John Hampton was recently featured on the burdgeoning Memphis based Web site culturegrits.com. The article, which featured Hampton mixing a project for Ardent Studios client John Cody Carter, is entitled "Mixing it up at Ardent Studios.

From the article:

This is the second part in a series documenting the journey of an album. This edition showcases a mixing session at Ardent Studios with revered producer/engineer John Hampton.

What’s the most important attribute of a music engineer? My first guess was a finely tuned ear. According to Ardent Studios producer/engineer John Hampton, I’d be wrong.

“I’ve never had good hearing,” confesses Hampton, who won a 2006 GRAMMY award for mixing The White Stripes’ “Get Behind Me Satan.” He says a prerequisite to being an adept engineer is “knowing a bridge, verse, and chorus, and at the same time having good people skills.” Although, it’s safe to say song structure knowledge and a friendly personality aren’t the only characteristics that have brought Hampton the success and notoriety garnered in his 29-year career. He’s engineered and/or mixed albums for the Gin Blossoms, Robert Cray, Afghan Whigs, Soundgarden, and the Vaughn Brothers.

On a recent Saturday morning, he’s working with Nashville recording artist John Cody Carter, a preacher and collaborator with country music sages Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. It’s day seven of their sessions, mixing Carter’s 13-track traditional country album. Adam Hill is assisting on the project, which generally takes an entire day - oftentimes a 10-hour day - to mix one song.

It’s close to noon and the trio has been working since 10 a.m. in Studio B nestled in a corner of the Ardent Studios brick building on Madison Avenue. Currently, the focus is on lowering the intro, a bongo arrangement, of the song “Ride ’em Cowboy.” Carter, who looks the part of the cowboy he croons about with his white-blonde hair combed back in a pseudo-ducktail and a matching goatee, is sauntering laps around the U-shaped console, stroking his goatee and listening intently.

Although Hampton works on the bongo intro for roughly 45 minutes, two hours later Carter opts to omit the bongo intro entirely. It’s the nature of the beast that is mixing a record - constantly tweaking sounds, levels, instruments, vocals. They are using 24 tracks of the 56-channel mixing console “with a bunch of other channels for all the effects,” says Hill, including echo chambers and analog effects. The main mixing board is roughly 12-feet long with a single computer keyboard at its center. Sitting atop an adjacent computer desk is a 24-inch iMac flat screen monitor, keyboard, mouse, and stacks of speakers.

“I had to get glasses,” Hampton laments, nodding at the computer screen. “After five to ten hours a day looking at this stuff, it takes its toll.” He’s referring to the jumble of boxes, columns, colors, and lines that somewhat resemble an abstract painting on the screen.

Since his hearing isn’t the best, Hampton says he relies upon visual indicators including spectrum analyzers that bounce up and down atop of the mixing board in bursts of bright orange. He gets plenty of mileage out of the black, vinyl rollaway chair as he moves from computer to mixing board, always on the edge of his seat with his back never touching the chair. He responds to every one of Carter’s requests.

“Is the guitar a little hot?” asks Carter.

“I think it’s a good little loop, but if you’re worried about it we’ll take it down,” Hampton responds.

Hampton makes adjustments that seem extraordinarily miniscule to the untrained ear. At one point, he says he’ll take the guitar part down one-tenth of a one bel (yes, it’s spelled bel). A bel is equal to one-tenth of a decibel. Later he confesses that he must bring the dual guitars closer together in timing, a 56- to 65-milla-second difference.

The chorus is repeated. And repeated. And repeated again.

“Ride ’em cowboy/don’t let ’em throw you down/cause you’re the toughest cowboy in town.”

Hampton closes his eyes while listening to the end of the song, bobbing his head up and down to the beat while occasionally throwing out some air guitar. “I’m diggin’ it, man,” he proclaims. “Time to burn a truck CD.”

After each track is mixed, Hill moves over to the controls to burn it on a SA-CD (Super Audio CD) for Carter to listen to in his truck. It’s a process Carter describes as failsafe because he can hear subtle nuances in an environment he’s comfortable in. “It keeps you from having to come back after the mix has been printed,” he says.

It’s an arduous process at the very least; one that’s also contingent upon the recording engineers work or “shit in, shit out,” as Hill says. Carter recorded in Nashville, but said he chose to come to Memphis to mix his next album for myriad reasons.

“My last album was mixed here,” he says. “I like the way John does what he does. He has a reputation for giving a record a little more beef. He allows artists to do what they envision.

There are 300 engineers that can mix in Nashville. I prefer to get out of the quagmire of Music Row. You don’t have to ask somebody to think out of the box in Memphis, because they’re not in the box.”

For more on John Hampton, Adam Hill, and Ardent go to ardentstudios.com. John Cody Carter’s website is johncodycarter.com.