10 years later, how far I've come.

I'm sitting here watching a music video that I shot a decade ago while still in college getting my associates degree in Applied Science from Ohio University. I specialized my degree around audio production, but it was a very broad focus during my 2 years. I hate that I didn't learn much about truly advanced audio production until about 3 years later when I started listening to audio podcasts. But we all start somewhere.

So let's revisit Thoughtless.


My initial thoughts are that the mix sucks, the vocal takes are horrible, the piano's off time, but the vibe of the song is still haunting. Despite its flaws, it was my favorite piece of music that I'd produced for just about the rest of the decade. 2010 marked a turning point for me, as I finally started meeting people who could guide me and critique me. Up until that point, for about 6 years, I was a shitty engineer who had no one able to give me consistent feedback to help me improve my craft. And despite the fact that I didn't really start to come into my own element as an engineer and producer for another 6 years, I still look back on this video with some pride. The song was personal, and the mix was a very different kind of production than any I'd done before. It sounded better than most of the stuff I'd been doing during the entire decade. It was my shining star. I look at where I am now and compare it to where I was, and I shake my head and want to cover my eyes, but I'm still proud of it.

When I recorded Thoughtless, I had no idea what I was going to put down on tape. I went into the studio lab at OU-Zanesville, where we had a digital 8 track tape machine that took Hi 8 tapes. I hooked up my BOSS BR-532 to it and loaded up a drum loop. I tracked that onto track 1 in mono, then went back to overdub the acoustic guitar. Can't remember what mic I used on the acoustic, but it was likely an SM57. From there, I noodled for about 3 minutes to figure out a rhythm guitar part to the song. When I found a couple of parts that worked, I put em on track 3. Track 4 was a borrowed bass guitar that I ran into the BR-532 and used a fretless bass simulator on. I still dig the vibe that tone has. I didn't deviate from the baseline through the entire song, and just played the same thing repeatedly. I wanted this song to just groove from start to finish, so changing things up wasn't really part of the plan.

I borrowed a keyboard from another student, and came up with a piano part. The piano patch had a string section mixed in, and when I held a note out the strings would swell up as the piano decayed away. I thought this was cool as shit, so I used that. Despite the fact that I'm not a pianist, and had never ever ever rehearsed the part before, I got a somewhat decent take. It wasn't til I had given the keyboard back that I realized I had flubbed the timing in the song at one point, but it was too late to fix and I didn't know how to edit back then anyway. Besides, it was a tape system.

So I started tracking vocals. I doubled the lead vocals, and recorded a harmony line. That took up my 8 tracks. I must've done some track bouncing, though I can't recall doing that, because somehow I got 2 lead vocal lines and 2 harmony lines on tape. With drums, acoustic guitar, bass, electric guitar, piano synth, and 4 vocal lines, that's 9 tracks. I only had 8. It's been too long that I can't remember, but there's no other explanation so we'll just say that I bounced something down to make room for all the vocals I wanted to do. I found a way to backup the audio from the tape machine, and took the project home as school came to an end. I graduated a few months later.

In the mix, the drum machine had a high pass filter on it at the beginning, and I took that off halfway through the first verse for an effect of the song picking up. I faded the drums in during the intro, so everything was sorta tied to that drum line.

The music video was made as a class project before graduation. It was shot using a midi dv cam both in my home at the time in downtown Columbus Ohio, and in a local cemetery. In spite of the poor lip syncing, and lack of overall emotion (let's just say that acting isn't my strong suit), I shot 95% of the shots myself. I had assistance from my girlfriend for the remaining 5%.

The shots where I'm playing an electric guitar in the chorus were shot in my living room one evening after getting off of work from my job waiting tables. I was still wearing my uniform, and you can see the dirty sleeves that came from the stainless steel countertops from the restaurant. We had to keep bleaching our shirts. It was disgusting. lol!

I spent 2 days on campus in the lab editing the video. The computer was slow, and it was Adobe Premier from 2004, and I didn't know how to do it any faster. Plus, there's a pesky thing called ADHD, so that slowed me down now and then. The security guards kicked me out of the building the first night after midnight because I hadn't left yet, and they didn't know I was still there. lol.

When it was done, the other students loved it. I think it was the best produced final project of the class, as far as how much thought went into it. Looking back on it, reading that last sentence, I'm embarrassed to say that a lot of thought went into this. But it did, and I didn't have the best opportunities to meet with creative minds to help nourish my fledgeling career. So it is what it is.

10 years later, I've had the chance to hone my video and audio editing skills. My ears have become light years better, my eye for shot composition and color correction has improved dramatically, and I look back on this and I'm still proud of it. This was the first time I'd attempted anything remotely like this, and it came out pretty decent for a first try from a guy who didn't have any real mentoring. A lot of that was my own fault, I was 23 and not applying myself. I could've found mentors and connections, but I lived an hour away from campus and didn't spend time there that I didn't have to. I did the bare minimum throughout school, and I wish I hadn't approached it like that. But I was young, and pretty stupid, and I eventually got over that.

There's an underlying point here. There may be more than 1, we'll see. The most obvious one is that no matter how long something takes to happen for you, it won't happen at all until you start applying yourself. I didn't get serious about my audio career until around 2008 when I moved to Denver. I sat on my ass complaining that no studios were hiring, and didn't really do much to look for studios to work in. I didn't do much to make myself attractive to studios. I didn't do much to keep my chops up. I didn't do much to build new chops. I just sat there and complained that the job market for recording engineers sucked unless you were in Nashville or LA. That was my fault, not the fault of the job market.

In 2008, when I moved to Denver, I decided to promote my services as a studio that would come to the client and record them in their rehearsal space. I got steady work, charging $10-hour, and it was a decent second income to supplement my job behind the deli counter at King Soopers in Evergreen. One day, I was recording an artist named Rob Medina, and we had started the mixing process. A business friend of his who owned a studio in the mountains convinced Rob to use him to do the mixing instead of me, and when I got the call I did my best to take it like a pro. It stung, but it was a SUPER blessing in disguise. The engineer was Bob Swanson, and when I took him the files he started asking me about my pro tools rig. I told him I didn't have pro tools, so he started asking what DAW I used. When he found out I was a guy who had 1 mic stand, 4 mics, small Roland monitors, and a BOSS BR-1600 CD, he was floored that I was going out and calling myself a studio despite my lack of gear. Even more amazing to him was the fact that I was getting work with this very meager setup. He said "I know guys with 10 times the gear you have who won't get started because they think they don't have the gear! Here you are doing it! THAT takes Balls!"

Bob was my mentor from that point on. Not only that, but he gave me spare equipment that he no longer needed. I was floored. I owe my career today to Bob, He challenged me, he taught me, and he guided me.

And when I moved back to Ohio a few months later, I was better prepared to start over in a new market with better tools and a better understanding of what I needed to do. I started applying myself and doors opened.

Had I sat on my ass, it wouldn't have opened.

That's one of the two takeaways I hope you get from this. The other is to be patient. We ALL start somewhere. I'm a better engineer today than I was a decade ago, but I'm still learning. No matter what point in your career you are, you're always learning. Even Pensado says he learns from the engineers he brings on Pensado's Place, and he's won grammy's! Give it time, keep at it, and you'll eventually get somewhere. Seek guidance and help along the way, and never stop trying to learn more about your field.

Thanks for reading.