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When producer/musician Jay.Greens’ founded Perception Records in Denver, Colorado, the goal was simple: collaboration and community. Fast forward a few years later and he’s bringing that philosophy to Los Angeles with Green Room Studios, a boutique studio in Highland Park that Jay tells us is all about “making records with people you like to do it with”.
We sat down with Jay recently to talk about the studio’s latest upgrades. Read on to find out why he chose the API 2448 console, how it impacts his workflow, why he still loves making records in a singles-driven market, and the one small detail that Vintage King provided to the patchbay that he considers important for a professional studio.
Tell us a bit about the studio and the work that you do.
The Green Room is a boutique studio owned by Perception Records, which is an indie label based out of Denver and LA. We use the space mostly for writing, production, recording, and mixing; pretty much everything other than mastering is done here.
We also have a live room across the hall that's wired in through Dante, so we're able to record full live bands. The whole approach is about making it a positive experience for the artist and making it fun while also doing it at the highest level possible and achieving something that's inspiring to work on. It's been a really awesome first year.
It's so great to hear that you still value records, even in today’s single-driven market.
Part of it is my love for listening to records. I love to go to the record store, pick out a record, and listen to it from start to finish; I like to listen to music the way it was created, I guess. Also, selfishly, from a creative perspective, I love the craft of creating a full body of work: putting intention behind it, and really having an underlying sonic character and message that you can translate on that behalf, all kind of baked into one. I think that’s lost in the art form of the single.
We are releasing a lot of singles that are part of an album – we’re doing it waterfall style – just to be able to keep up with the algorithm and its demands. But we are also still making albums, pressing everything to vinyl, and trying to do it the old way because, honestly, it's more meaningful. The whole process from start to finish is just so much more impactful, I think, for the listener and the creative.
Have there been any sessions at Green Room that have been particularly memorable?
One of my favorite projects that I'm working on right now is an incredible vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter from Denver named Halle Tomlinson. She and I are co-producing her debut solo album, and we had the first of a couple of full band tracking sessions in November. We got some good friends of mine in the studio: legendary New Orleans drummer Alvin Ford Jr., who’s played with J. Cole and is touring with Jon Batiste right now. We also had my other dear friend and mentor Borahm Lee from Pretty Lights, and Break Science, among others. We had LA-based keyboard player and multi-instrumentalist Andris Mattson from Moonchild in here as well. It was just an awesome couple of weeks and we got some incredible drum, keyboard, and synth sounds tracked.
I’ve also been working with my good friend Stu Brooks, who is the touring bass player for Dominic Fike and has worked with artists such as Matisyahu, 50 Cent, Danny Elfman, and more. We’ve had a lot of different people in here, and it's only been a year and we're just getting started. We’ve also just started opening the studio up for rent – it's available for bands and independent artists that want to get studio time, hire an engineer, and work in a professional studio. We’re excited for what’s to come.
What inspired the recent studio upgrades?
Part of it was that the company had an expansion. We opened the LA location and with that big move, we brought in a couple of other investors and decided it was time to go all in. We had spent a substantial amount of money renting studio time from other places, and as time went on, it made less sense to continue giving money to all these different studios when we knew that if we had our own equipment, we could also be bringing some of that money back as revenue.
It was a business decision that also benefited me as an engineer and producer because I got to build this incredible studio and work on all this dream equipment. So it was strategic, but it was also about taking a leap on the creative side and being able to make music at the highest level possible without having to rely on other studios, other people’s schedules, or budgets. We want to be able to work here at any time on any day of the week and not have to worry about a studio being booked or draining a budget.
What drew you to the API 2448 console?
I've had the chance to work on a couple of great consoles in my career. I learned on an SSL AWS900, which was a great board to work on, and then I got the chance to record at Sunset Sound and work on their API Demedio board, which was a game-changing experience for me. It is one of the most legendary consoles in the world, and everywhere else I went after that, I found myself chasing the sounds we got at Sunset Sound.
I’ve also worked on a Neve at Studio G Brooklyn, and at Colorado Sound in Denver and they're all great boards: I love the Neve, the SSL is great, but there's a character to the API and a certain sound that comes off it that just grabs me. I think it's unbeatable!
