All Posts by Vladlens Vasilcenko

My guest today is Marc Urseli a 6-time Grammy-nominated, 3-time Grammy Award-winning engineer, producer, mixer, sound designer and front of house engineer Marc Urselli works with many artists from around the world.

He has worked with U2, Foo Fighters, Nick Cave, Lou Reed, Sting, Keith Richards, Kesha, and Laurie Anderson and scores of other amazing artists performing rock, pop, metal, jazz, experimental/avantgarde/new music, urban and electronica and classical.

Marc also composes music for film and television, creates sound design for commercials and mixes audio for film and television as well as mixing more than half a dozen movie soundtracks.

Born in Switzerland he moved to Italy and opened his first commercial recording facility at 17 years old later moving to New York City, where he currently resides and works as Chief House Engineer for the historic & legendary recording studio EastSide Sound.

Marc works in the highest calibre studios worldwide, including Village Recorders (LA), Capitol Sound (LA), EastWest (LA), Sunset Sound (LA), Sear Sound (NY), Flux (NY), Grouse Lodge (Dublin) and many others.

Marc has learned a great deal about recording and mixing and teaches online and from the stage. I’ve included a great clip of him teaching for Sonic Scoop and am excited to learn more about mixing professionally for multiple genres.

Thanks to Rudy Roopchan for the intro!

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Dana shared stories of recording with Rick Rubin at Shangri La Studio, how to work with digital vs analog consoles, creating a great vibe in the studio, getting chewed out by Neil Young, and ejecting Christina Applegate from the control room, and more!

My guest today is Dana Nielsen a Grammy-nominated mixer, engineer, producer, and saxophonist known for his work with Damien Rice, The Smashing Pumpkins, Neil Young, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Weezer, Adele, The Avett Brothers, Bob Dylan, and Kanye West. 

Nielsen also frequently works with music for picture, producing, recording, and mixing a growing number of film scores and soundtracks, such as Will Ferrell’s Anchorman 2 (Paramount) and Casa De Mi Padre (NALA), as well as the Sam Rockwell/Olivia Wilde dark comedy Better Living Through Chemistry.

I am psyched to talk with Dana today about everything from recording to mixing both in the studio and remotely around the world.

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Eyal talked about how metal production is different from rock, metal instrumentation setup, how to get your bass and guitars in tune, the ultimate hi hat in snare removal trick, why community is so important for recording and much more!

My guest today is Eyal Levi the CEO of URM Academy, the world’s best school for rock and metal producers. Eyal is a critically acclaimed entrepreneur, musician, podcaster, educator and producer having cut his teeth as the guitarist and primary songwriter in Daath, a progressive death metal band that released albums on Roadrunner and Century Media.

In 2014 he founded URM Academy, an online education platform for producers with thousands of students from across the globe. URM is best known for its flagship program, Nail The Mix. The platform hosts some of the most prestigious rock and metal producers including Tom Lord Alge, Will Putney, Dan Lancaster, Daniel Bergstrand, Jens Bogren, Adam “Nolly” Getgood, Frederik Nordstrom and Kurt Ballou among dozens of others.

An accomplished speaker and educator, he has logged hundreds of hours teaching the next generation the craft and business of music production. His URM Podcast is now in its 5th year with over 250 episodes.

In the studio, he has worked with The Black Dahlia Murder, Monuments, The Contortionist, Chelsea Grin, Firewind and many others. And In 2017 Eyal co-founded Riff Hard with Monuments guitarist John Browne. Riff Hard is an online guitar school dedicated to the most important part of modern metal: rhythm guitar!

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Mike talked about mixing live sound for Gwen Stefani, the best ways to use guitar pedals and record amps in the studio, the importance of communication, how to get a great drum sound in a small room, and much more!

My guest today is Mike Fanuele a recording engineer, music producer, and live sound engineer based in Washington, D.C. Starting out in the studio in 1998, he has recorded and mixed hundreds of bands over the last 22 years, including Breaking Pangaea, Dashboard Confessional, The Deadmen, Second Letter, Further Seems Forever, John Bustine, Meghan Trainor, Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, and many others. 

