Artist Interview: David Boucher
Making Pop Hits with the UAD-1 and Pro Tools
By Marsha Vdovin

It's always nice when someone's road to success is paved with hard work, passion and learning. This month's interview is with David Boucher, a young engineer in Los Angeles. David caught the audio bug early on, building a recording studio in his parent's basement. College took him to one of the best music and recording programs in the country, at the University of Miami, where he received a B.M. in Music Engineering. Straight from college he was assisting at Right Track Recording in New York City. That's where he met Bob Clearmountain, who invited him to come to LA and work as his assistant.

I asked David if Bob Clearmountain was his mentor. "Not really. He never presents himself like that. He's a-I don't know, he's really humble . . .

David Boucher with Abby of The Ditty Bops

"He's so down to earth and obviously I learned things, because as he would work, I would hear things that I liked, or sometimes I'd hear things I didn't like. It was pretty clear that he was grossly talented, just from the day we got going. He didn't ever-I don't know, he just doesn't have that air of being better than somebody else. He just is. [Laughs.] He's got to be the most talented guy behind the mixing console. Like I said, I would hear things come up in the faders, and I'd see how he treated them, and things like that. He would have me do all of the recording because he felt like he would get too focused on any overdub that he had to do in the middle of the mix, and that it would give me more experience to work with clients. It's an incredible experience to work at his place. He's been a big part of my life."

"I've used the DreamVerb on every album that I've mixed since I bought it in 2004."

David moved on mainly to get more experience in recording. He's partnered with Producer Mitchell Froom (Paul McCartney, Randy Newman, Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow) for several years, "in kind of a team setting, where he was doing all the production, arranging, and I would do all the recording. For the first couple of records, we used outside mixers, and then more and more I got the go-ahead to do the mixing myself. Mitchell has this theory that if you have a good recording engineer, and you can see the vision through with the same guy behind the mixing console, you'll be better off than going to an outside mixer. The mixing really starts the day you start recording. But if you do have a problem, then an outside mixer can really save you."

Mastering is a different beast and needs to be a separate process, according to David.

"The thread of continuity that a good mastering engineer can bring to a project feels like a restriction to a mixer, more than anything else. If you're trying to make the whole album have this consistency, you end up thinking about other songs while you're working on the current song. You try to make concessions for things-especially in this world of iTunes, where you just pick out one song that you want-that are almost out of context. If you send it to a really great mastering engineer like Bob Ludwig, who does almost everything I work on, he or she will take this album's worth of recordings and turn it into an actual album. It's incredible what the mastering engineer can bring to it. If the recordist and arranger have done a good job, then the album will have a musical continuity that will come out in the mixes When the mastering engineer gets it, he or she will see the vision pretty clearly, and then just put it together."

David works in Pro Tools and makes extensive use of plug-ins. One of his favorite UA plug-ins he worked with was the RealVerb Pro, which he used in the TDM version. He was introduced to the UAD-1 Powered Plug-Ins by Bob Clearmountain, who uses the system. When he left Clearmountain's studio, David picked up his own UAD-1, and it's been an indispensable part of his studio rig ever since. "I've used it on every album that I've mixed since I bought it in 2004."

One of David's most successful projects was the self-titled break-out album by Canadian singer-songwriter Daniel Powter, with the highly successful single, "Bad Day." David relied heavily on the UAD-1's Pultec Pro processor for that record.

"My favorite one is the Pultec Pro, a combination of the EQP-1A and the MEQ-5. I mixed that album at Sound Factory, and they have two Langs and two EQP-1As. Daniel's record was a lot of tracks. If I felt like actual valves and transformers were going to help something, I could use the hardware. If it was the sound of the EQs that I really wanted, then I could use them in the UAD-1 and I wouldn't be taxing my system. For a few hundred dollars, you get basically an entire rack of extra EQs that you wouldn't normally have, as opposed to the expense of buying another Pro Tools Accel card to try and get the emulations on that. Because the UAD-1 is so efficient, you feel like you never run out of instances when you're using it. Most importantly, when delay compensation came around in Pro Tools, I didn't have to worry about anything with that, because the software would just compensate for the delay going through the card and through the computer. I didn't have to worry about any phase problems, so I could start using it with instruments that were multi-miked."

Like many UAD-1 users, David finds that the Pultec really works well on guitars. "It has the ability to add presence, without making the guitars too harsh. It's good on piano too. It's great on drums, but typically I would use the hardware on drums, when possible."

David has explored the many UAD-1 plug-ins and still relies heavily on his old stand-by, the DreamVerb. "DreamVerb is always one of the reverb sends. The Daniel Powter album is pretty dry, with maybe one or two instruments that are really soaked in reverb. I like the DreamVerb because I can get an approximation of Clearmountain's live chambers, which are incredible. From there I can kind of tweak it a little bit to suit the song even more. I feel like I get the same sort of effect, not necessarily the same exact sound, and achieve the same goal with them. I also always use 1176s. There are four of those at the Sound Factory, so I don't usually need more than that."

Some people are really good at creating hit pop songs. "Bad Day" is catchy and easy for people to relate to. David thinks part of the sonic quality that helped make the song such a hit is the piano focus. "It was one of the first records that have come out in the last three or four years where the piano is suddenly refocused into the front. It's been kind of a guitar-dominated world, up until Coldplay and Keane. I don't think people were really tapping into kind of the appeal that Elton John had. It's piano and vocal right out front, from the top of the song. Just comes right at you. It's not necessarily gentle and not necessarily dedicated to this almost classical recording of piano that people have for some reason fallen in love with in pop. It has guitar aggression, but it's on piano. Daniel borrows from that Elton school of thought. I don't know, there's just something about it. I heard the demos of it, and immediately knew that I could really try and make the song come forward."

Hit albums aren't always the most satisfying work experience, but the Daniel Powter album was for David. "The most satisfying part about it was the fact that it went through the recording process, and when it came time to mix, we were trying out different mixers, because it was a high-profile record for Warner Bros. and I didn't have any major hits under my belt or anything like that. We started mixing and I don't know how he did it, but Mitchell somehow convinced Tom Wally to let us start mixing, just to have something to set the bar for when we did have outside mixers come in to try and slam it or whatever. Then when Tom came to the Sound Factory and listened to our mixes, he said, 'Why would we go to an outside mixer? This sounds great.'"

David just bought a new Universal Audio LA-2A and hopes to use it on his new project.

"I'm mixing something right now for an artist on Columbia-a guy named Ari Hest. I'm going to see how the LA-2A works on a variety of instruments that I think need a little squeeze." noted, David. He's no stranger to the reissue LA-2A. "I recently used it on a record for Alexi Murdoch, at Sonora recording. They had a new one and a vintage one and I was really happy to use both of them. We would plug it through one and then the other and just pick which one we liked for the particular instrument. They were pretty close, but the old one definitely needed some new capacitors. I'm really looking forward to trying out my 'new' LA-2A."