Pointing the Flashlight: A TOTIEK Interview with mixing engineer KT Pipal

KT Pipal talks mixing for Told Slant, working with Rich Costey, and the difficulties of work/life balance

Welcome to my Substack! I’m Hannah Jocelyn, formerly known as Joshua Copperman, also known as Fell From The Tree. I’m calling this The Only Times I’ve Ever Known as a reference to Billy Joel’s “Summer Highland Falls” - the full line is “they say that these are not the best of times, but they’re the only times I’ve ever known.” And I’m trying to make the best of these times, and so are the people I interview. Follow the TOTIEK Spotify playlist here!

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This week, we have an interview with KT Pipal, mixing engineer for indie darling Told Slant and arena rocker Sam Fender. They’re an engineer who attended the Music Technology program at NYU, working under engineer Myles Turney. After working as a freelance engineer, including five years at Mission Sound and a six month residency at the Banff Centre, they moved to LA and briefly worked for legendary producer Rich Costey (Muse, Of Monsters and Men, Fiona Apple). The dissolution of a relationship and difficulty balancing mixing work and life led them to leave Rich and start working with sound design company One Thousand Birds, while continuing to mix on the side.

I learned about them because I adored their mix on Told Slant’s Point the Flashlight and Walk, one of my favorite records of last year. (We went into detail regarding the mix of “Bullfrog Choirs” - I originally left that in, but had to take it out for length.) Before I decided to interview them, I asked for feedback on an EP I mixed for Zophia Dadlez, and they graciously provided a ton of critiques with techniques I hadn’t thought to use before. I even used a de-essing trick Pipal suggested on a hyperpop song I mixed for Cam Dasher.

But I was just as interested in their career path as I was in their mixing process. We spent a lot of time talking about their work with Rich Costey, because outside of programs like Mix With The Masters, there just isn’t that same level of insight into the total chaos of the industry. Pipal was open and honest about their experience and I had a lovely time speaking with them.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

What got you interested in mixing specifically?

I grew up in a really suburban town in Southern California and would spend most of my free time just listening to CDs, on my floor, in my bedroom playing drums and percussion. And then I had a teacher in high school who was working as an assistant engineer at a recording studio, but I didn't really know what that meant. I was listening to records and starting to wonder more and more about why they sounded the way they sounded. Why the vocals were doubled a trillion times, or why that guitar was layered so much or what that weird slap-back echo thing was. And then the album that sealed the deal is In Rainbows by Radiohead. I literally wrote my NYU college admission essay about In Rainbows.

Who were some of your other influences?

Bob Clearmountain is definitely up there. Stylistically Manny Marroquin is up there. And Jaycen Joshua just for how polished and dialed his mixes are, I feel like I have specific references for specific things and Manny Marroquin and Joshua are in one camp and Rich and Clearmountain are in another camp.

Can you talk about working with Rich Costey?

It’s super intense, and you know, God bless him, he really gives every record his all. But when it's not your baby, I think it's pretty different. I was going through some relationship troubles and was new to L.A. - it all just sort of ended up piling up on itself. I remember at one point, having a conversation with him and being like, this is a lot, this is feeling really intense. And he said “I totally hear that. I want to make your life livable, but… a few months ago, I asked you if you wanted me to bring somebody else on and you said no.” I didn't remember that at all! I had completely blocked that out of my brain and kicked myself so hard for it because I think I just had no semblance of an idea of how intense it was going to get. And how much any one person has to carry you, whether you're Rich or the next person in line.

He has a few different engineers - there are also Martin Cooke and Nicholas Fournier. That’s such an interesting environment, especially for a project like the Of Monsters and Men record Fever Dream where he’s involved the whole time.

I started working for Rich in November of 2018. They were just finishing Fever Dream up as I was coming on. So I was in LA finishing mixes for him while he was in Iceland finishing that record. And then they all came back to his studio in March 2019. But Martin did all the engineering for that record. When it was me, it was just me and Rich the whole time, and I caught Martin on the tail end of his time with Rich.  I think him and Nick had been with Rich for several years. Rich was just trying to find new hands to keep on deck for as long as possible. Never more than a couple of engineers at a time. I probably should have let it be a couple when I was there too, but I got greedy. [Laughs] 

I actually reviewed the Sam Fender record you worked on for Pitchfork! 

