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Imagine being a youth who can, at no cost, access world-class recording equipment, musical instruments, and supportive mentors, in a space right in the heart of your hometown. Sounds like a fairytale? Well, it’s not, thanks to Notes for Notes. Since 2006, the non-profit organization has been turning that dream into reality, one space at a time, across the country.
Having just set up studio number 30, CEO/Co-Founder Philip Gilley, Chief Creative Officer Ross Tyler, and VP of Operations & Support Kristie Davis, recently sat down with us to give us an inside look at the work they do.
Read on to learn about their goals, their learnings, and what it’s been like working with Vintage King to equip the studios with the best gear for the artists of tomorrow.
Tell us a bit about Notes For Notes and the work you do.
Phil: Starting with why we do what we do. A little bit of my own personal background – growing up in Vermont, I felt very fortunate that we had music in the schools. However, it might as well have not existed for me because I don't learn in the traditional ways – like sight reading, for example – and there are probably a lot of youth who fall into this category.
I had a third-grade teacher, Mrs. Brown, who told me that “if you can't read music, you can't play music.” That was very discouraging to hear and I didn't really have the confidence, as a third grader, to stick it to “The Man” and say, “I want to learn music, I’ll figure it out on my own”. So I just gave up early on, even though I dreamed of being a film composer one day.
That's an important part of the origin story because even when music does exist in schools, it's probably not reaching every youth because we all learn differently. Potentially, what is being offered in terms of instrumentation and curriculum is not meeting them on a relevance level either, in a way that gets them excited about exploring skill sets and instruments that they didn't even know they might be interested in, if only offered.
Fast forward to when I was about 15, my mom got me a guitar and I just taught myself by ear and thought, “Well, why didn't anyone tell me I could do it like this?” So that's an important part of what happens in our studios – we want youth to have that interest be guided by their own passion, and then help them figure out how to learn in whatever way works best for them, whether that’s sight reading, by ear, using YouTube, hanging out, jamming, whatever it is.
Fast forward even further, I moved to California and found myself doing the Big Brothers program, which is a wonderful program but there came a point where I wondered, “How many times can we go bowling and to the movies?” We're hanging out, and hopefully, this is influential in his life, but I thought, “Is there anything I could get him excited about or instill in him that would live with him beyond whatever time we spend together?”
I figured maybe that's through music and there was literally no place to go make music other than a music store, where we would do what all musicians do, which is hang out, take guitars off the wall, sit behind the demo drum kit… that was the only place we could access the gear and I could teach him some basic stuff. My co-founders, Roderick Hare and Natalie Noone, both musicians in their own right, share in the passion for access, expression, and bonds that form through music.
That's where the idea formed: “Why isn't there a place where young people can go to get their hands on the gear that allows them to make the music they want to make?”
What is core to our culture is: one, there should be a place where youth can get their hands on this stuff, and not have it be something that's high up on the top rack. It's like, “Cool, there's a Gibson guitar right there! Take it off the wall. Let's try it.” And secondly, you should have someone in that space to encourage you and help when you hit a roadblock of learning. The goal of the program is to make records and learn about all the skills and the careers that can go along with that.
Ross will nerd out in terms of gear, but, essentially, it's all completely free – doesn't cost anything for any youth, and we build all of our programming around the studio experience. Even with zero experience, youth can walk into the studio, sit down with one of our producers and they're going to make something on day one, and we hope the inspiration of creating something from nothing is what drives them to come back.
It sounds like a lovely, safe space in which to be creative.
Phil: You're exactly right. That leads to one of the most important things, which I call the Three Types of Free: it's free to access; there’s freedom of learning, so we'll help them figure out what way works best for them to explore and learn; and finally, freedom of expression – expressing yourself in any way you want, sonically or lyrically.
We want to create a safe space because that's what the studio is: a place to be able to explore, try things out, and even fail; that's the magic of a studio environment versus just a music education program. A studio is inherently built around creation, and creation requires vulnerability and encouragement, so we take it very seriously and curate that environment so that it feels that way when young people walk in.
Take us through some of the studios you’ve built this year.
