Make Your Mark

Asking yourself the question, "What am I doing with my life?" is one of the toughest moments for anyone, let alone a musician struggling to do what they love for a living. For Third Wave Music owner Jen David, it served as a moment of inspiration. "I thought, 'Am I going to work in restaurants and play in bands forever or am I going to try to do my own thing?'" David says. "I decided I was going to do my own thing. If it was going to be anything, it was going to be a music store." Continue reading →

What's essential to making a great record in the mind of Dave Cobb? "Ordering food, drinks and jokes, all three of those are important to me," the Grammy-winning producer says. "I like enjoying the making of a record. I don't ever want it to be a project. When it starts to become a project, when you start pulling out boards and checklists, I'm out." Continue reading →

We all follow our own path into making the sounds that we love. For budding engineer and producer Joe Costner, he forged his own way by rebuilding a mobile trailer from the ground up and learning to record music in a completely different way. "I said, 'I want to do this,' and I fucking went for it like nothing else in my life," Costner says reminiscing about coming up with the concept for Spartan Recording. "I spent a year and a half building this, designing it, did every single cut of wood myself and measured everything myself. I really went for it." With some help from Robert Alexander at Vintage King Los Angeles, Costner transformed a vintage Spartan trailer into a mobile studio space and outfitted it with some incredible gear including a Solid State Logic XL Desk. Watch our brand new Make Your Mark on Costner and Spartan Recording to discover more about the renovation of the trailer, the process of recording in a mobile unit and how the XL Desk has impacted his workflow. Continue reading →

To say that Joe Barresi is an immense source of knowledge in the studio is an understatement in its purest form. The New York City native, who has worked as an engineer and producer for everyone from Kelly Clarkson to Queens of the Stone Age, has spent the better part of three decades amassing an organic education for himself in all things related to recording. Continue reading →

By the time Bill Putnam Jr. was a toddler, his legendary father, Bill Putnam Sr., was out of the recording and mixing world and had begun focusing on creating the legendary gear that would become the foundations of Universal Audio. That didn't stop Bill Sr. from still dabbling in the studio on occasion. Continue reading →

Grammy Award winner Kevin Augunas is best known for his work with The Lumineers, Cold War Kids and Gotye, but his career extends far beyond just production. As the head of Fairfax Recordings (housed in the former Sound City Studios), Augunas has evolved his place in the music industry by becoming a studio and record label owner. In our latest Make Your Mark, we visit Augunas at Fairfax Recordings and learned more about his life in the world of recording and beyond. Watch the mini-doc on Kevin below and read an expanded interview to find out how he ended up at Sound City, his choices in gear and his favorite part of working in the studio. Continue reading →

Even though you might not realize it, the music of Klayton (Celldweller) surrounds you. The native New Yorker and multi-instrumentalist has become widely known for the music he has created for film, TV shows and video games, in addition to his countless remixes and albums released under the banner of Celldweller. Having moved to the Detroit-area while in search of his first lucrative record contract, Klayton has established a home for himself in the Motor City, one that includes an incredible studio space. Discover more about the man behind the Celldweller name by watching our latest Make Your Mark feature and read our expanded interview below to learn of Klayton’s love of gear and his recording space. Continue reading →

In the lore of recording history, there are those who make one-of-a-kind contributions that will forever be remembered for their work in the field. For Rupert Neve, he's had the distinct honor of doing this over and over again by consistently bringing new innovations into the pro audio world. Throughout his 80 years of building electronics, Neve has gone from childhood tinker to console master to audio legend. Continue reading →

For Ted Greenberg, the star of the second installment in our Make Your Mark series, a love of audio seemed predestined from birth. The Greenbergs were a musical family, and Ted became involved in drums at an extremely early age. After working on some projects in the studio, Ted could never fully understand why the end result sounded so bad. He soon realized the answer was bad gear. Continue reading →

Life is simple in Austin, Texas, and that’s the way producer Daniel Barrett likes it; a dog on the floor, tubes in his gear and a French Press machine for making coffee. After spending years as an artist working in large-scale studios, Barrett took to creating a home recording space, Rubicon Studios, that better suited the Lone Star State's laidback vibe. Continue reading →