Jan 1, 1999 12:00 PM, Eric Rudolph

Now in its second season, the hip weekly PBS series Sessions at West 54th has become television's most reliable source for high-quality live performances by an eclectic array of artists from the pop, blues, country and jazz worlds. Most of the one-hour Sessions programs present two acts for about 25 minutes each, and fill the remaining time with interviews conducted by the show's host, ex-Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, himself a guest during the first season.

Much of the show's appeal comes from the feeling of intimacy in the performances-at its best, the show seems like a private concert for friends. It's taped in Manhattan before a live audience of around 200 on Stage A of Sony Music Studios' cavernous West 54th Street facility (which was once a Fox movie soundstage). The visuals (it's a six-camera shoot) and sound are both top-notch, and that's a major reason why Sessions has been able to draw such a wide range of musicians, including Ben Folds Five, Beck, Richard Thompson, Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach, Liz Phair, Cowboy Junkies, Lyle Lovett, the Pat Metheny Group, Lou Reed, Taj Mahal, Lucinda Williams, the Afro Cuban All-Stars, Jimmy Scott and many others.

"The idea of the Sessions sound is for the audience to hear what the acts hear onstage," says the show's recording/mixing engineer, Tom Cadley. This means bringing the audience right onto the soundstage, figuratively speaking. This is accomplished, in part, by using one of recording's oldest and simplest microphone arrangements: the three-mic overhead configuration commonly known as the Decca Tree (coined by classical engineers for Decca Records many years ago). Cadley says the Decca Tree defines the sound of the show: "You're definitely hearing the room; you hear what the musicians hear onstage, not my idea of what it should sound like using this or that reverb unit."

With such a wide variety of musical styles, the role of the Decca Tree is subject to a lot of variation. "For an acoustic act like the Del McCoury bluegrass group, I'll lower the Decca Tree so that I can focus the mics and get a direct pickup with a clear image," Cadley says. "That works because the act is five guys around a mic who walk up to do their solos. For someone like Liz Phair, with a loud rock band, the Decca Tree will be up near the lighting grid, and it will be mixed in essentially as a drum reverb." Cadley says his left-center-right Decca setup is most often fitted with three Neumann TLM 170 omnidirectional mics.

To work successfully with the wide range of acts that appear on Sessions, Cadley must be familiar with all types of music. "You have to know things like how important the clave is to a group like the Afro Cuban All-Stars," he explains. "It's easy to lose a clave with all the horns and percussion going on. Fortunately I never wanted to be a specialist, and my experience doing jingles, where you would cut a Coke spot for Latin, easy listening and rock stations all on the same day, turned out to be wonderful training." Cadley began his career as Bob Clearmountain's assistant at Bearsville Studios in upstate New York and has since engineered rock records for Joan Jett, Charlie Sexton, Midnight Oil and others.

Cadley records the show on a Sony 3348 48-track digital machine and mixes to a Sony PCM800 in Sony Music Studios Mix A, through a 96-input SSL analog board. (The audience tracks and host are tracked on the PCM800.) He uses Genelec and Meyer near-field speakers, leaving the room's giant built-in Boxer monitors alone. To get an idea of what the show sounds like on a single-speaker television, Cadley uses the built-in speaker on a Studer 2-track recorder, set across the room from the mix position like a TV would be in a living room. "That's how I can tell if the bass is sitting right," he says. "If it's too loud, it blows out the speaker, and if it is too low you can't hear it at all. I learned this from Bob Clearmountain; some people at Media Sound apparently discovered how much that little speaker in the Studers sounds like a TV."

So who does Cadley mix for-the person who casually flicks on the set or those who run the sound through their stereo system? "I mix for the person listening through their stereo, and I do it quite dynamically. A lot of people who mix music for television use a lot of compression so that everything's really loud. I don't care for that approach. It's quite easy for a person to turn up their sound level on the TV during a soft passage." (Sessions is currently mixed only for stereo.)

Cadley keeps the outboard gear minimal. "I use a Summit Audio DCL-200 dual compressor-limiter for most everything I do," he says. "It's warm and you can adjust the attack and release. For reverb I plug in a ton of gear," he adds, pointing to the array of equipment sitting behind him. "Then I'll ultimately use only two or three things, mostly a couple of small room programs from the board's Lexicon 480L. I'll often use an AMS RMX reverb unit for those canyon-like echoes on long sax solos."

Cadley is usually involved in all aspects of the production, including the microphone choices. He eschews piano transducers because of problems with hot spots and left hand definition. And as the lids are normally closed for camera purposes, he has devised his own solution-a pair of Schoeps MK4s (with Avalon preamps) attached under the lid, padded with foam, with the head angled down. "The Schoeps are set right above the piano's big iron support beams. People look at it and say, 'Well, you'll get the sound of the beams really nicely,' but the coverage is smooth and even, and it has some sense of space, which is what I'm after."