Mixing FOH for live shows, Mike has toured with Brand New, The Chainsmokers, Dashboard Confessional, Fifth Harmony, Fountains of Wayne, Garbage, Gwen Stefani, Hanson, Jimmie Vaughan, Meghan Trainor, and Miley Cyrus, to name a few. Mike stays busy when he’s off the road at his private home studio, Lavabed Recording, where he’s focused on creating an environment that keeps bands comfortable while making great music. Mike also does remote broadcast mixing for some of his live touring clients, combining the world of the live performance with the polished sound of the studio.

So today we will talk about how the studio and stage meet and what lessons Mike has learned from both.

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Eric talked about recording Willie Nelson, Miranda Lambert, and Rayland Baxter, how API helped his home studio sound pro, how to record fantastic drums, why time spent on a record does not equal quality, and the most common mistakes with songwriting.

My guest today is Eric Masse a Producer and engineer living in Nashville since 2006. 

Self-described as a three times Grammy losing producer originally from Grand Rapids MI, later living in Boston. Eric is a fan of great songs and focuses on producing (or co-producing), cutting, and mixing the records he makes.  He loves European Football and is a Chelsea FC supporter.  He loves giving people the thumbs up. He has a beard and almost exclusively wears plain black t-shirts.

After graduating Berklee School of Music in Boston he moved to Nashville to intern at Blackbird Studio by day and tend bar at night. Masse’s first studio was called "Cabin In the Woods" (Fairview, TN), followed by Idiot Dog (Music Row), and finally, The Casino (East Nashville), where he works today. When a record calls for a larger studio, he prefers Southern Ground.

In 2014, while playing in a golf tournament, Masse met eminent Nashville producer, Frank Liddell. That connection led to a collaboration that has born several projects, most notably Miranda Lambert’s 2016 release, The Weight of These Wings produced by Masse, Liddell, and Glenn Worf which won the Academy of Country Music's Album of the Year award.

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Michael talked about producing records remotely, how to help the artists find their why, the intersection of commerce and art, how to connect feelings to music, and traveling worldwide with his remote portable production studio.

My guest today is Michael Beinhorn who has lived his life in the pursuit of artistic expression, first as a visual artist, then as a performer, and finally as a record producer. 

Michael began in 1979 as co-founder of the seminal New York musical collective Material and has since produced and or recorded a long list of artists including Brian Eno’s “Lizard Point” from “Ambient 4: On Land.”, Herbie Hancock’s Future Shock, which included the groundbreaking cut “Rockit.”,  the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ breakthrough albums “The Uplift Mofo Party Plan” and “Mother’s Milk”.

Michael’s recordings have achieved combined worldwide sales of more than 45 million albums helping to define the careers of a diverse range of artists, including Soul Asylum, Hole, Soundgarden, Ozzy Osbourne, Courtney Love, Marilyn Manson, Social Distortion, Korn, and Mew. 

Over the past 20 years, Michael has become increasingly aware of the concerns facing artists and producers alike who are trying to maintain their creative ethics, personal expression and focus in the recording process. He has increasingly devoted his attention to artist development, the changing music industry and various ways to improve the quality of contemporary popular music. 

For this reason, he has been increasingly active in mentoring fellow artists and aspiring record producers. He has extensively addressed these (and other pertinent) issues in his book, “Unlocking Creativity” published by Hal Leonard. He has also started an innovative online consulting service (Beinhorn Creative) that remotely provides all the functionality of music production to artists who would otherwise, be unable to afford these services. 

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Packy talked about creating Chip Tunes 8 bit music with I Fight Dragons, producing with members of Vulfpeck, How to create cool lofi sounds in your studio, the secret to great fuzz guitar tone, and how an artist benefits from working with a producer.

