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RSR048 – Neal Cappellino – Recording Vocals With Alison Krauss

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RSR007 - David Glenn - The Mix Academy

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RSR048 - Neal Cappellino - Recording Vocals with Alison Krauss

My guest today is Neal Cappellino, a multiple Grammy® awarded Producer and Engineer who has called Nashville his home for more than 20 years. In 1992, he built and operated a commercial recording studio for several years and now maintains a private facility, The Doghouse, which is home base for his work.


Neal is a member of NARAS, AES, and Leadership Music 2016, and he also sits on the board for the Melodic Caring Project, a non-profit company that streams live music events to hospitalized children around the world.


With a performance background in keyboards and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Neal has built his career on empathy for both sides of the glass, helping guide platinum artists as well as emerging independent talent.


His extensive credits include Alison Krauss & Union Station, Vince Gill, Joan Osborne, Avicii, The Gabe Dixon Band, Dolly Parton and Brad Paisley.

I love going back and listening to things I did years ago and hearing how unselfconscious the recordings were when we were on tape. I really didn’t know anything and we were just capturing. I think those are just as validating success stories as the stuff you get awards for. All my work with Alison Krauss has been remarkably rewarding and that's on a daily basis because as demanding as it is, I learn so much from the creatives that I work with. I love learning about the technical and I’m always trying to be better, but there’s something about just learning about how creative people function and how they listen, what matters to them. I just like the musical moments where it just kind of lifts off and that happens with people on instruments not on an editing session. I just did a great record with Jeff White. It’s a bluegrass record and we did it in Vince Gill’s home studio. The level of musicianship was through the roof!! Those are the times I feel like it’s a success. The other part of it is just having a balanced life because this is not the only thing in the world that’s happening. You have to take care of yourself and your people. If I can provide and be healthy and present for all the other aspects of life then it's working.

Neal Cappellino
What is Success??

What are some typical challenges people face when trying to start a commercial recording studio?

First and foremost today is contracting a market place. I think you’re looking at a landscape that has gone through a thorough disruption via technology and the democratization of what we do. So I would have to say the challenge is coming up with a viable business plan in this marketplace now. I feel like I'm here by waging the war of attrition and I think that there’s a definite solid middle class of people that are professionals in this industry that are disappearing, be they people or studios. So I would say to anyone who wants to put a commercial recording studio together, run the numbers. I think the creativity is important and the music is wonderful but the recording studio business is a tough road right now and I think it will be for some time.

What can happen in home studios now that couldn’t happen before?

Everything really. Tracking is a little bit harder. You know the pendulum swings and then it comes back into the middle ground again and not too long ago the pendulum swung way to the side of home studio and home everything. People came back towards the middle when they realized that maybe things weren’t sounding quite as good as they wanted to. But by and large, myself included, people have rooms in their homes where you can do some of the heavy lifting of mixing for instance, overdubs, certainly things like vocals, guitars, and editing. Editing was that extra step that was invented with home studios and the advent of digital. The absence of that clock on the wall ticking away the hourly charges at a commercial studio is liberating. So pretty much everything, it just depends on your particular space.

“It’s all about meeting people and pollinating” - Neal Cappellino

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Working with Alison Krauss

I have to give props to Mike Shipley who’s no longer with us. Mike was the primary recordist on that and mixed Paper Airplane which we won awards for. I spent almost two years on that record and that was predominantly Alison and I in the studio doing instruments and vocals. I’ve worked with Alison in some capacity since maybe 2002. We were pretty much camped out. We started at Blackbird and then moved over here to The Doghouse. If you want to geek out on tech stuff, her signal path at that point was a Sony C800G microphone and I was going through a Neve preamp into a TubeTech CL1B. That changed on the background vocals depending and who and what song it was. On guitars I used nickel diaphragm KM54s or KM56s (small diaphragm tube mics) and just recently started using sE Electronics RN17s which are transformed, small diaphragm condensers that work great on string instruments. On dobro Neumann M49 (large diaphragm tube) sometimes a Schoeps. The sound hole on a dobro projects a lot of the low end and then the resonator you get a lot of midrange tone. You put one mic on the lower side of the resonator pointing at the resonator getting a lot of the honk. The other one you put over the sound hole just above some distance away and that like an acoustic guitar you get the low end.

