David Paich
You grow up in Los Angeles the son of a widely respected jazz piano player and successful arranger, start grabbing for the keyboard before you’re tall enough to look down on it, and join a band with some high school classmates. Soon, you’re a member of one of the most popular bands in the world. Not a bad bio, but for David Paich, a principal architect of the Toto sound, it’s not quite enough.
After slipping out of the spotlight for awhile, Toto is back on the road supporting their new, self-produced album, Falling In Between. Fans of the band’s combination of cream and power will not be disappointed. Paich, who wrote or co-wrote “Rosanna,” “Hold the Line,” and “Africa,” has also managed over the years to partner with Boz Scaggs (he co-wrote the classic, “Lowdown”) and play on sessions for other artists, including Bryan Adams “(Please Forgive Me)” and Cheryl Lynn “(Got to be Real).”
Much of the pre-production on Falling In Between took place at ATS, the project studio that is literally across the street from Paich’s Calabasas, CA home. “In 1998 I converted what had been a five car garage into a studio,” says an open and unhurried David Paich. “I wanted to have a place to write songs and record overdubs for Toto. Recording keyboards and vocals is the longest part of recording process.”
Paich hired studio designer Frank Letouf to help put his room together. “Frank’s one of the best in L.A. He worked on Lion’s Share, Babyface’s studio, and lots of other rooms.” A 16x16 Pro Tools HD system feeding three 24 bit O2R boards are the backbone of the mix room. “The O2R’s have been great, but I’ll probably move over to a Pro Control at some time. Obviously, more and more is taking place inside the computer.”
Rick Ruggiero tuned ATS, which features Doug Sachs Mastering Labs monitors and a pair of Big Reds. “I still have some great hardware processors---Fairchild and API are among those that I lean on the most---but I’m a real fan of plug-ins these days. The Sony Oxford compressor/limiter is amazing. I was really influenced by something George Massenberg said: analog likes to marry with digital. If you record digital, make sure you get some analog processing into the chain, and visa versa. At least that’s what I think he was saying!”
John Jessel has been Paich’s personal engineer and studio manager for nearly two decades. He manned the desk when some of Toto’s biggest hits, including “Africa” and “Roseanna,” were being mixed. “Dave has me on salary to take care of and manage his studio,” says Jessel. “I make sure that all of his computers are in shape, and that his software, including Cubase SX 3, his DAW, is up to date. Dave records all audio as well as MIDI into Cubase, but he also has a Pro Tools rig. I’d say we update computers every three or four years.
“Dave wanted his current room to have a look and feel similar to The Manor, his old studio in Sherman Oaks that was flattened in the ’92 earthquake. That studio was built like a fortress, but it couldn’t withstand the force. Afterwards, when we went back inside, we found that his 5,000-pound API console had been displaced to the other side of the room.
“The three O2R’s we have are working fine, but we’re going to be moving over to the Digidesign Icon platform. Dave likes me to set up a series of palettes that he can call up easily; stereo brass will be on two faders, percussion on several others, for example. From there, Dave can mix by himself. I’m really interested in the new Vienna Symphony Library platform. Dave does a lot of orchestral composing, and the new interface looks like a major improvement.
“Fortunately, we were able to salvage some equipment from the old studio, including Dave’s old Mastering Lab 605 Big Red monitors. They image so well! All of the mixes we do here translate effectively into other environments. We set the Big Reds flush into the front of his studio, which is all rock. We didn’t do anything intense to treat this beautiful teak wood room, just a bit of padding here and there.
“We built one huge patch bay that includes the computers, Dave’s Pro Tools rigs, and his MOTU MTP AV-4 MIDI interface. Dave also has kept a bunch of classic keyboards- Mini Moogs, for example- in part because he likes the way these older pieces act as controllers. We also set up a pair of Mackie speakers close to his main keyboard controller-Dave recently switched from an old Yamaha KX88 to the Yamaha PF200- to create a stereo field he can reference as he’s playing. We monitor through a variety of speakers while we’re mixing, including NS10s, some small KRKs, and a pair of Genelecs. Everything goes through a pair of Fairchild 1011s. The Fairchilds warm things up with that old-fashioned tube sound, but we use just a smidge of them- you can’t overdo it!
“Everyone who comes here loves the vibe. Dave lives way up on the hill overlooking the valley. The place is very warm and inviting, and the studio is low-key but technically state of the art. It’s a great place for people to hang out and write in.”
Toto rented out Phantom Sound for a year to record Falling In Between. “Our drummer, Simon Phillips, runs Phantom, which is located in Van Nuys,” says Paich. “We began work on this record in February of 2005, shortly after Simon moved his own HD system in there. Phantom Sound feels a lot like Sunset Sound, where we recorded Toto IV, and we were comfortable there.
“We started out by moving our gear into the room. I brought over my Baldwin 9 foot grand, the same one that I’ve used on all of the Toto albums, plus my Hammond A100, and Lukather brought over a bunch of guitars. Simon has an array of microphones---he really like the Rodes line ---and I came with a pair of Schoeps mics that George Massenberg turned me onto. Steve MacMillan mixed the album at Phantom Sound.
“We did this album in two big chunks. We started out writing and tracking at Phantom for about a month, and continued on by recording vocals and overdubs. In a second tracking period we wrote the music to another five songs, wrote lyrics for them, and tracked overdubs. As I said, I brought Pro Tools files back to my studio and worked here on my keyboard parts.
“Simon did all of the tracking at Phantom, and I use a guy named John Jessel…no, not the old comedian…that’s Georgie Jessel, to track at my place. Steve Porcaro has his own studio, where Mike Ging tracks for him.” Watching Toto’s newest member, Greg Phillinganes, play on a daily basis is one of side benefits that Paich enjoys the most. “Greg is an amazing keyboardist. Hearing him play every day is like getting a master class. An example? He came in the studio one day, sat down at a keyboard, and played about 13 choruses of the most brilliant soloing I’d ever heard on the changes to “Giant Steps.” Most Mix readers know that the harmony changes every two beats throughout that chart; it’s really tough. I asked Greg how he came up with that stuff, and he told me that most of what he’d played he picked up by watching Stevie Wonder rip through the changes when they toured together. First of all, that Stevie thought this stuff up is amazing. That Greg could cop that much difficult material is also amazing. He can also come up with the most understated stuff. Remember his solo on Fagen’s version of “Ruby,” from the Night Fly album?”
No longer young kids who thought---correctly---that they could take the world by storm, Toto has little to prove, but more to say, according to David Paich. “We’re basically musicians with families. We don’t have planes like the Stones, or U2, though of course we’re all grateful for the success we’ve had. But we had to get a loan to finance this album, which is being distributed by Frontier Records. It was a labor of love. This is a different time in our lives. We’re no longer interested in trying to invent clever songs. We dealt with everything from mortality to the fall of Enron on Falling In Between. Reaching for a deeper level of lyrical power was an important goal for us, and we think we got it right…though we’re not on the level of Jackson Browne or Steely Dan! We hope that we’re giving our fans music that they will recognize as Toto, and that this album shows a group of individuals who are stretching and growing.”
Appeared in Mix, May 2006