Phil: I’ve just come back from building out studio number 30, and it also marks our fourth location in Milwaukee thanks to the support of Keith Mardak. Ross can elaborate on why these studios represent the next level for us, especially in terms of gear, but also with expanded programming by being able to serve youth during the school day.
Of the four studios we opened this year, the one in Atlanta is very special. It's in the Covenant House, which is a homeless youth shelter and program. It's wonderful to be taking what we had done as more of a pop-up in the facility, to now actually have a home base there so that we can really create a consistent program.
Ross: They didn't have the ability to do a full construction type of setup, so it's a single open room that has a prefab-built, WhisperRoom-style vocal booth inside of it. There are multiple production and mix stations and one main mix station, and they can all pull lines and push feeds to/from that vocal booth. Then there's a center hangout area that actually has an electronic drum kit, guitar amps, and a couch and stuff. So instead of being like a traditional studio with multiple rooms, Covenant House is more of an open workspace with an isolated vocal booth.
The Running Rebels studio that we just finished building in Milwaukee, is in a community center and is a bit unique in its setup. There's a huge lounge where existing producers and their artists can come in, workshop new ideas, work on beats, and whatnot. We built two big mix rooms that each have their own vocal booth attached, and then we built a nice-sized ISO room. Both of those mix rooms have access to pull lines and push feeds to/from the ISO room and the giant lounge (if they want to mic that space up like a “live” room). So all inputs are shared, with the concept being that you could have two different professional tracking sessions or mixing sessions happening at any point in time, and it feels like a real Studio A, Studio B, with a shared live room and a shared ISO room type of vibe.
Phil: We have two studios in a public charter school partnership – the Dr. Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy – that built a brand new high school. We built an incredible studio there in partnership with them, as well as one in their renovated middle school.
Ross: The space in the high school is set up to be 100% a pro recording studio environment – it has the SSL ORIGIN 16 console installed there, which is a great thing and a first for us. We are super excited about it. This studio has floating floors, double-leaf walls, room-within-a-room pro isolation… the whole nine yards, from a construction perspective. It also has a lounge with a podcast area and two production/mix stations for youth to work on their own even when the main mix and studio rooms are being used. This studio has a full-fledged mix room with the SSL as the centerpiece, a vocal booth, a live room, and an ISO booth.
The middle school is built a little bit more like our recreational studios, but we wanted it to be a stepping stone for students to move up to the high school. It has a big multipurpose main room with a Live PA setup (front-of-house board, mains, wedges, and so forth). You could actually do a performance in that space if you felt like it, and youth learn about live sound there; it has a real dedicated podcast room as well, a mix room, and a nice-sized ISO vocal booth. But the gear and how it's laid out is like a simplified, 30% version of what the high school has, just to get the youth used to some of it, so when they step up into the high school, it won't feel completely overwhelming.
Phil: We do have one other location in High Point, North Carolina, as well, and between Milwaukee and North Carolina, we're deeply invested in being inside the school day, which gives us a whole other level of impact because we have more access serving youth. We are now a class that youth get to sign up for, so when that bell rings, they get to walk into a professional studio and cut records. I think we all wish we had that during the class day when we were younger.
What drew you to the SSL ORIGIN 16 console and what are your favorite features?
Ross: Reason number one is, providing youth a studio space that has an analog console in it gives them an experience that they probably could never get unless they were paying to go record at a studio.
Number two – how many great records are recorded or mixed on an SSL? It truly is a fantastic platform and they did a great job simplifying it into the ORIGIN series. When they shrank it down to a 16-channel footprint they made it affordable enough that we could have an actual analog console in a studio for once, with the right funding. SSL took the best of the best, simplified it down into a format that fit, and made it affordable for schools, non-profits, and smaller studios.
The third reason is, the SSL Large Fader/Small Fader layout on the ORIGIN; the ability for you to establish multiple paths to success in regards to how you marry that analog beast into the digital world is amazing. It’s so much simpler to route than a lot of other consoles that you find on the market. Also, it's really a 32-channel board disguised as a 16-channel board. On many consoles, you would have 16 channels left of the Master section and 16 more to the right, often using the 16 on the left as inputs and the 16 on the right as playback/mix etc. On the SSL ORIGIN, you can have two different sources for each channel, one for the long fader and one for the short. You can flip-flop them too and even use separate inserts on each. Sure, only one can use the EQ, but you really do have 32 channels on that board.