What are your favorite ways to time align the pickup of the acoustic instruments to the mics?

I have a lot of UA plugins and they have the IBP, I’ll use that. Sometimes I’ll just shift the track on the ProTools edit window and see where it clicks into a more solid image. Of course I say don’t do it, but I look at it and pick a transient to see how far I am off. I can get it in the ballpark visually, but ultimately you just have to listen to it. It’ll change according to the frequency you're listening to as well, so if there’s a little bit of smear (I hear it in the top end where it’s not focused) a lot of times you can compensate for that with EQ. But it’s kind of the integrity of the imaging which the the articulation and if those are smeared that makes us do other things like add top end EQ which might not be the solution. Maybe it’s just pulling one mic down or adjusting the levels to find basis of tone and more solid articulation.

Melodic Caring Project

Levi Ware is an artist from Seattle. He was a client, now a friend. He was kind of finding his way in music and one day happened to be asked to perform for a young girl who was in the hospital with cancer and he did so via skype session on his laptop. I think it affected him profoundly. He realized this is what music is for me and my life and him and his wife formed the company and asked if I would be an advisor for them. It’s been a slow, tough go for them. Nonprofits have a hard time raising money and getting awareness, but they are doing great work. The format for them is tying into touring artists live venus. Like they take a mix off the board, they have a really well done 3 camera produced shoot, the artists agree to address the children that are joining the live feed. They also coincidentally call their kids Rockstars because they are real Rockstars of the show. They dedicate a portion of their show to the kids and even go as far as taking the cameras backstage. It goes so far, not only from the healing element of music, but the idea that this is something that they get to look forward to. Really emotional stories from both the children and their parents about what these concerts do for them..give them hope and strength and more determination to get through their chemotherapy or surgeries or what have you. So it's just one of the ways to give back. I applaud Levi and Stephanie for what they do. It’s not easy but it’s really gratifying.

“Failure is the best learning mechanism we have” - Neal Cappellino

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Jam Session 

Q- What was holding you back at the start?
A -Probably having a mentor, I think I skipped that step. I think a lot of my learning came from learning my own lessons by making my own mistakes versus the traditional path in this town which is to work at a studio as an assistant or an intern and I did none of that. I just came to town and started building a studio. I probably would have learned a lot quicker if I would have had a mentor or somebody to learn from. I did eventually learn from folks, but it was a little bit later on.

Q- What are some common things people often start out needing help with?
A -  I think people need help with being patient. Everybody wants the silver bullet and it just doesn’t work that way. I can tell you what I do, but you’re going to have to do in a dozen other ways to to find out what works. Spend the time doing your own thing and learn. Don’t be afraid to incorporate other people’s tips and tricks, but ultimately it has to be your own distillation process.

Q- What was some of the best advice you got early on?
A -  I wanted to learn from Richard Dodd and I asked him if I could work on some sessions with him and he said, “You can learn from me, but I can’t teach you.” I took that to mean he’s not going to stop his workflow to show me anything and it was up to me to know how to learn in that situation.

“It’s hard to put a clock on creativity” - Neal Cappellino

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Q- Share with us a recording tip, hack, or secret sauce.
A - Everybody loves compression, it can do so much. I find when I get tracks that have been over compressed it’s largely due to a low end frequency that triggers compression to happen before it would really be necessary. So one of that hacks that we were sharing up at gearfest last week was inserting high pass filters before you compress. One of the things I do to clear up a mix is get rid of all the unwanted low end stuff. High pass filters are your best friend

Q - Before you listen, what are some numbers you would throw as suggested starting points for a low cut filter for some different instruments?
A-
 On a male vocal I might start at 50 or 60 at a pretty steep slope high pass filter and see how it affects the tone. Electric guitars and bass there’s a point at which the bass tapers off and the guitars pick up in that low mid frequency so you just have to play with that. On acoustic guitars there’s a lot of woof that comes out at 200 and that might be more of a notch than it is a high pass filter but sometimes depending on what you want to do with acoustic guitars I’d run that high pass up past 120 maybe up to 200 if you want more articulation on string and pick. Same thing with snare, you want to filter out a little bit of the kick drum so that it’s not triggering the snare compression, set your high pass somewhere around 80.

