Insights In Sound 189 – Steve Genewick, Audio Engineer S19 E8 – Live from The Village Studios

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We are live from the Village Studios. My guest is Steve Genick. Nice to see you.
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Nice to see you. Glad we finally got to do this. What’s it taken like about a year now to put finally put this together? Taking a bit to put this together. Yeah.
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No kidding. Yeah. But, uh, schedules and everything else, you know, we’re all busy people.
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So, um, let’s start with a little bit of background because you and I, I have been discovering, have so much sixderee
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separation. Well, first of all, before we even go there, you’re not really a musician.
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Not really. I was a really bad guitar player. Never really learned to like I didn’t
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play in bands and stuff like that. Uh-huh. Which I think is interesting because, you know, I in one sense I always thought the best engineers and the best
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producers understand the vibe of playing together with other people. Mhm. And uh I recently had a conversation
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with um Susan Rogers and Susan is also not a musician. And
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she was telling me uh she actually had this little passage in her book too about this conversation she had with
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Miles Davis. And she said, Miles basically got in her face and he was like, you know, rapidfire questions. And
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one of the questions was, “Are you a musician?” And she said, ‘N no. And he said, ‘That’s okay. The best musicians I
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know aren’t musicians. That makes sense. Yeah. And I thought, you know, you obviously have you have that intuitive
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sense of the process, right? Which I think is in certain ways even
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Yeah. And I think it’s funny because people assume I’m a musician because especially on sessions because they’ll see me reading charts
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because I can I can follow a chart. Um, and that happened that happened at when
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I started when I was at Capital. When I started working at Capital, you know, suddenly we were doing scoring sessions
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and orchestral sessions and I’m watching the assistant engineers there at the time and you know the tape ops and
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everybody and you know I’m I’m watching this happen and I had a basic music
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knowledge of music theory you know 44 time and here’s a bar and quarter note
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half note that kind of stuff. Um, but I realized very quickly that they they
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were following charts and just to run the tape machine you had to know, you know, the composer like we need to punch
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in at bar 32 and you had to know where bar 32 was and and again I could count bars but then there’s a repeat and a
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koda and all and and I was like I can’t I can’t do that job and that’s the job I
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want and I can’t do that job if I can’t follow this chart. So, I want went to my
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boss at the time, Michael Fondelli was my boss and I said, “Look, can I have every Tuesday night off for the next
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four months or whatever, and he was like, why?” I said, “Well, I’m actually going to enroll in a music theory class
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at Santa Monica College because I want to learn how to read the charts and know the music theory so I can do this.” And
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he went, “You’re going to enroll in a class to learn how to do that?” I said, “Yeah, I really need I really think I
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need to know how to follow the charts.” He said, ‘ Not only can you have the night off, he said, ‘We’ll pay for it,
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so go for it.’ So, I actually went back to school and took music theory classes to learn how to read a chart. Now, I’m
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pretty good at it. I mean, I can’t play it, but I can read a chart and I can sit and talk to an arranger and like, oh yeah, I
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see the little harp glist in bar 32 that you’re talking about, or like, hey, there’s a passage here, you know, when
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we’re recording a score or whatever. Like, I didn’t really hear this cello line. I see it here, but can we bring
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that out? So, it’s actually been really helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Now, you did come up under under
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um people like Michael, but let let’s back up even further than that. Yeah. I know that you started out doing live
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sound and then you ended up eventually getting a gig at the infamous Cherokee Studios.
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I did. Which that’s my elma mater as well. Um
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tell me a little bit about that. What that was like for you. So, I was going to a recording school at
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the time, a place called the Trebus Institute. I remember that place. Now, this is 30 years ago or whatever.
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More than 30 years ago now. I don’t think it exists anymore. I don’t think so. And I think I know I’ve heard of like two other people who
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went there that are like that have come up to me and said, “Yeah, I went there, too.” So, I knew nothing basically. I
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knew I wanted to kind of do this. I had friends in bands and stuff like that. And I thought, “Oh, Sound Guy, that looks like fun.” Um, but I didn’t know
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how to do it. I didn’t know what to do. Again, I I never had a four track and recorded. I didn’t follow that. So, so I
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was going to school and I was learning the basics and the school was good. It’s nothing like the schools are today. I mean, today they’re really advanced
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this, but I was learning what an EQ does and what a compressor does and signal flow and all that kind of stuff. And I was actually in a class, it was
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actually Bobby Osinski was my my teacher for this class. Yeah. And the guy that
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sat next to me in the class was the nightr runner at a studio called
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Cherokee that you know I’d heard about whatever. We had a lot of night runners. Exactly. And he came in one day and told
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me that he got fired that and I was like what? He was like and he said no I did
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something stupid and and I said so they’re looking for somebody and he went yeah dude you should go get the job. And
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I literally got up and walked out and went home and got my resume and went to Cherokee and said, you know, I heard you
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need somebody. I’m looking for a job. And I met with probably Joe, Rob at the time, either Joe or or Bruce. I don’t
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remember who actually. And they looked at my resume and they said, “Yeah, can you be back here at 4:00?”
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And I said, “Yeah, great. I can.” And then I spent a couple weeks doing, you know, you do the 4 to midnight shift,
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you know, it’s eight hour shifts, so 8 to 4, 4 to 12, 12 to 8. Oh, yeah. Um, so you know, you do the 4 to midnight shift for a couple weeks and
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then you get landed on the midnight to 8:00 a.m. shift by yourself cleaning up and do and you do that and till you
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either die, quit or somebody else dies or get fired
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and and you get up with Cherokee, it’s mostly that you get fired. You get fired. Yeah. Or quit. Yeah. You
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know, until you’re not the new guy anymore and then you get to do the dayshift, right? Um, and that’s how I got the job at
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Cher. And then I was learning more. You know, I was hanging out. We had five rooms there, you know, and I was hanging out and I was learning and I was
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learning a lot more at the studio. So, I ended up not finishing the school. Um, because it was actually taking time away
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from being in the studio where I was learning real world stuff. So, um, I mean, you learned a lot at that
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studio, that studio in particular, because I mean, there were only four rooms when I was there, but literally
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every day there was somebody new coming in. There were new sessions coming in. I
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got to look over the shoulder of some of the really great producers and engineers and I’m sure you did too.
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Absolutely. Yeah. And not to mention the technology itself which in that era I mean it was kind of
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the transition era from from tape to ProTools. It was Yeah. It was still pretty it was
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still almost exclusively taped. Well and Cherokee were among the later studios to make that transition. They
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were very analog ccentric for the longest time. Yeah. I mean, I can remember digital
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machines coming in once in a while, a 3348 or or a Mitsubishi once in a blue
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moon, but that was still tape. Well, we still had that we had that first um Sony 24 track which we had for
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about a day and then D went get that out of here, you know, right? Cuz it there those first ones really did
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sound horrible. Yeah. But that was still tapebased. Yes. The workflow was still tape and all
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that. There were a lot of virtual sess like MIDI sessions like I can remember guys bringing in enormous keyboard rigs
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and and you know we had one 24 track tape that was feeding time code and everything else was virtual.
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Michael Boder used to bring these these phone booth sized racks in and Yeah. Exactly. So which now if you wanted to
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go back you know most of those tracks don’t exist because there was never a multittrack because it was all coming out of the machines. Yeah. Um, and then
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I do remember like all of us huddling around a little
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Macintosh computer one day looking at what was called sound tools. Oh yeah. And it was the first time I ever saw a
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digital workstation and it was like, “Oh no, you can cut and paste. It’s it’s like it’s like Word Perfect but for
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audio. You can cut and paste and move this.” And we were like, “Wow, that’s pretty.” It was two channels. Yeah. you know, and I and I distinctly
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remember all of us sitting me and Bill Smith, who’s still one of my great friend, like, “Wow, that’s cool.” Yeah,
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we’ll never that’ll never be a thing for us, though. Like, that’s way too, you know, we don’t we don’t need that. We
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have this other stuff. But it was a different learning process learning on tape, I think. And especially with guys like that. I mean,
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D. Rob, rest his rest in peace, was an absolutely brilliant tape editor. I’ve
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watched him do window edits on on tape where he’s just removed a single track and stuff like that, you know. Yeah. And learning how to, you know, fly
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background parts off of, you know, from a quarter inch machine back on and, you know, get it. Oh, no, we got the first
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half. All right, go back. Do it again. Let’s let’s punch the second half. Like, you know, it was fun. Yeah. I mean, you know, flying stuff, you
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know, then we could load into a sampler. You know, there was an I think the H3000 had a they had one that had a you know,
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4 second samples or whatever it was, so you could fly in almost enough for background vocals. Exactly. Almost enough for half a chorus
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or whatever. You know, you could go like line by line and fly stuff around and Yeah, it was it was crazy. And and it
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was way it was fun though. It was, you know, there was something to it. It took a long time. Well, and then they also
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had one of the uh I don’t know what they had when you were there, but when I was there in the mix room, we had kneecam 2
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automation, right? With the big huge floppies, you know. By the time I got there, it was flying faders.
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Okay. There were two ne consoles, so it was relatively dependable at that point. Relatively. Yeah. And I So, it was
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flying faders on studio 2 had a VR, I believe, and studio four or five,
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whichever one that was, had a V. So no recall, but it had flying faders. Ah. So we had the big sheets, so you still
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had to write everything down. And Okay. We we had four A-ranges when I was there. And we still had there were four three A-
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ranges when I was there. Uhhuh. Yeah. The the main the big the one the custom one which Bruce still has in the new
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which Bruce still has. And then there was Studio 3 in the back. And I think that’s I think that’s the
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console that’s at uh East West now. I made a couple moves. I think I asked about that. Uh and actually
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Candace insists that it’s not the same concept. Okay, maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. Uh but I do know that um I
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mean I asked Bruce, we were there recently. We did a panel there. Uh and I said to him, “So Bruce, do you have
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another A- range anywhere?” And he said, “I’m not telling.” So, you know, he could have one maybe
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in cold storage somewhere. Who knows? But that original one and that was seriously modified. I mean, they lowered
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it and everything, right? had the the low and it had the little side car and it wasn’t purple, right?
