Nashville, TN (February 5, 2015)—Nashville producer Buddy Cannon and his longtime audio engineer Tony Castle have been using iZotope RX on recent Willie Nelson sessions to save performances that would otherwise be unusable for technical reasons.
Cannon and Castle, who have worked with artists like Kenny Chesney, Merle Haggard, Alison Krauss, Jamey Johnson and others have recorded six albums with Nelson since 2007. Cannon says that when Nelson records a song, each of his vocal and guitar takes has its own magical moments, so he and Castle needed a creative tool that would allow them to salvage great performances marred by pops, squeaks or inconsistent proximity range.
“Last year we were doing a recording session, and the track had a popping sound on it,” says Cannon. “The engineer brought up RX and suddenly the pop was gone and the notes were still there—it was just like magic. Willie’s guitar, ‘Trigger,’ has traveled a lot of miles and at times he can be a little noisy. RX lets us make previously impossible edits so that we can use a great take.”
Another RX tool they use frequently is EQ Match, which enables them to match the sonic differences between takes and ensure a consistent-sounding mix. “Willie isn’t the type of singer to stand perfectly still at the mic at a consistent distance—he moves around a lot, which creates proximity changes,” explains Castle. “If we need to comp vocal tracks, we use EQ Match to get a consistent sound.”
Castle recently mixed a live performance by Kenny Chesney and used RX 4 to remove much of the ambient noise, unwanted transients, and the screams and whistles of excited fans.
“Since I got RX, there hasn’t been one Pro Tools session I haven’t used it on,” Castle says. “It makes editing so much faster and more efficient. It’s such a timesaver.”
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