“The first thing I do is just pull up the faders and listen” - Neal Cappellino

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Q - Share a favorite hardware tool for the studio
A-
 I’ll make a shameless plug about these reflection filters I’ve been using. A reflection filter is this kind of U-shaped baffle that has a sound absorption material on the inside and you place it around a microphone and it doesn two things it helps you isolate the microphone from bleed and or to tune the space that you’re in. So if you’re in a really reflective room and you don’t want that much reflection getting into the microphone, the reflection filter can knock down those reflections and help you control the acoustic space a little bit. A lot of times I’ll use a piece of foam that I stick on a snare mic to block some of the high hat from bleeding in.

Q -Share a favorite software tool for the studio
A-
 I love having the ability to bring up a big template of reverb and delay effects. One of the things I’ve been using a lot is Thermionic Culture Vulture plugin to give tracks grit. Vocals, B3, guitars if they’re too tame and you don’t want to really re-amp it, that’s a cool tool. I do a lot of circular sends to delays and reverbs and sending vocals to a delay then sending that delay pre-fader to a reverb kind of cross-pollinating the effects. That’s always fun to me creating different dimensions with delays and reverb.

“A lot of times our ear interprets low frequency as distance” - Neal Cappellino

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Q -Share with us a tip for the business side of the recording studio

A - Quickin is helpful. Keep track of your expenses just so you know real world what it costs. There’s nothing more helpful than looking at the numbers and knowing where your money is going. You can get a really good picture of what you’re doing by looking at what you’ve paid and what you’ve been paid, and then what that sorts out to at the end of the year, or quarter, or month or whatever. I would pay somebody to help you do your taxes at least a couple of times so you can see how to navigate that. It’s hard to be self-employed you have to pay self-employment taxes. I would do it above the board, you don’t want to get caught owing back taxes. You just want to sleep at night knowing you’re not going to be vulnerable somewhere down the line for something like that. And then if admin rights. If you’re a creator and have authorship or if you’re doing production and there are royalties involved, the admin stuff is really cumbersome but it’s worth getting your hands around whether it’s copywriting songs or registering with soundexchange or a PRO. Do that stuff because when the time comes, hopefully you’ve receive revenue from it. It also helps you in your dealings with clients. Not many people know if you’re registering stuff with soundexchange musicians actually share a portion of the digital royalties from soundexchange if you register it right.

Q -If you had to start over what gear would you need? How would you find people to record? And how would you make ends meet while you got started?

A - I would probably outfit myself with limited resources with some sort of portable multi-channel recording situation that I could move around with. Whether that’s going to other people’s spaces or maybe going to live venues seeing shows. If I was younger and putting more energy into going out a lot that’s probably what I would do. There’s been great success stories of people attaching themselves to artists for the love of the music that they make and ended up working on projects together and that end up being the launching pad. So I’d probably put money into a laptop based multi-channel recording setup, and interface, some affordable pres. Antelope Audio makes a 32 channel pre which is pretty nice. So that you could go to a club or someone's home studio. Find the things that are ubiquitous and versatile. One of the most versatile mics is the 57, the 421, the RE20, the Audio Technica 4033. Those sort of purchases will go a long way towards accommodating many different scenarios. As far as making ends meet, multitask. You’re going to be a position of supporting this career endeavor at first, so it’ll take a lot more than it will give back. I would support that hopefully in a parallel field, maybe you’re in video production or working at a club.

“Give it heart” - Neal Cappellino

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Q - What is the single most important thing a listener can do to become a rockstar of the recording studio?

A - I think it’s be the right person. Hang in there and like I said there’s a lot of people that can do what I do and do it better, but there’s only one person that can be myself. A lot of what you bring to a situation is who you are: personality, chemistry, your heart, your work ethic, your intention. All that stuff factors in. It’s the intangibles that add to the picture at the end of the day.