And then there’s the functionality of the modern APIs! To me, the 2448 is the perfect hybrid between the analog and the digital: it has all the functionalities of a vintage API analog console, like the warmth and the tone, but it integrates perfectly with Pro Tools. I can use it as a DAW controller, save and write automation… It's an incredible workflow and is the fastest, easiest way to make music, I think – if you know how to use it.
When it came time to buy a console, I didn't even consider anything else. Dave [Fisk] was like, “Wow, you're the easiest client I think I've ever had! You just knew what you wanted and you were ready to buy!” And I’m like, “Yeah, we thought about it for many, many years!” [Laughs]
What are some of your favorite features of the console?
I think my favorite feature has got to be the tone, above all else. Nothing beats the sound and punch of the API preamps, but I love everything about it! I love the API 560 EQs because you can sculpt so precisely with them; it's pretty cool to have an analog EQ that has such precise control. I also have an API 2500 bus compressor that I use pretty much all the time for drum compression or parallel compression of any kind.
Many users love how you can really push the console in a way that you just can’t when working in the box – has that been your experience as well?
Totally! The sound you get when you intentionally clip something on the API is an incredible, beautiful saturation that is not achievable digitally without it getting abrasive.
You can push the console, smash it, get grit out of it, or you can get clarity and absolute pristine-sounding perfection, so I really think my favorite feature is the sound of the console – it’s about the API tone and color; I really can’t rave about it enough.
Having 48 channels to mix with is awesome as well; I never run out of channels! Most of the time, 32 channels are enough for a lot of the mixes I’m doing, so it's just perfect.
It’s really about the way the whole console works and integrates with my entire digital setup; that's probably my favorite thing about it. I couldn’t just pick one thing; there are so many things!
How have you customized the 2448 for your studio’s needs?
I haven't really customized the console itself, but I have my own little 500 Series rack up in there that's kind of customized. I have a couple of Sunset Sound “Tutti” 500 Series mic pres, a pair of 527A API compressors, a One-La Compressor, and an SSL G-Comp.
Then of course, there’s all the sidecar gear: we have the API 2500 compressor, a stereo pair of Chandler Germaniums, a pair of the Distressors, an 1176, LA-2A, and four channels of Neve 1073s.
Aside from helping you work faster, how has the console impacted your workflow?
It's made me much more intentional about the choices I make during mixing and recording. A lot of that comes from having unlimited access to the console and being able to work on a mix for as long as I want – within the time constraints of when a project is due, of course – but if I'm willing to work through the night, nobody's gonna stop me.
It's really given me an opportunity to zero-in on the sound I'm going for, how to get there, and, as much as possible, doing it analog first. Previously, the mixing and the final production stage was definitely more in-the-box because what would happen is I’d get to record at a studio with a console and then I would work on the files at home. That was cool, but when you're able to work on the tracks in the same place that you recorded them and continue to progress with the mix in analog…I think my approach has changed completely.
When I'm ready to mix, I’m really trying to get the sound that I'm going for on the board and with the outboard gear that we have in the studio. If it needs any kind of additional treatment, I'll do it in the box after the fact. It’s made me more intentional, more thoughtful, creative, and patient with my process.
There’s so much enjoyment in the craft when you're doing it on a board and you can physically change the sound with your hands as opposed to being hunched over a computer. I come from a background of being a musician first – I'm a guitar player, first and foremost – and I want making music to always feel like music and not coding. [Laughs] Sometimes when you’re working in the box, it can feel ‘not musical’! It feels very technical, which is fun, and there is a place for that, but I strive to feel like I'm playing an instrument when I'm in the studio and being on a board feels like you're playing an instrument. Not to say that people aren't doing that with their computers, but I just feel a disconnect for me when it comes to the digital world.
What was it like working with David Fisk and Vintage King during the purchase of the console?
Dave is really easy to work with; very friendly, he knows his stuff, and he's been very helpful. It was an easy process. I don't like to shop; I'm not interested in checking out all the different options and talking about all the different possible things, and I think he knows that. He's got my vibe and he knows that I usually know what I'm looking for. I might have a couple of questions about a couple of different things, but then I'm ready to pull the trigger and move on because I'm busy and I’ve got records to make! [Laughs] So he's very comfortable with that and he's been great.