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Yeah. But I remember I mean I remember liking that console and again I was a
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runner and assistant engineer so I didn’t have my engineering chops to the
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point where I would be like oh that was a great you know I wasn’t making records like that then I was I was still learning but I
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remember it you could definitely hear a difference when you did something in studio one and then brought it to the VR
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in studio two. It was like, “Oh, okay. I there is a difference in these com.” And that’s the kind of stuff that you could
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learn at a place like that exactly, you know, oh wow, yeah, that’s
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really different, you know, and that console made sense. I mean, there was a signal flow to it with, you know, a monitor section and everything.
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Yeah. And that really I mean, I learned a lot about signal flow through that console.
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Definitely. And Yeah. and learning to work in the analog domain, you learned a lot about
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signal flow and that kind of stuff and gain structure and all that which I still use today. I mean, I’m still
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recording on these consoles, but I’m mixing all in ProTools. I mean, I mix in the box, but the but the process is a little
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different, but the theory is still the same. Yes. You still have to no matter what people say, you still have to gain stage.
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You want to do it right to do it. Exactly. It’s more forgiving now. Yes. But yes,
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but to get things to work in the optimal mode, you still have to do that kind of stuff. Yes, you do. Yes, you do.
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So, and in here, especially, you know, when I’m recording or whatever it is, I’m still using those same
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theories that I learned there and at Capital and everywhere else. Well, and you know, that that goes to
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the whole issue of, you know, how much are we using ProTools like a tape machine, you know, which again depends
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how you started, you know. Yeah. And it depends on the day. Yeah. If I’m in here, it’s a tape machine. Sure.
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If I’m at home, it’s console and a mixer and everything else and an editor. And you know, most of us have a control
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surface of some kind so that we still have a tactile thing. You know, I have 17 faders in front of me. I got
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to have I I just I with a mouse, I can only do one thing at a time. Yes, exactly. And nobody wants to sit
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there a group and do all that crap. With faders, I can grab Yes. I can’t grab 10, you I can I can grab
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three or four at but I’m constantly you know oh I’m holding this and writing this you know
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like I know the piano has to come up in the chorus but I’m writing the guitar but the chor you know Yeah because you’re still doing that. I
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mean, you know, and that’s the funny thing is that even though we had that automation, we were still doing a lot of stuff by
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hand, you know. Um, and I, you know, I remember the days of like, you know, okay, we’re going to do a mix. You take those
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four channels, you take these, you know, I’ll stand back here and mute these and, you know, stuff like that.
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Tape and pencil marks everywhere and Yeah. Because again, at Cherokee,
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two of the consoles had automation, right? The other three didn’t. Well, when I was there, only one did, right? So, even more so. Yeah. So we
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were mixing on and then there were engineers who didn’t like the automation anyways.
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Yes. So we still did that. Yeah. Or a lot of times I mean there was one engineer in particular that I worked
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with who um he would mix in sections you know and we would mix it and then you know okay now we’re going to mix the
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chorus you know and then we’d splice it all together from the two track later on. I worked with one producer. I don’t
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remember his name, but they would record like a an intro and like one verse with
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the band, like one verse, one chorus, and a bridge. And then that verse, they
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would sing the first verse, and then they would sing the second verse, and then the third verse or whatever, but it was the same piece of tape.
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And then the song was assembled in the mixing stage. Yeah. So we’d mix the first verse,
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put it on tape, you know, and then same thing, but just unmute the first verse vocal and unmute the second verse
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vocal and mix that and then and then the whole thing would get assembled on quarter or half inch, whatever, probably quarter inch at the time, you know. But
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now to your point, that’s exactly that that to me is the other thing that we learned at those studios was technique
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and also just how you can kind of use the creative process in whatever way
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works for you and works for the session. You know, there was so much of that. And
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I mean, you know, you you talk about the the people you came in under, you know,
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I mean, we both got to look over the shoulders of some of the greatest producers. Absolutely.
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And a lot of that had almost nothing to do with the music per se as it did just the brain.
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Yeah. The creative process, man. Watching watching Phil Raone work. And oh my god, you know, it’s like it
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almost had nothing to do with the song as much as it had to do with the artist. Mhm. Oh, he was always concerned with I
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mean I worked with Phil quite a bit and he was always concerned with what was going on out there. Yeah.
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And the artist and you know one of the one of the greatest things Phil ever told me I mean he told me a lot but one
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the one thing I when I think of Phil when people ask me like what did you learn from Phil? I remember Phil looking
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at me he said Steve if you’re ever producing or engineering like he said the first word out of your mouth is
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always yes. When the artist asks for something you say yes. Yeah.
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Talk them out of it later. Figure out how to make it work later. Whatever it is, even if you know it’s not going to
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work, just say yes. Got to let them try it. Yeah, absolutely. You know, can I do this? Yes.
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I mean, it’s going to take a minute to set up and it, you know, we might have
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to hop through a couple hoops, but but do it, you know. And then, you know, I
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mean, I I work with Don quite a bit now, and he’s the same way. If an artist wants to try something, just try it. I
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believe Don W must have learned almost everything he knows from Phil because he’s got a lot of the same ethos. Same same kind of attitude, same kind of
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style of producing. And it’s funny because people will talk about some producers and they’re like,
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“Oh, well, he doesn’t really produce. He, you know, you know, they talk about Rick, people like Rick Rubin or Phil Ramon or Don,
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you know, and they’ll say, well, he doesn’t really produce. He doesn’t he doesn’t do he just creates a vibe. He
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just and I’m like, “No, that’s producing.” But also, by the time, you know, I mean,
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I was an assistant on some Rick Rubin records back in the day. By the time that band gets to the studio, Rick’s
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already done the work because he probably did it in pre-production. He does a lot of pre-production.
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And with Phil, you know, we would have meetings and we would talk about the sessions before they happened. So, by
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the time we got to the session, a lot of stuff was already in place. So, it didn’t look like he was doing a lot, but
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it was it was there. It was done and and he was paying attention. And if something had to be taken care of,
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they’ll step in and take care of it. But, you know, you hire the right musicians, you get the right room, you hire the right engineer. You know, the
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records I did with Phil with the greatest musicians in the world, it was usually Al Schmidt engineering. We were at Capital.
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We were like, “What more do you need? This should be easy success.” Yes. Yeah.
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Go out there and play the song and sing it and do a great job. And that’s, you know, but but he had done the work to
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make it that simple beforehand. Yeah. So, and and you know, Don was is the
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same way. Tommy Luma was the same way. You know, Tommy was another real he was a music person. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, somebody
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like David Foster is the same way, too. But David’s more wants to get in. He’s much more hands-on. He’s more hands-on musically because
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he’s probably helped write the song and he’s helped do the arrangement and or he’s done it or all that. So, he’s much
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more involved hands-on musically than somebody like Phil who can do that
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if you wanted him to, but he usually had somebody else doing that. He was hiring the right people to do it. Quincy was
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the same way. He had to do it. Those were the do no harm producers, you know, as opposed to the David Fosters.
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Uh, what’s his name? Jeff Lynn is another one. Um, you know, guys who you knew it
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was their production right away. could hear them in the production, right? As opposed to, you know, somebody
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somebody like Phil Raone. I mean, they did so many different things and you almost couldn’t believe that it was the same person.
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Sure. You know. Absolutely. Yeah. And and I’m not I I think they’re both valid. I love working with David. I love watching him work. I
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can’t do that. I can’t sit and go, “No, no, this you’re singing an E flat. It should be an E
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here, but go to I I don’t do that.” Yeah. But watching David do it is amazing.
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Richard Perry was another one like that same you know I mean it’s it’s a different style as you say they’re all valid styles you
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know it’s just what works for that artist you know and there are some artists who really want that handholding
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right you know I mean I think about like Trevor Horn you know Seal’s records
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would not be what they are without his heavy hand in the production you know
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and that’s great you know really depends on on what you want to have for that particular thing.
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Yeah. And it’s interesting, you know, I’ve done records with the same artist
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with different producers. Um Uhhuh. you off the top of my head, I can think
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of like Michael Bubé’s Christmas Record. Ah. Uhhuh. I engineered all of the or orchestral
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big band stuff for Bob Rock, but Al, I was Al’s assistant for all the
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David Foster songs. So I was actually me and Michael were I think were the
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only people that worked on every summer record. Interesting. So but watching again two different
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production styles with the same artist. Yeah. You know in the same rooms with you know
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it was it’s really and you know again we go back to a place like Cherokee or Capital. Those are the kind of things
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that you see in a place like that. Like here at the village, you know, multiple rooms, multiple things, like Yeah.
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And you learn different styles. You get to watch different styles. Um I always
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joke I sometimes you learn what not to do. Oh yeah. I’ve learned I’ve learned more lessons
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about what not to do watching other people screw up. Oh, absolutely. Not that I have screwed up plenty myself, but
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but you know, especially being a runner or being the third assistant, you know, the guy in the back logging tapes or
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whatever and you’re watching, you’re like, I don’t ever want to make that mistake. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And
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you know, it’s funny you mentioned you mentioned Capital and Cherokee in the same breath because in certain ways they
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were like 180 degrees opposed. Totally opposite. And you’ve been through both.
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Yeah. Now I’ve only done a couple of sessions at Capital. I’ve never worked there, you know, on staff or anything like that,
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but the vibe, you know, the the engineers at Capital, I mean, you had um
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uh Christina Picari, um Bill Smith, of course,
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Pete Dell, Pete Dell, Leslie Anne Jones, and yeah, Leslie, I forgot Leslie worked. They were the They were the engineers
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when I started there. And Ray Blair had just left. He was kind of still around. Uh um
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but I mean these are these are a different type of personality in terms of engineers. Definitely.
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Yes. Um and you know everybody in that building I mean I actually was in there for a session. Um
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Christina was engineering the session at the time and uh I made a comment about the nearfields. I said, “Wow, these
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sound great. What are they?” And gets on the phone and says, “Bob, would you come down here a minute?” Bob Norberg. Sure.
