Stephan, you're a singer, a songwriter, a guitarist, and a producer. How are those jobs different for you?

SJ: Being a producer is a very different thing from being a musician. Being a musician is more of an air sign and being a producer is more of an earth sign.

You've been a producer from the very beginning, both for Third Eye Blind and for other artists. What is the appeal of being a producer for you?

SJ: I've been a producer since I was fifteen. It's always what I've done. This is the craft I developed. I was a furniture maker's son and I grew up in a wood shop. I spent what seemed like a lifetime having a trade and a craft. It's a craft - it's a skill, rather than a talent.

How did you learn that craft?

SJ: What I've learned I've learned by listening, which is really the only skill that I have.

In second grade, I remember listening to the end of "Shining Star" by Earth, Wind, and Fire. It sounded like it was in one room and at the end it got super-close and tight and I wondered how they did that. That's how I learned what reverb is.

The two of you have worked together for a while. What's your working relationship like?

SJ: Sean and I have worked together for almost a decade as a production team. I tend to set the tone and the direction we're going for in a song and Sean takes the responsibility of translating that direction into the right choice of signal chain and holding the technical aspect together. We've worked together long enough that people see us working in shorthand. His wife describes us as an old married couple.

SB: I think we work well together because we bring different skill sets to the task at hand. Stephan is not so interested in the technical aspect like microphone/mic pre choices etc., his focus is more on the overall picture. I tend to immerse myself in the details, like what amp into what cab with what mic might be cool. I love to search for cool sounds and experiment with gear.

Stephan definitely gets involved on that level but he doesn't really care to be the geek about it. Sometimes it works out and he will like the results of what I've come up with. Other times I'll be headed off in a different direction than he intended. He'll come in and go "it's not what I hear" and I will stand back and think about it and realize I have veered off course!

I have been very fortunate with Stephan because he's allowed me to give my input, my two cents. He'll give a directive of "this is what I have in mind, this is the general direction I'm going in with this guitar sound." . Then he'll leave me alone to try things and I'll come up with something to show him.

It's really just a confidence thing that you get when you work with someone for a period of time. I think some of the younger guys coming up need to learn how to develop that sense of confidence and not be scared to put their two cents in, their ideas can be very valuable and it's more important to be able to express yourself in that way than to be the fastest Pro Tools guy on the block.

During your recent keynote address for the SanFran MusicTech Summit, you were quoted as saying, "I don't think it's necessary or useful. The album is an arbitrary concept. It's not something that has to exist." Does this mean the album as an organizing principle is dead?

SJ: The album is not only an organizing principle of songs; albums are an organizing principle of my life. My life is measured in periods of the albums I love. I've spent my adult life trying to make albums that other people would love as much as the albums I grew up loving.

Originally albums were created by record executives as a way of making cash. They have a set of limitations. You can have artists go and create incredible works of art out of these, but they were invented for commerce. Then the Beatles and the Beach Boys came along and turned them into the Sistine Chapel and the Mona Lisa and Shakespeare.

The way that we engage music now - the way we want to hold it in our hand - is very different as a culture. Those limitations opened up when the CD became 80 minutes of music. Every record became a double album.

Now songs are on a web site. There's a kind of immediacy that's available with the art and music and liner notes that's quite endless. We're designing a new website where you can listen to a song and look at all of the liner notes and lyrics. You can see a video of the making of the song and if you want it you can buy it. You're looking at an ever-morphing, ever-changing album.

When I do a song for say Vanessa Carlton it's a joy, especially working with an artist who's as heroically talented as she is. But when I'm producing myself, the process of writing lyrics can be very difficult and it can take me years to make a record.

I recently wrote a song called "Why Can't You Be" and worked it out and recorded it. One option is that when you've recorded that song, why don't you post it up on your site? Then your audience who engages you will find out about it (since they don't find out about it through the press, MTV or radio as much anymore - they find out about it online by engaging each other). Then the album comes out as a collection of those songs - the options have become fluid and creative.

The album is still an organizing principle that I like and want to continue to make all the way down to vinyl. But that doesn't mean it's necessary. It is appealing to me, but it's no longer necessary.

