Music Recording/Production

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

A: We promise to put YOUR unique vision first. At the end of the day the final file we send you must fit your vision for the song; our years of knowledge and technique paired with the suite of tools at our disposal give us plenty to work with when working on your art. If there's something you're in need of or want to add to your music that we don't have, we will go get it or go learn how to do it. We do not compromise on the integrity of the art.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: What we like most is the smile on artists faces when we press play in a session, or when they listen to a file we send. That sort of "happy-shock" when they hear their art coming through the speakers (hopefully) better than what they thought it could sound is what makes us all high five each other at the end of the day.

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

A: The biggest misconception is that we just press a couple buttons and sound comes out the speakers. That could not be further from the truth. We don't just press a button and magically make things sound good. We listen carefully, and we make adjustments by hand. Some decisions are based on creativity, some are based on technicalities. At the end of the day, there isn't some magic sauce; there's a craftsman with tools at their disposal getting to work on your musical project.

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: We ask about musical influences on them as an artist and on the project at hand. We also ask for well defined "needs" and "no goes" for the project. Having this frame work of the song ensures we know where we need to be heading, and where we don't even need to look when working on the project.

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

A: Realize your vision for your music as much as possible on your own and then get us involved in the process! Even if its just writing down notes on what you want things to sound like. This isn't because we're lazy, its because we love having a back and forth dialog with you! Tell us about your vision, share your influences, share what you need your music to have, make sure we know what you don't want in your music! The more we converse about your art, and the more we know - the quicker and more precise we can be!

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

A: Laptop w/ Studio One Professional installed, Apollo Twin, SM57, CloudLifter, API 550a.

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

A: We all come from slightly different backgrounds with roughly the same path. Local musicians doing a solo gig or in a band, then majority of us went to school. mentored under GRAMMY winning musicians and/or audio engineers, worked across the country on writing, recording, mixing, and/or performing either personal music projects or for small time artists as well as a couple famous ones! We all came together when we figured it was time to stop strictly learning and absorbing, and time to actually put our years of experience and knowledge to work help a new wave of musicians and artists grow. We've been doing this as Sleepless Productions for about a year at this point, but the time spent in the music business as individuals can range back 10+ years.

Q: How would you describe your style?

A: While the genre or nature of the project can have an impact on the stylistic choices made, one constant across all projects remain, detail. We obsess over tone, timing, frequency, character and so much more that make up the experience of listening to the song. Is it the drum fill before the chorus? The effect on the vocal during the bridge? We like to give people a reason to go "Oh and listen to this part coming up!" when they listen to your song.

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

A: I think I can easily speak for all of us at Sleepless when I say that we would love to work with Travis Barker. His skill, his technique is unmatched. Another thing we admire is the flexibility of a musician. Travis Barker can easily sound at home on a Punk track, then go to a Hip Hop track and then add his flavor to a Heavy Metal song, and then surprise everyone and do an Electronic song while still sounding like Travis Barker. Flexibility while maintaining authenticity is a quality we admire greatly.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Don't get too caught up in the gear. At the end of the day no one cares if you recorded your music in a multi-million dollar studio or if it was recorded on your laptop in your living room. No one cares if you spent 3 hours EQing a snare. What matters most is the music. Focus on the music, all else is just fluff.

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

A: Typically we work on Alternative Rock that can include things like Hardcore, Pop Punk, Pop Rock, and Alt genres like that. Although this is our typical project we do like to keep on our toes with RnB, Hip Hop, Electronica and other styles.

Q: What's your strongest skill?

