A session guitar player with The Nashville Cats, recording with Tom Dowd at Criteria Studios, the difference between a Nashville vs Muscle Shoals recording session, and much more! 

My guest today is Mac Gayden, a successful songwriter, producer, and guitar player. He is also considered a musician’s musician for his intricate playing. He started playing guitar in Nashville as a teenager in the 1960s and quickly become a top session guitar player playing on iconic records such as Bob Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde. 

Mac was also known for his unique slide guitar sound through a wah pedal made famous on JJ Cale’s record Crazy Mama. And years later in 2013 He was finally inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame as one of the original “Nashville Cats”.

As a songwriter Mac wrote “Everlasting Love” covered by many great artists including Carl Carlton, Robert Knight, U2, and Gloria Estefan. It has the distinction of being one of only two songs to ever have hit status every decade for the past 40 years.

As a top session player Mac helped found to critically acclaimed super groups in the 70s, Barefoot Jerry, and Area Code 615 both of which recorded with Wayne Moss at his famous home studio Cinderella Sound in Madison TN (about 10 miles north of here).

We talked about recording power pop in a small home studio space, getting big lush vocals, great drums sounds, and composing for film.

My guest today is Andy Reed, a fantastic power pop songwriter, musician, engineer, and producer from Bay City Michigan. Andy owns Reed Recording an analog meets digital studio where he records his own music as well as other bands. I met at Welcome To 1979 recording summit this fall which is an awesome weekend long clinic of music and recording panels.

As an artist Andy writes and records with The Legal Matters a very cool power pop band that reminded me of the things I love about Elliott Smith. And he has also recorded and toured with The Verve Pipe as a bass player.

Jason joins us from Los Angeles, and is going to help you make your best record ever by showing you how you can avoid 5 Big Mixing Mistakes You Don’t Know You’re Making In your Studio.

My guest today is Jason Moss, a mixer, producer, and engineer focusing on the pop, EDM, hip­hop, folk, and indie rock.

Jason is a graduate of New York University's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, where he honed his skills through mentorships with Grammy­ winning music makers like Bob Power, Kevin Killen, and Jim Anderson.

By putting his own spin on tried­ and ­true techniques, Jason likes to create records that are a meeting of classic and modern sounds. His clients include artists signed to labels like Disney, Hollywood Records, Glassnote, and many more.

As a music educator Jason is the founder of BehindTheSpeakers.com, and frequently lectures on mixing at NYU. His how­ to articles have been featured in leading industry publications by Berklee, TuneCore, SonicScoop, The Pro Audio Files, and Disc Makers.

Lior talks about working with Michael Beinhorn, Rick Rubin, and how to make a great record! He also shares advice on how to be a successful intern.

My guest today is Lior Goldenberg a producer and mixer based in Los Angeles. He has been making records in LA since the early 90s starting out as a runner at the Record Plant and then as s second engineer for producers like Rick Rubin, Michael Beinhorn, Robert Margouleff and Manny Marroquin.

Lior’s clients include Stone Temple Pilots, Ziggy Marley, Rancid, Fuel, Macy Gray, Sheryl Crow, Vanessa Carlton, Marilyn Manson, Andrew W.K., Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Alanis Morissette, MxPx, Allen Stone, and many more. He has even mixed songs for Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. And he recently produced and mixed a record for Grant Ganzer, a finalist on 'the voice'.

Lior has worked at Conway Studios and Scream Studios before going completely independent at his Calabasas facility in 2006. And He is currently building a studio in Woodland Hills.

Thanks to our sponsors!

Roswell Pro Audio - Roswell Pro Audio is a boutique microphone company based in the wine country of Northern California. These hand crafted microphones provide a distinctive sound, and a level of performance normally associated with far more expensive devices. Now you can get the rich quality of a big studio mic vintage sound on home studio budget. Make your best record ever with Roswell. 

Chris Graham Mastering - Chris Graham has mastered thousands of songs and has charted on Billboard in multiple genres. Every mastering project includes a free video mix consultation because he knows that the better a mix sounds before mastering, the better it will sound after mastering. Go to RSRockstars.com/FreeMasteringSample today and get your free sample started and your record finally finished!

The Softube Modular plugin with the Doepfer Eurorack, Intellijel, and Heartbeat drum machine is one of the coolest plugins I have ever heard!  