So those are the three main reasons: we want to make sure youth can get the experience of working on a board; the cost and size is great; and SSL has a great workflow in regards to how you can go back and forth from the digital world.
How did you customize it for your studio’s needs?
Ross: We built it so that you can come into the console as an input console, use all 16 preamps and EQ, then use the DAW just as your tape machine, and actually have it route directly back to the 16 Small Faders for playback/mix with no repatching needed. Or, we've got it set up so that you can come in live to the SSL to track but do your mixing in the DAW.
Whether you're going analog to digital and back to analog, or you're starting digital only – using the Universal Audio preamps and going right to the DAW – and you just want to use the SSL’s busses to sum your mix, you can. We did a lot of creative patchbay design with the SSL to do that.
Part of the goal was to establish as many options as possible with as little manual patching and understanding of patchbays as possible, to make it easy for youth. So we designed all the patchbays so that the SSL ORIGIN and all of the outboard gear land at a Universal Audio interface input or output that is labeled and easy to find. Got to shout out Universal Audio! They really stepped up and provided us with what we needed to make this studio's workflow work.
We’ve got it set up so that if a student walks up to any mic input, plugs in a microphone, and starts talking into it, the youth sitting at the board is going to see a VU meter jump. Every single input is automatically patched to a preamp and whether that preamp is on the SSL, or it's a preamp built into the Apollo x8p, it's going to show up somewhere. So at the bare minimum to entry, a youth can plug a mic in, tap on it, see it spike up and down, and go, “Okay, I'm recording through that.” As long as they know how to make the gain knob louder or quieter, they can record; they don't even need to know how anything else works. That was a big thing for us.
We are using the SSL and UA’s Console to feed the Hearback cue system, so even though UA’s Console does handle the feeds, you get to use the Talkback mic and the Cue/Foldback section on the actual SSL. Makes the youth feel real pro hitting the Talkback buttons on a real SSL console as they lean into the Talkback mic.
We do have three Lexicon PCM92s, and the AMS RMX16 500 Series Reverb as well, which we love, so you can actually use the hardware reverbs and compressors with the analog board and never go into the digital realm, or do the opposite.
What do you think of the SSL UC1, UF1, & UF8 Controllers?
Ross: I've used the UF1 and the UC1, personally, for a while now and I love them – especially since the last update – where you can basically use the controllers to control any plug-in you want. The useability is great and it 100% sold me on the idea even before we built that studio and wired it.
We wanted to make sure that youth at the middle school, who could end up on that SSL console in high school, would have the ability to utilize things that would feel familiar, the core idea being: keep it simple, teach them something easy but familiar, so when they graduate to the big board, it doesn't feel so strange.
The students at the middle school start by using SSL plug-ins – which we have through our partnership with Slate Digital – and when the youth opens up that SSL 4K plug-in, it looks a lot like the SSL ORIGIN board’s channel strip. Then we took those three controllers, put them together on top of the desk, and the youth get an opportunity to interface with some hardware and software that will look and feel like the SSL ORIGIN does.
What made you select the SSL 2 and 2+ audio interfaces?
Ross: We had two production stations in the lounge of the high school that both have computers, a pair of KRK monitors, an Akai MIDI keyboard, etc. and for those stations, we wanted to mirror what was happening at the mix desk with the SSL, so we thought we’d try and throw a little SSL flavor on these smaller workstations.
Because the interfaces don't have a complex backend routing system of their own – they rely on the Audio/MIDI settings within a Mac – they’re super fast to set up. You have to lean on your DAW to do your routing, and that's not a problem, especially for a small workstation. SSL made setting them up easy and it made getting sound in and out of them a lot less complicated.
I don't want to name other manufacturers, but there are other similarly priced units that have a software back end that becomes a massive challenge for youth when working on their own. We had some of those and there's one in particular where, in order to even set up the cues to get a mix back into your own headphones, the way you have to select it doesn't look like anything a normal human would use in a studio or DAW. So the youth get stuck and struggle to figure out how to get the mix back to their headphones. Or, all of a sudden, they’re wondering why everything they’re doing is twice as loud and clipping – it’s because they doubled the channel into the interface’s software mixer and the DAW at the same time or something to that degree. The SSL simplifies the whole process and that’s so great.
