WORDS BY KHALID STRICKLAND a.k.a. BLACK PACINO
PHOTOS BY E-PILLS
Who the hell does Troy “MixByMail” Hightower think he is?
Sure, he’s one of the sharpest studio engineers to ever work a mixing board. Indeed, he has mixed a slew of gold and platinum records for Onyx, Redman, Big Pun, Erick Sermon, Common and many others. Admittedly, Hightower’s engineering resume is untouched; there’s not enough room here to list his credentials. Many of the classic Hip-Hop records that dropped in the 90’s were glazed with the Hightower polish.
But to quote Janet Jackson, “What have you done for me lately?” Moreso than any musical genre, Hip-Hop is about the moment and Hightower can’t rest on his precious-metal plaques forever. Besides, is a good engineer really necessary to the hit-making process? He just turns a few knobs after the artist and producer do the all heavy lifting. Anyone can do that, right?
Wrong. An engineer can make or break a record and grandmasters like Troy Hightower do not come a dime-a-dozen. A poor mixdown can sap the potency of even the dopest track. Hightower is a reputable, seasoned vet with a keen ear; a sought-after component for great-sounding records. Recently he’s mixed albums for deejay/producer Presto, Boss A.C. from Portugal and De La Soul, to name a few. At an event called “Future of Music,” Hightower shared his expertise on a panel with Bumpy Knuckles and the legendary DMC, moderated by Harry Allen. In addition, Hightower has put his knowledge of television audio to use by working at networks such as FOX News, CNBC, Court/Tru TV and currently ESPN.
Hightower also established a company called MixByMail, hence his nickname. Clients from around the globe send him their unmixed songs in a variety of formats and Hightower returns them professionally enhanced. The finished, improved songs are available for download upon completion. From rank amateur to platinum superstar, no one has to have their records sound like crap with Hightower as an option.
In the comfort of his home studio, adorned with gold & platinum plaques, I interviewed Troy “MixByMail” Hightower and it was very enlightening. Head to the basement and get in the mix.
Black Pacino: What qualities must a great engineer possess?
Troy Hightower: The best quality to have is your ears. You’ve got to hear what you need to do. If you don’t have good ears, you’re not a good mixer. Anybody can push faders. Honestly, that’s everything. Your ears.
Pacino: How’d you get into the engineering game?
Hightower: It really started from deejaying. I was deejaying in the bedroom as a young’un and then when I went to college, deejaying parties and Bar Mitzvahs. One day I looked at this wall of records in my apartment… matter of fact I can show you this wall of records in the other room… I looked at it one day and said, “You know what, I don’t feel like buying anybody else’s records anymore. I want to produce my own records.” And I wanted to be a producer. So I started producing all these records but still deejaying… trying to produce beats.
Once I got into doing beats, I moved back to New York around ’91 and I got this guy that wanted the same. We went to the studio and wanted to record something. It seemed like it took longer to record something at the studio than it did when I was recording it at my house. We were trying to figure out why. This was by the hour. The whole thing is instead of getting it done as efficiently as possible; they were like, “Let’s lag the time out. Let’s make it go longer than it’s supposed to.” At that point I said to myself, “Wait a second. I’m gonna learn this cat’s job.” And that’s when it started because it was taking too long and I thought I could do better.
Pacino: I know you’re a humble dude, but what makes you one of the best in the business?
Hightower: My attention to detail and like we were talking about earlier, my consistency. Every mix I do, I try to be consistent with it. It’s consistently thumpin’. You can hear the vocals, you can hear all the instruments. That’s really what I pride myself on. That’s what makes me one of the best.
Pacino: How can an artist benefit by dealing with MixByMail?
Hightower: These days with major studios closing down and equipment being cheaper and better, the average person can get a Pro Tools system or some digital editing system and record something in their house. And that’s what’s been happening ever since… I don’t know… like, September 11th 2001, where we had a problem across the board where all businesses were shut down in New York. Nobody was in New York and people started buying their own systems and recording and mixing. For me, I said to myself, “I don’t like what I hear on the radio.” Sonically, the stuff wasn’t sounding good.
The same thing happened back in the 80’s when the ADAT machine came out. Studios basically slowed down again because people were doing stuff in their house and trying to record and mix stuff in their house. That was really short lived. We’re talking 2 or 3 years it took before people started going back to the studio again because they said, “Wow. It’s nice to have this but we still can’t mix the final product properly. So we need to go to the professional engineer to mix our stuff.”
Same thing is happening now. I said, “Well, if people are going to do this in their house, how can I make it so that they can send me stuff that I can mix and help them out sonically like I would when I worked in the big studio.” So that’s where this whole mix by mail thing comes from. How can I get that person who’s working overseas or whatever to send me stuff? They can do it over the internet. That’s why I developed it. And also I wasn’t working at major studios anymore, so I had to figure out how I could get my hustle on.
Pacino: Why do so many artists think they can just hit the board and do it themselves?
