In the Studio: Paul “Wix” Wickens
Most musicians might be a little daunted if Paul McCartney asked them to arrange his classics for the stage. Not Paul “Wix” Wickens. The keyboardist has helped McCartney take songs like “Eleanor Rigby,” “Magical Mystery Tour,” and “Live and Let Die” on tour since 1989.
“It was different types of problem-solving, really,” he says. “Some of the songs are straightforward and others are massively complicated. Paul’s very keen to have everything live; he doesn’t want a click track or any pre-programmed parts. For ‘Eleanor Rigby’ I ended up making sampled cello chords, which I played with my feet so that I could play the top lines with my hands.”
Now, with Logic Pro and a PowerMac G5, Wix uses those musical problem-solving skills to write and record songs for television, film, and pop stars.
Get It While You’ve Got It
If Wix isn’t playing, he’s thinking about playing. The musician’s mind is constantly composing, even when there aren’t any instruments around. “I used to walk around with a tape recorder,” he says. “If a tune popped into my head, I’d hum it into the recorder. You’ve got to get it when you’ve got it, even if it’s just singing it into your mobile phone and recording it on your answering machine.”
Wix puts those serendipitous bits and pieces into a Logic Pro session at his London recording studio, where they can serve as inspirational fodder for his projects. “I just put them all in as audio files and make a note of where I was at the time, what I was thinking when I came up with the tune,” he says. “In downtime, I tend to go searching for those. I’ve also got classical libraries that I tap for inspiration.”
He also finds inspiration within Logic Pro itself. “You can usually find something to inspire you without too much of a problem,” he says. “And sometimes when you’re fiddling about, you just want something to cheer you up, something inspirational. Logic is a great tool for that — it comes with a bunch of samples that can really drive you creatively.”
When he’s on tour, Wix keeps himself busy by writing and recording riffs and melodies on his PowerBook G4. More often than not, the hotel-room recordings end up on studio master sessions. “I don’t often want to get caught up with oscilloscopes and number-crunching,” he says. “If something sounds good and works good in the piece, I don’t mind if it’s been recorded with a dictaphone. If I take something from the road and carry-on, I’m doing it because I like the performance — it’s captured some emotion that I want.”
Sometimes those recordings turn into full-blown demos before Wix gets anywhere near his home studio. “I travel with a FireWire drive that has some of my stream libraries on it,” he says. “That way I’m able to do some of the stuff I can do at home on the road. If I’m writing pop songs, I can just use what I’ve recorded in the hotel and the built-in Logic samples and it’s fine. Everything for making a demo is in one little box, in my PowerBook. And beyond that, I can work on sound files, mixes, different edits — things that I would be doing in the studio on the G5.”
At Home with Logic Pro
Songs come together at Wix’s home studio in London. Logic Pro is Wix’s main tool for recording and composing in the studio. “I have a mixing board that gives me 96 inputs,” he says. “I can run them all into Logic and record on all of them. And with Logic, I have all of them at the touch of a button.”
“Sometimes when you’re fiddling about, you just want something to cheer you up, something inspirational. Logic is a great tool for that — it comes with a bunch of samples that can really drive you creatively.”
Wickens can quickly mix and match tracks, pulling samples from his extensive libraries to garnish live recordings. “That’s when the speed of Logic becomes important,” he says. “In terms of creativity, you need that speed — you don’t want to get bogged down in the minutiae of programming something when you’re on a roll.” After the furious bouts of creativity end, however, Wix can fine-tune his tracks before making a final mix. “If you want to delve deeper, you can get right into it and do some complicated stuff. You can get into the nuts and bolts of the song if you want to and that’s important at the pro level.”
Logic has enabled Wix to write and produce without limitations. “Logic is easy,” he says. “People can just start writing songs at a very basic level without too much interference from the program. It’s very intuitive — if you want to do something, it doesn’t get in the way.”