The 4K button on there is surprising in how closely it gives you character when you push the drive a little hotter on those preamps – that's an added plus. Also, for the price point, I haven't heard better AD/DA conversion.
What are some of your favorite pieces of outboard gear?
Ross: This studio has an Apollo x4 that marries to an x8p that marries to two different x16s and all of those together, through creative patching design – physically through the six Switchcraft 9625 patchbays, and digitally through UA Console – have provided us with a very unique opportunity to simplify (with very few manual patches needed) and do really cool things. We love how UA Console works and we use it in other studios to teach youth how real consoles work. In studios without an analog board, we always say, “use Console as your actual analog board and use your DAW as your tape machine and mixdown console”.
We wanted to be able to give youth the flavor of more than just what an analog SSL console would sound like. So the way we built out the Argosy desk around that SSL is that the left-hand racks have the Hearback, the interfaces, and a Black Lion Audio Revolution EXP AD/DA converter to help us convert some of the stuff that we needed to get in and out of the board.
We didn't take the Switchcraft patchbays and put them on the other side of the desk, like you often see with analog consoles. Instead, we decided to take two Neve 500 Series boxes and build channel strips. So, for example, there’s a 500 Series box where the first four slots are Neve 1073 preamps; directly below that is another 500 Series box where the first four slots are Neve 1073 EQs; and in the racks below are two Distressors, two Warm Audio WA-1Bs, Warm Audio WA-2As, and Warm Audio WA76s. What we did, patching-wise, is use normalization and creative layout in the Switchcraft 9625s so that the first 1073 preamp normals to the 1073 EQ directly below it, which is then also normalled to one of those compressors in the rack below.
So here’s your SSL, but maybe I want it to sound like a Neve, so with one patch cable, a youth can go from a microphone jack in the patchbay to the input of the first Neve preamp, and that lights up. Now that you've got that whole chain patched and sent to Console, the preamp lights up, the EQ lights up, the 1B compressor lights up, and it automatically shows up in Console because it's already normalled to one of the channels of one of the x16s and they can just record! All they had to do is patch one cable – steal the signal from that mic, plug it in, and the whole chain activates.
So we’ve got four Neve channels, four API channels, and then they all cascade into EQs and compressors, round trip back into an x16, and just show up immediately in the DAW ready to be recorded. They can always learn how to break that chain at any point and customize or use any of those pieces of gear as inserts to the SSL with more advanced patching.
We love the AMS Reverb, so using that 500 Series hardware unit is awesome, and it looks rad too!
Then we have the SSL Bus Compressor 500 Series. Oh, that's another reason we love the SSL console – the bus compression in the master section! So this gives us two SSL bus compressors, and if they felt like using the 500 for a drum bus comp and then using the console’s bus comp as the master bus, they could.
We have an API 2500+ Bus Compressor as well. Those are really great units for advanced students who want to get out of the box and start taking advantage of analog bus summing on the SSL, but then also want to utilize real-world bus compressors.
What was it like working with Alex St. Cin and Vintage King to build out the studios?
Kristie: I've never talked to Alex face-to-face, or on the phone; it's only been through email, but I still feel like he's more of a friend than just a vendor we're working with. I feel really comfortable, like we could hang out and have a beer together. [Laughs]
I usually send Alex a gigantic list, he finds all the gear and puts it on the invoice for me. He makes it super easy to get what we need and ensures it’s the right fit.
He's been fantastic, even with gear that Vintage King doesn't carry. If I’m having trouble finding something, he’ll go out of his way to send me links, and say, “Hey, I found it here.” It’s clear he’s more than just a vendor – he’s a resource.
We often have tight turnarounds. For example, in some of our latest builds, we couldn't send gear to the school until construction was somewhat done. Once complete, the school year was set to start within a matter of weeks, so it was like, “We need this and we need it fast!” Alex partnered with different vendors to arrange faster shipping and made sure we had the gear in hand by the time we were ready for the build. He really went above and beyond to ensure we had everything we needed when we needed it!
