A few years ago, my studio manager, Zach Bloomstein, needed to do a session in the Santa Barbara area, and his client hooked them up with Alan Parsons’ ParSonics Studio in Goleta, California. There, he met the house engineer, Noah Bruskin, and when he returned, he told me how amazing and helpful Noah had been on their sessions. When I dropped Alan a line for our recent podcast, he told me, “I have a complete genius Pro Tools operator in the studio,” and said to drop Noah a line. In an era where everyone seems to lament the lack of mentoring in recording, Noah has been able to spend years working with a master engineer/producer – a situation that is generally lacking these days, and his takeaways offer up some good insight.
Have you been busy?
Yeah, there are lots of different things going on. I’ve been doing a lot with Alan here at ParSonics. I work at another studio in Montecito [Secret Garden Recording Studios] as well. It's the farthest away, yet in the same town, as you could get from each other. [laughter]
They're on the north and south sides of Santa Barbara.
Yeah, you know. Often, the client wants to go in at Secret Garden, but they have an engineer. I’ve got to go down there, and then, when they're done, I’ve got to go back, lock up, and make sure everything's cool.
Is Secret Garden a private studio?
It's semi-private. It's owned by Ben Margulies who co-wrote and co-produced Mariah Carey's big hits on her first [self-titled] album. He built the studio in 2000 or so, and I met him a few years back. The studio had not been changed since then and it was out of date. I convinced him to upgrade. Another studio that I used to work at, in Carpinteria [just south of Montecito], ended up selling off all their gear. They had bought the same exact console that Alan got here, the [Rupert Neve Designs] Shelford 5088. I said, “You're never going to get a better deal on this console,” and I ended up convincing him to buy it. I basically rewired the whole studio with the builder that built Alan’s place, Jared Stansill, and slowly got all the gear back up and working. I know where all the buttons, patch points, and everything are now. Nothing can happen there without me, which is job security, but...
It's hard to make a studio completely intuitive for freelance engineers.
Definitely. Everybody's workflow is a bit different, like, for instance, the ways they want to use the console or headphone system. But, luckily, it's many of the same clients that always come back. Once they get it all figured out, I only get the phone call if something bad has happened.
When something breaks! What was your path leading to working with Alan Parsons?
I'm from Goleta, in the Santa Barbara area. I got the bug for this in high school and ended up going to Hollywood to go to Musician's Institute. I did their one-year program and got the foundation of most of what I know, but L.A. was not cut out for me. It was much too cutthroat. I'm glad it didn't work out there, because I probably would still be running and getting food at a studio.
Were you interning in L.A.?
I was looking for a spot, but no one was biting. Right after MI, I ended up getting an internship back here in Santa Barbara, at a studio downtown that's no longer there [Playback Recording Studio]. I worked a six-month internship there, and within three months the main engineer, and basically everybody else on the staff, quit to go work for Sonos. The owner was like, “Okay, you're up.” I jumped into the deep end. My first session there was with Kevin Costner doing a voiceover. I worked there for close to three years, with all kinds of different talent on everything under the sun, doing audio books, TV, voiceover commercials, music, and radio. All right around the end of this studio, because it was struggling as the commercial real estate was way too expensive. The owner was looking to get a partner or sell the studio. Alan, at that time, was thinking about buying a studio or building one. He came in and they were working on a deal, but it didn't really make sense for Alan, so he ended up backing out. The studio ended up closing and they destroyed the place, sadly. Maybe a month or two later, I heard through the grapevine, “Alan might want you to go work up at his place.” I sent him an email, and he said, “Yeah, come up next Monday.” We met at his house, and he was in the stages of building ParSonics. It was just getting drywalled.
He told me that the previous owner installed generators in it for an end of the world, Y2K scenario?
Yeah, definitely. There were some weird things. Everything had that barbed wire across the fence.
Like razor wire?
Yeah. I met up with Alan on a Monday, and he's like, “Alright, come back on Wednesday and we're going to start working.” Alan had a studio in his house that was there when he bought it. An old, funky studio. We started work up there while this place was getting buttoned up. I helped wire and test everything here. It was a natural process, “Okay, now we've got to bring all the gear down to the studio.” That was 2017, and that's how it all started.
Alan Parsons is an amazing producer and engineer. But he is also one of the most gracious people I've been around.
Absolutely! Such a humble human. He's the kind of person you want in a session to make sure everything's going to be okay. There's no bad energy. It's all going to work out, and everything's going to be cool.
A calm demeanor.
Exactly. So many producers are synonymous for yelling at people. It's the opposite here.
What was some of the first work that you did with Alan?
The first thing we did was his album, The Secret. I was thrown into that! We had just wired the studio, and nothing had been tested. His whole band and all this crew came in, “Okay, we're in now and it's got to work.” Otherwise, everybody’d be sitting around. That was a long process of, “How does this all work?” Sorting out the workflow, the console, and dialing all that out. Then we were working on multiple sessions. We started doing the remixes of Al Stewart’s Year of the Cat and Time Passages [that Alan had produced]; we did both of those albums in surround and stereo. That was a blast to do. Those multitracks are absolutely incredible; just perfect. Obviously, back then you couldn't see the waveforms as we do now, but I throw them into Pro Tools off those tapes and I’m like, “Gosh, those are beautifully perfect waveforms.” Everything is exactly where it should be. We’ll pull everything up and it's 90 percent there. Which was such a lesson. You don't need to put a million plug-ins on or do anything else. Just get it right, then and there. We’re not having to jump through hoops to get somewhere from nothing.
Were those Al Stewart records on 24-track?