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NealCappellino.com

Big Thanks to Merissa Marx for this week's episode!!

RSR046 – Steve Marcantonio – John Lennon At The Record Plant

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RSR007 - David Glenn - The Mix Academy

If you dig the show I would be honored if you would subscribe, and leave a rating, & review in iTunes.

RSR046 – Steve Marcantonio - John Lennon at the Record Plant

My guest today is Steve Marcantonio, a Grammy winning producer, recording engineer, and teacher from Nashville TN. He is also a member of NARAS, a Leadership Music alumnus, and winner of the ACM Engineer of the year award.


Steve Marcantonio started his career at the Record Plant Studios in New York City in 1978.

While at the Record Plant he worked with such artists as The J. Geils Band, Aerosmith, Kiss, Heart, Graham Parker, The Blues Bros and John Lennon.


One remarkable and heart breaking story is that Steve spent 8 days in the studio in December of 1980 with John and Yoko. After they left on the night of the 8th John was killed. Quite a shock for a 21 year old who just started in the business 2 years prior.


Steve’s credentials include Rosanne Cash, Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill, Reba, George Strait, Alabama, Restless Heart and Deana Carter. And In recent years Steve has done records with Brantley Gilbert, Thomas Rhett, Band Perry, Taylor Swift, Hank Jr, Steven Tyler and Cheap Trick.


And though he didn’t include it in his bio I know Steve is also dead serious about cooking real Italian food!

For those of you out there that are listening to this either just starting out wanting to be an engineer, maybe working on a session, or just an intern the best quote that I have which was ingrained in me when I first started out is, “As a second engineer you’re to be seen and not heard.” You might be in a session and someone might say something that you know is wrong, don’t come right out and say it. There’s certain ways of going about that, but you should just keep it to yourself. Don’t show up your engineer. When you’re in a session, it’s not about you and what you’re engineering and the gear you’re using. It’s not about the problems you’re having or you may not like the studio, you may hate the studio. It’s about the artist; it’s about the song you’re recording

Steve Marcantonio

“My cousin Joey was the bass player in the Four Seasons” - Steve Marcantonio

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Keep Your Promises

Roy Cicala hired me off the street. I didn’t know anything, so he wanted to teach me his way. I learned a lot of valuable lessons from him. One of which is when you’re booking time with someone you have to keep your promise that you’ll work with them, even if you get booked by someone else who’s a much bigger name. You don’t go by the name, you go by the booking. I was actually involved in a project with the Blues Brothers. I worked on the soundtrack of the Blue’s Brothers movie. It went on for about 6-7 months. I don’t think there was a budget because we spent a heck of a lot of money, a lot of time, and a lot of other things. Along the way I got to learn about a very valuable piece of equipment back then it was called the BTX. It was this white little console that held two tape machines together. Well in September of that year Jonny and Yoko were working on Double Fantasy and they booked the studio and they wanted me because I knew how to use the BTX. I thought for sure that the producer of the Blues Brothers having worked with me for 5-6 months would have said oh sure. He said, “No, I need you here with me.” At the time John Belushi was very famous, the Blues Brother’s movie was going to be huge, but I’m thinking to myself man I have the chance to work with John Lennon. I didn't make any fuss, and as it turns out I missed that chance, but I got my chance late afterwards. You can’t get too bent out of shape with names, you have to keep to whoever it is you’re working with.

“I was known as Roy’s boy” - Steve Marcantonio

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John Lennon at the Record Plant

In 1980 I hadn’t been at the Record Plant for two years and I’m working with John Lennon. It was december that year and they had recorded enough songs on double fantasy to make two records Milk and Honey was the next one. This particular song they brought in was not on Double Fantasy and they wanted to release it as the next single for Yoko. It was a song called Walking on Thin Ice. If you listen to it, it’s sort of like a dance record. I remember the first day, I didn’t even want to look at him because I didn’t know what he was like and I didn’t want him to think that I was [judging him]. So that day I was just really concentrating on what I had to do to keep it together and he had a guy from the BBC there and the one thing I remember him talking about was love me do. When he said that I was like, “Holy Shit! That’s a member of the Beatles sitting 10 ft from me!” It blew me away! By the second day the ice was broken and he was one of the nicest guys I’ve ever, ever worked with. Very down to earth. You know he walked around NYC without any bodyguards. He was such a cool guy and time that was the pinnacle of my career.

