page_title: Jerry Finn
section_title: Recording style and influences
hierarchical_section_title: Jerry Finn / Recording style and influences
caption_attribution_description: English: Producer and engineer Jerry Finn's recording equipment at Conway Recording Studios in Hollywood, California on September 11, 2003.
context_page_description: Jermone Gregory Finn, sometimes credited as "Huckle" Jerry Finn, was an American record producer, mix engineer, and musician. He worked with numerous punk rock and pop-punk artists, such as Blink-182, AFI, Sum 41, Alkaline Trio, Green Day, Morrissey, MxPx, and Rancid. Finn was known for the warm guitar tone present on albums he produced, as well as the "punchy" sound of his mixes. He was instrumental in developing the polished sound of pop-punk in its second wave of popularity between the mid-1990s and early 2000s.
  A graduate of the Dick Grove School of Music, Finn began his career in the early 1990s as an assistant engineer at various Hollywood-based studios. He began an association with producer Rob Cavallo, with whom he engineered and mixed Green Day's Dookie. Finn's career subsequently prospered, as he moved from being an engineer to producing albums with the likes of Pennywise and Rancid. Finn forged a strong bond with Blink-182, producing four albums with them beginning with Enema of the State. He also worked extensively with Sum 41 and Alkaline Trio. Over the course of the 2000s, Finn worked on numerous albums with Morrissey, before his death in 2008.
context_section_description: Finn was known for his dynamic, warm guitar sound, featured prominently on Blink-182 albums and Sum 41's All Killer No Filler (2001). "Whenever I could corner him at a party, I harassed him about how he gets guitar sounds and how he gets his mixes to sound so punchy," said producer John Feldmann. Finn achieved the sound by recording instruments through more than one amplifier at the same time. "Many engineers try to keep everything separate and add effects later," said Finn. "Players play to the sound, so you just have to get a sound and go with it. This allows you to mix tones together to get just the right sound." Finn owned reportedly over 100 guitars, and would often bring large collections of instruments and amplifiers to the studio.
  He estimated that it took him 10–12 days to mix an album, though some took less or more. Upon reviewing rough mixes, Finn would attempt to craft the mix around the "sound in [his] head" he created. In mixing songs, Finn preferred to first "get the drums happening to where they have some ambience," followed by the vocal tracks. In terms of mixing bass and drums—"perhaps the most difficult task of a mixing engineer," according to Bobby Owsinski—Finn preferred to have the "kick [drum] and the bass ... occupying their own territory and not fighting each other." He felt the "sound of modern records today is compression. Every time I try to be a purist and go, 'You know, I'm not gonna compress that,' the band comes in and goes, 'Why isn't that compressed?'" When setting the compressor, Finn would set the attack slow and the release fast so that "all the transients are getting through and initial punch is still there, but it releases instantly when the signal drops below threshold." Finn called this "the sound of my mixes. It keeps things kinda popping the whole time."
  Blink-182 bassist Mark Hoppus called Finn "meticulous in getting great sounds". Considering recording drums to be a "lost art," Finn took great interest in this step of the process. He often focused on room microphones to capture drum ambience naturally. This proved frustrating to Blink drummer Travis Barker: "For hours and hours, Jerry would be adjusting microphones. [...] I'd sit around drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, just praying that I'd be able to start playing soon." As for Finn's producing style, Barker wrote, "[Jerry] was more about giving us ideas and lending an extra set of ears. He'd say, 'Hey, that sounds cool—why doesn't that part at the end go a little longer?' Or 'What if this song had an intro?'" Frequent collaborators to Finn included drum technician Mike Fasano, and engineers Sean O'Dwyer, Ryan Hewitt and Joe McGrath. He was also known for working with keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr., whom he brought into Blink-182, Alkaline Trio and Morrissey sessions. Finn credited John Bonham as a musical inspiration growing up, and Don Was, Ed Cherney, Mick Guzauski, John Purdell, and Duane Baron as influential on his recording techniques.
caption: Finn's recording equipment at Conway Recording Studios in September 2003.
exif: {}