My guest today is Packy Lundholm a Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer/engineer. He plays the guitar with Nintendo rock band I Fight Dragons, who just released their third LP "Canon Eyes" and celebrated their 10th anniversary. Packy runs his recording operation out of the B-room at Sound Vault Studios in Chicago, where he records various artists, and works as a session musician at Rax Trax Recording and Gravity Studios as well. 

In recent years he has collaborated on several projects with Vulfpeck keyboardist Woody Goss, sharing credits with Vulf members Theo Katzman and Joe Dart. Outside of the studio he performs live in different contexts, from jobbing bands and bar mitzvahs to improv-heavy tributes to Traffic and the Grateful Dead.

Packy writes and records his own music from time to time, his most recent full-length release being 2016's American Soccer. His music draws heavily from early power pop influences with touches of psychedelic rock and Americana. He is slowly brewing plans to release more singles over this year, hopefully culminating in another full-length record in the nearest possible future.

Recently I saw a new video that Packy posted recording the song Don’t Leave A Thing Behind in his studio and I knew he would be great to have on the show to talk about recording yourself in the studio as well as playing with and producing other artists.

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David talked about touring with Keb' Mo', performance and improvisation vs planning in the studio, how to listen, digital vs analog instruments, the power of beat four and gravity of one, Rick Beato and perfect pitch, and much more!

My guest today is David Rodgers, a California native David Rodgers is one of the most exciting talents in Nashville’s jazz scene today. Currently an active member of Keb’ Mo’s band as a keyboardist, he has also recorded on numerous records including Keb’s Grammy-winning Oklahoma (2019). 

David has toured and performed worldwide at the Montreux Jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, and the Playboy Jazz Festival, among many others with a Bachelor of Music degree in classical and jazz piano performance from Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music and a Master of Music degree in commercial composition from Belmont University.

His compositions have been performed and recorded internationally, including guest appearances at the 2018 Jazz Education Network’s Young Composers Showcase where the U.S. Airmen of Note played his winning big band composition, as well as in Canada where he was invited as a guest artist to the Banff Centre’s International Workshop in Jazz & Creative Music. 

In addition to being an active Korg-endorsed artist, he was also a finalist for ROLI’s first-ever International Next Awards for which he was invited to London to perform as a soloist. He has released two albums: the 2017 genre-bending, debut project Songs For A Generation which I mixed; as well as his 2019 album, Doorways which he recorded and mixed with me right here as well.

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Ike talked about recording with Tinashe and mixing Lizzo, Ricky Reed, and Manny Marroquin, vocal production and recording powerful female vocals, cool plugins, techniques for creating wide vocal mixes, and much more!

My guest today is Ike Schultz, a Multi-Platinum award-winning mixing and tracking engineer based in Los Angeles, CA originally from Toronto Canada. He’s collaborated and worked on albums for a variety of artists including Tinåshe, Lizzo, Adele, Rihanna, Kanye West, Ariana Grande, Adam Lambert, Whethan, Calvin Harris, Dua Lipa, Charlie Puth (pooth), Phantogram, and more.

Ike worked at the legendary Larrabee Studios directly assisting nine-time Grammy award-winning mixer, Manny Marroquin, for 3 years. Then went on to mix Lizzo’s debut release ‘Coconut Oil’, under executive producer Ricky Reed at S.K.A.M. Studios. Ike worked on the majority of the album including the singles “Phone” & “Good As Hell”.   

While at S.K.A.M. Studios, Ike worked with DJ Felli Fel, Ty Dolla $ign, Lil Yachty, Whethan, DRAM, Imad Royal & Post Malone. Afterwards, he mixed & contributed as a songwriter for multiple feature films for Paramount Pictures’ music department, and began working with Grammy award-winning producer & engineer Chris Testa for the Oprah Winfrey Network, MTV, & Facebook’s content collaborations with Buzzfeed.  

In 2018, Ike became the engineer/vocal producer for Emmy Nominated & Multi-Platinum recording artist Tinashe. He recorded & mixed her fourth studio album “Songs for You” which became the first independently released #1 album on iTunes in the US since 2016.   

Thanks to Gabe White at WhisperRoom for the introduction.

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