Did VK also install the console?
Yeah, Frank Verschuuren came in, installed the console, and wired the patchbay together as well. Frank is also a great guy and really helpful. The studio is kind of a tight squeeze and it was easier for him to crawl back behind the desk than me because he's a little smaller than me, so that worked out well. [Laughs]
What was the process of reworking the patchbay like?
I told them all the gear that we had, how we wanted to use it, and they built out the layout for us and Frank wired the patchbay. The only patching I have to do regularly (other than during live tracking sessions from the live room) is any outboard gear that I'm throwing on an insert. Most of the other essential signal flow routing is streamlined with normaling. During tracking sessions, because I'm running from the live room through Dante, we go to the Focusrite, out of that into the API Mic or Line inputs, and then the API outputs are normalled out into our interface (we have Apollo x16s), so it’s pretty simple.
Because we use Dante, I have to use the digital routing as well when we're tracking, so we did the analog patchbay first, the Focusrite to API mic inputs, throw the compression on the large fader inserts, and the headphones from the aux sends out into the Focusrite in, and then we have to go into Dante and make sure all the digital routing works with the I/O and Headphone sends to the live room hear back. Now that we have a template built, it's pretty quick and we don’t have to redo the digital routing each time, but that is probably the most complex part of our setup.
I think my favorite thing that Vintage King did with the patchbay was the labels they printed out – they’re just clean, aesthetically pleasing, and the patchbay is now incredibly well-labeled and organized. Every patchbay I’ve had before was one I built out and wired myself, and I had handwritten labels on them – they were so much less organized. [Laughs] A lot of studios I've been to also have very makeshift, DIY labels – that’s kind of a common thing. I remember talking to a buddy of mine about this. His patchbay had no labels on it at all! That's nuts; you’re going to forget where things are eventually! I was like, “Dude, why don't you just have Vintage King print you some labels for your patchbay!” and he was like, “They do that?!” [Laughs]
With handwritten labels, it can be like trying to decipher a doctor's handwriting sometimes, right?
[Laughs] Totally! I'm guilty of it too, by the way. I'll be working on a session, assigning tracks to faders, and I'll remember where they all are. Sometimes we can do that if we’re by ourselves, but it's so nice to have somebody else who can come into my studio, look at the patchbay, and immediately know how to work it as well.
You want to make sure your clients, other engineers, and creatives are able to come in here and work, so with the labels, there’s a really professional layout and it’s all clear. It was definitely the right thing to have.
Tell us more about your networking setup for recording from the live room.
So the way our studio is set up is, we have a production room in a communal facility that has 12 other production rooms, and then there's a shared live room that's tied into Dante on a digital network to every production room. There's only one other engineer here who uses the space as a tracking engineer, so no one really uses it other than me and him, which is awesome.
It's not something I'd ever done at another studio before, so it was a challenge, and I had to figure out how to do it. Adding the console into it is another layer of complexity. The other engineer here – the tracking engineer – doesn't have a console in his studio. He's doing everything digital, using the Focusrite and Dante to control everything, so it's a little more centralized.
It was a solid two months before we got fully confident with the live tracking space. Early on, there were a bunch of days where we had drums, mics, and everything set up, and it was not working, but once we got it dialed in, it was great. I'm lucky to have some good friends who are musicians who were willing to come in, hang out, and help us do things like set up the drums and try to get it working before we had paying clients or label projects to work on.
It’s really incredible; it kind of blows my mind that you can record a sound source from another room that's not plugged into your studio at all. It’s coming through the Focusrite interface, then into the API preamps, and I can control the tones right here in analog! It’s sort of bizarre and I'm sure there is some layer of digital sound impact, but I have to say, I feel like the drum sounds that we're getting are incredible, so it's not bothering me. It sounds great and all the great musicians we've had here have said it sounds great. The guy across the hall had Bernard Purdie in here to track drums and he didn't complain, so I think that means it's alright by me!
