As you can see in my photo, music keeps you young! I remember being a child and listening to my red and yellow 78 kid records over and over. Then after burning myself out on those, I moved up to those stackable 45's with the big hole and began tossing questions to my mom like "How did they get that echo sound on the record?" My mom, not knowing a thing about recording, thought it over and told me that it was recorded in an echo chamber. Little did she know that she was probably right!
From that point on I was very curious to see an echo chamber and tried to imagine what it must look like. Not a day would go by without listening to a record of some kind. I listened to Porgy and Bess so much that no one in my family ever wanted to hear it again.
One day a friend of the family got one of those mono reel to reel recorders with the neon level indicator. That was the coolest thing I had ever seen and I was mystified about how the machine captured the sound.
Later my parents bought me a little 3 1/2" reel to reel machine that I used to record people (without their knowledge of course), things off of the tube, and also outdoor sounds. This machine cost a whopping $16.95!
A guy that lived up the street from us worked for RCA records and used to give me loads of free unreleased records. He gave me Beatle records (even though they were on another label) before the Beatles ever hit the states! He also gave me the Supreme's radio demo and countless other artists, some that made it, some that didn't. All of these things contributed to my interest in the music biz.
As with most of the people in this business, I come from a very musical family. A lot of my relatives play something and this made family get togethers a lot of fun. Music was always a diversion, never serious, and I never thought that I would ever be making a living working with it.
As the years passed I learned how to play the guitar and did the local band thing; spending thousands to make hundreds. It was during this time that I purchased the equipment to keep my creative interests alive. I would record people for free just to get my chops together, always experiment-ing, always learning. It was during this time that I realized a few things:
1. Music helps bring people together as they share ideas and passions.
2. Music helps to heal by releasing emotions that sometimes get locked inside.
3. Music is an effective communications tool, as it trancends languages.
Over the years (and about a thousand recording sessions), I have developed my own little philosophy that I go by:
- I will always treat the people that I work with the same way that I would like to be treated.
- I will be sensitive to their needs and try to achieve their artistic vision even if it doesn't always match mine.
- If something I did is wrong, I will make it right.
- And above all, I will always listen!
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I joined Group Effort in 1986, after my own basement studio operation had outgrown its basement. After I got out of college (Bachelor of Music Performance in Jazz Trombone, probably the world's least sought after diploma), I decided that I would open up a quality, low-cost musician oriented studio.
Since I had acquired enough gear during college to get started (I recorded a lot of recitals at school) I spent the summer of 1981 reconfiguring the basement of a rented house in Finneytown (Cincinnati) to work as a studio. Between doing live sound (including a 12-year stint as the music mixer for Jazz Live at the Hyatt series downtown), trombone gigs with big bands full of accountants, and running the studio, I managed to eke out a living.
As digital technology developed, so did my client roster, and pretty soon I had a lot of gear. I heard that Group Effort (which had a solid reputation as being the place to go for high-quality, musician friendly recording) was in the process of building a second room in their new location, and saw an opportunity. I introduced myself and we worked out a merger deal. Since then, it has been nothing but upwards and onwards.
Over the last two decades, even with the emergence of so many new styles of music directly related to the development of technologies like MIDI sequencing and digital sampling, it is interesting to note that the fundamental truths of music continue to hold fast. A wise professor of mine used to expound on the fact that all styles of music are the way they are because of the sociological "mind-set" of the people that make them, and therefore all types of music have equal inherent validity--not just the ones you happen to personally enjoy. But I digress.
The point of all this is that above premise is essential to being an effective engineer/producer, along with the requisite musical knowledge and experience. If I'm working with a group in a style of music which I would not normally be a consumer of, it doesn't matter to me because I realize that the group's music is important to them, and that's all that really counts, so I do my best job and give them my best advice which they are free to take or leave, as they see fit.
I provide the bridge between creativity and technology, and I especially like it when I land on that middle ground where one coincides with the other--and that's when the magic happens.
I also maintain a personal page if you want to know more about me.
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