ENG

RUS

FRA

DEU

ITA

CHN

ESP

CONTACT LOGIN

HOME

›

ARTIST

›

Mark Winterburn

Producer, Engineer, Guitarist

Mark Winterburn

Mark Winterburn is a producer, Engineer and Guitarist whose credits include engineering for Plan B, James Arthur and many more. He has been honing his craft at Edge Recording Studios working with Producer and Engineer John Delf. Find out why he swears by Aston Mics...

Plan B, 5 Seconds of Summer, James Arthur, Virginmarys, Cassia, The Script, New Order

Mark uses

Origin

Spirit

One thing lead to another

When I was a teenager I missed a lot of school as I was ill, I missed about 3 years of high school on and off and was in the house on my own so that’s when I started getting into playing guitar. I got a digital 8 track recorder and a drum machine, I used to copy songs; that’s what kind of got me into it. From there I started to record my friend’s bands with shitty mics & shitty rooms, trying to do my best. It was all on an 8 track & all on to compact flash, not even tape or anything that glamorous. From there I did a course at SSR in Manchester, which is called Spirit Studios now and that sort of lead me to where I am.

I would usually call myself an engineer/producer or producer/engineer but the majority of stuff that I do, I produce myself and engineer it. I do both, but I engineer for other producers as well as play little bits of guitar on peoples stuff so I do keep my toe in the water as it were, I still try and do my own stuff when I get the time. It’s why I got into this originally, it was to learn how to do my own stuff better and one thing lead to another. I’m not complaining at all but this is where I’ve ended up so I don’t really get much time to do my own thing.

I took a bit of a gamble

I know definitely what it was cos it was a pretty binary moment. I finished my course and I was working in a college near Wigan in the Performing Arts department there. I could see on Facebook that a friend of mine was setting up a studio, which is Edge and where I’m at now. So, I was following them on FB and the owner of the studio put a post up saying they were looking for people to do work experience as they were literally just getting started & finishing building it and starting to do sessions. I was following the studio page and saw that post, so I gave John Delf a call. We had a chat and I started coming down & sitting in on the sessions. I took a bit of a gamble really cos I had that job that I’d been at for a couple of months, decided to come down to a few sessions, it was pretty cool and they were happy to have me around so I just felt I had to take the plunge, quit my job and started turning up at the studio every day and trying to be as useful as I could.

I think I was doing that for about 8 or so months, then in June 2012 we’d been really busy at the studio and we thought we had a few days off, so the engineer at the time had gone to bed, turned his phone off and John, the owner of the studio, rang us at around midnight. He’d just done a gig with Plan B’s front of house and was saying that he needed to finish this record off, Ill Manors. We tried for ages to get hold of the engineer but he’d switched his phone off and was asleep. I think he had around 60 missed calls between us so John called me back and asked would I do it, so I was like yeah of course, shitting myself. We came in after midnight, started setting things up, luckily it went really well. We spent 7 days finishing off this album which they’d been doing over 2 years in London and Los Angeles, all the hip hop programmers and stuff. We did vocals on a couple of songs, some more band stuff on a few of them basically finishing it off but we did one song from scratch from start to finish in the studio as well, tying up that album. That was the moment I thought shit, I’m doing it now! It was amazing, I was like this is cool, how’s this going to go? The album debuted at No. 1, it got Mercury nominated and it was so great to be working with someone at that calibre.

We’ve done some other stuff, we’ve been really lucky. We’re doing some stuff for James Arthur right now in today’s session, mixing some acoustic tracks, we do little bits with him every so often. I’ve done a lot of work for 5 Seconds of Summer. A few years ago we were doing quite a lot of stuff including live mixes, engineered a song called Girls Talk Boys which was on the Ghostbusters soundtrack. New Order are down the road, I’ve dealt with them a few times and their various side projects. Seen The Script a little bit, Don Broco I did a mix for but we have been really lucky over the years. It’s not that we’re doing big shot stuff all the time but every couple of months something like that will come in as a nice little boost but it’s all good.

Give the best of your ability all of the time

You have a general philosophy but the main thing, ultimately, is that, no matter if you’re working with any of the big shot guys or girls, you try and give the best of your ability all of the time across the board and that goes without saying. The difference is that people who aren’t as far along or smaller bands who don’t necessarily know what they want, find it difficult and different, but you take everything with its merits and try and guide people in the right direction when it comes to releasing things & how to approach meetings with potential management and labels and things like that. As for work, you just try and make the record that they want to make. If that means them learning from it after it’s been done and everything and you doing a better job next time, great. But basically, getting to establish a relationship with them and getting consistent work, which we’ve been luckily enough to do. You’re trying really hard to get what they want to hear coming out of the speakers at the end.