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I still have a pair of his monitors to this day, you know. Um, but there was such a vibe of real, you
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know, the the marriage of engineering and production was so heavy in that studio
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in in in that environment there, much more so than I think at almost any other
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studio. Yeah, it was definitely a different place. So, when I when I left Cherokee,
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got fired or left, whatever, however you want to say it. So I left there and then I went kind of back. I was working for a
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friend’s installation company and I was doing live. I was having a good time. I was 20 some 22 23 years old.
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Indestructible. Yeah. I was touring and working in bars and you know I was having a great time. Uhhuh.
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And I was walking out of Molly Malone’s one night and Bill Smith was walking in.
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Oh, I love it. And because Bill and I were friends from Cherokee and he went, “Wow, I’m glad I now at
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Bill had left Cherokee and was working at Capitol by at at this time.” He had he had been to Capitol. Um I had been to
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Capitol, I think once to visit him. Um and he said, “Wow, I’m glad I ran into
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you.” He goes, “We got to talk.” And I was like, “I’m just going home.” He’s
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like, “No, no, come on. We got to talk.” He said, and he sat me down and he went, “Look, we had a guy quit today at
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Capital. He’s part of the setup staff, so but you should come get the job.” And I was like, “Oh, man. I don’t want to,
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you know, studio was fun, but I’m having fun on the road and this.” And he was like, “No, no, no, no.” And he sat me
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down and was like, “You don’t understand. This is capital. This is different. That was that thing. This is
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and you know, we’re doing, you know, and then he said, I remember he said, “We
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just finished the new Frank Sinatra record.” And I was like, “What? A new Frank Sinatra would was the duet.”
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That would have been duets, right? Exactly. Like the last record of his career pretty much. Yeah. So this was like a month or two
24:27
after they had done that record. Wow. Okay. And um maybe six months, whatever it
24:32
was. But that’s when I was like, hm, interesting. He This is a real studio. This is different.
24:38
Yeah. Yeah. I had never been exposed to any place else except for Cherokee, which was
24:44
chaos in a good way because they have five rooms and all kinds of stuff going. And again, like we talked about, it was the end of the hair band thing and the
24:50
beginning of the hip-hop thing and but Cherokee was rock and roll. It was rock and roll and hip-hop and
24:55
ever since and it was great. It was really fun. But Capital was different and you know, you’re going to see string dates and
25:00
you’re going to see, okay, yeah. So, he kind of talked me into it. I said, “All right, what do I do?” He goes, “Well, the the the boss is named
25:08
Michael Fondelli.” Michael’s a wonderful guy. Absolutely. Um, you should bring a resume into him. I said, “All right.”
25:14
So, I said, “All right, I’ll see you tomorrow.” So, I went home, got my resume together, and I went to the building at like noon.
25:21
Now, I grew up in LA. I grew up, you know, three miles from the Capital Records building. I passed it almost every day of my life. I’d never been
25:27
inside because you don’t go inside unless you have a business, you know. So, I walk into the lobby and at the
25:33
time it had the gold records and all that stuff. And I said, you know, I’m here to see Michael Friendelli in the studios. And
25:39
they were like, okay, wait. And they called and he came out, which was knowing Michael Yeah. It was kind of odd
25:45
for him to actually come out himself. He should have sent somebody, you know. Yeah. And he came out and he said, “You’re
25:50
looking for me.” And I said, “Yeah, I ran into Bill Smith last night and he said that you needed a guy and here’s my
25:57
resume.” And he looked and he went, “Wait here.” And he left. And he came
26:02
back like two, three minutes later. And he went, “When can you start?” And I said, “Well, when do you need me
26:09
to start?” And he went, “Can you be back here at 4:00?” Same thing, right? at the 4 4 to midnight. I mean, they needed a
26:16
guy. Uhhuh. This the guy had walked out the day before. Wow. And I was like, “Yeah, I can be here at
26:21
4:00.” He goes, “Great. See you at 4:00.” Third, 27 years later,
26:27
I walked out at Capital. But he went down and went to Bill and went, “Who’s this guy?” And he went, “Steve, he knows what he’s doing. Hire him.” And Michael
26:33
came up and that was my interview. Can you be back at four o’clock? So, and
26:38
you know, I started back as a a setup guy, you know, and at Capital, you know, the setup, you know, we would do runs
26:46
and stuff like that, but we were also in charge of setting up the rooms. Did they have three rooms at that point? Three rooms. Yeah. Plus all the
26:51
mastering rooms and, you know, but I know at one point they were, when I first went in there, they were
26:57
building the third room. Yeah. Studio Studio C was already there was construction going on. I remember
27:02
Studio C was built and it had been remodeled and was Okay. was was up and running. Um, so yeah, there were three
27:08
rooms, but that’s that’s where I learned about orchestral music and and big band
27:14
setups and you know, so so as the night person, you know, I would take the drawings from
27:20
the engineer, you know, the assistants would talk to whoever the engineer was or in this case a lot of times they were
27:25
the engineer and I would get a drawing with a mic list and I would spend all night
27:31
placing the chairs and plugging the headphones and the lamps and hanging the microphones and, you know, stands and set sheets and I mean
27:37
sometimes some of those setups, you know, especially, you know, Capital’s unique. The two rooms A and B set next to each other and the wall opened up.
27:44
You could have string section here and the horns there, stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, a two room date, you know, we get 50 50 some people in there, you
27:51
know, rhythms. I mean, some of those setups took 8 10 hours to do by yourself, one person by yourself, you
27:57
know. Um, so the 4 to midnight shift was actually 4 to like 3 or 4:00 in the
28:02
morning usually. But it was great. I was having a great 10 and that’s and Bill was right. I learned more stuff. I had
28:09
never seen string dates like that. I had never seen big band sessions. I you know and at the time you know Paula was a
28:16
studio manager and we would do Yeah. four sessions a day. Uhhuh. You know we could do a 10 to one two to
28:23
five in that room, 10 to one two to five in that room, flip them around and do a string date at night and a string date at night and and it was you know we were
28:32
cranking. plus you know a mix in studio C and you know and it was the best
28:37
people in the world. It was the Tommy Leo and the Phil Ramones and the Quincy Joneses and you know Al Schmidt and Jeff Emer and you know the movie score Sean
28:45
Murphy and you know Bobby Fernandez and all you know the best guys in the business and women
28:50
in the business, the best producers, the best engineers, the best musicians and it was like wow this is cool. And you
28:56
had, as you say, you had Paula booking the place. You had uh you had Michael
29:02
Fondelli running the place. You know, I mean, five people on the five full five or six full-time techs.
29:07
Yeah. Your tech department was the envy of pretty much the entire industry. Yeah. You know, two proper mastering rooms like with
29:14
cutting lathes at the time. Wally Trogett and Ron McMaster. Um you know, they had their
29:19
rooms plus we had, you know, the guys like Bob Norberg and those guys were upstairs doing. So, we were doing catalog work and mastering and it was it
29:27
was a really cool place to be. Um, and I fell in love with it immediately and was just this is it, you
29:34
know, and and then over time, you know, like it happens, you know. I then I got to know Al because Bill was Al’s
29:41
assistant. Yeah. And Al and I hit it off talking about baseball. Actually, we were just talking about
29:48
baseball. Yeah. Um, we were both big Dodger fans, so we hit it off that way. And I knew
29:53
Bill obviously, so when they needed an extra set of hands to log tapes or whatever, I was the guy they would bring
29:59
in. Um, and so I got to working with those guys quite a bit. Um, and obviously you had a really good
30:06
relationship with Al, right? As I said to you, you know, Al was the one who he said to me, “Oh, you got to get him in
30:11
here, you know, and it’s like, you got to interview gentlemen, you know.” So, right. And so so over the course of time
30:17
I had become an assistant engineer at Capital. Somebody had left. I don’t remember who. Um and it was actually
30:24
Elliot Shiner that got them to hire me as an assistant. He was like, “I want I’m coming to do a record and I want Steve as my assistant.” And they were
30:30
like, “Well, he’s not in the union. He’s not.” And he was like, “I want him.” And Michael was like,
30:36
“All right, I guess you’re in.” So it was actually Elliott that got me promoted to do that. So I I worked a lot
30:42
with Elliot back then. I was his assistant on a lot of projects. I worked with Jeff Emer quite a bit back then. It
30:47
was, you know, and then and then I was working with Al quite a bit because Bill was still there. Bill had an opportunity to go off and do
30:54
some stuff on his own and I was just I just kind of slid in, you know, like
30:59
Bill was there and then Bill wasn’t there and I just kind of moved over a chair and we were off and running and
31:05
and I was on staff at Capital. Al did almost everything at Capital. He loved
31:10
working there. He was a fixture there. I mean, I always thought he was one of the staff guys there for years and years. Paul and told
31:17
me that No, no, he just loves it here. Yeah, but he actually had like he had a credential, a capital credential. He
31:23
could open the gate, he had a parking space. He could get in, you know, so people thought he worked there, but he he actually was never on staff or
31:29
anything like that, but I was on staff. So, it was great for me because I had a real job, you know, I had benefits and
31:37
401k and, you know, if Al wasn’t working, I was still working. And you know, I got to do, you know, when the
31:44
Academy Awards would take over the whole place, I would work with Tommy Vicari in the Academy Awards. And you know, so and
31:49
and when Al did a record, I did a record with Al and and then Al was really
31:54
really busy. So I started working with Al around 2000. And also at that time,
31:59
the job changed a bit because that’s when Al uh when the HD systems came out
32:05
and ProTools could go 96K. That’s when Al was like, “All right, this sounds okay now. we can use this now.
32:11
So Al made the switch from tape to ProTools, which means not only was I
32:17
Al’s assistant, but now I was the ProTools operator. Well, and and the dynamic changed. So the job that
32:23
like Bill had with Al was different from the job I had with Al. Well, and I think Al was actually
32:28
probably personally responsible for the acceptance finally of of digital recording.
32:33
I think when Al said when Al said it was okay, the industry said it was okay. Yeah. Exactly.
32:38
Yeah. Before that, we had used ProTools, but it was it never sounded right, though. Everybody was always like, “No, no, no.