I remember reading that review after I had stopped working for Rich. Oh my God. I laughed really hard. And especially I laughed again when Felix [Walworth of Told Slant] sad “Hey, someone from Pitchfork is reviewing [the record.]” And I was like, Oh, what's their name? And then Felix told me, and it was you. And I was like, “Oh my God, they called us sterile?”

You have a credit on the title track of Hypersonic Missiles.

That album has a really interesting history. Rich had already mixed a couple of songs. I think “Dead Boys” and, some other songs which I'm not sure actually made it onto the record. So, he had already mixed a couple songs when “Hypersonic Missiles” landed. And it was right when I started working for him, he was going to Iceland to mix on Neve 5088 console.

He went to the studio in Iceland, and we figured everything out and moved all his plugins over and he did a mix pass, then the [label] loved it, but there were some minor tweaks that needed to be made and all the prints needed to be done and he couldn't get another day in the Iceland studio. So I ended up pulling it all up in L.A. and matching the mixes, and then doing all the tweaks from there. So I think that credit is on that song specifically because it was a little bit more all hands on deck. 

So you basically mixed the whole song?

I wouldn't go that far, but it was a lot of fun and it was the first time that Rich wasn’t around for when I was doing it, and it felt cool to have that autonomy and trust your own instincts, you know? Then we went to London to finish Hypersonic Missiles with Sam, and we flew out the day after we had wrapped the OMAM album and we’d been mixing until four in the morning. And I was just super burnt out. And this relationship I’d been in for five years was crumbling before my eyes, then I got on this plane. And then we landed in London. just went straight to the place where I was staying and I didn’t go into the studio at first, and because Rich is eager to get the mixes started and get things in good shape before the client comes in, he went to the studio and over the course of the next week, I basically had a full mental breakdown and Rich and Metropolis Studios assistant Jack Thomason ended up doing most of the heavy lifting, which, thank God. I was so out of my mind while we were doing that album, it was a bonkers time for sure. I think that that experience speaks a lot to why I've changed my life so much since then. 

Were you mixing on your own while working for Rich as well? My timeframe is all over the place because major label release schedules are so weird.

The first album I mixed was for Human People. I had a pair of NS10s and I had a pair of Adam S3As. And I shared a 10x10 bedroom with my partner at the time. And she's an editor and I'm a mixer. So we had my sister build us this full wall-shelving system. So basically you’d walk into the bedroom and it's just a full-size bed. And I managed to fit onto this bookshelf and just sort of like jury-rigged some acoustic paneling and called it a day. And then mixed the whole thing. I think I mixed it almost all in the box. 

What’s your mixing process like?

When a new project comes in, I spend a good amount of time prepping each song, getting to know the parts and integrating them into a barebones routing template. Once everything's routed and organized, I like to go through each individual track or group of tracks and do a good amount of editing. Light gain staging, fades where appropriate, de-clicking as needed, dealing with sibilance and tuning as appropriate.

Once prep feels finished, drums - or something foundational like a piano if there are no drums - are first. Getting the feel of the groove to pop, making downbeats land emotionally, a general EQ and sense of space for them related to whatever is next. Throughout the process just trying to keep track of what's a foundation and how to make that an emotional, driving element. What's a flourish or a touch, what instrumentation or vocalization can perform both functions? How do I propel those things in the direction the reference mix, the song structure, the lyrics tell me they want to go?

How did you get into contact with Felix?

I came into contact with them via their buddy and our mutual friend, Emily Sprague [of Florist]. Emily and my ex-partner are our partners now. In the process of orienting that becoming fluoresce was working on a new record, which I think they're still working on. And my name had floated around. And I think I was just mentioned to Felix as a thoughtful person who also happened to mix music. And they called me up and asked if I was interested. And of course I said, yes, because I love Told Slant. And I love Florist, and I had been excited to hear what they had been working on and it sounded like this was going to be a pretty significant departure from earlier [more lo-fi] Told Slant records.

I'm curious what state the rough mixes were in and what did you have to do for that project to polish it up? 