Hightower: I think it comes down to money. Think about it like this: the process used to be, you get somebody to produce your record and you pay them. They would go to the studio and record a record in a day and it might take 8 to 10 hours. That’s just recording the track. Then they’d go back to the studio again, then they’d record the lead, the ad-libs, the chorus and if they had singers, they’d record the singers. That would be another 8 to 10 hour day. Then they would come back again and mix the record. A lot of times, that might take 8 to 10 hours. And then they’d go home, listen to the record and go, “You know, I want to change such-and-such” and they’d go back to the studio again and take another 10 hours. So that would be like four days. Let’s say it was $100 per hour for the studio; you’re talking $800 a day. 8 times 4 is 3,200 if I’m not mistaken. That’s just the studio, that’s not paying the engineer. So one record might have been $6000. By recording it and mixing it themselves, they save all that money.
A lot of people have been fooled into thinking that they can mix a record . It’s what I call “Demo-itis.” If they do it themselves and then they listen to it long enough, they’re gonna like it. There’s been a lot of records on the radio sound like trash. We’re talking about singers that came out that really couldn’t keep tune. Like Lumidee. You hear a record long enough, you tend to like it. I mean, I like Biz Markie but when that record “You Got What I Need” came out back in the day, he was out of tune. But you heard it long enough and you liked the record. So Demo-itis is cats love to hear what they’ve done like, “Nah, I did this. It sounds good to me.” But then when it’s done by somebody else and it’s done professionally, they go, “Hmmm. Okay, well maybe I can’t mix my records but I can record ‘em.” And that’s what’s going on. Last year I got more business doing this MixByMail thing when people were tracking stuff and they’d send it to me, than I had in the four years previous. So they’re starting to come around.
Pacino: Of all the records that you’ve mixed, do you have a favorite? Not so much the song but the way that you hooked it up?
Hightower: Like I said earlier are consistent. I can’t say I like them all but they’re consistent; the bass is right, the drums are right. Favorite records? Hmmmm. One of the records I was most proud of… now I don’t know if it’s because it was a hit or not… and see, that’s the other thing. It might’ve become a classic and I’m like, “Yeah, I like that record.” Like “Resurrection” and “Used To Love H.E.R.” (by Common). Hot record, I like the way I mixed it but…
To me, the “How High” (by Redman and Method Man) record was a great record. It was a great record because that wasn’t the original version. The original version was on the album and that was the longer version. That version that Erick and I did, Erick being the producer and me mixing it, that was all done in the studio. That was a remix. We took the vocals from the original record, put ‘em in the (Akai) S1000 sampler and flew them into the record. Nobody was in the studio. We flew those vocals into the record, put all the samples in the record and everything. I mixed that record and to me, that’s my favorite record as far as sound-wise. That record really sounded good.
Other recent stuff, of the past 3 or 4 years, are the De La Soul things, yo. Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump. To me, those are the best-sounding records I’ve done to date that have been released commercially. Those are hot. And now I got some new hot stuff, the independent stuff that I’m doing, that can live up to what I did in the past.
Pacino: You may not want to blow anybody up, but do you have any studio stories? What’s one of the wildest things you’ve seen pop off in the studio that you can talk about?
Hightower: Ya’all always want to talk about some studio gossip…
Pacino: (Laughs) You know we got to go there. The streets want to know. Gossip sells.
Hightower: Ummm… the sessions I was in really weren’t wild sessions, not like I could say “One day, there were strippers in the studio…” Stuff like that, honestly, I was never in sessions that went buck wild like that. It wasn’t like there were orgies in the studio and a cat was smackin’ some girl’s a** in there… or there was a pole in the spot and they were making it rain, na’mean? It wasn’t even like that. Most of the people I’ve worked with they were just cool people. We did work. We had fun but we did work. But it wasn’t any wildness.
Pacino: Any session particularly memorable?
Hightower: The “How High” record was definitely memorable. Another crazy session that was memorable was when I first got into this business working at The Apollo. I was working with a cat named Ollie Cotton. He was doing… remember Live Squad?
Pacino: Oh yeah, Live Squad. I remember them dudes.
Hightower: He was mixing Live Squad and I was like his intern/assistant over at The Apollo working with him. And I always had aspirations to be an engineer or whatever. One night after Live Squad, there was another session going. And it was some crew named Onyx. And we had been working all day. The engineer was like, “I’m not doing that session. Who the hell are they?”
Pacino: He was brushing them off?
Hightower: No. I mean, homeboy worked like 8 to 10 hours and he’s like, “Yo, I’m not trying to work after twelve o’ clock.” He’s like, “Troy, you want to do it?” No problem. This session is memorable and I’ll tell you why. Because number one, I didn’t know Onyx. I didn’t know who the hell they were. I’m sitting there, I turn around and they said the people are here. And Jam Master Jay and Run walk in the studio. I was like, “O-kaaaaay.” And they were directly involved with Onyx. That is the most memorable session ever for me. You know, thinking it was just some group and then Jam Master Jay and Run walk in the door and basically that session is what got me into this business. I made history with that situation.
I mixed “Throw Ya’ Gunz.” That was the first record and after it went gold I sat back and said, “Damn. I think I need to learn some more.” Because I wasn’t school-trained on being an engineer; a lot of it was self-taught. Doing intern work and I didn’t assist a whole lot. I assisted but it’s not like I did it for 4 or 5 years. I assisted for maybe a year and then this Onyx thing came in and then I started assisting a little bit more. But it wasn’t like a seasoned assistant. I went from to assisting some stuff to (snaps fingers) mixing records.
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That onyx plaque is awesome……haha if you ever want to get rid of it get at me