32:44
I still want my my my analog.” Exactly. And Bill was a really good ProTools. He was one of the early adopters and he was one of the early
32:51
ProTools operators and um you know, he had a system, but we would fly stuff in
32:58
and and tune it and edit it or whatever and then punch it back onto the machine, you know, onto the analog, but all the
33:03
initial recording was always analog. Um, so but but when it switched, so then so
33:09
then the job of being Al’s assistant changed a bit and we were getting along great and we were working and he was
33:14
busy and it got to the point where literally I was giving my schedule to Paula
33:20
because Al and I were booked six months in advance. Sure. You know, we would be mixing and Al
33:25
would get a phone call. Okay. Okay. All right. Uh, we’re gonna do a Diana Crawl record in June. Okay. And I
33:33
would get up and go up the hallway and walk into Paula’s office and go, “Is June available?” And why? And the phone
33:40
would ring and be like, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. Yeah, you guys are doing a Diana Crawl
33:46
record in June.” I mean, it was that kind of thing. You know, we would schedule our vacations. Al would be like, “I’m going on vacation
33:52
here.” Okay, great. I know either I’m working with somebody else that week or that’s when I can go on
33:58
Yeah, that’s when I can take some time off. So, it was great. and Alan and I did hundreds of records together and we
34:04
worked together basically for 20 years. Wow. And then it was fun because you know
34:10
especially like the records with Tommy Leuma that we would you know the Diana Crawl records and stuff like that inevitably
34:16
recording would go along and Al would start. So then we would split. So then Al would go to studio C and start mixing and I would keep working in studio A
34:23
doing percussion overdubs or vocal overdubs or whatever it was. So now I got to engineer some stuff too which was
34:29
fun. And then then there were gigs where, you know, Al would get a call and
34:34
either he couldn’t do it or he didn’t want to do it or they didn’t have any money or whatever. Be like, “Steve will do it for you. Go ahead.” You know, or
34:41
lots of times Al would do the recording and then I would do all the overdubs and
34:46
then Al would do the mixing. Uhhuh. You know, so just because budgets or whatever, he would do something else.
34:53
You know, there were a couple other guys at Capital obviously Al would work with too. So, so that would happen a lot. You
34:58
know, a lot of the L Puma records were that way just to save money and Al didn’t want to sit around and do bass
35:05
overdubs, percussion overd. It’s boring, right? So, he wants to go do something else. So,
35:10
gave you a chance to learn a lot of stuff. Gave you a chance to learn a lot of stuff, get some credits, some engineering credits, you know, stuff
35:16
like that. So, it was it was fun. And the fun ones were always, you know,
35:21
Steve will record it and then Al will mix it. Like, okay. to me th those but then I had to be his assistant for the
35:27
mix when he’s mixing the tracks I had to cut. Oh, boohoo. So it was like turning in my homework.
35:35
Did I do okay? But yeah, I’m watching him like what’s he changing? Like
35:42
oh my. But that’s actually great though because you really I mean you had a teacher
35:47
I mean who better you know really there’s nobody better. Sitting next to
35:52
Al was the greatest education I could have ever had, you know, and sitting
35:58
next to Elliot Shiner and Jeff Emer and Phil Raone and whoever the engineers were and watching, you know, I spent one
36:06
year, I think I pretty much only worked with Jeff and Al who had two totally different ways of
36:13
working. Sure. Totally different philosophies on working. You know, Jeff, you know, we
36:18
used to joke it looked like the power went off when I hit play because all the compressors were whack, you know, and
36:25
and Al didn’t compress anything and Al was like, you know, move the mic, right? Move the mic. If the compressor
36:30
hit 3dB, that was, you know, right? Both of them made fantastic records, but
36:35
they had a completely different way of working. They and they loved each other, too. I mean there was definitely the admiration between them was huge. But
36:43
but you know I mean watching Elliot work one of these consoles was you know he was a magician with a VR or an 88 or
36:49
whatever. I mean it was VR at the time but you know but Al you know I remember one time because Al and
36:55
Elliott were obviously great friends and Elliot was coming we had been mixing in Studio C for like months and and
37:02
Elliot was coming in to do it right. We were going to go to studio A and and record something and Elliot was coming in to mix a record and talking the night
37:09
before. How’s everything working in here? Oh, it’s been great. We’ve been in here for months. We haven’t No, nothing’s wrong. Everything’s great.
37:16
Console’s working fine, you know. So, next day, Alan and I are
37:21
doing whatever we’re doing studio A and Elliot comes in. He’s like, “What?
37:26
What’s going on?” He’s like, “I thought you guys said you’ve been mixing in there forever.” We’re like, “Yeah, not
37:33
yeah, we haven’t had any problems.” Why? He goes, “Every EQ I hit is bad.” And Al and I just started because Al
37:39
never hit I don’t use that He didn’t use it. So, we didn’t know the
37:44
EQs were bad. Well, you know, Al was like, “Yeah, just put a 44 on it, you know, and move it
37:51
this way.” Al did when Al had EQ, he hit an EQ and he had to compress. He had to compress. But if it was stuff he recorded, he just
37:57
avoided it because he didn’t have to. He was probably I mean the the session the few sessions that I saw of his I mean it
38:04
was really it was like a couple of mics and it was as as bog standard as you
38:09
could get to a certain extent but always great mics put him in the right place. Yeah. Yeah. again, Capital, best
38:18
musicians in the world, great gear, Mike. I watched him. I watched him one
38:23
time and he literally he would go out in the room and he would put his head right where, you know, where the mic
38:29
would be and he would really listen, you know, in that sense. I mean, it just
38:35
was mind-boggling watching him. And again, when those sessions came up, Al and I had talked about that.
38:42
I mean, it was all planned out by the time we got there. Uhhuh. And by, you know, we were there. I mean,
38:48
it was planned out days before and then we were there three or four hours early getting everything set up
38:55
and getting all that. So, when downbeat hit, I mean, we were kind of done. It
39:00
was all the heavy lifting had been done already. We already knew what mics were going to go where and how we were going
39:06
to set the room up and who was going to do this and I had the headphones worked out and I had, you know, and it was all
39:11
taken care of. Pre-production. Yeah. You can’t really put a value high enough
39:17
on how important pre-production is. And that’s kind of, you know, really
39:23
overlooked. Yeah. A lot. I mean, I’ve done some big, you know, big live things. You know, we did the
39:29
Oscars for a few years where we were live. We were the or and we had fiber lines going to the theater and the
39:35
broadcast and you know and I’ve done a you know we did a Paul McCartney record live broadcast you know so we at Capitol
39:42
we did a lot of those big kind of sessions big live broadcast and just big sessions you know big orchestras costing
39:48
somebody a lot of money you don’t want that over time on you exactly um
39:54
and and I love those sessions and I’ve had people ask me like don’t you get nervous for those things and I said you
40:00
know what I Don’t because I mean there’s an adrenaline rush for sure. Sure. But if I’m prepared,
40:07
I’m not nervous because I know it’s going to be fine. And we’ve probably thought out logistics of all right, if this happens, we do
40:13
this. If you know, we got extra mics and we got, you know, so if I’m prepared, I’m not nervous about it. You also came up in a live environment,
40:20
which doesn’t hurt either. Yeah. You know, so but even in the studio, it’s all live. I mean, it’s again, you got three hours
40:25
with that orchestra. You better get it. Yeah. Yeah. you know, studio musicians, you know, we
40:31
got we got one day to do this. Go. So, how is the how has this changed for
40:37
you over the last few years as the whole studio scene has evolved and working at home more and everything?
40:42
Quite a bit. So, um kind of around
40:48
2017, you know, Al was getting a little older.
40:53
He was still working. The work was still great, but he was slowing down. Uhhuh. Um, not him personally, but the work was
41:01
slowing down a bit. Sort of by design, by his design. He was he didn’t want to work quite as much.
41:07
I was in his 80s at that point. He was in his 80s at that point. And so, so again, some of those calls it was
41:13
like, you do this one, you know. So, I was starting to work more on my own and
41:18
he was working less on his own. I had been at it for a while now. I had my own clients, stuff like that. COVID hit, studio shut down. Um, I had a
41:28
little mix room at my house that I would do. I could do budget projects, stuff like that. People who didn’t have money
41:33
for capital or whatever, you know, I could do that at home. Um, so I had a little setup and when COVID
41:40
hit, you know, we had shut down with client, the writing was on the wall a little bit and we had started the Atmos
41:47
thing was in full effect, which we can get into. Yes. But long story short, I ended up
41:52
with a studio at my house um working from home and then Al was Al had this
41:59
lung thing. So he was COVID was a big deal for him. He didn’t want to get it. We actually came here to do a couple
42:06
records um because Jeff would give us he gave us studio B to work in and nobody
42:11
would go in there. It was just us. So we could we could walk straight in and you know they would leave the food at the door and then we would go home and they
42:17
would clean the room and and so um so it had started to slow down that
42:22
way. Um and then you know co the whole world’s got all messed up. We all
42:28
learned how to work remotely. Yes. Stuff like that. When the studios reopened I had an Atmos room at my house
42:34
by that time and they were like well just keep working at home because then the other guys can work in these rooms.
42:39
And so I stayed home and worked and then We got word that Capital was going to close because they had to do this
42:45
earthquake renovation, right? Um um I guess before that then Al passed
42:51
away unexpectedly. Yes. Um unexpected to the point where I
42:56
talked to him on a Thursday or Friday about a job we were going to do. We had a we had a project that we were
43:03
going to come up and it was oh I got this doctor’s thing on Monday, you know, and I was like fine, I got to finish the
43:09
thing I’m doing. We’ll do it the week after. actually had scheduled him to be on this show the following week. So yeah, like
43:17
nobody expected it, right? And that Monday or two, whatever it was, he passed away. Um so obviously that work went away.
43:27
Not you know. Yeah. Um tragically um you know and everybody thinks oh well Steve just stepped in and
43:33
got all you know a lot of Al’s clients had were retired and had passed and all
43:39
that kind of stuff too. So he wasn’t quite as busy as and it was co at the
43:44
time. So um I think since he’s passed there’s probably been four or five
43:49
sessions where I can remember sitting in the chair thinking I’m in the wrong chair on this one. Like this this is an
43:57
out gig and I should be sitting in that chair and he should be sitting in this chair today. But if he was here, he would,
44:03
even though he would have been 93 years old, he still would have been sitting in this chair. And he still would have been
44:09
robust as all hell, too. I mean, one thing you got to say about Al, I mean, you know, the guy had all his
44:16
marbles up to the very end. Up to the very end, you know, absolutely. I mean, the work was still great. Yeah.
