The Memoirs of an Audio Engineer

My parents tell me that whenever I jumped into a new activity that I fully submerged myself in it. Whether it was hockey or boy scouts or music, it became my life. My parents got divorced when I was very young; I almost don't even recognize a reality in which they were ever together, even though I do have bits and pieces of memories. Children of divorce interact with and see the world differently I believe; the narrative of "go to school, do well, go to college, do well, get a job, do well, retire at 65" doesn't really seem to resonate as well than with people who grew up in happier nuclear families. Art tends to be the only way these children can express themselves fully and so was the case for me.

Music was always around me; my father would always have his favorite CDs blasting whenever he would pick me up from school or if we were on our way to his house for the weekend. He was a rock fan, and arguably one of the best kinds. He grew up in the 1970s and 1980s so if you're doing the math that means he had (and still has) original Queen, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd records in his collection. Of course as time went on and by the time I came around in the early 90s, he was listening to Pearl Jam and Nirvana amongst other popular rock bands of the time. This fueled me. I couldn't wait to get in his car, have him put on a Seven Mary Three album and sing along with him to "Cumbersome," and yeah, it looked (and sounded) exactly like that one seen in Workaholics where they spend an entire scene showing the guys doing the same thing. My mother always had music playing in the car too and it too was great music, but I'm not sure it had such a lasting effect. She was listening to Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, ...I'm sure another member of the Jackson family, and at some point became a country fan (which I never truly understood considering she's from North Jersey).

Performing music came into play in second grade. Fortunately the schools I went to had a focus on the arts and choir was mandatory for a time, not that I was complaining but I really wanted to make noise, like that kind of noise that makes your ears ring endlessly for an entire night and part of the next day.

I have no recollection of this but apparently I used to beat on pots and pans with wooden spoons as a kid, the typical drummer origin story. I do have vivid memories of constantly having my feet in hands in motion in some sort of discernible rhythm but because I lived in an apartment for the first 13 years of my life drums could never be played. I could, however, get my opportunity to beat a snare drum to death in the school band; unfortunately, band was only offered to fifth graders and older. I spent second and third grade in choir and developed a love for singing and I got pretty decent at it. By fourth grade I really wanted a new experience, knowing that I had to wait a whole year before I could try out for the school band. My teacher that year was, as some people say "a huge piece of shit." Needless to say, I needed to get out of the class as much as possible and so for a change of scenery I chose to give the viola a try; I really don't why I chose the viola and to be honest I didn't play it much because half way through the year I broke my arm playing hockey with my dad and playing a viola with an arm stuck at a 90 degree angle is a bit difficult. That was difficult year for me as I was in and out of surgeries and check-ups but by the summer before fifth grade I was out of my cast and awaiting September so that I could try out for drums.

So, September came, as did the try outs, and you know what happened? Your boy got cut. I was so nervous for my try out, the moment I had been waiting years for, and I blew it. My sense of rhythm was nearly non-existent. To make things worse, I found out later that I was trying out for the last spot on the drum line, which mean't that if I didn't get it, chances were that someone was. The instructor asked if I wanted to try out for another instrument and for some reason I said "yeah I guess the tuba." The fucking tuba. I was given a tuba, blew a couple times and the instructor said that it was a "perfect" fit, which was such bullshit as I think in retrospect, my mouth couldn't stay on the mouthpiece at all. But I convinced myself I wanted to be a tuba player now and I went home to tell my mom that I failed my drum tryout by succeeded in beginning my tuba career.

Thank Christ that told me to go to the instructor the next day and tell her its drums or nothing otherwise I might still be a tuba player. As instructed, I went back to have that discussion and was given a second opportunity to tryout and nailed it. There was still a problem: as predicted, the last spot was filled. It was actually filled by a girl I was friends with and so I couldn't join until next year. Disappointed, but understanding, I went to class and sat next to that girl and told her what had happened. What she did next probably changed my life: she went to the instructor and pulled herself from the drum line so that I could join. I found out from her years later that she pulled herself off the line because she had a crush on me and knew that I had been waiting for the opportunity to play drums. Just to cap this part of the story off on a comedic note: she reminded me almost every day for the rest of our grade school careers that I was a drummer because of her.

Fast-forward many years, I've been playing drums for years now, my family moved out of the apartment and into a house, where my drumming only bothers my mother and stepfather, I went back to choir because that same band instructor who gave me a second chance to tryout turned out to be unenjoyable to be around, and I'm trying to start bands with friends in school but have no idea how to do that or even what that means. At some point, I had befriended a group of metal-heads who were older high school kids, which I thought was coolest at the time. They had a band already and practiced almost every day. I remember going over to where they practiced for the first time and seeing the room where they practiced. Guitars, amps, drums, basses, various pieces of equipment everywhere. They also had microphones set up everywhere, a mixing console sitting on a desk with XLR cables plugged into every single input, and a Fostex digital 8-track recorder sitting next to that mixing console to record everything. I don't exactly remember what it was that struck me as amazing but what I do remember is that was all I could think about from that point on. I knew I wanted to do something with music for a career, I never really knew what until that moment that I was going to be an audio engineer.