VK has also been amazing with returns. At the school in North Carolina, the construction kept getting delayed – we had gear delivered in August/September, but we didn’t start the build until late January. We ended up needing to return some items we didn’t use, and the VK team made it easy; returning items was never a hassle.
Take us into your mic lockers – what are some of your favorite microphones?
Ross: The Universal Audio Sphere DLX Modeling Mic is awesome – you can change the polar patterns and choose different mics to emulate (live, during tracking, or in post, at mix down), so we love it. We’ve also got all the little UAD white SD mics that can also morph into different types of microphones. From a teaching perspective, that's paramount because we couldn't afford to have every mic in the mic closet, but we also kind of can because we have all the UA mics.
Being studio nerds, and having a larger budget at this studio, we’ve got some special mics too, like the Royer R-121 ribbon mic – you put that right alongside the Shure SM57 on a guitar cabinet and you have a glorious combination, right? It's a great mic for guitar cabs and can be a cool room mic as well.
Then we have a pair of Beyerdynamic M 160s, which are legendary microphones in the overhead realm for bands like Zeppelin, and on guitar cabs for Hendrix and the like. You can blast it with sound and it doesn't cave like many ribbon mics do.
We also have a pair of matched AKG C414s. They’re great room mics, vocal mics, guitar cab mics, and can be great overhead mics – if you're going to Glyn Johns a drum kit using two 414s in the overhead position and something else on the kick, it’s a fantastic thing to do.
We also have some Neumanns – a pair of 184s and a TLM 103 – which are great. We have a bunch of Sennheiser MD 421s which work great on guitar cabs, toms, horns, etc. We have all the Shure stuff you need, and we’ve got some great Audio-Technica condensers, like their AT4040 or their AT2020.
Are there any special stories from Notes for Notes studios that you can share with us?
Phil: When we get asked what some of the greatest achievements are…honestly, if we stopped at 30 studios, these would still represent some of the greatest achievements. On a more high profile note, are you familiar with the song ‘abcdefu’?
Yeah, that was a huge hit for GAYLE a couple of years ago!
Taylor aka GAYLE is an alumnus of our program. When she was about 12, she found us at a CMA FanX event where we had a little pop-up. While it's not that we're trying to engineer the next GRAMMY-nominated artist, it will happen and it has happened – GAYLE got nominated for Song of the Year.
At the core, our organization is a community and I’m incredibly proud of the journey of, specifically, two young men – Will Flores and Cameron Cassell, who transitioned from members at 17 into volunteers, and eventually, as they matured and grew, we put them each in charge of a studio. Will led in producing GAYLE in those early years of her discovering her sound and now he’s N4N’s resident “golden ears” for mixes while also helping in the field, building and wiring new studios.
The right combination of interests, passion, and personality, combined with access to gear, encouragement, and the community, will help talent emerge from young people in places they didn't even imagine for themselves. All youth can get something out of the program, from just keeping themselves occupied for a couple of hours a day (and away from negative situations) to exploring a career on stage or behind it. Those are the stories we're most proud of when we think of why we do what we do.
What is Notes for Notes looking forward to in the new year?
Phil: Going into next year, we’ve got some very exciting opportunities thanks to some big partners stepping up to help us innovate and grow. We're building a studio with the band Rüfüs Du Sol who are supporting us with a ticket giveback on their entire world tour next year, which may actually lead to our first international studio.
It is our goal over the next five years to have at least one studio in every state and we are actively looking for artists and industry partners that want to help us do that. We really want to canvas the entire country because a studio can benefit both an inner-city environment and a rural community. I'm actively working on trying to launch something in Vermont, where I’m from, because I know the rural issues stem, often, from boredom, so it’s better to create opportunities for youth that put them in a productive environment and get them excited about paths beyond their hometown or state.
I feel that the people reading this through Vintage King are the same audience that we want to make aware – engineers, producers, songwriters, artists who can get involved in helping support Notes for Notes with their time and expertise. There might be engineers who are local to us in a market, who are willing to swing by for a workshop. It could even be done remotely where people offer up, “Man, I can give you a couple of mixes on a song, if you just send me the stems”.
It’s a way for anyone interested in music to have an impact on our organization and the youth we serve. So that's kind of an open call to anyone who wants to get involved; there's a way they can help and make a difference.
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