A Room Studio and Instruments

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: The New World Ensemble. The Love Bullies. Gotye. Jennifer Crighton. An API 500 version of the DECCA compressors (Audities builds a lot of gear). Sherrie Lee Heschel remixes. Stephens Tape machine upgrades.

Q: What other musicians or music production professionals inspire you?

A: Daniel Lanois, Ken Scott, Dave Bascombe, Terry Manning, Dave Amels, Dave Cobb, John Burns, Martin Birch, Eddie Offord, Flood, Alan Moulder, King Tubby, David M. Allen, Brian Humphries

Q: Tell us about a project you worked on you are especially proud of and why. What was your role?

A: Zeena Parkins- "Phantom Orchard". It was just a great project. We produced, recorded and mixed it.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: Both. Because.

Q: What's your 'promise' to your clients?

A: That they will get 150% of what we promised at the time of booking.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: It's everything to do with music.

Q: What questions do customers most commonly ask you? What's your answer?

A: Does the instrument collection come with the room (yes). Is there a house engineer (yes, 3). What are your hours (10-10).

Q: What's the biggest misconception about what you do?

A: That we are "invitation only".

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: Describe the project, time required, dates, our roles.

Q: What advice do you have for a customer looking to hire a provider like you?

A: Come and visit, 2 hours will speak volumes that you won't fine anywhere else in the world.

Q: If you were on a desert island and could take just 5 pieces of gear, what would they be?

A: Is there electricity? If yes: Ondes Martenot, Stratocaster, Vibrolux, Buchla Synth, Teapot.

Q: What was your career path? How long have you been doing this?

A: 25 years.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: Turn on a dime accommodation of the musical moment's needs. Method, equipment or interpretation.

Q: Which artist would you like to work with and why?

A: We are currently working with Gotye on a project that takes full advantage of our facility and instrument collection towards his award winning vision of pop culture in 2015. It's a blast.

Q: Describe the most common type of work you do for your clients.

A: Production in most styles. Re-mix for remote access to the Audities instrument collection and our unique processing abilities. Great drum room lends itself well to live-off-the-floor bed tracks. Multiple tape formats that include 2in 16/24trk, 1in 8trk, .5 in 2 trk, DA-88/ADAT archive retrieval.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Instrument sound first, mic choice, mic placement, mix/comp/eq, performance, review, refine, commit.

Q: What type of music do you usually work on?

A: All types.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: Identifying sonic archetypes from the past that brings them into focus and use in the present and looking for ways to expand them into the artist's vocabulary.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: Answers, inspiration, completion, celebration.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: For production realization, listen to the song, understand the artist's intent and offer the most comprehensive path towards realizing those goals. Staff engineers and producers have very broad and deep understanding and history with most styles of music.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: We have the best equipment possible for a well integrated Analog and Digital recording environment. It's very easy to seamlessly use tape and digital methods here, taking advantage of the best from both worlds.