3EB has also gone a step beyond that and released individual tracks for fans to remix.

SJ: It's been interesting to see this whole culture of budding mixers not having heard our mix. It gets filtered though their intelligence and creativity and ears and it turns into something. The response that we've had coming back from a thousand-something mixes from this first song, "Non-Dairy Creamer" is "Wow - this is awesome! I never thought of this as dirty-bass one-note techno - good for you."

There's no particular one way we have to mix it because we don't have bosses at record companies telling us what to do. We have all of these tools out there that bring us closer to our audience and to other musicians.

For 3EB it's been the fans and their renewed excitement that has invigorated and inspired us. What we wanted to do on this album is to include them in the process and share that. So we're using the internet to bring us closer to our audience and to other people in the music community.

What do you think of Radiohead's releasing its latest album In Rainbows for free without the mediation of a record label?

SJ: I loved it. Both Sean and I actually paid for it. They said pay what you will and instead of stealing it I think everyone actually paid for it.

In Rainbows got eclipsed by all publicity about the ways they released it. What was forgotten was that they made a gorgeous, spontaneous, liberated album.

What we really care about is music. The technology and the gizmos are in service to the emotional response that you get from a song.

Just to clarify - you plan on releasing your upcoming record Ursa Major as a traditional album as well?

SJ: Absolutely. I believe that digital releases and physical releases can enhance each other. The Physical release will be on CD and on vinyl LP lovingly mastered in analog and ready for your Technics turntable in late February.

We've always thought of the signature 3EB sound as very stripped down, but going back and listening to your records, we noticed lots of interesting details in the production.

SJ: Oh, yeah - we're totally overproduced.

We're thinking of cool but subtle details, like a pan here or a bit of reverb there - things that you'd only hear if you were listening closely on headphones.

SJ: That's sweet. We spend all our time on those little things that don't matter - you have no idea. We polish the stuff you can't hear. That's where we put in all the work.

The things that are right up in the center of the mix - we whip those right up. But we put in a lot of time into reversing [a pad] on a piano chord!

SB: I think we've been fortunate on this project [Ursa Major] that a lot of things just sorta came together with the completion of the new studio and our working environment now. We didn't have any unnecessary pressure from a record company to do something by a certain deadline. When you don't have those pressures and when you are not forced to do things the tried and trusted way for time's sake, you can afford to try things you might have been wanting to try for a while.

SJ: I think what Sean is saying that we don't know what the hell we are doing and he needs the extra time to figure out how to work this stuff! [laughs] Seriously though, there is no one way to record this or put this out. Shake up your Etch-a-Sketch and get inspired to draw a picture with sound is a really great way to be. It's a way that you make things fresh and exciting and we try to keep that in mind so we don't fall into the "this is the way we've always done it" rut.

So being in your own studio has allowed you more time and freedom to experiment?

SJ: Yes, it has, but on the flip side of what we're just talking about sometimes you have to impose a certain amount of nervous pressure to get the best results out of someone. When I am working with artists sometimes I will concoct that pressure.

What are some of the production details we should be listening for on Ursa Major?

SJ: We have a chamber room that we're recording in that was built in something like 1889. It's got twenty-eight-foot ceilings that were built with music in mind, it's a beautiful sounding room.

This allows us to focus on one essential truth - we're not really recording instruments. We're recording the room with the instruments playing in them, which is a very different way of looking at it.

What Sean and I focus on is that this is an album that is being made in a space. We can focus on whether we want to use the space to hold a track or a song together or to isolate the track within that space.

That means things like cutting way back on compression, for example. We've barely touched an outboard reverb - we've really used the chamber as a chamber. In the past I've always sung right up on to the popper stopper of an ELA M251. Now what's happening is I'll back up to a point and say, "that's the amount of room sound we want to have," and you've just made your reverb.

And Sean knows the song and sort of plays the gain on the mic preamp as we go. All of these things are a result of reacting to the environment that we're in.

Does recording in a room limit the sorts of editing you can do after the fact?