Mainly we’ve got an SSL AWS 924 which is amazing, that’s really good & I feel very spoilt with that, it’s just a great sounding desk. Makes things very easy, super clean & there’s some really clever options on it that they’ve put in like switchable EQ bands, the buss compressors are amazing on that, one of the best buss compressors in my opinion. PMC MB 01 monitors which are ridiculously big, high end mastering monitors. It’s basically like having a P.A. in the control room but the control room here is quite big so having a big set of mains that can fill the room up so you can hear what you’re doing is really important. I have this conversation a lot with John and say if you had to get rid of everything in the studio but keep one thing, it would be those monitors cos you can hear what you’re doing on them so well. It doesn’t really matter what desk you’ve got if you can’t hear what you’re doing. Whatever compressor or pre-amp you put on a snare drum say, if you can’t hear it properly, it’s irrelevant cos you can still screw it up.

They’re astonishing

We have a Neve 1073 Mic Pre that are really important to what we do just with the size that they add to the sound, the EQs great and the mics and stuff when it comes to that. The Aston stuff has been a real game changer in the sense that you can just have so many accessible options that don’t break the bank and can definitely stand up against the Neumann and the much more expensive mics in the world. Especially the Origin, I’m a massive fan of the Origin and that’s seen a lot of use - it takes EQ really well and sounds really good on the end of the 1073 Mic Pre, they’ll get used on every session usually.

The Astons are great for crush mics and stuff and kick drums especially if you want a more styled kind of retro sort of sound. Great on vocals, great on everything, we love them here. Can’t really speak highly enough of them. When the Spirit came out about 3 years ago we were looking at them and going to give them a try but were thinking well, they’re a new thing and the price of them and that’s often where you look unfortunately in terms of gauging how good something is before you try it and we didn’t really have high expectations. Then we tried them and were like fucking hell these are really, really good. Seeing how everyone else has got behind them has been great as it proves that people aren’t put off by the price tag and you can have cheaper stuff price wise that really does the job. They definitely do - they’re astonishing!

We haven’t tried to blow any up…yet!

We knew James from Sonic and the owner of the studio, I don’t know how they knew each other but he sent us the SE Electronic stuff one time to try out but basically knew him when he worked for Sonic and obviously he left & set Aston up, stayed in touch which we’re very grateful for and yeah he helped us out a lot. Using the Spirits for sure, if I had to pick between the two as being my favourite I’d probably pick the Origin but the Spirits get used all the time. We got the Starlights as well. I think the Origin sounds a bit more when it’s on a good Mic Pre, it sounds what I try to get vocals to sound like after EQ’ing them a lot so it just has a nice, not necessarily a low mid thing it’s more that the high end isn’t really pronounced but it still sounds detailed and cos of that it sounds really warm and nice and not harsh in any way. The vocals really, anything, kick drums and drum overheads and stuff, it sounds retro in a good way. It sounds really cool and exactly how you what it to sound, it’s a no brainer.

I’ve definitely put some on the floor before so the early reflections of the room bounce over and you get a more distant room sound weirdly just by putting them on the floor. I’ve also recorded someone outside with an Origin or Spirit, we were on a farm & they really wanted a dead sound so we recorded someone outside, that was pretty fun. Nothing crazier than that I’m afraid - we haven’t tried to blow any up…yet!

Outtakes and Credits

Q. Upcoming projects/ current projects you’re working on?
A. Today it’s 3 x James Arthur acoustic tracks that have been done with video, we’re mixing them but that’s what we’ve been doing for him recently. That’s kind of an on-going thing, he seems to trust us with that now, which is really good.

Some cool new bands that I’m working with, Manchester North West stuff but some really good cool bands coming through.

Q. Who are your favourite artists?
A. Nine Inch Nails, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Placebo. They’re the three bands that I’ve never stopped listening to. The sound of their records are always amazing, but in very different ways. Anything loud with great songs and I’m happy!

Q. If you weren’t working in music what would you be doing?
A. Probably work in a shoe shop....

Q. What would your fantasy mic be? (i.e. one that doesn’t exist!)
A. Something wireless, the size of a bottle cap and with the strongest clip in the world that was indestructible, could take crazy SPL and sounded exactly how the source sounds! Also a drum mic that only picked up the drum it was pointed on would be cool. Just saying.....

Q. What are 4 words that you’d use to describe the Aston brand, or your experience with the brand?
A. Durable, Affordable, Game-changing, Astonishing

Q. What was the first song that made you cry?
A. When She Loved Me - Sarah McLachlan

If you’ve seen Toy Story 2 then you know....

Accept cookies.

We use cookies to help give you the best experience on our site.
Information received tells us how customers use the Aston web site and provides information to help us improve your browsing experience. For further details see our Cookie Policy