What was it like growing up in Sayreville, NJ? Did you come from a musical family?
I grew up in a pretty normal household. No musicians in my family, but it was always in our house, and I was drawn to music early. I played piano a lot as a kid, but never saw it as a career path. It was always just a hobby and a passion, up until my early twenties. I did well in school, and it was always, "You're going to be the doctor in the family." I didn't even know this existed. [points in direction of his console] I only figured out later in life, "Wait, that's somebody's job!"
What was the local music scene like?
I was always in bands. I came up in the New Jersey hardcore scene with my first real group of friends when I got out of middle school. That time ['97 to '99] was an awesome explosion of local music. Later, I was booking shows, running a little record label, and it was cool to be on the ground floor for a lot of these seminal bands [The Dillinger Escape Plan, Deadguy, Ensign]. I was very active in music, but, again, it was just all for fun. My family was still, "You're going to be a doctor when you grow up." [laughs]
It sounds like you had a strong math and science background.
I got good grades and gravitated towards that. We were talking about going to the Ivy Leagues, but financially it didn't make a lot of sense. I wound up going to school in Hoboken for biomedical engineering at Stevens [Institute of Technology], which is a great school. That was my career path at the time. They had just started a music program, and I was there for one of the first years. I was taking recording classes and music theory as electives between science classes.
Do you feel there's an intersection between science education and music?
Every producer that I like is hands-on and has both sides of the brain working. There's a very technical, analytical side to engineering and, obviously, the creative side of it. There are the people that are off on Mars and couldn't do a math problem, and then these unbelievably clinical engineers who can't write a song. So, if you're going to be a one stop shop and do it all, you need both sides of the brain working. I figured out early, "Oh, there's this other part of recording that isn't just fun and jamming with a band." There's a lot of computer work and science behind audio. If anything, it trained me to analyze and think critically. Also, to problem solve in a different way. If I had only been a musician since the age of 13, I probably would've lacked some of my skills in the studio today.
Around this time you got a taste of working in the corporate world.
I worked for Lysol, or rather the mega corporation [Reckitt] that owns them. I was in a microbiology lab, and I found out pretty quickly that it wasn't creative. At that time, research and development was nonexistent for a lot of companies. It was more about re-engineering current products. "How can we make this work better and cost less?" They were interested in mechanical engineers because they needed to make things work cheaper. The repetition and monotony got to me pretty quick and I realized I couldn't do that my whole life.
If you're going to be doing repetitive monotonous work, it's got to be in audio!
Yeah. I'd rather do it a million times here. [laughs] But the landscape is always changing for a producer, and every band is different. Every dynamic is different. I'm always trying to go for a new thing or sound with a band, and it's always an exploration. That is non-existent in that [corporate] world.
Escaping Lysol, you began interning with Gene Freeman [a.k.a. Machine] at his Hoboken-based studio, The Machine Shop.
One of the recording classes that I was taking shared a building with Machine's studio. I had one foot out the door on the science degree, and I was wondering, "What else is there?" Machine had just had a kid, and he needed an intern to babysit the abandoned studio while he took some time off. Everybody in that building knew that I was a big fan of his records and the genres that he worked in, and at the time he was one of the more sought-after producers in heavy music. I was very hungry to grab that position, and he was great. It was a very hard job in the beginning. I was green, and the hours were long. I think the guy before me was Josh Wilbur [Korn, Lamb of God]! I'm trying to replace a guy who had worked under Andy Wallace [Tape Op #25]. So, the learning curve was fast there, but Machine was very accommodating to me using the studio during downtime and learning on my own. It was a big catalyst for me.
So, you were able to start recording your own projects?
Within a couple weeks I already had a friend's band in there. I was just figuring it out, watching him, and sponging up everything I could. There was not a lot of sleep, because I would work a 12-hour day with him and then go and work on my own project until I passed out on a couch. Then I'd wake up and do it all again.
That sounds like your twenties. Going in there as a fan, what were some of the productions at The Machine Shop that caught your attention?
Every Time I Die [Gutter Phenomenon] and that Clutch record [Blast Tyrant] sounded great. He was on the forefront of digital, which I thought was cool. There was this Pitchshifter record that he made [titled www.pitchshifter.com] and Mindless Self Indulgence [You'll Rebel to Anything]; nothing sounded like those albums at the time. I'm not a huge fan of those bands, per se, but the production was unique and creative. We got in pretty early on that digital age, crossing into heavy music. It felt like the place to be to accelerate getting into that side of the genre.
The Machine Shop relocated to nearby Belleville, New Jersey, and you eventually began your own Graphic Nature Audio.
We wanted to expand the studio, because it was small. By then I had crossed into making my own records after a few years of assisting. We were renting drum rooms at the time, and we wanted our own spot. We found a place in Belleville where we had way more space; it was enough rooms for me, Gene, and any of our assistants, plus it had a good drum room. Machine was there for about four or five years, and I ended up staying for maybe 11. Gene wanted his family to move to Texas, so he pulled out and me and my guys renovated the studio and set it up to be our spot. It was a big warehouse in a semi-industrial area of Belleville. Not a glorious area, but to be five miles out of New York City? It was great, and we made so many records there.
How is gain staging important in heavy music? That seems counter intuitive.
It was something I cracked the code on, particularly when we're in the analog world. The dynamics of the music changes based off the level you're hitting with all your gear, and you can work that to your advantage in particular productions or mixes. Everyone's inclination is, "It's just crazy loud music. Turn everything up." I was that guy. "Oh, smash this. Let's smash that!" I was making worse-sounding records by feeling like that was the way to get the sound.
It was too blasted out?
A lot of the amount of gnarliness on a record comes from the design of the source tones more than actually destroying sounds with gear. If you buy a really nice EQ or fancy summing mixer, and then you "break" it by putting the levels too hot, you could be putting the wrong kind of damage on sounds. I realized that tweaking the gain staging throughout the process, with different busses and summing stages, is the ultimate way to control all of that chaos and violence that we hear on heavy productions. Once I figured that out, I was able to really hear what gear does and how it interacts. I'm definitely not saying everything has to be "safe," but it's the delicate use of that gear, and what we push into it, where your headroom actually exists in your signal flow. When you get a grip on that, you really do have a lot more control.
There's a YouTube video where you walk through your bussing process, and I noticed MIDI living alongside your live drum tracks. What's your philosophy towards reinforcing drum hits with samples?
I don't think there's ever been a production I've done where there aren't real drums. Obviously, it's very project dependent, but I'm using both tools to create the best of both worlds. There's no limitation on that for me. There's the purist who says, "You can't use samples. It's bad." I say, "Okay, your drums don't sound as good as mine." [both laugh] It's always about what makes the record sound the way it's supposed to. Everything in the studio, whether it's samples or plug-ins versus real gear, it's all about what's going to give me what I want, what the band wants, and what suits the project. I'll use anything. If it's what solves the problem, I don't care what it is. I've had records where the drums are basically "real." And then I've had records where the drums are very much not. I always use those tools to tailor what we're trying to accomplish with a project.
You don't get pushback from drummers? "Hey, I stomped that kick drum hard. Why did you have to add MIDI?"
It does happen, where people are surprised by what goes into making a record. More so with bands that are less experienced and haven't seen behind the curtain. "What's your favorite record? This one? Okay. This is what they did too." Generally, the rapport with all the bands I work with is good because they trust me to do the thing that they're looking for. So, the process of it, no one really cares.