SJ: I wouldn't know. As soon as we get to the editing part, I make up something else that I immediately have to do and I cut out and figure out some reason why Sean has to do it.

How much has technology affected the recording process for you?

SB: You don't have to pay so much heed to irreversibly screwing things up! Your focus can be on being creative without worrying that you're going to erase something and if it doesn't work, just hit the undo button.

The main thing the technology has affected for me is the ability to try things that just weren't possible when recording to tape. I remember on the first Vanessa Carlton album that we did (Harmonium), she has this really spacious song called "She Floats." Stephan wanted to create this huge 120 piece choir with people screaming and people doing this super low kind of stuff and all these weird harmonies in between.

We had to create it with just a few people. It's just so easy with the tools we have now to record five people screaming and then have the same guys do another note and just keep stacking things up until you have a huge choir and if you don't like an element of it you can just hide it and create another, nothing's lost or has to be deleted for sake of space. You don't have to think of the technical limitations anymore- it can all be done relatively easily. I think the tools that we have and the tools like you guys are making are just so amazing because they allow you to just express yourself endlessly without risking screwing stuff up.

Have any iZotope products been among the technology you've been experimenting with?

SJ: Sean has been a big fan of Trash. It really provides a lot of flexibility.

SB: Vinyl was actually the first iZotope product I used, I think when it first came out. I liked it so much I think I used it on everything! I really like Trash 'cause it's just too much fun but recently I've really been liking Ozone for my final mixes, it's incredibly flexible and makes me sound like I know what I'm doing.

We also understand you've been using RX as well?

SB: I just used it on this 3 song EP release that is coming out next week. We have been filming every moment in the studio to use on the bands new website which will have weekly "webisodes" of us making the record. We're getting all this great stuff but there is hiss on most of the video footage plus all kinds of other noises, pops and squeaks. For instance our drummer was wearing a necklace that kept hitting the lavalier microphone and it was very abrasive! I used RX extensively and it's amazing. I couldn't believe how well it worked for cleaning this stuff up.

How do you keep your head in the midst of all this changing technology?

SJ: As long as the means reaches that end, we're concerned more with the end than with the details of the means. Some of my favorite records were made on the biggest pieces of crap possible. I was thinking of the Streets' first album which was made on a Mac notebook and there is so much feeling and intensity on that record. As long as you are holding on to that feeling of the song in your head you'll be able to get it out with whatever means you have.

SB: With the new studio when we were making equipment decisions we were really torn on which way to go, specifically what we were going to do for a console. At our old studio we had a mish mash of control surfaces and an old Helios line input console from the 70's. Because we use Pro Tools every day, it's the centerpiece of everything we do, we were very tempted to go with the Digidesign D-Control and have the complete recallability and ease of use. In the end though Stephan felt more comfortable going for more of a traditional setup. He had recorded the first Third Eye Blind record entirely to tape and mixed it on a Neve console with no automation and felt that he wanted to go back to a more organic setup like this. We decided on a Wunder Audio Class, an analog console, and also acquired a Studer 2" machine (somebody's unwanted hand-me-down!). He already had a fair amount of great vintage outboard gear and we made a decision with this album to record and mix in a more traditional style. There are obviously limitations when working in this way but having to commit to a mix, knowing you are never going to be able to recall it exactly to make a small change can be a good pressure and can put you on the spot to perform.

With my personal studio however, outside of the work I do with Stephan I work completely "in-the-box" and I feel that it is equally as valid a way of working. Especially in the last year or two I feel that the quality of plug-ins and software tools has become so good that I am able to make an end result equally as good as that I can make on the very expensive equipment at Stephan's studio. In fact I really don't think it is necessary to compare the two anymore. They both produce equally great results.

Personally I am really excited about the ability for someone on a limited budget to be able to make a really high quality recording and to have tools that allow them to make great mixes for a reasonable price. I totally agree with Stephan that it is the end result that counts, getting the intended emotion across to the listener by whatever means. My hope is that more great music will get the exposure it deserves because of these awesome tools.

Learn more about Third Eye Blind at their website, www.3eb.com.