I have always been hooked on synthesizers ever since my grade school friend showed me his Radio Shack Realistic sound fx maker and Moog Concertmate MG-1 back in the 1970s. And I even had some chances to learn analog subtractive synthesis when I was in high school and college on classics like the ARP 2600 and 5200.

There is nothing quite like the feeling of turning knobs to create sounds from other worlds that make you think of sci-fi movies and giant robots. Occasionally I feel like I could even do without the music part as long as I can create wild and cool sounds that modulate all day long!

But these days it can be pretty hard to (and expensive) to find hardware synths to keep the passion alive. So when I saw that Softube had designed a modular system that will allow you to build digital versions of analog synths I knew I had to check it out. 

I got ahold of Softube Modular with the Doepfer Eurorack modular system, Intellijel, and Heartbeat drum machine. There is a whole world of possibilities in here. And the best way to check these out is of course to try out a demo and see what you can do with them yourself.  However in the end the only part that really matters to you is "How do they sound??" right?

So here are a couple of videos where I walk you through the presets as fast as I can to give you a quick overview of how this awesome modular plugins from Softube actually sound:

MODULAR

Buchla and Moog started it all with their modular synthesizers in the 1960s. Doepfer made it affordable in the 1990s by introducing the Eurorack standard. Today, the Modular plug-in from Softube makes the modular synthesizer truly accessible to everyone.

Created in close collaboration with Doepfer, Softube Modular gives you both the sound, flexibility and expandability of a true analog modular synthesizer. But Softube Modular is more than just another virtual synthesizer plug-in—it's an entirely new modular synth standard.

Softube Modular is a revolutionary virtual modular synthesizer. I finally have a way to patch and experiment on the go with my laptop. So far its been incredibly fun, and I am looking forward to all the new modules they will add!

Richard Devine, Electronic artist and music producer (Warp, Schematic)

Infinitely Expandable 
As a Modular owner, the basic system gives you a great toolkit to start out with. It includes six modeled Doepfer modules and over 20 utility modules. But there is much more to discover. Additional modules from quality Eurorack vendors—starting with a range of units from cutting-edge manufacturer Intellijel—are available for separate purchase. More modules will continuously be made available. Owners of Softube's drum synth Heartbeat can add its instrument and EQ modules to Modular and combine them with any other modules. Softube's award-winning engineering team have modeled each analog module, component by component, and the resulting plug-ins are sonically indistinguishable from their hardware counterparts.

A synthesists dream come true, a high quality virtual Eurorack experience!

Christoffer Berg, Programmer, mixer and producer for Depeche Mode, The Knife and Fever Ray.

Mike talks about the importance of mistakes in the studio, and shares some great tips for recording drums, bass, guitars, and vocals!

My guest today is Mike Senior, a professional recording and mixing engineer, who has worked with artists such as The Charlatans, Reef, Therapy, Nigel Kennedy, and Wet Wet Wet.

In October 1999, he joined the editorial department of Sound On Sound magazine as the Reviews Editor for six years and also launched both the popular 'Studio SOS' and 'Mix Rescue' columns.

Since turning freelance, he has specialised in project-studio production and become one of Sound On Sound's most prolific contributors, performing more than 50 Mix Rescue remixes, launching the regular Session Notes recording-technique feature, and critiquing more than 350 commercial releases in his monthly Mix Review column. 

In 2011 he published the best-selling book 'Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio', and its sequel 'Recording Secrets For The Small Studio' followed in 2014. Alongside his audio and writing work, Mike also hosts the well-known Cambridge-MT educational resources website, which includes the web's largest free multitrack download library as well as thousands of recording and mixing audio demonstrations.

Today Mike is going to talk about the power of mistakes in the studio, and just how valuable they can be as out teachers and guides. He is also going to teach us 4 important mistakes that you are probably making in the studio, and how to turn those from big failures into bigger wins.

Thanks to our sponsors!

Roswell Pro Audio - Roswell Pro Audio is a boutique microphone company based in the wine country of Northern California. These hand crafted microphones provide a distinctive sound, and a level of performance normally associated with far more expensive devices. Now you can get the rich quality of a big studio mic vintage sound on home studio budget. Make your best record ever with Roswell. 

Chris Graham Mastering - Chris Graham has mastered thousands of songs and has charted on Billboard in multiple genres. Every mastering project includes a free video mix consultation because he knows that the better a mix sounds before mastering, the better it will sound after mastering. Go to RSRockstars.com/FreeMasteringSample today and get your free sample started and your record finally finished!