A: Our strongest skill at the moment is quick turnarounds for mixes. Generally we can get a song mixed in a couple hours and sometimes less.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: As stated in some answers above we try to being a lot of options and flexibility to a project. We are a small production team that houses multiple producers, musicians, and engineers. Some people may think "too many cooks in the kitchen!" however its the exact opposite! We feed off each other and we all bring slightly different ears, knowledge, influences and styles to the table. Different ears catch certain things in a mix and keep a very solid lock on quality control, different musicians add a variety of creativity to a project. Whether its production, writing, mixing, or mastering, the project will always have at least two creatives working on it to ensure there is a level of uniqueness and quality control that would be hard to achieve with just a single person working on it.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: This can vary depending on the nature of the project, but typically we like to get a very solid idea of the sound an artist wants. We like to hear an artists biggest influences, we like to hear what they've been listening to lately, and we like to hear things that maybe the artist wouldn't normally listen to but they like "that one part", or a song they like the mix on, or the quality of a sound within a song. Once we know where an artist is stylistically, we can get to work. If it's a project that involves writing a beat or a bed of music then we like to get started very quickly and keep creativity flowing. We will generally get a rough outline of a song with the main components and a very simple arrangement. If the artist is in the studio then we will get scratch vocals just to hear the vocals alongside the music and we will build the track out from there. If the project is remote then we will actually draft up a couple small chunks of music within the realm that we have been given by the artist, send them to the artist, and depending on which one the artist likes the best we will move forward on that particular song from there. If no writing on our part is necessary and the project involves more mixing and mastering work, then we like to do a couple versions of the track. One with heavy influence from the artist, either in person or someway of live digital communication. Then one fresh mix/master from the ground up without the artists input, strictly the audio engineers interpretation of the mix/master. From there we listen to the song in a variety of listening spaces like our professional studio, mobile phones, vehicles, laptops, Bluetooth speakers and more. We understand things are rarely perfect the first time, so we like offering options, flexibility, and communication to make sure the vision of the project is always realized fully.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: Our studio setup is focused on the speed and efficiency of a digital workflow. We are based on a custom built PC with all solid state drives, so no moving mechanical hard drives. We run Studio One Professional alongside a suite of plugins ranging from iZotope, Native Instruments, Slate Digital, McDSP, FabFilter, UAD and more that can easily emulate a vast array of vintage hardware gear, sound like something totally new, or impart NO coloration and sound as pristine as possible. The good thing of a studio that is all digital is that no matter how long we work on the session, no matter when we open the session, or no matter when we want to make adjustments the sound is EXACTLY as we set it. We are not bound by the limits of physical hardware. You want the vocals to sound like they went through an old British mixer, and the drums to sound like they went through a classic American mixer known for Rock n' Roll? No problem! Half way through the session you change your mind? Changing it is no fuss. We pride ourselves on the fact that at any point during a work session we can make radical adjustments to the sound that just would not be possible if we were using a more analog type of setup in the studio. No one wants to be locked into any choices, unable to use a piece of gear because its being utilized elsewhere, or just out of luck when an old piece of hardware decides to act up! Outside of the computer we have an Apollo interface insuring we can run the most demanding audio sessions with crystal clear audio. Our main speakers are the EVE Audio SC207 and we have multiple pairs of headphones for referencing. This means we can check our audio to make sure it sounds good no matter how the end user listens to it! For recording we have a handful of reliable work-horse microphones. EV ND44 mics for capturing more delicate sounds like strings or guitars, and a variety of Shure mics to use for more generally full sounds like a voice or amp. Efficiency, fun, flexibility and reliability are the names of the game when we're in the studio.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: Digital. We like flexibility, options, efficiency, and workflow. With a digital workflow, using digital tools, I can literally add the sound of a vintage hardware pre-amp to every single track in my session and then change the model of that "pre-amp" across all the tracks in the session with a single click of a button. I can give a sound the characteristics of vintage hardware, clean up the sound with a digital tool that doesn't exist in hardware form and then add more vintage "mojo" to it. Then with another press of a single button I can turn ALL of these tools off and hear the sound as clean and raw as it was recorded, all without stopping playback of the session.

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

A: We are inspired heavily by music producers and engineers in the Alternative, Pop, and Hip Hop scenes such as Andrew Wade, John Feldmann, Andrew Scheps, Tony Maserati, Mike Shinoda, and Young Guru. We also have influence from the Electronic Music industry with the likes of Porter Robinson, Daft Punk, and Deadmau5. Not only are we inspired by the musical styles but the dedication to creativity in the studio as well as audio fidelity not being sacrificed to achieve those creative and stylistic goals.

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

A: To date the majority of our projects have been from inception to completion. So we will either draft up an initial musical idea alongside the artist and develop that into a full-fledged song ready for release or they artist/band will come to us with a simple idea to start with and we see that through production, recording, mixing, and mastering. This means slimming down to find the core idea and feeling of a song, then building it up to contain unique and creative elements while ensuring it stands up to modern music expectations.