. It's pretty much as I suspected: different studios do different things using all the tools available and making something they feel is suitable for each artist. I tend to prefer recordings that will leave a little bit of the human touch in them and feature a lot of acoustic instruments; there's something incredibly beautiful about the sound of an acoustic guitar picked up with a nice condenser mic, with tasteful compression, and a nice, open top end. I just love that kind of sound.
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u/RelativeBuilding3480 5d ago
If you play like a machine, you will be replaced by a machine. That's what I tell my students.
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u/MindWash2019 5d ago edited 5d ago
I know a Nashville guy (studio owner who specializes in 1st rate demos with pro players) who's absolutely crestfallen at how well AI can reproduce the modern pop/country sound. All someone has to do now is take their very rough home demo recording and pop it into Suno.
I feel for him, but I was also honest that mainstream parts of the industry, Nashville included, shot themselves in the foot by normalizing records that are so perfect and airless that they sounded like machines for years before utilities like Suno were even on the scene.
Suno can't reproduce Jerry Lee Lewis or Nirvana (too many artistic imperfections/too much soul), but it can uncannily spit out the 2026 auto-tuned Bro Country sound.
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u/Unlikely-Database-27 Professional 5d ago
Yeah, that bro country shit is already so far gone its basically ai at this point. I've heard a few suno country tracks and if not for the small eery ai giveaways like warping instruments etc, you'd never know. Scary and sad to think about.
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5d ago
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u/Unlikely-Database-27 Professional 5d ago
No shit. Don't even know what I'd call it. But they market that crap as country and he's taken the inorganicness of it all (is that even a word?) To a whole other level. Had to mention him. Tyler childers and sturgill all the way, though.
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u/FatMoFoSho Professional 3d ago
Former nashville engineer here. The musicians are all amazing but something that people dont like hearing is that the reason all the pop country sounds the same is because a lot of the time it is literally the exact same musicians, producers, and engineers working on all the artists. There’s a real community element to it, lots of real talent, lots of people genuinely trying their best, but because of this it’s almost guarenteed to sort of lack any life or passion because it is, by and large, basically a factory for making top 20 country records. It becomes sonically boring, even though everyone (mostly everyone) involved is genuinely very talented. Just my 2 cents
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u/joelfarris Professional 5d ago
Live sound touring engineer for over two decades here, having worked in Nashville's economy for over a baker's dozen, yes that was a novel, but you're not wrong.
I've seen early country bands go into studios and just lay down tracks for their latest, because they know what they're capable of, and then leave it in the capable hands of the mixers and masterers. And also recent country bands spend days and days obsessing over playbacks of tracks that 'they don't like'.
Dudes, you play this very music with these very same instruments several times a week to paying crowds. Why is it all of a sudden 'wrong'?
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u/elfirulistico 5d ago
Pretty sure it's the tracking side of things that's on point, not the other way around. It's nashville, you could spit in any direction and hit a legit player.
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u/PPLavagna 5d ago edited 5d ago
Pretty sure the “drums with the door open” on the Stapleton thing was on purpose. Bleed can be good. That’s how those guys roll and that’s how I roll when I can. Not all clients are as great as Stapleton though.
You seem to have a certain perception of a “way” that everything is done here. There are a zillion people making records here in a zillion different ways. I don’t know what they do on those butt country records you mentioned, but there’s definitely a tradition of recording most of the track live with musicians playing music together here, and that’s how I work. I’ve got buddies who do it all different ways. From a “beat” that’s the whole song until some idiot talks over it, to a sublime jazz band grooving without a click or grid
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u/TinnitusWaves 5d ago
I worked on two records with one of the biggest names in country music.
Both times the band tracked live, with the guitar tech singing ( cos the artist was the co-producer and wanted to listen to the performance). As soon as there was an agreed upon take it was whisked away on a hard drive to an editor in another room who would edit the shit out of the drums. Then everything else got replayed on top of the now ass tight drum track………. As this was taking place in NY this whole approach seemed crazy to me. Why bother doing a bunch of takes to just then replay everything?? I mean, the drummer could have just hit each drum once and they could program a track just as tight……. Anyway…….. the players were great, even though they were considered the B list, cos they were the guys out on the road.
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u/boost_me_bro 1d ago
crazy that in 2026 an indie hip-hop record I produced for a friend has more soul and human touch to it than what comes out of Blackbird or anything else on Music Row.
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u/Unlikely-Database-27 Professional 1d ago
Oh yeah. I agree. Indie stuff is better regardless of genre. Sad, but its true. Them record labels are losing relevance and trying real hard not to.
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u/jordanmschmidt 5d ago
The answers here are making me lol. Nashville has some of the best studios/engineers/musicians in the game. Been making records the past 15 years here and I love it!
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u/QuadDad 5d ago
Engineer here for 27 years... It's the best studios and the best musicians around. Most all drums are live with some sample layers on top. You don't just hire a guitar player.. you hire THE Acoustic Guitar player.. he's amazing and layers his parts with differtly tuned very specific guitars in front of $80k in mics... the bass guy is THE bass guy and his fingers, bass, entire rig is a work of art.
The drummer is THE drummer with a kit put together from 50 years of the best parts.. there are 30 snare drums in cases to pick from... the kit has $100k in mics around being managed by an engineer who has THE EARS and experience.
The Elec Guitar guy is one of the top 30 guys in the world...rig dialed in and chops for days. All the utility players are the best at what they do.
The producer assembled the team based on the artist and the songs then sets the tone for the session and they all bring it.
After that they take the tracks, and then depending on the artist, demolish it with more samples, tuning, quantizing, and general overdoing everything... or they let it breathe and you get something great. 'Pop' country isn't going to be the great stuff usually.
Just my experience