The first time I heard “No Backpack,” I went “Oh, this has to be a banger, like an anthemic Springsteen [song.]” Felix spent a good amount of time on this album and was really deliberate about the way that they recorded everything, you know, and the rough mixes that I got were rough mixes for sure. But the stems and everything that was reflected in the rough mixes was a really deliberate approach to the production and how they wanted everything to sit. By the time I got the stems, all the panning was basically locked in and a lot of the effect work was locked in as well.

We had a long conversation about the narrative aspect of the album. And I was really excited to hear about that and sort of try and convey that in the mixes. It was just a matter of latching onto the vibe and, just trying to boost whatever that was.

It’s so interesting - this is a very emotional album and you have to keep some separation between real life and the music, not to go on about the art and the artist, but the idea that the person who referred you is also dating your ex - there’s just a lot of personal stuff involved. Do you need to compartmentalize?

I think that that's maybe one of the reasons why this came together so well, and why Felix and I ended up being a good match. We come from a similar ethos, you know? A lot of this record is about their ex in a way that express things that I would want to be able to express. It was the two right people at the right time, I'm sure somebody else would have done an excellent job mixing this very, very differently. But that's sort of the weird nebulous part of mixing that keeps me coming back. I never really know if I'm the right person for the job until it's out in the world.

I'm wondering how much of your mixing has been impacted by the sound design that you're doing at One Thousand Birds?

I think that it’s been impacted for sure. I wouldn't say a ton just because concepts that are so important to music mixing like compression and certain types of reverb, that stuff doesn't really translate I've found or at least not in the same way. But it's been really interesting to work in sound design and be reminded of the importance of the sound of something, and how each individual element stacks up onto something else and, and becomes this larger statement. This idea of space in mixes and fidelity and all these different things have sort of been inspired by sound design to a certain extent just because it doesn't really take very much, or it can take a lot and it can all sort of move as one, if that makes any sense at all.

I do want to ask you about like the queer community in audio - is there one?

I've definitely struggled to find community. Especially in the major label world - Rich always used the right pronouns, but you're almost always the only person in the room who likes they/them pronouns or who doesn't identify as male.

And that's pretty taxing, it gets really intense in it and it gets hard to sort of try and justify your existence every day. And then to fight so hard for it in this world where a bunch of cis-het dudes are excelling because of whatever privilege. And you're just kinda like, “but I also have feelings and I also need to get top surgery and like, I don't know if I can stay here!”

Totally, you have to work even harder for connections. A while ago, mastering engineer Sarah Register (who’s worked on records for Future Islands and Protomartyr) actually mentioned her girlfriend at the time in an interview and I went “yes, finally, just one queer person in this entire industry!”

Can we please rewind for one second? (Laughs)

Have you met any other non-binary or queer engineers, since you started doing this?

Instagram is a crazy hole, but it's also really tight because I feel like I've found a lot of engineers and people via Instagram that are trans or that are non-binary or just gender atypical. I’m lucky to work at One Thousand Birds where there's a really big emphasis on non-cis male people and emphasis on inclusion.

And I think there's still a lot of internalized misogyny amongst, you know, even non-binary music makers. Especially when it comes down to hiring producers and mixers. So I've come up against that, but I think there are a lot of people doing a really good job of lifting each other up.

It was hard to find what other records you mixed!

Yeah, it's tough to get the word out. It's so hard to get the internet to put your name on the things that you were a part of. I don't think I have a credit on the OMAM album which is fine by me. It's just about who you are in the room at the time. Which is unfortunate. And I think it's like an old world thing for sure. And directly affects our royalties. Especially with my weird and long journey, I feel like I’ve been hopping from place to place. It's been hard to keep all the credits in one place.

So if somebody wants to go into this mixing world, or even like a sound design world, what do you tell them?

Find what moves you about a piece of music and stick with that. Or try and propel that as much as you can, you know? And whether that's in a global sense of finding what you love about music and let it carry you forward, or finding what you love about a song or about a sound. Try and zoom in on that. And let that carry whatever it is that you're doing.

Thanks for reading! Listen to Point the Flashlight and Walk, and read my review while you’re at it ;) You can follow KT Pipal on Instagram at @_sleepal_ and me at @copperperson997 on Twitter.