It’s mind-blowing that you can record a digital signal over the cloud and still get the tones that you want to get in analog. I don't want to make the claim, but I don’t know if there is another studio in the world that's doing that with an API, so we’ll see. [Laughs]
I was joking with my buddy across the hall that in 50 years, people will be selling plug-ins that emulate the Dante sound! [Laughs] ‘That little extra character that you get from having your signal go through Dante. ’ It's crazy!
What drew you to the ATC SCM25A studio monitors?
It was kind of between the ATCs or the PMCs for us, and when talking to other engineers, everybody recommended the ATCs in the price range that I was looking at. PMC has a demo room right next to our studio, so that was one of the first things I'd considered, but all of the PMC models I liked were significantly more expensive than the model I liked from ATC.
I'm still getting used to them, actually. They were freshly installed last week, and I haven't had the time to do the Trinnov speaker tuning yet, so that's on my agenda for this week. I've had some writing that I've had to do, so I've been putting off the arduous process of taking all the measurements. [Laughs] But the ATCs are great speakers.
I think I’m really late to the speaker game in my life because I’ve spent most of my career so far in the songwriting, production, and session musician side of things and you can get by with pretty average speakers as a producer, but not so much as a mixer.
It’s amazing now to hear the things we have been working on with these speakers. I'm going in and cleaning up things. [Laughs] You mix on these incredible speakers and you're like, “All right, let me go back to work on this snare for another couple of hours!” It's bittersweet, like you’re so excited because you got a new toy, and then it’s like, “Wow, my mixes sound like shit!” [Laughs] I’m kidding, they don’t sound that bad, but I guess whenever you upgrade, you're like, “Okay, well now I hear what I wasn't hearing before and I'm ready to mix again.”
I guess the upside is that these mixes will now translate better to many other systems.
Most definitely! I've already noticed that, even with the demos and the roughs I've been making here in the last week. I'm listening in my car and taking them home, and they’re already sounding good.
It’s funny, on the first track that I pulled up in here, I worked on the snare sound for an hour afterward. That's why I made that joke, because I really listened to the snare and was like, “Wow, there's a lot that I need to clean up that I didn't really hear before”, and now it's sounding ten times better.
What are some of your favorite pieces of outboard gear at the studio?
I love the LA-2A – it’s probably my favorite compressor. It just sounds so good on everything, and there's nothing else that really sounds like it. I always wish I had more than one channel of that. [Laughs]
I really love the Moog Matriarch. I guess it’s not a piece of outboard gear, but it's my favorite synth right now.
The API 2500 bus compressor is one of my very favorites as well. I also love the SSL G-Comp – it’s always on the end of my mix. I use it on the program insert, usually mix with it on, and just bypass it a couple of times if I want to hear the difference. It adds the perfect glue and levels everything out without squashing the transients.
Which microphones do you find yourself using most often?
It really depends on what I'm recording, but for vocals, we usually use the FLEA47, which is a U 47 clone. For drums, I pretty much always use the Coles 4038 as a mono overhead. It’s one of my favorite drum mics in general; you could get a great drum sound with just the Coles as a mono overhead. I also love my AKG C414s as overheads, and the FLEA47 as a crotch mic on the drum kit. Honorable mention to the Subkick and the always-reliable SM57.
We also have the Neumann M147 that I use a lot of times as a kick out, which is kind of unconventional, and I love the way it sounds. You get a little bit of the snare in there too; it sounds great on the kick and captures this roomy, airy snare character. It’s kind of nice, right in the center of the kit.
We're still trying to grow our mic locker but we’ve got all the standard stuff – a bunch of SM57s, the Audix drum mic pack, the Sennheiser MKH. We’ve got some good things on the list, but we’re definitely trying to get some Royer 121s, and I would love to get some kind of U 67 clone or maybe a reissue or something. Always more mics! It’s a never-ending rabbit hole.
Do you have a go-to signal chain for recording, or do you use something different every time?
Most frequently, for recording vocals, I’d say I use the FLEA47 going into the API pre with the LA-2A. Occasionally, I use the Distressor on vocals, or sometimes the 1176 as well.
