MATT JONES
In last month’s instalment, recordist Matt Jones answered your questions about working in the world-famous studio on a variety of projects and sessions. He offered us so much insight, we thought we’d best divide his amazing advice into two parts – so here’s the second half.
Matt began at Abbey Road in 2012 straight out of university, rising through the ranks from runner to assistant and now to recordist. However, his journey to the iconic studio arguably started when he first picked up the trombone, aged seven.
He learnt guitar through his teens and played in brass ensembles and metal bands; his interest in recording led him to the highly regarded Tonmeister degree course at Surrey University, which turns out so many top-flight recording engineers.
Matt has worked with such varied composers as Danny Elfman, Stephen Price, James Newton Howard and on projects including How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Amazon’s The Aeronauts and the David Attenborough Netflix documentary Our Planet.
MT What are your go-to reverbs?
For the plate side of things, I’m a big fan of Soundtoys Little Plate, because you load it up and it sounds good and there’s only one knob to adjust. So, that’s very quick to get yourself up and running. But if you want a more detailed plate, then the Waves Abbey Road ones are excellent and you can adjust those a bit more to get a more tailored sound. As far as rooms go, the Valhalla stuff is great. That’s most of what I use day to day.
MT Do you ever use reverb on orchestral material?
Definitely. We’ve got a luxury at Abbey Road in that things that were recorded in Studio One already sound quite big and reverberant, if you’ve mic’d it that way. But it’s always nice to have a little bit more on hand. Then, obviously, if you’ve recorded an orchestra in a smaller space, you’ll
