The coin trick was something that I learned from Tommy Dowd. He was such a great teacher!
He once asked me if I'd like to know how to mike an acoustic guitar. I responded in the affirmative, and he said, "Get on your knees."
I was a little taken aback, as you might imagine. He saw the look on my face, and exclaimed, "Not for THAT you idiot! Get on your knees, move your head around the guitar and stop where it sounds great. That's where you put the mike... put it where it sounds great to you EAR."
Duh!
Another time, Clapton discovered two guys named Tom and Don camped out on the beach behind his house in the Bahamas. Eric signed them, brought them to Criteria, and was co-producing with Tommy Dowd. They had a song called, "Little Things," Coming out of the bridge, and going into the last chorus, there was a 4 count drum roll with accents on the 1,2,3, and 4. When everybody else went to lunch, Tommy asked me if I wanted to learn how to make a good song into a great song.
He told me to do a rough mix, then edit that 4 count turn at the head of the entire song. I'd never done a 1/4" tape edit. My hands were shaking, and I rocked that tape back and forth over the play head for about a minute. Eeee-oooo,eeeee-ooooo, etc. Tommy said, "Just cut it already!, You can always put it back together." Duh!
I cut out the drum turn, plopped it onto the front of the song, put a paper leader in front of it, and hit play. Brrrrrr, brrrrr, brrrrr, brrrrr, and BAM, the song was instantly better. It went from good to great. I learned how to edit, and to never take a song's arrangement at face value... ever again! Priceless.
All of us who ever worked with Tom Dowd learned things like that every day, no matter what our "station" on the totem pole was. For those of you who watch NCIS, he was like our Leroy Jethro Gibbs.
He changed modern music because of all that he taught to hundreds of engineers over the years. We learned and used those techniques, and passed them on to the next generation. God rest his soul.
Buy this DVD:
http://amzn.to/1qgUg13
Tom Dowd and the Language of Music
best,
Michael