Yeah, 24 tracks. I think they had done some overdubs on 16-track, but what Alan used to do was bounce everything down from the 16-track to a pair of tracks on the 24.
Sync them up but then mix them back on to the 24 so they're all in one place?
Exactly. But it was interesting because if we wanted to, we could go into the 16-track and pull out all the breakout of harmonies or whatever it was, which was helpful to place them in surround and spread them out a bit. That was a huge learning lesson. Around that time, we also did The Alan Parsons Project’s Ammonia Avenue. What an incredible album! The songs on that album are masterpieces. It's so eye-opening to see how it used to be done, and think, “Okay, this is actually how it should be.”
Have you picked up an ethic of like, “Let's get it in the right way”?
Yeah, for sure. I try not to paint myself into a corner. I will do some filtering most of the time, a little high pass. Then in the box I'll throw a little more high pass on it. Just in case someone's like, “Oh, that bass doesn't have quite enough lows.” It definitely taught me the confidence of committing. Everybody's like, “Oh, I don't know about this sound.” If you're happy with something, then do it. I've found so often that even doing demos, something magical happens in that moment. You may never be able to recreate it. “We got it.” In that vein, you want to have the right feel of everything. Everybody's, “Oh, we'll do it later. We'll fix it in the mix.” It hurts me to do that. I'll say, “No, we're here now. Let's get it right.” I've definitely adopted that mindset. It makes everything so much better, and easier. It's more inspiring to have the sound we were looking for while we're recording overdubs over it. A vocalist wants to be in the song. If it's all over the place, then they won't have the inspiration to give all to the vocal. There's no other way to do it in my mind. I've had a lot of my clients say that too.
People spend too much time in the candy store. They need to get out of there.
Definitely.
When I get hired to do a record I'll say, “Let's keep this in focus. Everything has to have intent.”
Exactly. Something that I have trouble with is when some producers, or some artists, are like, “Let's just throw the kitchen sink at it and see what sticks.” How about we consciously decide what we're thinking, what we're doing, what we're going to use, and the parts we're going to put down? There's absolutely a place where you can try things and mess around. But to slap it all down and have to go back later and piece it all together? Now we've got a jigsaw puzzle that we've got to work from rather than having a beautiful song. It's a big challenge.
If we commit along the way, at least the next reaction is only to decide if that commitment was right or wrong.
Exactly. It gives a direction. That was a huge learning lesson for me. One of the major takeaways from doing those records is trusting your ear and instinct. When I work with Alan, I've got the computer screen away from the console, and Alan's not looking at it either. He's saying, “The guitar on the left is a little bit louder than the guitar on the right.” Sometimes I'm like, “No, it looks like they're the same level.” But no, he's listening and hearing that. It's taught me to not trust what I’m seeing. It takes me out of the music, staring at the waveforms and all the plug-ins. The luxury of not having to look at the computer is a big one. Growing up listening to music, we know what we like. It's knowing that and trusting it. A lot of people fool themselves and think, “I don't know what's right.” You know what you like. You have to find your way there.
Have you helped with some of Alan's Master Class Training Sessions?
Oh, yeah. Those are a learning experience for me as well. It’s one thing to do something; it's another to explain it! I have done maybe ten of the Master Classes with Alan in various forms. It's always such a learning experience for everybody. It's a fun dynamic, and it definitely spices things up. It's one thing working alone with an artist, one-on-one. But if you have a crowd of people, it's a whole other thing. It's interesting to see other people's tastes. It's always inspiring for me, because I come out of it with a new perspective; I’ve learned to see through the eyes of everybody else.
Do you have a personal studio space yourself?
Most of the time I'm here at ParSonics. When the Atmos build happened, I had just moved out of my space – I had a pretty fleshed out studio. I said, “Alan, I have everything you don't have, and you have everything I don't have. Let's marry the two.” This is the best of both worlds. I tend to come up here often. Alan only really comes in here if we have work to do, usually in the afternoon. If I need to do something, I'll come in the morning and knock it out. I do have my old desk with my computer and such at the other studio in Montecito, as well.
What was the biggest studio surprise for you that Alan brings to the table?
I had never even conceptualized or knew about vari-speed. That was an eye opener! Of course, they had it with tape. That was Alan's go-to thing, and very simple to do on tape: Slow it down a little bit. But in Pro Tools we use the [Apogee] Big Ben [external word clock]. We’ll slow down the sample rate by x amount of clicks and get the same type of thing. I had never thought of that!
It's a feature they basically wrote out of DAWs.
Double tracking with vari-speed is hugely important to Alan's sound. I've listened to Alan’s records; they sound so big and wide, with so much depth. I think a huge part of that sound is tracking with vari-speed.
Has working with Alan made you focus on your own sonics and recording quality?
Yeah. It's unexplainable, in a sense. I’ll set up the mics, and then Alan will come in and do the littlest tweaks. Then I'll think, “Oh, there's the Alan Parsons sound.” I could have done that, but it's not the Alan Parsons sound. I've seen it with other producers and engineers that I've worked with. “Oh, there's their sound. How did we get there?” It's indescribable, but they have their ear and their instinct. It's all the choices, the whole chain, but it all comes down to that instinct. Learning Alan's choices, the fidelity of the results was eye-opening for me. Coming into this, I hadn't done a ton of records. I didn't do a lot of music recording because it wasn't profitable in the other studio. Rarely did I ever do anything 100 percent on the mixing board, and that's Alan's MO. The little touches that give it Alan’s sound are an enigma to me still. I’ve learned a lot from that. Then, I'm like, “I’ve got to find my sound and put it all together. 
