Before the Event
How did the two of you meet?
Arun Pandian: We met because a good friend of mine and Devin's is a songwriter named McGowan. [To Devin] How did you meet McGowan?
Devin Greenwood: Basically through John Legend's old Philly crew. He was writing songs with an Australian guy, who goes by the name of Old Man River, and he wanted both Arun and I to play on the project. We ended up forming a band, but this guy lives in Australia – halfway around the world! We were meeting and commiserating a lot, and eventually we became good friends.
AP: I'm from Texas. I originally went to school for finance. I landed the Miseducation tour with Lauryn Hill. I did that for a few years, and I got to play on both the record and the tour. Through that, I played with Santana, Mary J. Blige, and Nas. After that, I was in New York for a while. I did some off-Broadway performing with Savion Glover and Jared "Chocolate" Crawford, who I ended up producing in Philly for a record label, with Chris Schwartz of Ruffhouse Records, which The Fugees came out on. I was producing Chocolate on that label in Philly and then came back here to New York. After 9/11, I was at a crossroads. I asked the question, "Do I want to be a guitar player anymore, to tour with people and be on the road?" I decided that I didn't, that I'd rather control my own career. I started getting into sound, audio production, and engineering. I taught myself. I bought a piece of gear, learned how to use it, sold it, and got another piece of gear. I mentored with Henry Hirsch [Tape Op #56] at Waterfront Studios upstate, working with him as a producer. I also learned a lot by doing my own music. Since then, I've worked with artists like Norah Jones, Mumford & Sons, and Gabriel Garzón-Montano.
DG: Mine's a similar arc. I played classical piano as a kid, but ended up studying film in college, which is a real passion of mine. After film school though, I got a chance to tour with [vocalist] Donna Godchaux from The Grateful Dead. I did that for a couple of years when I was 22. Later on, I played with Lo Faber from God Street Wine, became Amos Lee's first music director, and did several years internationally with Melody Gardot, singing and playing [Hammond] B3. I was songwriting inbetween all that – Steve Forbert actually covered one of my songs – and I put out a record back in 2006 called Eye in the Cloud. Like so many singer-songwriters, I felt like I was on track to get signed, but at the same time I was starting to get into studio craft as well. Just outside of Philly there was a place where Shelly Yakus [Tape Op #31] used to work, called Scullville Studios. Shelly did all of the early Tom Petty, John Lennon, The Band, Dire Straits, U2, and so many famous songs that you know, like [Van Morrison's] "Moondance." He's a really great dude. I made my record there with Shelly and Rachel Alina. I learned about studio engineering and recording to tape, and I was seduced by this whole world. When I started producing local artists, and one of them got signed, people wanted me to make records for them. All of a sudden I was making money doing that. Around that same time, Norah Jones had me play on her third studio record [Not Too Late] and we were recording Amos Lee's first album as well at Sear Sound [#41] and the old Magic Shop [#66]. Before long I'd moved to New York and opened my own studio, The Honey Jar. Since then I've worked with people like Sufjan Stevens [#70], who was in the neighborhood, and Steve Reich [#15] – which is how I got into the new music world.
AP: I'm currently teaching audio engineering at Long Island University. A good friend of mine, from my Lauryn Hill days, is head of the recording technology program over there, and he approached me about teaching. It's right down the street from where we are now. My first inclination was to recoil back – I'm actually doing this for real. I don't want to go teach in a classroom. He said, "Oh, come on. You're really into this and you've got a studio. It'd be great for you to come talk to these kids." I did it, and I was surprised by how much I actually enjoyed it. After teaching at LIU, I started to think about doing a Master's in Music Technology or something like that. I ended up at NYU, studying in the Tonmeister program, where I got to learn about classical recording techniques, as well as 3D audio. Devin knew that I was doing this, so he told me about the broken instruments project, and he suggested we team up and record it. They weren't planning to record the concert. We partnered with Sennheiser. Speaking of, we'd like to thank David Missall and Axel Brisard for donating the microphones to record the event. We also have a GoPro Fusion camera that I purchased. I'm going to shoot 360 video of the performances as well, for the sound installation.
AP: There will be a vinyl 2-track stereo release of the 3D audio recording.
DG: We'll mix the 2-track record either here at the Honey Jar, or in Arun's studio, Signal Corps Recording. There will also be a sample bank, with avant-garde electronic music being made from those same sounds.
AP: And there will be the 3D sound installation, which I'll be mixing at NYU. They have the lab and the speaker setups that we need.
