Greene Street Studios

I obtained an internship at Green Street Studios in Soho, New York. You're probably asking, "How did this MF'er manage to get an internship at a major studio with a bio degree?" Up to this point I had been playing with samplers, cassette based multitrack recorders, abandoned analog synthesis gear and, more than anything else, turntables. I had a weekly Dj gig at a wine bar/resturant across the street from the studio. Dave, the studio manager would stop in after doing his studio manager thing and have some wine, food and salacious flirtivity with the waitresses. One night, one of the girls came up to my booth and said, "You should ask Dave if you could work at the studio." I went up to him and asked if he was looking for any help. He said, "Can you use a sampler?" I replied, "Is the Pope Catholic?" and right there I embarked on my professional career at Greene Street Recording where I made coffee, got lunch, cleaned control rooms, edit rooms, lounges and bathroooms. On occassion I was allowed to wrap a cable. I gradually worked my way up to aligning tape machines and eventually, assisted on sessions. It's funny, I saw a lot of interns come and go. The ones that went the fastet were the ones that graduated from some kind of audio program. It's like they didn't have the patience to put up with the schlep-work crap. I don't know, there's something important about learing humility. I think it better equips a person to handle the responsibility of success. If you got roots, you don't forget em'.

BONZAI!

So I spent about a year and a half at Greene Street. Around the middle of my stint there, I was introduced to the owner/operator of a small jingle house called Bonzai Productions located in the Flatiron District. Turns out he needed an organized, efficient, go-getter assistant with a cool head and first call sampler programming skills. Instead of that he hired me ;-). I really cut my production chops at this facility. It was a one man operation but pro as pro could be for 1994. Amongst my many and varied duties, I assembled and cataloged sample libraries; kept everything current. Bear in mind that sample library CD's weren't available pre-formatted at that time so everything had to be manually sampled and tweaked. Imagine 8 hours in front of a 2 bit LCD screen about half the size of an index card...or better yet, don't. I also was responsible for some sequence programming, being an operator on small VO sessions, seconding for visiting engineers and occasionally hosting the talent. There's no bigger ego boost when you're in your mid-twenties than walking into the VIP room of any given club with the latina version of the Spice Girls. Marteen is still a top notch producer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/engineer down in Miami. He is truly, El Heffe.

Fusion...and I don't mean the genre!

Being young and energetic, I always had my ear to the grindstone for new stuff...new music, new gear, new technology. It was my passion and my job. How cool is that? I was asked to help in the design and launch of Fusion Studios in the mid 90's. I built a rep in the industry as being the go-to guy for bleeding edge technology. Consequently, I was attracting the type of clientele who are more apt to use electronic rather than acoustic noisemakers. This included rave babies, house heads, beatminerz and DJ's of all flavors. I went on to become the Chief Engineer at the facility and did the obligatory 96 hour no-overtime workweek. (If you can't understand it you never will. If you do understand, you can revel with me while we share war stories over pints of Guiness). Still, pull at a tear long enough and the threads start getting unraveled regardless of how well the fabric is made. Same thing happens to people. After a few years of that pace I decided I needed a vacation, something kind of, ummm, permanent.

Through the Fire

and into the frying pan...I figured I would be relaxing a little not having the responsibility of someone's studio hanging over my head. If I could have predicted what was about to happen I'm not sure I would have left Fusion. When some of my old clients from Fusion found out I hit the road, they started coming directly to me for studio help, hiring me as a freelance engineer and programmer. I found myself responsible for my own studio and busier than ever! The home studio revolution was just starting and a lot of these artists wanted to get in on the action. I'm not sure who asked me first, but I would build these project studios for artists. The difference between me and the floor sales guy at (insert music mega store) is I assemble systems based on what the artist was trying to do instead of making purchase recommendations based on commission and stock on hand. Pretty soon, everyone was asking me to not only make the recommendations but to design and setup the workspace. My only interest is making an artist/producer as productive as possible inside of a budget they're comfortable with. A few years later at an AES convention, a Digidesign guy asked me what I did. I said, "Well, I put together project studios amongst other things.." He said, "so, you're a systems integration specialist then.." I guess I am, amongst other things...

Endings are just New Beginnings

So we enter a new millenium and in addition to the programming, engineering, sound design and 'systems integration', I was always pursuing my own musical career. In addition to the numerous edits, remixes, collaborations and single productions, I struck a partnership with a talented producer/songwriter/bassist virtuoso named Anton Bass. Together we created an album under the group name "Karmadelic" for Jellybean Records. The album launced in the summer of 2001. Everything was going great. Release parties, live shows, DJ gigs, rockstar lifestyle..then 9-11 happened. What a mindf**k. The bottom fell out of the music industry. I lost a lot of confidence. Who ever said, "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger", neglected to mention the recovery time involved in that process. For me is was too long. Afterwards, though, I learned to appreciate the little things that make our day to day special. Things that may just disappear tomorrow. Yeah, the music is still here. I feel fortunate that I'm given the skill, understanding and experience to do the things I do with sound and help artists realize the ideas they have inside. I believe I owe my talents to the thing that has sustained me throughout the years, good and bad. I owe it to the music. "Cause' without the music, I don't know what we'd do" - Cevin Fisher

Sounds good, print it...

So that's the very long and not too short of it. Hope you enjoyed the story. I enjoyed playing it out and with any luck it'll just get better. There's a ton of stuff I probably overlooked so if anyone feels left out or wants to remind me of a bit of forgotten history, drop a line from the "information request" page, Even just to say "What up dog?" if you feel like it.... may the creator cast eternal email spam the one that sends any chain e-mails... Peace, Konrad Carelli - AudioTactician