44:21
You know, he got tired at the end of the day, but I get tired at the end. He was 90 years old. Yeah.
44:26
Um, but he showed up every day and he was working and and the work suffer,
44:32
loved what he did. He loved what he did, you know, and and that always showed, you know. Yeah. I mean, we used to have a saying,
44:38
we we lie to our wives every day when we say we’re going to work cuz we had a blast. We had so much fun
44:43
when we were working. Mhm. Look, there were times, you know. Yeah. Like like any marriage, it was,
44:51
you know, I mean, you spend 18 hours a day with somebody for 20 years, you’re gonna have some disagree.
44:57
Exactly. You’re gonna have some disagreements. Um, so it wasn’t always beachy, but for the most part it was.
45:02
And the thing about Al was, and I’m kind of the same way, he would get upset if
45:07
something went wrong. I mean, he wouldn’t get upset if for no reason. But if something went wrong and Al got upset, he would let you know about it
45:15
and then it was over. Mhm. And it never came up again. Uhhuh. Unless it came and if it came up again, you were then you were in big trouble.
45:21
Um, then somebody got fired. Exactly. At least off his sessions for sure. Um, but it he said his peace and
45:29
it was done. Mhm. Okay. Yeah, I got it. Yeah. You know, and I’m kind of the same way. And look, there were times when I got
45:35
mad at him, too. It was a two I can’t imagine. Well, you know, again, we all, you know,
45:40
we spent a lot of time together. He had his own way of doing things. I can imagine you know, but 99.9% of the
45:46
time we were having a blast and we were making great records and we were you know hanging out with Paul McCartney and Bob
45:53
Dylan and Phil Raone and Tommy Le Puma and you know Diana Crawl and
45:58
you know all these I mean these people are fun to be around too and we’re making great records and you know
46:04
winning awards and people love you know so you know who how could you know how
46:10
could you be at Capital so long? Why would I leave? Yeah, exactly. Where do you go from there? Where do you go? Well, then it happened.
46:17
Yeah. So, they and they had to do this earthquake renovation. Studios were going to close. Okay. You’re all getting
46:24
laid off. And then, you know, the consolidation of the industry and, you know, UMG and
46:29
other four-letter words. Exactly. Um, but by this time, again, we were coming out of COVID. Everybody was used
46:35
to working remotely. Everybody, you know, I had my own clients. So, I just kept working. I I now had a studio at my
46:41
house or I come here or I go to East West or I go to Sunset or wherever. I
46:47
just I literally just kept working. It was it was no different, you know? I mean,
46:53
people would call Paula and she would say she would call me and say, “Hey, you’re going to do this.” Like, nothing
47:00
changed. It’s just the venue changed where I would go. And I miss Capital. I miss the rooms
47:05
because the rooms are great. I miss the microphone collection. I don’t understand. How can you have a studio and not have 18 U67s? That’s, you know,
47:13
Exactly. Exactly. How do people work? What? You only have one C24, right? Yeah. Like, you know, we’ll go
47:20
get another 47 if that one’s easy. That doesn’t, you know. Yeah. Here it happens at the village. It’s great because they But they don’t have
47:26
16 U67. Nobody does. So, um, actually, I think uh I think Blackbird might, you know,
47:32
they might. Yeah. But they don’t have rooms big like Capital. That’s true. So, that’s true. Um, so I’m I can’t wait to get the rooms back.
47:39
I hope that that will happen. It will happen. It will definitely happen. Okay. I mean, I don’t work for them
47:44
anymore, but I still know a lot enough people. Okay. Well, that’s reassuring to It’s in the works. The the rooms will be
47:50
back. They will be back to what they were. And I mean, I’m confident that that those guys will
47:55
Well, I hope so. Me, too. You know, I mean, there were, you know, there were rumors about it being turned
48:00
into condos and all sorts of stuff. And oh my god, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I mean all the gear, we put all the gear in
48:06
storage. Um, so it’s all coming back. Nothing got sold. Nothing got great outside of like
48:12
computers and monitors. That stuff’s expendable. Exactly. So, um, but other than that,
48:17
should be back. So, let’s shift gears a little bit. I want to talk to you a little bit about the Atmos stuff. Okay.
48:22
You were a an early an early pioneer with that stuff. The early one.
48:28
Yeah. You were um and and you know, for music. Well, yes, for music, not for film. For film, those
48:35
guys, I mean, immersive, you know, look, first of all, there were many, many
48:40
different immersive formats. There were lots of different ways to approach this. Uh, you know, there’s a lot of talk
48:45
about, well, you know, this was a a marketing thing, you know, like VHS versus beta kind of thing, which, you
48:52
know, there’s probably some truth to that, but certainly in the early the DVDA and the
48:57
CD and all that stuff and all the different formats and stuff like that, you know, um,
49:02
and I lived through that with Al and Elliot. Yeah. Tell me about your your experience with that when it first came out. Well, I
49:08
mean, the 51 thing was fun because it was, you know, Elliot Shiner was huge into it and he would work at Capital a
49:14
lot. So, I I was his assistant on a lot of those early 5.1 records and Al got into it, you know, so and, you know, and
49:20
at Capital, we were doing movies. So, 51 and multi- channelannel and that kind of stuff was not foreign to me at
49:27
in any way. Okay. We had ways of making the consoles do it and everything else. Um, but the basic
49:35
story comes down to where I got called into Paul’s office one day because that’s where that was the everybody was
49:41
there. Everybody went into Paul’s office. Yeah. And Paula was there and you know, uh,
49:46
Art Kelm, who was the chief tech at the time and general manager and and Pat, our boss, you know, all the all my
49:54
bosses, all the brass were there. And I got called in and they said, “So,
49:59
here’s the deal. We’re going to tear apart Studio C. We’re going to make it into a Dolby Atmos room, speakers in the
50:05
walls and on the ceiling and all that. And then um once we’re done with that,
50:10
you’re going to mix a record in Dolby Atmos. And I said, “Okay,
50:16
why?” And they went, “We don’t know, but that’s what they want us to do.”
50:23
Um but Universal, who was the boss, they said, “We need you guys to mix this record in Dolby Atmos. Here’s Dolby and
50:31
here’s money. Can you do it? And being capital, we went, “Of course we can do
50:36
it.” Yeah. Yeah. And then they left and we went, “How do we do this?
50:43
We’ll figure it out.” Cuz that’s what we did. Sure. Um it’s like the Phil thing. You say yes and you figure it out. Exactly.
50:48
Um and so it was, “Okay, so when is this
50:53
happening?” And it was like, you know, tomorrow we start. Yeah. We’re doing this now. So, so basically we took
50:59
studio C which was already surround. I mean it was a 51 room you know the
51:05
console did it. So again multi- channelannel was not foreign to us but this whole but the object based thing was
51:11
the atmos thing was totally different. We didn’t know anything about that. Okay cuz it’s a movie thing it’s for movies
51:16
and the guys and it had been around for probably 10 years at the time. So it was not new technology but it had never been
51:22
used to mix music only. This was a new concept. Now in hindsight,
51:28
Apple and Dolby and Amazon and all these companies, they in UMG, they had, you
51:33
know, the upstairs people had an idea of what the plan was. Yeah. It had something to do with dollar
51:38
signs. Yeah. We didn’t have nor did I really care to be quite honest with you.
51:43
Like, okay, do something new. Yeah. Okay, cool. Whatever. Yeah, great. I still get paid by the hour, you know.
51:49
Yeah. Um, and plus it was a chance to play with a new toy. New toys. Yeah. New toys are always
51:54
great. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so tore the room apart, installed it. While they’re
51:59
installing it, the guys from Dolby at the time was Nick Conungle was kind of our our Dolby person. So he’s there
52:05
teaching me kind of how object base work and how the system worked. And at the time it was a external render. It was a
52:12
film render on a PC, which is a whole another world to me anyways. But you know, it was very complicated and we had
52:18
a Crestron system because we still had the analog console. So we had to be able to switch from console to not console
52:23
and and do all it was really complicated. It was three computers, you know, out of this ProTools into this
52:30
ProTools, out of this pro into the into the PC and then into the B chain and all that, you know, objects flying and
52:36
moving and, you know, and it was kind of overwhelming and you’re like, I just want to mix a record.
52:41
Okay, this is different, you know. I mean, it wasn’t the mixing part didn’t scare me. That scared me, but the mixing
52:48
part wasn’t intimidating. It was there’s no sound coming out of the speakers again today. What did I do wrong? You
52:53
know, it was it was Maddie and Dante and you know, networking, all the networking stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
53:00
You know, so it was complicated. Well, that’s when our jobs became much more it based in a sense and a lot of us
53:06
didn’t really speak right that language. Yeah. And we were all learning that, you know, the text were learning. You know,
53:11
usually you go in a studio, people know how to use it, and you’re there to learn, and there’s somebody older than
53:17
you who goes, “No, no, you do this.” And it were, “Ah, okay, now I get it.” You know, in this case, none of us knew it.
53:23
All of a sudden, you got to bring in a network tech who knows how to type in an IP address. And I’m calling text and going, “Guys,
53:29
there’s no there’s no sound coming out.” And they’re going, “Huh, okay.” And we’re all trying to
53:35
figure it out, you know? So, yeah, kind of fun, kind of not fun. Mhm. The only nice thing is that we had a
53:42
little we had some time like they the record company wasn’t outside of well
53:47
the the first one we had no time. So basically they put this together systems
53:53
in. It’s working. Okay. Everybody left and I had an RM record and oh by the way
53:59
the band’s coming in two weeks. Oh gee. Okay. Figure it out. So
54:05
a whole album in two weeks. Yeah. in at from scratch. No pressure. No pressure.