                      Yoko Ono - Walking on Thin Ice

I remember the night before he passed it was a Sunday night early Monday morning which is the most desolate NYC night. We were on 44th and 8th about a block away from times square and it was about 3 in the morning and I had already been there close to 20 hours. The producer said let’s take a break and I was fading so I went for a walk. I started to put on my jacket and he said, “Hold on I’ll come with you!” And it was just me and him walking outside and no one was there. No one was there to see me and him, that was so intense for me. Also, the day before he had given me two crisp $100 bills to buy him a clap track because he was collecting studio gear. That night we heard he was shot and I didn’t believe it. I said no way because he just left. But sure enough it turned out to be true. The following day I came into the studio and handed the money back to Roy who then got it back to Yoko.

“Holy Shit! That’s a member of the Beatles sitting 10ft from me!” - Steve Marcantonio

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Gretchen Peters

I would say my number one highlight besides working with John Lennon is I got to record a song with Gretchen Peters. She’s probably one of the most amazing artists I’ve ever worked with. Great singer, great songwriter, she doesn’t write with anyone except for Brian Adams. She had a song she wrote called, “When You Are Old,” and it’s about getting old and tired and grey. My mom had been getting old and she was into music and said, “I want bridge over troubled waters to be played at my funeral.” I gave her this song and she said, “That’s the one I want played.” So sure enough in the funeral home, we played that song and there was not a dry eye in there. That’s one of my major accomplishments besides the grammy. Having that song played for my mom that I recorded was incredible.

                    Gretchen Peters - When You Are Old

Running a Great Recording Session

Obviously you have to pick the right mics to go with whatever instruments you’re using. In order to get a good mix you have to have good sounding tracks. You’d be amazed at some of the stuff I have to mix, I’m not sure where the producer was when they were recording it. In order to get a good sound, you have to have a good sound on the floor whatever instrument you’re recording. Is it in tune? Are the heads changed on the drums? Are they in tune? Does the drummer hit the drums with the right velocity to get a good sound? These are all elements that you’re dealing with as a engineer. I have go-to mics for certain things, but I’m not opposed to trying new things. I have to keep up with the times. I realized in order to stay current I have to try these things. And I love it, I think it’s great!

Secret for Mixing Great Vocals

Country and pop vocals tend to be louder than rock records. What I use mostly in ProTools is RVox, it kind of evens out the vocal. A lot of times too I’ll mult the vocal into where there’s different EQ or compression on it and I’ll use it in different spots in the chorus or verse. And also most female vocalists have an EQ point somewhere around 1k-2k that really hurts your ears during specific spots and a multiband compressor can take care of that or you can just scoop out that EQ. As far as recording vocals, my favorite go to vocal mic is an SM7. It has everything you need. There’s no real, real lows or sparkling highs and the artist can get right up on it. The best thing about it..it’s cheap. When a vocalist says big, most of the time it means a lot of reverb. I tend to use delay most all the time on anything instead of reverb just to give it that width. On a vocal the delay has to be used differently in the verses than the choruses. Instead of sending it to a delay, I duplicate the vocal and I put the plugin right on the vocal. So instead of having the send go up and down, I’ll just clip gain the vocal up or down. I think you have better control over an effect

Tips for Stereo Bussing

When I first started, we never put anything on a stereo bus. These days I start with my slate mix rack which has the meter on it so that I can see, and then I use the virtual console, then depending on the song I go to API or Neve. You can strap the virtual console on groups like all the drums and you can just affect it with just one plugin so they all see the same thing. I don’t use individual faders these days, I’ll bus all of my drums to a master subgroup and on those busses I put my virtual console and I also use a compressor. Sometimes The SSL compressor but lately I’ve been using the Slate virtual bus compressor. When you put a plugin on in protools at first you should always bypass in and out to make sure you’re just not hearing it louder because whenever you hear something louder you instantly think it sounds better, so you should always set your unity gain on a plugin. Having said that with virtual bus compressor its louder because its compressing and limiting and what have you. The last thing I put in the chain in a tape machine.

