3 Questions For Tim O’Heir: Mixing Care Bears On Fire

September 15th, 2009 by Trenton

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Tim O'Heir

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN: Tim O’Heir came up and out of the ‘90s lo-fi indie rock underground in Boston, where he engineered records for Buffalo Tom, Come, Belly and ultimately hooked up with Lou Barlow and J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. O’Heir produced/engineered Sebadoh’s Bakesale and Harmacy, and work with Folk Implosion led him to his first film soundtrack, for Kids.

O’Heir’s been based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn the past several years, making records with bands such as Stellastar*, The Starting Line, Hot Rod Circuit and All-American Rejects. He’s also continued to record and mix film scores (The Savages, In The Land of Women) and is slated to sound design an upcoming Broadway musical version of Clueless. We asked Tim about his recent work with the all-girl teenage rock trio, Care Bears on Fire, and about making records vs. film scores.

Q: How’d you end up working with Care Bears On Fire? And what was mixing that record like: what were any creative and technical challenges or delights?

A: Steve Yegelwel at S-Curve Records called me about this project. We’d worked together on the Boston band, Fuzzy, when he ran Seed Records under Atlantic. We’d been trying to do something together for the past few years and this seemed like the right match.

Care Bears On Fire is three girls — aged 14 and 15 — and they rock. The majority of their fans are in that demographic, many of which listen to Top 40 radio and American Idol stars. Steve specifically wanted this record to be “Anti-Disney,” drawing on the classic sound of The Clash and The Ramones.

The songs were co-written and produced by a number of people, and Steve wanted it mixed by one person to get a cohesion of tone for the overall album. It was challenging because the tunes were approached differently by each producer. The main obstacle was the drums.

From what I understand, a lot of the tracks were done quickly and there wasn’t time to get proper sounds, so there was extensive use of FXpansion BFD and Drumagog to get things happening. As with most of my productions/mixes, the goal was to get it as live sounding as possible, so time was spent searching for the right replacement sounds, reverbs, etc. Once I locked that in, I had to fold the vocals and guitars in. Again, most of the guitars were direct so I made use of Digidesign’s Eleven and Line 6’s Gearbox for amp simulation for both guitar and bass, favoring the Gearbox.

Care Bears on Fire rocking out.

Since I mixed the project at my studio in Williamsburg, all “in-the-box,” I relied on Waves Studio Classics EQs and compressors to add what I felt I was missing, not using a board and the usual outboard gear.

Q: Was there anything different, challenging or refreshing about working with such a young band?

A: I ended up producing two of the tracks from the ground up at Mission Sound in Williamsburg. The biggest challenge was working around their busy school schedules!

I found it refreshing to work with a band that really didn’t have any mold they were trying to fit into. They just did what came naturally instead of trying to cop the “flavor of the month” rock band. When I suggested something arrangement or composition-wise, they were really eager to try it. Everything was new and exciting for them in turn making it more exciting for me to see them pull it off.

Q: How does your film score work tend to come about, and how does it differ — in terms of budget, where and how you work — from engineering/producing records these days?

A: About 10 years ago I got a call from Stephen Trask to work on an album he was producing. We hit it off, so when it was time for him to record the score/soundtrack for Hedwig and the Angry Inch, he rang me up and we’ve been working together ever since.

Film work is a completely different world from making records and there is a definite animosity coming from the “film sound” folks towards “record” folks. (I have no idea why, but it’s there). Making rock, pop, jazz, etc., records is like making a piece of art. You have time to contemplate the material and experiment with instrumentation and arrangement.

When recording a soundtrack there is complete order that must be followed or budgets explode and things fall apart. The composer writes the score and a copyist prepares the music for the individual musicians. The musicians arrive at the studio and when its “downbeat” time, the session begins. No time for war stories, straight to work. In some cases it is done in a band-like atmosphere but when there’s an orchestra you need to get the right take and move on to the next cue. It is stressful, but fun.

When you mix a score you need to mix to stems so when it comes to the final film mix, the mixer has a bit of control over the music to adjust things as the director requests. The stems usually consist of: Drums, Bass, Guitars, Keys, Strings, Horns, Percussion, Effects. Most mixes are done in 5.1 surround, so each stem consists of 6 tracks. Care must be taken not to cross-pollinate the effects because if the director hates the horns and they share a reverb with the guitars, there’s no way of having that reverb on the guitars without hearing the ghost of the horns. This can be problematic, because my final mix is really the way that music should be heard, with all the stems at zero — that’s the mix. But, the final mixer has other considerations, so hopefully there’s a compromise where the score won’t suffer.

Check out Care Bears On Fire’s new record on S-Curve, Get Over It!