54:10
Okay. Um and I mean I got through it I think you know then Scott Lit the producer
54:16
came and and there I mean there was a whole process to get that record finished but that was kind of the first record and then it was okay we want you
54:22
to mix this song. Okay. And then it was can you mix this song? Then it was can you mix this song now? And they just
54:30
kept throwing me stuff. And meanwhile you’re trying new stuff every time you do a mix. having to make
54:35
it up as I go because there’s no tools. Like even just reverb, like we had some
54:41
51 reverbs, we had some quad reverb, it’s an EMT 250, stuff like that. So again, I had been through the multi-
54:47
channelannel thing, right? So we I knew 51 I could make, you know, okay, we’ll put one side of the 480 in
54:53
the front and one side in the back and, you know, stick this in the center and we could kind of make it. But, you know,
54:59
really the only tools were for film post-prouction, right?
55:04
So, I had like car park and you know, like the reverbs were, you know, piled
55:11
garage. Yeah. I didn’t have plate. I didn’t have large hall. I had, you know,
55:16
all these weird post-production things that didn’t do. So, I was trying to figure out, okay, how do I make this
55:21
work? You’re really making it up as you go. I’m literally making it up as I go along. And then I’m running and and I’m talking to the people from Dolby and you
55:28
know so I mean this is evolving over months and okay well here’s what an
55:34
object does here’s what this does and and now remember I have one room I can’t
55:39
go play this somewhere else oh that’s right sure and you can play it back after that right so you know but they’re telling me
55:47
oh it’s an object based system and it doesn’t matter how many speakers you have because it scales high and low and I’m thinking this is great but I don’t
55:52
know what it sounds like anywhere else I only know what it sounds here at Capital. This room sounds great. And there wasn’t even really binaural
55:58
rendering at that point, was there? They didn’t even mention it to us really. Oh, there’s this binaural thing, but don’t worry about that.
56:04
Um, literally like we weren’t paying any attention to the headphones. Like nothing. Once in a blue moon, we
56:11
put something on just, oh, look, it’s in headphones. Yeah. So, it was like two a year or two before we even thought about the headphones.
56:17
Wow. Um, so I’m having to make stuff up. So, I’m figuring out how do I get my
56:23
capital chamber, whatever em, you know, my 480L, all this stuff. By this time, I was pretty versed in mixing in the box.
56:30
So, I had a rough template of mixing in the box and I had my reverb set up and all that kind of stuff, but how do I get
56:36
this into all these channels now, right? Right. Um, this is what and this is the bed and
56:41
this is an object and the bed can change depending on the room and how it’s configured, but the objects don’t and
56:47
all this other stuff. So, I’m trying to figure out how this is gonna work, but I can’t go. Once in a while, Dolby has a
56:54
theater across the street from Capitol um around the block, the Vine Street Theater. Oh, that’s right. Yeah. So, I once in a blue moon I could go
57:00
over there and listen to something, but now I’m listening in a movie theater. I was going to say it’s still a completely different environment.
57:07
You’re still not getting the the consumer’s experience, right? Like this sound and there was no consumer experience
57:13
because fair point. We did. We People would come in and listen. They’d be go, “Why are you doing this?” And I’d be
57:18
like, “I don’t know.” You know, that’s the best part right there. How are people gonna listen to this? I
57:24
have no idea. Like, if you have a home theater, are you going to listen to it? But who has that? Nobody has. And who listens to music in a home
57:30
theater? And you can’t stream it. I mean, you could have a like the Ram thing was a
57:36
Blu-ray. So, I guess if you make a blue So, it was kind of that thing like, yeah, if you have all this
57:41
Yeah. who all five people who buy the Blu-ray basically. Yeah. Um so yeah, that was like, why are you
57:48
doing this? I have no idea why I’m doing this. That’s hilarious. Again, they knew. Yeah, but it was literally years before
57:54
we really knew what was going on. Um but it was fun. But then I So I would have to make stuff up like, okay, I can
58:01
cascade these into this and put these here and these here. And so that’s kind
58:06
of how I came up with the concept of the object bed. Okay, so that was me figuring out how do I
58:12
make this? They tell me it translates, but I don’t. But now I’ve seen it. There were a couple times where we could go to
58:18
a post house or somebody did something somewhere else and brought it to us and to listen. So, a couple things like that
58:23
happened and I was like, “All right, I got to figure out a way to make this do what I want it to do, not what it wants
58:30
to do.” Yeah. On its own. How do I get around some of this stuff? And I came up with the idea of zones. And I didn’t call it an object
58:37
bed. One of the other guys started calling it the object. You were a trailblazer. I was I was the only guy. It was me
58:42
involuntarily. It was me and then we got Nick Reeves involved cuz we needed another person.
58:49
Um and then eventually Pete Gonzalez. I mean these are all capital guys. Chandler Herod like so eventually all the capital guys we were all mixing at
58:55
Amos and and that was great because then we could have we could have discussions and all you got at least somebody to compare notes
59:01
with. Right. Exactly. But I had come up with this template with this this I called them zones but the guys started calling
59:07
it an object bed and I was like okay that worked. In hindsight I wish we hadn’t have called it the object bed because it just made it more confusing
59:12
for people. Um but and now it’s easy because you know but I I had this whole
59:18
template that I had come up with that worked. So then I gave it to Nick and then I gave it to Pete and it would
59:25
evolve and somebody would come in and want to do it and I would you know we were kind of in this all for one one for
59:31
all thing like this is either going to go or it’s not. Yeah. So if we help everybody then we have a
59:38
better chance of it taking off and it’s really fun and I like doing it and we’re all working
59:43
and we’re all getting paid to do this and it’s and by that time I was kind of like I want to mix this and they were like great do it. So, and you were
59:49
really kind of enjoying this as a new toy in that sense, right? Because I mean, you know, the thing that always amazed me when I started hearing
59:56
a lot of these mixes was not the fact that you could put stuff behind you. That wasn’t really the thing
1:00:02
other than a little bit of ambience, but the fact that you could really spread the image, you could get height out of it, you could get depth out of it that
1:00:08
you couldn’t get with a stereo mix, right? And with a film again, so for the
1:00:15
most part, like everything when I started, everything I heard that they could play me was film music basically,
1:00:22
right? With a film, you have a screen. Everybody’s looking that way. There’s a story going on on that screen.
1:00:28
Anything that distracts you from that story is not good. Okay? So very rarely do you have stuff
1:00:34
other than this ambience other than some like plane flying overhead or something helicopter that’s cool
1:00:40
but for the music there was some ambience back here it wasn’t you know you could kind of spread the orchestra a
1:00:45
little wider but it wasn’t you know but as we’re going through the process of them teaching me
1:00:51
the system I’m going wait a minute these are all full range speakers here yeah
1:00:56
and that’s the spec for this it’s full range full range everywhere so I can put anything I want anywhere I want.
1:01:02
Uhhuh. There’s none of these little dinky little For better or worse. Yeah. You can do whatever you want. You can put it and and it’ll stay there. It’ll
1:01:09
stay there. Great. So, I was like, “Here we go. Now, now you’ve given me this instead of
1:01:17
that, right?” Which I love. But now I have all this. I’m going to use it. Uhhuh.
1:01:22
So, I got fairly aggressive with some stuff. Now, you quickly learn that not everything needs to be that way,
1:01:27
right? The background vocals don’t need to be behind you and stuff like that. Unless they do, right? Okay.
1:01:33
You know, um, so some stuff lean I I’m going to make this big and I’m going to
1:01:39
I’m going to use this and and I had some crazy hip-hop mixes where I have stuff
1:01:45
flying around and moving and and when it’s appropriate, that’s really fun. When it’s not appropriate, you just But
1:01:53
it still sounded cool. I could do Miles Davis kind of blue. You know, we did the whole thing around kind of blue, which
1:01:59
was a threetrack, which is where we came up with the reamp scenario. And there’s nothing moving. There’s nothing
1:02:05
flying around. There’s But it sounds huge, and you feel like you’re in the space. the the mixes that I’ve done that
1:02:11
that people comment that I still get the most comments on are stuff like Miles Davis or um I did a a mix of Gregory
1:02:18
Porter Mona Lisa which which Al did the stereo mix but I did the Atmos mix and it was recorded at
1:02:24
Abby Road with a big orchestra and tons of microphones because that’s what they do and and I was able to spread the
1:02:31
thing around there’s nothing moving there’s nothing it’s it’s a static orchestral mix with Gregory Porter
1:02:38
singing his ass off. Mhm. It’s a Vince Mendoza arrangement. It’s beautiful, but I was able to fill the
1:02:43
room with it. I was able to put So, you feel like you’re sitting in the room with it. And,
1:02:49
you know, as one of my clients called them, there’s no magic tricks. There’s So, that’s just as valid as
1:02:56
stuff moving around. If it’s appropriate, you move something. If it’s Yeah. The thing about those mixes though
1:03:02
is that people already a lot of people already know them and you’ve got this sort of preconceived
1:03:08
that’s the hard thing in your head, you know, and that’s the part that always fascinated me. It’s like, okay, so now I’m going to remix
1:03:15
Marvin Gay, right? You know, I’m going to remix I mean these classic tracks that you already have.
1:03:20
Yeah. You know, 90% of the audience already knows what it sounds like to them.
1:03:25
Yeah. You know, and that’s the hard part is Yeah. keeping the vibe. Yep.
1:03:31
But ex but making it in putting it in this new format. And before like when we
1:03:36
were doing the mixing again for a couple years if you didn’t know one of us you didn’t hear Dolby music in Dolby Atmos because nobody else
1:03:43
had it, you know, but but we were showing we were constantly demoing stuff for people. I’d be mixing and every day
1:03:49
I you know I play Rocket Man 10 times a day um because that’s the song we always used to and it still works to this day.
1:03:55
It does. It does. In fact, I introduction to the first time I heard that was in the uh in the room at Blackbird, right?
1:04:02
You know, and I mean, what an experience, you know? It’s like, oh, so this is what they’re talking about.