I began collecting whatever microphones I could afford and buy a mixing console of my own and eventually I was given the opportunity in high school to produce and engineer my first project, a folk group called The Shade Plant Bandits. Because of the equipment I had at the time, every song had to be recorded by having every band member playing in my bedroom at the same time live, mic'ed up, and all the microphones plugged into my P.A. mixer which only had 8 inputs. That mixer was plugged into the headphone jack of my Macbook Pro and recorded into Garageband, so this meant that I had mix every song live because it was getting recorded into one stereo track in real time. We did the entire album this way and honestly, I'm still super proud of that record.

I would later go on to join a new band from the frontman of Shade Plant called The Michael Character where we went on to put out two full band records, both of which I either produced and/or mixed, and tour the entire United States. After The Michael Character, I went on to exercise my vocal chops for the first time in a hardcore band that I started called The Artwork Of, where I produced and engineered four EPs, and toured the United States again, before calling it quits after five years.

I love playing music live, it's cathartic, it's energizing, it's therapeutic, but for me it is second to sitting in a studio getting to help someone track the next great record. All through high school I worked my ass off. So much so that I was able to use the second half of my senior year to go work an internship at a record label to learn more about the music business. During my junior year, a couple friends started recording music with a local engineer in a backyard studio that he built and this studio was amazing. He had everything a professional studio has but this was just in this kids backyard and at the time I thought this engineer was the best there ever was. I found out that he went to New York University and at that point my focus was on getting into NYU for school. The summer before my senior year I was accepted to attend a two-week audio engineer summer camp at NYU and it was one of the best experiences of my life, but the one thing that was huge for me was that this was something that would absolutely help my chances of getting into NYU. Let me save you the anxiety of knowing whether or not I eventually got into NYU. I was accepted, but not for the program I wanted, and it didn't matter anyway because the school was too expensive for me to go. I ended up going to a school in Philadelphia that no longer exists simply because it sucked. I didn't graduate from college; attending class got so bad for me that just to show my parents I was going, I would keep to my morning routine of getting up at 4 a.m., walking the half mile to the train station, take the train to another train that would take me Philly by 7:30 a.m., only to grab two Bacon McGriddles from the train station McDonald's and then turn around and get back on the train to come home. Eventually I just dropped out. I wasn't learning anything new and the stuff I was learning didn't interest me at all.

This is the world of art: if you want to be an artist, make art. Simple. Do the thing you want to do and so you will be an artist. To make a career of art is a bit different as you typically need to know people who know other people who can help elevate you to a spot of financial security. I had plenty of musician friends who knew engineers who owned studios, so my plan was to contact these studios and see if I can get an internship. I figured the best way to get into a studio was to get into a studio. At a recording session in which I was hired to do drum work for a band, I asked the owner if he was looking for interns and he said to send him a resume. I did the following week and was hired. This studio wasn't a great working experience but a decent learning experience for me as the owner ended up not being stuck in the ways of the 80s when it came to processes and even technology. Eventually I went on a tour with my band and just never went back to that studio and I found out that Hurricane Sandy completely wiped it out months later.

Utilizing my musician connections once again a year or so later, I was able to land an interview for an internship at another studio, Blue Light Digital Sound in Mount Holly, New Jersey. I got a phone call informing me that I was hired the following week. That was almost 8 years ago. In 8 years, I went from being a starry-eyed engineer-hopeful with much to learn about real world studio experience to an intern, who was never given "no" as an answer from the owners, to an engineer who developed his own techniques about production and editing, to now where I serve as Recording and Production Services Coordinator for Blue Light and its 3 separate recording facilities in New Jersey.

As bright I tried to make the end of this story, here is the reality of the my situation: I'm working full-time in property management and spending what time I can on helping the studio grow its recording business. Blue Light provides instructional services to people with developmental disabilities as a primary source of income, and we are doing well in that regard, but the recording aspect of the business has suffered as a result. I am an engineer. It is in my blood and need to continue doing it. As COVID-19 still lives among us, I've had to switch my operation at home by upgrading the equipment I personally own to be able to mix and master from home and I'm doing so successfully. The problem is now I have a wife, a home, and furry little children that depend on me and so I have to be careful how I spend my time because time = money. I am an engineer, I have to be. Without this label, I am nothing and without my skills I don't have a future.