At just 26, Katie May has already worked with some of the biggest names in the industry. She trained at Real World Studios in Wiltshire, UK, where she is still based, and has worked on records by Peter Gabriel, the 1975, Harry Styles, Roger Waters, Gabrielle Aplin and many more.
At the moment I can’t stop listening to
It depends on whatever session I’m doing. When I work on a pop session, I want to listen to rock music. When I work on, like, a jazz session, I want to listen to techno stuff! When you work in a studio, you need to constantly remind yourself to listen to music for pleasure. For a long while I was just listening to BBC Radio 4 whenever I got in the car after a session. I wouldn’t listen to any music, because the last thing I wanted to do after a 12‑hour day was force myself to listen to an album. So, I’ve been going through all of my old Spotify playlists from three or four years ago and listening to what I was listening to back then. And finding a lot of comfort and nostalgia in that. There’s an album called Somewhere by Sun June, which I listened to religiously about three years ago, and which I’ve been getting back into now. It’s just a really nice dream pop album. But it’s not even necessarily about how good the album is. It’s just, as soon as I press play, I’m immediately transported to that place I was in. I love that feeling of having such a visceral connection with an album, that you can’t really explain. It’s as if, immediately, your brain goes back to those exact feelings that you were feeling at that stage in your life.
The artist I’d most like to record
I feel like my classic artist that I’ve always wanted to record is Laura Marling. But that’s not impossible for the future, because she’s been to Real World before. You know what, I’d love to work with Fiona Apple, just because there’s so much going on in all of her stuff. I loved Fetch The Bolt Cutters. There are so many layers of intensity and raw energy and emotion in what she does. It would be a really interesting thing to watch happen in front of you.
I mean, my favourite part of working in a studio is the privilege of being able to watch someone perform in front of you, especially somewhere like Real World where the control room and live room are all the same. So for me, being able to turn around and watch someone who’s so talented put so much effort and energy into a take, whether that’s a guitar take or a vocal take — or anything, that’s such an incredible thing. And no‑one gets to see that, except the people in the room with the artist. So watching someone like Fiona perform in front of you would be amazing.
Katie May: If you can’t get the artist to perform something that’s true to them, where they have confidence in what they’re doing, it won’t be a good record, regardless of how good the mics are.
The first thing I look for in a studio
I look for vibe! That is paramount over everything. I try and approach it from an artist perspective: if I was an artist walking in, about to work with an engineer and a producer who I hadn’t worked with before, what sort of a room would I need to feel most comfortable? And I find a lot of that is in the small things: the ambient lighting, or having a nice rug out, or a couple of plants up, or whatever. I personally put that above how great it sounds. If you can’t get the artist to perform something that’s true to them, where they have confidence in what they’re doing, it won’t be a good record, regardless of how good the mics are.
The person I would consider my mentor
When I started working at Real World, Oli Jacobs was the head engineer here, so he was like my mentor because he was my manager at the time. He very much supported me, and he still does now. [Former Real World engineer] Oli Middleton as well. Both of them, I love to bits. I think part of the reason I felt so excited about doing this as a career is because I’ve had people around me who really lift me up. I feel like there can be quite a lot of competitiveness in this industry; I see some engineers almost step over other engineers to get to their goals. And it always feels really counterintuitive to the whole music industry and the whole process, because you want to be around people who lift you up and make you feel good about what you’re doing.
My go‑to reference track or album
The way I tend to view references is as a really good way of resetting your ears. A lot of people bring up reference tracks when they want their mix to sound more similar to that album, or whatever. If I’m in a new room, often I’ll just put up a song I know really well. So, like, ‘Reckoner’ by Radiohead. I’ve listened to that so many times, something like that. As long as it’s something that I know really well, then that’s exactly what I would put up. There’s one song called ‘Good Guy’ on the record Crushing by Julia Jacklin; that’s just my perfect ear reset, to remind myself what my ‘flat ear frequency response’ is. I don’t think I ever put reference tracks on as a means of trying to make something ‘sound more like that’, because I think that can be quite limiting for how you mix.
When we get bands down here, a lot of times they’ll come and they’ll say: I want this record to sound like this. And we’ll say, OK, cool. We can, you know, choose mics appropriately and place them appropriately for that sort of a sound. But inevitably, it always sounds different because you’ve got a different room, you’ve got a different drummer — you’re working at a different time of day, even, it’s a different season in the year, it’s a different year! So it’s never going to sound the way that classic album sounds in your head. And that’s perfectly fine! It should always be different. Otherwise, what’s the point in doing it?
Katie May in the Wood Room at Real World.
My secret weapon in the studio is
This probably isn’t the most technical answer of all time, but what I’d like to say is that I do have a particular level of awareness that I try and bring to every single session. That might just be a social awareness of how to make someone feel comfortable in the room, or trying to read how they might be feeling that morning so you can react to them in the best way, to get the best take out of them.