For guitar, I play a Fender Strat and I'll use either the AKG C414 or just an SM57 on the guitar amp, depending on what style of guitar part it is. I'll usually go into an API pre and use either the Distressor or the LA-2A for tracking that. The trick for me with guitar is not compressing it too much. Especially if I'm doing a solo, I probably won’t compress it at all; I think with a really good guitar player, their dynamics are so much a part of their expression, and just generally, with the guitar as an instrument, if you over-compress it, you completely squash the life out of it, so I think one of the secrets is to not do too much.
How do you feel about plug-ins?
I love plug-ins! My favorite EQ is the FabFilter Pro-Q. Everyone probably says that! [Laughs]
I also love all the Soundtoys stuff, it’s just incredible!
I love the RC-20, which is a plug-in that you can do some cool things with. It's got kind of a tape warble, chorus type of flutter effect; there’s a reverb built into it that’s really nice; it has saturation modules, a bit crushing module, and also a vinyl noise module that I don't really use.
I've also been really into UAD’s Culture Vulture and FabFilter’s Saturn, which are great for saturation. I also like plug-ins from Valhalla, like VintageVerb and their delay plug-in. Serum is also great. And Future Audio Workshop Sublab for the 808 sauce.
I don't have a favorite digital compressor as much. I use the UAD models of the stuff that I have in real life when I run out of analog compressors, and they sound good, but they’re not the same as the analog versions. They don't get me excited because I have those in real life, but they're very practical. I’ve got two analog Distressors, but I’m probably going to need more than two of them for the entire mix, though… so that's where the digital comes in handy.
What's a typical day like for you in the studio?
There’s never a typical day in the music business! [Laughs] It's always so different, and that's what we like about it. When you're working on a specific project, you get in a flow and build a routine and a rhythm around it, so my typical day always depends on who I'm working with and what their typical day is like because I want to make the artists happy. I want them to be in a good mood and at their best creatively because the best work comes when they're feeling the most creative. It's one of the things that's a prerequisite of being an engineer or producer – you have to be able to go with the flow or adapt your life around the life of the client you’re working with.
My routine often changes drastically, so I try to have a couple of consistencies in my life, like spending time with my fiancée, surfing in the ocean, spending time outside and getting good exercise so that when I am in the studio, I’m able to do as much as possible.
If I'm just coming into the studio and working by myself, I'll grab a cup of coffee and start working, probably on whatever I was working on the day before. I try to write as often as I can, even if I just have an idea; I still try to write a song at least once every week just to keep the muscle going. It can be very easy, when you're doing a lot of engineering, to let that muscle fade, and writing is very important to me. I learned to engineer out of a necessity to record songs because I like to write songs. I fell in love with engineering because it's so fun and I love doing it, but for me, the song comes first and the practice of writing songs comes first. So if there's any specific routine to my days, I try to play guitar, try to write music as much as I can, and then just keep chugging along on whatever project is next on the to-do list.
Are you working on any exciting projects right now that you're able to talk about?
I'm just finishing this record that I’ve been working on for almost two years with a rapper from Harlem named Gordo Flea. I wrote the music with him and some other writers, and I produced and performed guitar, bass, and keys on the record. We've got some great musicians on it, and Gordo is a really prolific MC with a great voice and a great story. He lives and breathes hip-hop and he’s become a good friend of mine. I got to spend a lot of time in New York while working on the record, which was cool because I hadn't got to work in New York before. I had played a couple of gigs there when I was younger, but getting to work in the city was great. He’s got a studio in Queens, so just getting to hang out with a local and work on hip-hop in New York City was so inspiring. The singles start dropping this summer, I think, with the album out later this year.
I'm also working on my own solo record, which I'm very excited about, and that’s dropping early next year. I'm co-producing it with Stu Brooks, the amazing bass player and producer I mentioned earlier. He’s a legend and it’s been crazy to work with him. It’s funny, because when you're working on your own record, it's super hard to be the producer because you need that objective third party voice to say, “Hey, I like this”, or “I don't like this”, or “Why don't you try this?” I wrote all the music, performed almost all the instruments, and got it to where I wanted it to get. Then I started hanging out with Stu and I asked if he would help me get it over the finish line and it's been awesome.
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