1:04:08
It’s still what I use. I can explain what Atmos is till I’m blue in the face
1:04:13
or I can hit play on Rocket Man and when the chorus kicks in, you go, “Oh, I get it. Oh, there’s an I mean,
1:04:19
that’s what this is all about. There was an acoustic guitar that I had never heard before.” Yeah. There’s a couple, you know, but stuff like that, I mean, yes, that
1:04:25
really does kind of open your mind to, okay, now I see what this is capable of. And
1:04:31
I have to say the thing about that mix is yes, you hear that it’s immersive,
1:04:37
but there’s no like fancy tricks where shit’s flying around. A couple little things that Yeah. You
1:04:42
know, by the way, I did not do that mix. A lot of people think I did. Greg Penny did that mix. So, that was that was not
1:04:47
me. Greg fantastic. Again, it’s still the benchmark of that’s what we play, but that’s it. Exactly. You know, that
1:04:54
mix and and several others like it are really to me it shows you what it’s
1:04:59
capable of where it’s not just a gimmick, right? You know, and yeah. Yeah. To your credit, man. I mean,
1:05:05
that’s, you know, I think maybe because of the fact that you had so much time to abuse it,
1:05:11
you learned how to use it really well. And I could learn what worked and what didn’t. Yeah. And
1:05:17
and I, you know, again, we were mixing with no pressure because we didn’t know what it was for. We kind of knew that
1:05:25
eventually it was going to be released. I mixed a bunch of stuff that had no intention of being released where it was
1:05:32
we want we want to show the artist, okay? So, mix this song and then we’ll bring the artist, you know, mix this Beck song
1:05:38
and then we’re going to have Beck come in and listen to it. There was never an intention of it being released. Was
1:05:44
there ever a situation where the artist came in and said, “Oh my god, what the
1:05:50
um with me?” No. I know it happened with one artist in particular, and this
1:05:56
happened down the road where we had already had Amazon and Apple, so stuff was already being released.
1:06:03
And there was one very big artist who it was, from what I understand, it was
1:06:10
not presented to them properly. uh where they didn’t get the Rocket Man
1:06:16
experience kind of because we like I always used to tell people because I found out
1:06:23
kind of the hard way like never play an artist their song if they’ve never heard Atmos don’t play them their song first.
1:06:30
I could see that. Play them play them Rocket Man. Play them something that’s like their let
1:06:35
them get accustomed to what this is before you hit them with we just redid
1:06:41
your entire record. Because a lot of times we were literally remixing their records.
1:06:46
Sure. Making mix decisions that they weren’t there for and stuff like that. So
1:06:52
um so there was one artist I know of who it was presented poorly.
1:06:57
They didn’t like it. They rejected it. They had a fit over it. Uh I don’t know if they had a fit. That’s what I heard.
1:07:03
I wasn’t involved in this record. I didn’t mix it. I wasn’t um They shall remain nameless. Yes. Mhm.
1:07:10
Subsequently, once it was kind of represented to them in the proper way,
1:07:18
they came around and now they actually enjoy it. Um, so that was just a bad situation of
1:07:25
they somebody got it wrong. Um, but again, it’s kind of the wild west. We we’re all still learning. I’m
1:07:30
not blaming anybody for anything because we all didn’t know. Um, as I said, you know, the the fact that
1:07:36
you got to play with it for so long. Yeah. I think empowered you really to know
1:07:42
like, okay, what’s going to work and what’s not going to work and really push those boundaries and then, you know, get the push back
1:07:49
and say, okay, there were plenty of times where I would do something and come in the next day and go,
1:07:54
yeah, the hell did I do here? Yeah. Or I would find stuff like I kept like a part of a song would come up and I would
1:08:00
turn around and I was like, what? Well, obviously there’s something that’s distracting me and I did it.
1:08:06
Yeah. But it’s still distracting me, so take it put it back up there. Right. Exactly. You know, it’s bother if
1:08:12
it’s bothering me, it’s going to, you know, or I would, you know, I still to this day, even in stereo, I always say I
1:08:17
like to I like to hear the mix through somebody else’s ears, I like to put somebody else in the chair and go, “All right, you listen.” Even if you’re not,
1:08:23
you could be the the runner, you could be the artist next door, another engineer.
1:08:28
Like, you sit and listen to this and I’ll sit over here. Yeah. and watch you watch it. And with Atmos, it was even
1:08:34
more so because I could see what people were reacting to. Yeah. Right. You could see when they look up because everybody’s
1:08:40
People are much more You get more physical reactions with it. Yeah. Sure. Good and bad. Yeah. You get the cringe. You get all
1:08:46
that stuff. Sometimes it’s like or they keep like turning like why do why are they keep turning around?
1:08:51
There’s something that’s bothering them, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Um I had one I did a a record I got a
1:08:57
call um they said you’re going to mix this Cynthia Revo record who Cynthia’s obviously at this time this was her
1:09:04
first album. She had been on Broadway and done all that stuff but the Wicked Thing hadn’t happened yet. This was a few years ago. Um and they said you
1:09:11
you’re going to mix you’re going to mix this whole album but we want you to mix this one song first. She’ll come in and
1:09:16
listen to it and then you’ll do the rest of the record. But we want to get I said that’s great. I like doing that anyways.
1:09:22
like let’s get them in and get them comfortable and make sure I’m on the right path with what they want. So she
1:09:29
came in one morning and they gave me a song un and I told her unbeknownst to her she made the perfect record for
1:09:36
Atmos because there’s so much ear candy and little things and background vocals and all this stuff. It’s still my I
1:09:42
think it’s my favorite record that I’ve ever mixed in Atmos. It’s Cynthia Reva. I think it’s called Volume One. Um, but
1:09:48
as I was playing this for her, first of all, she loved it immediately. I played her the Rocket Man thing. Played her.
1:09:55
Okay, it was the third, you know, play to her. Wow, this is amazing. This is great. Well, way do you get to this
1:10:01
one? And she’s playing me. This is a record that’s not released yet, by the way. I mean, it is now, but at the time it hadn’t been released, but she’s playing
1:10:07
me songs off her phone and talking about them. And she talks a lot with her hands. Uhhuh. And she kept doing, oh, this
1:10:15
would be. And she kept doing stuff like this. And I’m watching her hands going, I have to make this record do this.
1:10:22
Like that’s what she’s That’s the personality. Sure. Yeah. So, I figured out ways to make it do
1:10:28
this. So, there’s if like if you look at the ADM files, it’s crazy because it’s just green balls moving, but but they’re subtle
1:10:34
movements. It’s not, you know, but it’s things are spinning here and things and and you kind of feel this
1:10:42
this dynamic thing. Yeah. It’s not so much that is you just feel it kind of moving around a little bit
1:10:48
and it comes from that thing with her hands. That’s great. Yeah. So, it’s it’s it’s still fun. I
1:10:55
still love it. Now, it’s a little different now because, you know, now it’s in the world and Yeah. And personally, I like doing new stuff.
1:11:02
Like the catalog stuff is fun, but it’s it’s way more difficult because usually you’re trying to recreate a mix and you
1:11:08
Right. It’s much better if you actually are creating it with that in mind. Sure. Exactly. And there’s no preconceived
1:11:13
ideas about what this, you know, I’m not ruining somebody’s childhood by, you know, remixing their and early
1:11:20
on when we were doing this, you know, before the release date at Capital and at Universal, we would
1:11:26
have serious discussions about there’s songs we we should not tackle right now because we don’t we still
1:11:32
don’t really think we know what we’re doing with this Atmos thing. It I’m still wrapping my head around it. The
1:11:37
guy, you know, there were only four or five of us doing it anyways. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so, you know, we would have
1:11:44
discussions like, let’s stay away from Bohemian Rap City. Let’s stay away from Let’s stay away from Pink Floyd. Let’s
1:11:50
stay away from like all the obvious ones. Like, let’s not do those the stuff that’s ingrained. Yeah.
1:11:56
Let’s not do that because let’s wait till we got a handle on this till we think we know what we’re doing
1:12:02
and then we’ll do some of that. Now, some stuff got done like, you know, we did a couple
1:12:07
queen things because they wanted to play it for for the guys. So yeah, again, one of the most difficult records
1:12:12
I ever had to mix in atmos was two songs for the Rolling Stones because they came and said, “Look, we
1:12:18
want the Stones to do this. Can you mix a couple songs, then we’ll play it for them and see if they’ll give us the okay
1:12:24
to do the whole record?” Oh boy. So I mixed two songs for the Stones and I would because Don was who produced
1:12:31
this I was mixing older I was mixing stuff uh Heartbreaker and Angie.
1:12:37
Okay. All right. Right. Uh-huh. So, but Don is the president of Blue
1:12:44
Note. Don was and I know Don pretty well. So, I would call be like, “Don, can you come listen
1:12:49
to this?” And he would come down and listen and go, “Yeah, they’re not going to like it.” And he would, you know, and this is why
1:12:56
Mick won’t like this. Keith won’t like that. I spent the better part of a week mixing those two
1:13:01
songs. And I never do that. It’s But they kicked my butt. Uhhuh.
1:13:06
First of all, it’s a 16 track, so there’s not that much. The Rolling Stones, there’s not that much on there.
1:13:12
Right. Right. Um, and then it’s I mean, you know, there was some horn parts and heartbre
1:13:17
stuff like that. So, you know, a like a four-piece rock band is one of the hardest things to mix
1:13:23
in at cuz there’s really all you can do is make this a little bit bigger. Yeah. Yeah.
1:13:28
So, and the Rolling Stones are a thing as the Rolling Stones. When you
1:13:34
start picking the pieces apart, you can’t pick the pieces apart. No, it’s the sum that makes them
1:13:40
what they are. Yeah. Yeah. It It’s It’s how it all goes together. Yeah. The pieces individually, the sum is way
1:13:47
greater than the parts. Sure. So, when you pull the parts apart, it, you know, again, not a criticism, it’s
1:13:52
that’s the genius. I mean, that’s the same thing with the Beatles, same thing with a lot of those earlier bands where they really
1:13:58
were playing together as a unit. You know, how do you separate that? Yeah. Um, so those were the two hardest songs
1:14:04
I ever did. And then, you know, I thought, “Oh, this is cool. I finally got something.