The drums get Coles 4038 ribbon mics set high above the kit. "That's my drum sound; I use 57s and 58s or Audix D3s for the snare and toms. I like the Audix mics because they're small and camera-friendly. The kick gets an M88. But those additional drum mics are mostly for added definition; the overhead Coles are what I use most. They've got a big diaphragm and a nice top-end roll-off that keeps the cymbals from going sizzly and loud," Cadley says. The bass is usually taken direct, though Cadley sometimes adds a mic to get the cabinet sound as well.

Choice of vocal mic turns out to be an area the musicians usually have an opinion about. "Acts come in here during their tours and they're used to using Shure SM57s and 58s, which makes sense because they are so road-worthy," Cadley states. "But as good as they are, they don't sound as good as a condenser mic. However, we've learned that some people are very attached to certain mics," especially the ubiquitous SM58s. "We tried to use my main Sessions vocal mic, the AKG 535, with Brian Setzer, and he just wasn't comfortable with it and asked us to put in an SM58. For a vocalist the mic is their instrument, and they need to be comfortable. Some bands come in with unconventional vocal mics that we end up using, like Phish, which had Neumann KMS 150s, which were great," Cadley says.

Elvis Costello was also intimately involved with the choice of his vocal mic. "He really wanted a 58; again, he is really comfortable with them. I wanted to try a Microtech UMT 70, but it can't be handled, and working with the mic and stand is part of Elvis' stage presence. So we gave him the AKG 535, a condenser mic I feel sounds good on everyone, and which can be handled. I don't have to add any false top to an AKG 535. If I'm not fighting bleed, which I am constantly doing with Sessions, I can use it flat." (The AKG 535 has a 2dB rise between 7 and 12kHz to project vocals. Cadley paired the AKG with a Martech preamp.)

Cadley says that on the Costello-Bacharach show (a challenging one that featured a total of 29 musicians and vocalists), the string section presented special problems because of its proximity to the drums and vocal monitors. For the tour, the violins had Shure SM17s Velcro'd to the instruments, but Cadley says that is far from ideal. "The best sound from a violin is about two feet overhead, but with the drums bashing and the monitors you just can't do it." His solution was to place four Neumann TLM 170s (through Neve preamps) in front of each string group about six feet high, "to get some air and something a little less harsh that I could work into the mix. I used the TLM 170s because they're not too directional, so they would pick up the entire area. Through brutal EQ I was able to get the P.A., monitors and all the other things out of them. The viola and cello took similar treatment. Mixing Sessions is about maintaining the spatial relationships that you see. We added the Neumanns so it doesn't sound like the violins are all in your face." Coles 4038 ribbon mics were used for the trumpet, and Neumann KM 84s for the sax and flute, all with Hardy preamps.

Cadley had originally thought the Decca Tree would play a much larger part in the final sound. "I thought it would be great to use on a string section. However, with the regular pop rhythm section out there and the number of monitors, it became just a bunch of noise, and I couldn't hear the violins. So the Decca Tree ended up being the main reverb," when the audio post-production commenced.

Though most of the Sessions artists are not contractually entitled to post-production input, many become quite involved with the process. "I try to get the FOH engineer in here working with me for at least some of the time," Cadley notes. "I talk to the artist after the soundcheck, and I ask them to come in and listen to the live mix; I always give them a DAT and a CD for the tour bus, no matter how bad my live mix may be. With a lot of artists we talk on the phone after they've listened; Paula Cole spent several hours going over the mix right after the show.

"I'm surprised by how many artists I never hear from; they apparently think, 'Well, it's just another TV show.' That seems so strange to me because, as we've learned recently with video releases and various nostalgia kicks, these types of programs live on a long time." In the case of the Costello-Bacharach show, both the artists and Kevin Killen-engineer/mixer on the duo's record-were involved. "Kevin isn't here right now because of a scheduling conflict," Cadley explains during a break in mixing that Sessions installment. "But he was here for the show and we mixed one song together, and we've been in constant touch about the shape the mix is taking."

Some artists go even further, bringing in their own mixers. "Pat Metheny has worked with Rob Eaton for ten years," Cadley says. "He mixed the show, and it's going to be great. Lou Reed is quite comfortable with my friend John Harris, so he took over, which is also great."

Although sitting in a state-of-the-art studio mixing a television show that constantly features some of the day's most provocative artists may sound like a dream job, Sessions is a weekly show and the schedule is tough. When we spoke the hour-long Costello-Bacharach show was getting special post attention; Cadley was on his second day of mixing. However, it was still early in the week, and there were many more shows to complete before the weekend. "Normally, with the shows featuring two pop acts, I'll mix each 25-minute segment in seven hours," Cadley explains, "and do the whole show in one 14-hour day. It's a rough schedule-we start taping in late August and finish before Christmas, and then I basically take the rest of the year off."