?I've had a few major epiphanies in my life where I realized the direction I was headed was not the direction I wanted to go. As far as the recording studio part of my life, I had one of these breakthroughs not too long ago. My life changed. What happened? Well, after 4 years of running a busy recording studio, I decided I wanted to make music.

Let me give you a little background so you understand my situation. Back in 2001, I decided to make a jump into this recording studio thing. I bought a Pentium 3 (450Mhz) computer with Windows 98, I got a loan / maxed out 2 credit cards and I was off to war. Obviously, there are lot of technical hurdles that need to be addressed in a recording studio situation but a year after buying my gear I had a few demos done and many more lined up.

I must admit that I was quite clueless about “music”. I mean I could make a bunch of fast noises while stuck in my shred guitar rut, but I had no understanding of those things crucial to making a great recording. I didn't even know vocals had pitch when I bought my gear. I had never really thought about it before. I didn't realize how critical timing was. I just wanted to press the record button while someone else played something.

Well, this continued and continued. I racked up song after song after song. Many times, we'd have an entire record finished in a weekend. While there were 2 or 3 gems that came out of this that I'm very proud of, most of the records I put out were sub par The songs weren't good enough. The performances weren't good enough. The emotional intensity wasn't high enough. The engineering could have been better too, but an overwhelming majority of engineering is in the “songs, performances, and emotional intensity”. As far as I'm concerned, without these elements, this whole “engineering concept” is a waste of time. Engineering doesn't kick in until you have a situation where you are dealing with great songs, performances, and emotional intensity. After you have those things, you can start thinking about compressor settings.

So here I was recording 4 days per week in a very overbooked studio running songs through some sort of assembly line of recording, doing my best to mix them, and sending them out the door. While there is nothing wrong with serving bands, I found that I wasn't serving them that well. Many of them were disappointed to hear that their $350 recording we busted through in a weekend didn't sound as good as X major label band. Sorry! Of course, most of these bands were also oblivious to how important the performances, songs, and emotional intensity were, too.

To make a long story short, I decided that I didn't want to be a part of sloppily cramming noise onto a cd and sending it out the door. While, I was a small part of a few gems, overall, I hurt my name by rushing. Don't ruin your name by putting out crap when you know you could do better.

Now, I'm focusing on producing. I do this because most of the 700+ songs I've recorded don't mean much to me, the band, or anyone else for that matter. It sucks to give up that much effort to make recordings that made absolutely no impact on people. Now, my only goal is to make songs that make an impact. I'm working with people that I 100% believe in their music. I'm working with people who are driven enough to get their music out there.