I’ve assisted on quite a lot of sessions where it’s quite high stress, because the producer might be quite an old‑school producer who likes to make the drummer feel like they’re not doing a very good job or whatever, in order to get the best take out of them that way. But for me, there’s nothing nicer than when a band are in a room together and they all feel comfortable with each other, they’ll feel like it’s a musically safe space, and they feel like they can talk about things, that everyone can listen to each other. A lot of that comes from the engineer: if the engineer is making everyone feel uncomfortable, even if it’s just in their body language or the way their face looks when they react to people and their ideas, those small sorts of things can just get into people’s heads. And immediately everyone’s taken out of the process. It has such a trickle‑down effect, I think. from the recording to the end of the day, to the end of the project. If everyone feels like they’re really involved in the process, everyone has more fun doing it. And beyond that, if they’re then touring that record a year later, they’ll look back on those songs with fond memories, instead of being like, “Oh, that was when I had the worst week of my life, and it was so stressful, but we got a good album out of it.” And that then plays into how they tour it, how happy they are playing those songs back.
I’ve got the luxury of having so many nice mics at Real World, so I’ve never had to deal with only having one nice mic or whatever in a room, because we have so many nice things. I feel like I’ve been so exposed to those really nice, expensive, boutique bits of gear that I’ve realised that, really, it’s not about that. I’ve heard so many bad recordings made with that gear!
The studio session I wish I’d witnessed
Well, the baby part of myself just wishes I could see some of the AC/DC recording sessions back in the day! Back In Black was my favourite album when I was a kid. That’s the reason I started playing guitar. It would be interesting to see how differently people worked in the studio back then as opposed to now. The whole rock & roll thing of being in the studio doesn’t really exist any more, at least from what I’ve experienced. It’s all peppermint tea instead of cocaine now! Which I think is a good thing. But it would be interesting to look back and actually see how sessions used to be run, just purely out of curiosity.
The producer I’d most like to work with
Well, I would have said someone like Jack Antonoff, but then I’ve worked with him already! Obviously there are the classics, but I don’t think I’d want to have met someone like Steve Albini, because I think it would take some of the magic out of the process as well. Watching Jack work was amazing, but it did also take some of the magic out of it for me. Obviously we work with quite a few big producers at the studio, and that’s a really exciting part of the whole process, watching them do what they do. But I also find that there’s so much to learn from every single person you work with. Even if it’s like a producer who’s not very well known at all, there’s still so much that you can learn from that one person. They’re not necessarily less valuable than a big‑name producer.
The studio experience that taught me the most
There was one thing which I think definitely informed how I think about sessions now: we did one of the Breath’s last albums. The Breath are a lovely folk band who are on the record label at Real World. Stuart McCallum and Ríoghnach Connolly. They’re the nicest people on planet Earth, and so funny. They did an album with Thomas Bartlett, it was just Ríoghnach, Stuart and Thomas doing the session. Seeing the three of them work together... Thomas: his brain is all over the place, in the best way possible. As soon as they did a take, as soon as he had an idea, Thomas would just immediately add, like, a keyboard part. Without even telling anyone what he’s doing, he’s just going to do it. He does, like, a four‑bar section of it. And then, just for speed’s sake, he would just then loop that section as and when it needed to be in the Pro Tools session. There was something just really cool about seeing how fast it was done, and how it wasn’t about necessarily capturing the most ‘human’ performance or anything. It was just about keeping the excitement in the room really high, just building it as quickly as you can, because if the momentum continues to grow, the artist will get more excited about what’s happening as well.
That was similar to seeing Jack working with the 1975. He was just so fast at everything he did. He jumped between instruments really quickly. And as soon as there was a lot of energy in the room, he would either swap to a different song, or he’d ask people to get involved and get their opinions on things, just to keep everyone really engaged at any one time. As soon as you start to lose that engagement, people don’t really care about what’s happening any more. They don’t care about the part they’re playing, they don’t really care about the song any more. But if you keep everyone’s energy high all the time, have breaks as and when you need them to make sure that you are not destroying yourself; that excitement and that momentum will translate all the way to the end, when it’s released.
That’s something that I’ve tried to keep in my head. It doesn’t matter if it’s not recorded perfectly. It doesn’t matter if something’s out of phase. You can fix it later. All of that stuff doesn’t matter, as long as the energy is there and everyone’s excited about what’s happening. You’re just building these things up, bit by bit. The other approach is being really careful about everything you do, but then writing or recording that song turns into a huge slog. And as soon as it’s a slog, it’s not fun. No‑one’s having a nice time. If it’s a slog, then something needs to change. Something’s gone wrong. Maybe you just need to go have a nap, or maybe you need to change to a different song. But trying to force something to happen when everyone’s not having a good time, that’s not going to get you anywhere.
The advice I’d give myself of 10 years ago
Just trust yourself! There are a lot of people with a lot of opinions in this industry. I used to go on forums all the time and ask all these questions, try and learn from all these people online, but a lot of the time the people you’re learning from are either people who don’t do it full time, or they’re people who have really strong opinions but don’t necessarily have the experience to back it up.
There are lots of people who think that what they believe is the be‑all and end‑all of of every single area of audio. And I just feel like, if someone was there 10 years ago, telling me: “Katie, there are no rules to any of it. It should just be fun. It should feel like painting. It should feel like, like the most creative, exciting thing in the world.” I would have told myself just to trust my gut a bit more and not look to other people for validation. And no‑one really said that online. Everyone was like, “Oh, you need this mic to make something sound good. You need this interface. You need this cable.” For God’s sake! None of that is true.