1:14:10
Maybe they’ll hear this and they’ll like it and I’ll get to mix the Rolling Stones record.” Then CO hit. Oh. And they did end up, you know, a
1:14:17
couple months later they played it for him in England, but it was COVID, so they ended up So Giles Martin ended up doing it in
1:14:23
England because that’s where the band was. Yeah, exactly. And Giles mix great. But so my Rolling Stones stuff never got
1:14:30
released, but Oh, well. But it was fun. You’ve done enough stuff, I think. Yeah. But I I mean, I got to mix a
1:14:35
couple YouTube songs for you, too, so that they could hear it. I don’t think they’ve I don’t know if they’ve ever been released, but you know, 16-year-old
1:14:42
me was jacked. I got I was sitting in the room with you two playing back my mix.
1:14:49
Oh jeez. This is pretty cool. Yeah. You know, I mean, I’ve had a lot of moments just a lot of moments like that
1:14:54
in my life just because of where I was. But yeah, it’s you know those things. It’s
1:14:59
it happens especially at places like Capitol or here, you know. I mean, I spent the better part of last year in
1:15:06
this room making a Spinal Tap record. This is this is a legendary room right
1:15:11
here, you I mean, I sat right there and watched Spinal Tap recorded songs. It
1:15:17
was And you have that like, how did I get here? Yes.
1:15:22
Pretty cool. Oh, I I know that feeling. Yeah. Yeah. And when are they going to figure it out and I’m going to get kicked out?
1:15:28
Well, and yeah, that’s the whole imposttor syndrome thing that, you know, we could get into that forever, man. You
1:15:33
know, but uh but yeah, especially I mean, and this is this is the legendary fleet with Macroom, too. So, you know, I
1:15:40
mean, yeah, you think among other I mean All and I did a George Pson record in here. We’ve done
1:15:45
all kinds of stuff. Exactly. You know, this is I love this console,
1:15:51
you know. I have a special attachment to this console. Yes, indeed. I remember wiring it in.
1:15:58
Oh my god. I mean, just coming to studios like this is still so much fun. And
1:16:04
it’s true. I mean, I got to see friends just waiting in the hallway earlier. I run into four people I haven’t seen in a
1:16:11
long time. I was uh taking a friend through here recently and uh Tina was giving us the
1:16:18
tour and we walked into like three studios in a row where somebody I knew was in there and he turned to me and he
1:16:23
said, “God, walking through this place with you is like walking into Cheers with Norm.” You know, it’s like because Yeah, you run into so many people that
1:16:30
you know and it’s a wonderful thing. Yeah. I mean, I was supposed to be working here this week that the session
1:16:35
of moving, but you know, again, we did all the spinal tap stuff here either in here, we we recorded in this room and then we mixed
1:16:41
in studio F upstairs and it just be great coming in every day and see, hey, who’s here today? Oh, Nico’s
1:16:47
down. Oh, great. Let’s go see Nico, come on. You know, or people would come in and you know, yeah,
1:16:52
because you run into your friends because with Capital it happened all the time. Sure. But, you know, I I was at Capital every
1:16:59
day, so I would see people. But happened to Cherokee all the time, too. Yeah. You know, and now we don’t we’re all Now we’re all siloed.
1:17:05
We’re all at home in our little rooms. I see people on screens. Yeah. You know, but it’s it’s fun to get out
1:17:11
and I still love recording. Still my favorite thing to do. I just did a record that Don was produced with
1:17:17
Trisha Yearwood, a Christmas album. We were at the Warner Brothers scoring stage with a 60 piece orchestra for two
1:17:23
weeks. Like, oh, that’s fun. Oh, so much fun. David Campbell did great arrangements. Then I took it home,
1:17:29
mixed it, you know, mixed it at home and did the whole sync DNA remote mixing thing. And now I’m gonna mix it in
1:17:35
atmos. And so I get to sit at home enough and I love mixing at home. I mean, my mix room at home is my favorite
1:17:41
place to be now. But but I still love But you don’t get people You don’t run into people. Yeah. Yeah.
1:17:46
Yeah. I still love recording. Still my favorite thing to do. And it was Al’s favorite thing to do, too, you know. And
1:17:52
I love doing big band records and I love doing like this big orchestral stuff. And I love doing spinal tap.
1:17:58
Uhhuh. Yeah. So, well, you also had CJ in the mix, too, which you know, that’s between between
1:18:04
CJ and the and the three original members of the band. That’s high comedy right there. And Rob Reiner, who’s the fourth.
1:18:09
Exactly. So, yeah, it was great. It’s Yeah. I mean, that probably there were probably, you know, a mile a minute
1:18:15
of laughs in that whole session. I can imagine. Absolutely. Yeah. I sat there,
1:18:21
Mike sat there, Chris sat there, Harry sat there. We had all all our little
1:18:26
things and and you know, we came in every day. I mean, we were here for five weeks recording.
1:18:32
Wow. When was the last time you had five weeks to record a record? When was the last time you had a budget like
1:18:38
that? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was it was really fun. It was, you know, and and we would do
1:18:43
like a song. So, we would come in and go, “Okay, we’re going to work on.” And they had stuff demoed, so we had, you know,
1:18:50
so they kind of knew the parts and everything. and and we would track it
1:18:55
and then we would do the o the guitar overdubs and then we would do the background parts and then we would do the lead vocal or however it went but
1:19:02
basically over the course of a day we would complete an entire song I mean not mixed but
1:19:08
and it was fun because at the end of the day you were like and the end of the day was six o’clock it wasn’t like we were
1:19:15
7 o’clock bankers we’re kind of working bankers hours um but we’re getting work done of course
1:19:21
and you know I You work for six or seven hours straight through, you know, break for lunch, but that’s a lot of work.
1:19:27
Yeah. And Oh, yeah. But at the end of the day, you’re like, “Oh, cool. We got another song today.” Yeah. Great. And we come in the next day and
1:19:33
pick another one. And, you know, whatever it was. So, it’s fun, man. It’s still the most wonderful to do.
1:19:39
Fun experience. Yeah. Big band records are my favorite because instant gratification. Yeah. Bands out there, they play it
1:19:46
and the energy is just amazing. Energy, play it, and everybody goes, “Everybody good. No confessions. Great.
1:19:52
We’re done. Let’s go to the next song. You know, it’s you’re finished with it.
1:19:58
There’s none of this. Do the drums and then send it out to the guy who does the bass
1:20:04
and then we’ll send it to the guy who does the guitars and then, you know, I do plenty of those, too. You know, I mix a lot of stuff like that.
1:20:10
It’s they’re harder to mix, you know, stuff because nobody’s playing together. I mean, it’s a valid way and
1:20:16
some records have to be made that way. Yeah. Um but it definitely makes it more difficult to mix. It does. And you don’t
1:20:21
get that vibe. You don’t get that at all. Yeah. There’s no reaction. And
1:20:27
And it’s fun. Yeah. You know, it’s being here with people and Yeah.
1:20:32
You know, telling stories and joking and that’s it. Yeah. Well, okay. So, that that leads me to a
1:20:39
really great place to wrap this with a question that I tend to ask a lot of people and it’s very applicable here.
1:20:47
We’re in a completely different world now. We make music differently. It’s listened to differently.
1:20:54
What do you tell 15year-old you coming in now?
1:21:00
Well, learn the computer. First of all, um, 15-year-old me, it’s I
1:21:07
think it’s, you know, there’s no what I discovered and what I try to tell
1:21:16
students, people is is you might think you have an idea of what you want to do
1:21:22
in this business. And there’s a lot of different jobs. There’s a ton of
1:21:28
different jobs. When I started at Cherokee, I figured I was going to be making rock and roll records for the
1:21:34
rest of my life because that’s what I liked. That’s what I did. Y
1:21:40
if you would have told 21-year-old me in recording school and as a runner at
1:21:46
Cherokee that in 30 years you’re going to be making jazz records and big band records and orchestral Christmas records
1:21:54
that I would have been, no, I’m not. Why would I do that? you know, but it’s fun.
1:22:00
And I didn’t know it was fun until I was exposed to it. Uhhuh. Um, and I tell people all the time,
1:22:07
you’re coming in, you may think you’re going to mix records, but you know what? You might be the best dialogue editor that’s ever lived. You just don’t know
1:22:13
it yet because you haven’t been exposed to it. You didn’t know dialogue editing existed. Yeah. or a sound effects editor
1:22:19
or you know I mean I’m sure every I mean look you can talk to every single engineer whether they’re a music
1:22:26
engineer, a film engineer, whether they do books on tape, whether all of them
1:22:32
wanted to be Bob Clear Mountain. Yes. Yes. We all wanted that job. Yep.
1:22:38
We want to sit at the big concert to sit in the big chair and make records with the Rolling Stones. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what we all want to do.
1:22:45
Bob gets a But every single one of those guys would tell you that’s how they started. But
1:22:51
yeah, now they have Academy Awards for mixing music in films. And now they have whatever Emmy Awards for mixing TV shows
1:22:59
and that’s what they love to do and they’re making a living doing Foley or whatever. Yeah. Whatever it is, but
1:23:05
but you didn’t know it existed because you didn’t know it existed. So yeah, you know, so that’s what I would say is
1:23:12
keep an open mind because you never know what’s going to come up. And I’ve been lucky enough because I get to make big
1:23:19
band records and jazz records, but I also get to make Spinal Tap records and
1:23:24
and you know, whatever else it is, you know, I get to do a pop record once in a while or stuff like that. So I get to do
1:23:32
a Beatles record. Who thought I was going to ever get to work on a Beatles song? No kidding.
1:23:37
I did. Yeah. you know, so it’s keep the options open and have fun.
1:23:44
It’s it’s a cool job if you can make it work. If you think you’re going to get rich doing it, you’re in the wrong business.
1:23:50
Forget that, man. But, um, but it’s certainly fun. I I always say it’s either this or I have to
1:23:56
get a real job. Yeah. A little late for that. Yeah. I think I’m unemployable at this point.
1:24:02
We all are at this point. Yes. Yes. So, I have to do this otherwise Oh,
1:24:07
we starve. Well, you have my sympathies. Thank you, Steve Janick. Thank you for being my
1:24:12
guest. My pleasure. Pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Sorry it took so long. Finally happened.
1:24:18
Finally happened. Awesome. Yeah. Cool. Hey, I’m Daniel Keller. Don’t forget to
1:24:24
hit the subscribe button and join us each week for Insights and Sound.