“Go with your gut and your soul” - Steve Marcantonio

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Jam Session 

Q- Share with us a recording tip, hack, or secret sauce.
A -  There’s not a session that I do that I don’t record acoustic guitars and your listeners might be rock and rollers that have never receded acoustic. I got to work with Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick and he’s a trip. He played the guitar sitting right next to me while I’m engineering. I asked him if he had any acoustics he looks at me and goes, “Acoustic?! I’m a rock guitar player why should I play acoustic?!” Just last week I was working with Dan Huff who’s a great producer and incredible guitar player and we were doing acoustic on this one song and he wanted a really distressed sound so we went into a distressor mode on the acoustic. After 35 years, I never thought of putting that on an acoustic! In addition to that we also had another mic that was clean. Its nice to commit to doing something, but it also nice to have a fallback. I would never think about distorting an acoustic or a drum, but try it once in awhile, you never know! For distressors, if you don’t have the UA the Waves Eddie Kramer tape machine is cool.

Q - Share a favorite hardware tool for the studio
A-
 Drums are my favorite thing to record. I think a lot of people hire me because they love my drum sounds. When I’m recording a room sound, the UREI 1178 is my go-to. I hit the bottom button and the top button and I just slam it. I get it to where it’s blended in a little bit, but I love having heavy duty compression on my drums. Another thing I’ll do is take a mic, the Buyer 160 or any other kind of ribbon mic or maybe even a 57 and I’ll put it right above the kick drum facing the toms and the snare and just compress the snot out of that too. It really adds a nice effect to the overall drum sound so those are my go-to things in recording.

“Go by your ears, don’t go by your eyes. We listen to music we don’t read music” - Steve Marcantonio

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Q - Share a favorite software tool for the studio

A -As far as plugins go the UA plugins, I can do records only using them. All their plugins sound pretty close to what they’re emulating, slate plugins and soundtoys..those are my three favorite brands. I would say amongst all of them echoboy is one I use all the time. I use that in delays and I always go through all the different modes whether its tape or transmitter or am radio, that’s one of my favorite plugins. As far as software, those are my three go-tos. 

Q -Share with us a tip for the business side of the recording studio

A - My wife keeps reminding me I’m a businessman and I’m sure your listeners will hear this and go, “I’m not a businessman, I’m an engineer!” But you’re running your own business and I guarantee you in the course of my career, I’m probably shy $10,000 of bills that I didn’t send. It’s difficult to just go in there and send a bill right away, so I got a guy. Every now and then you gotta call a guy, there’s a guy for everything nowadays. I got a production guy here who does all my billing. He knows every studio here, every record company person. I've waited sometimes for 3 months for a check. You can’t make too much of a big deal with these labels because they might get tired of you and say, “Steve’s a pain in the ass, I don’t want to work with him anymore.” You just have to stay on top of it. I pay Mike Griffith a small percentage to take care of my bills.

"I would hope that engineers get very involved into the song or the track they’re recording” - Steve Marcantonio

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Q -If you had to start over what gear would you need? How would you find people to record? And how would you make ends meet while you got started?

A - Well the first thing I would say is go wherever the music scene is. Go to clubs and get to know musicians in the area. You might have to work online if you still have clients from where you moved from. Otherwise you just have to scratch and claw your way and find out where the music is and go from there. So I have almost the identical setup you have, but of course nowadays you can just get a laptop and some kind of UA hardware and do it that way. If you want to find a place to record you just have to find someone to go in with you. One of the most important things to do in this business is network. You have to get around and get your name out there, meet people, you never know where they are going to be in a week or year or month from now. Be really nice to people and network.

“Be really nice to people and network” - Steve Marcantonio

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Q - What is the single most important thing a listener can do to become a rockstar of the recording studio?

A - I would say to go with your gut and your soul, listen before you speak, and use your ears not your eyes, especially nowadays there’s too many people coming into the control room going “let me see it.”

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Big Thanks to Tyler Cuidon & Merissa Marx for this week's episode!!